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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of On Something, by H. Belloc
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+Title: On Something
+
+Author: H. Belloc
+
+Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7354]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 20, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON SOMETHING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by William Flis, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
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+
+
+                             ON SOMETHING
+
+                                 BY
+
+                              H. BELLOC
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                                _To
+                              Somebody_
+
+
+
+         CONTENTS
+
+A PLEA FOR THE SIMPLER DRAMA
+
+ON A NOTEBOOK
+
+ON UNKNOWN PEOPLE
+
+ON A VAN TROMP
+
+HIS CHARACTER
+
+ON THRUPPENNY BITS
+
+ON THE HOTEL AT PALMA AND A PROPOSED GUIDE-BOOK
+
+THE DEATH OF WANDERING PETER
+
+THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+A NORFOLK MAN
+
+THE ODD PEOPLE
+
+LETTER OF ADVICE AND APOLOGY TO A YOUNG BURGLAR
+
+THE MONKEY QUESTION: AN APPEAL TO COMMON SENSE
+
+THE EMPIRE BUILDER
+
+CAEDWALLA
+
+A UNIT OF ENGLAND
+
+THE RELIC
+
+THE IRONMONGER
+
+A FORCE IN GAUL
+
+ON BRIDGES
+
+A BLUE BOOK
+
+PERIGEUX OF THE PERIGORD
+
+THE POSITION
+
+HOME
+
+THE WAY TO FAIRYLAND
+
+THE PORTRAIT OF A CHILD
+
+ON EXPERIENCE
+
+ON IMMORTALITY
+
+ON SACRAMENTAL THINGS
+
+IN PATRIA
+
+
+
+
+
+Of the various sketches in this book some appear for the first time,
+others are reprinted by courtesy of the Proprietors and Editors of _The
+Westminster Gazette_, _The Clarion_, _The English Review_, _The Morning
+Post_ and _The Manchester Guardian_, in which papers they appeared.
+
+
+
+
+
+A PLEA FOR THE SIMPLER DRAMA
+
+
+It is with the drama as with plastic art and many other things: the plain
+man feels that he has a right to put in his word, but he is rather afraid
+that the art is beyond him, and he is frightened by technicalities.
+
+After all, these things are made for the plain man; his applause, in the
+long run and duly tested by time, is the main reward of the dramatist as
+of the painter or the sculptor. But if he is sensible he knows that his
+immediate judgment will be crude. However, here goes.
+
+The plain man sees that the drama of his time has gradually passed from
+one phase to another of complexity in thought coupled with simplicity of
+incident, and it occurs to him that just one further step is needed to
+make something final in British art. We seem to be just on the threshold
+of something which would give Englishmen in the twentieth century
+something of the fullness that characterized the Elizabethans: but somehow
+or other our dramatists hesitate to cross that threshold. It cannot be
+that their powers are lacking: it can only be some timidity or self-torture
+which it is the business of the plain man to exorcise.
+
+If I may make a suggestion in this essay to the masters of the craft it is
+that the goal of the completely modern thing can best be reached by taking
+the very simplest themes of daily life--things within the experience of
+the ordinary citizen--and presenting them in the majestic traditional
+cadence of that peculiarly English medium, blank verse.
+
+As to the themes taken from the everyday life of middle-class men and
+women like ourselves, it is true that the lives of the wealthy afford
+more incident, and that there is a sort of glamour about them which it is
+difficult to resist. But with a sufficient subtlety the whole poignancy
+of the lives led by those who suffer neither the tragedies of the poor
+nor the exaltation of the rich can be exactly etched. The life of
+the professional middle-class, of the business man, the dentist, the
+money-lender, the publisher, the spiritual pastor, nay of the playwright
+himself, might be put upon the stage--and what a vital change would be
+here! Here would be a kind of literary drama of which the interest would
+lie in the struggle, the pain, the danger, and the triumph which we all so
+intimately know, and next in the satisfaction (which we now do not have)
+of the mimetic sense--the satisfaction of seeing a mirror held up to a
+whole audience composed of the very class represented upon the stage.
+
+I have seen men of wealth and position absorbed in plays concerning
+gambling, cruelty, cheating, drunkenness, and other sports, and so
+absorbed chiefly because they saw _themselves_ depicted upon the
+stage; and I ask, Would not my fellows and myself largely remunerate a
+similar opportunity? For though the rich go repeatedly to the play, yet
+the middle-class are so much more numerous that the difference is amply
+compensated.
+
+I think we may take it, then, that an experiment in the depicting of
+professional life would, even from the financial standpoint, be workable;
+and I would even go so far as to suggest that a play could be written in
+which there did not appear one single lord, general, Member of Parliament,
+baronet, professional beauty, usurer (upon a large scale at least) or
+Cabinet Minister.
+
+The thing is possible: and I can modestly say that in the little effort
+appended as an example to these lines it has been done successfully; but
+here must be mentioned the second point in my thesis--I could never have
+achieved what I have here achieved in dramatic art had I not harked back
+to the great tradition of the English heroic decasyllable such as our
+Shakespeare has handled with so felicitous an effect.
+
+The play--which I have called "The Crisis," and which I design to be
+the model of the school founded by these present advices--is specially
+designed for acting with the sumptuous accessories at the disposal of
+a great manager, such as Mr. (now Sir Henry) Beerbohm Tree, or for the
+narrower circumstances of the suburban drawing-room.
+
+There is perhaps but one character which needs any long rehearsal, that
+of the dog Fido, and luckily this is one which can easily be supplied by
+mechanical means, as by the use of a toy dog of sufficient size which
+barks upon the pressure of a pneumatic attachment.
+
+In connexion with this character I would have the student note that I
+have introduced into the dog's part just before the curtain a whole line
+of _dactyls_. I hope the hint will not be wasted. Such exceptions
+relieve the monotony of our English _trochees_. But, saving in this
+instance, I have confined myself throughout to the example of William
+Shakespeare, surely the best master for those who, as I fondly hope, will
+follow me in the regeneration of the British Stage.
+
+
+
+
+THE CRISIS
+
+PLACE: _The Study at the Vicarage_. TIME 9.15 _p.m._
+
+
+DRAMATIS PERSONA
+
+THE REV. ARCHIBALD HAVERTON: The Vicar.
+
+MRS. HAVERTON: His Wife.
+
+MISS GROSVENOR: A Governess.
+
+MATILDA: A Maid.
+
+FIDO: A Dog.
+
+HERMIONE COBLEY: Daughter of a cottager who takes in washing.
+
+MISS HARVEY: A guest, cousin to Mrs. Haverton, a Unitarian.
+
+(_The_ REV. ARCHIBALD HAVERTON _is reading the "Standard" by a lamp
+  with a green shade_. MRS. HAVERTON _is hemming a towel_. FIDO
+  _is asleep on the rug. On the walls are three engravings from Landseer,
+  a portrait of Her late Majesty Queen Victoria, a bookcase with books in
+  it, and a looking-glass_.)
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON: My dear--I hope I do not interrupt you--
+Helen has given notice.
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_looking up suddenly_).
+                                        Given notice?
+Who? Helen? Given notice? Bless my soul!
+  (_A pause_.)
+I never thought that she would give us notice.
+  (_Ponders and frowns._)
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON: Well, but she has, and now the question is,
+What shall we do to find another cook?
+Servants are very difficult to get. (_Sighs._)
+Especially to come into the country
+To such a place as this. (_Sighs._) No wonder, either!
+Oh! Mercy! When one comes to think of it,
+One cannot blame them. (_Sighs._) Heaven only knows
+I try to do my duty! (_Sighs profoundly._)
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_uneasily_): Well, my dear,
+I cannot _make_ preferment.
+
+(_Front door-bell rings._)
+
+  FIDO:                               Bow! wow! wow!
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_patting him to soothe him_):
+    There, Fido, there!
+
+  FIDO:                               Wow! wow!
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON:                   Good dog, there!
+
+  FIDO:                                               Wow,
+    Wow, wow!
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_very nervous_): There!
+
+  FIDO:                                   Wow! wow!
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_in an agony_):  Good dog!
+
+  FIDO:                              Bow! wow! wow!
+    Wow, wow! Wow!! WOW!!!
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_very excited_): Oh, Lord, he'll
+    wake the children!
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_exploding_): How often have
+    I told you, Dorothy,
+Not to exclaim "Good Lord!"... Apart from manners--
+Which have their own importance--blasphemy
+(And I regard the phrase as blasphemous)
+Cannot--
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_uneasily_): Oh, very well!...
+    Oh, very well!
+      (_Exploding in her turn_.)
+Upon my soul, you are intolerable!
+      (_She jumps up and makes for the door. Before she gets to
+        it there is a knock and_ MATILDA _enters_.)
+
+  MATILDA: Please, m'm, it's only Mrs. Cobley's daughter
+To say the washing shall be sent to-morrow,
+And would you check the list again and see,
+Because she thinks she never had two collars
+Of what you sent, but only five, because
+You marked it seven; and Mrs. Cobley says
+There must be some mistake.
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_pompously_): I will attend to it.
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_whispering angrily_): How can
+    you, Archibald! You haven't got
+The ghost of an idea about the washing!
+Sit down. (_He does so_.) (_To Matilda_) Send the
+    Girl in here.
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON _sits down in a fume_.
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON: I think....
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_snapping_): I don't care what you think!
+      (_Groans_.)   Oh, dear!
+I'm nearly off my head!
+
+      _Enter_ MISS COBLEY. (_She bobs_.)
+
+                                Good evening, m'm.
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_by way of reply_):
+Now, then! What's all this fuss about the washing?
+
+  MISS COBLEY: Please, m'm, the seven collars, what you sent--
+I mean the seven what was marked--was wrong,
+And mother says as you'd have had the washing
+Only there weren't but five, and would you mind....
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_sharply_): I cannot understand a word you say.
+Go back and tell your mother there were _seven_.
+And if she sends home _five_ she pays for _two_.
+So there!  (_Snorts_.)
+
+  MISS COBLEY (_sobbing_): I'm sure I....
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_savagely_): Don't stand snuffling there!
+Go back and tell your mother what I say....
+Impudent hussy!...
+
+      (_Exit_ MISS COBLEY _sobbing. A pause._)
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_with assumed authority_): To return to Helen.
+Tell me concisely and without complaints,
+Why did she give you notice?
+
+      (_A hand-bell rings in the passage_.)
+
+  FIDO:                             Bow-wow-wow!
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_giving him a smart kick_): Shurrup!
+
+  FIDO (_howling_). Pen-an'-ink! Pen-an'-ink
+                            Pen-an'-ink! Pen-an'-ink!
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_controlling himself, as well as he can, goes to
+    the door and calls into the passage_): Miss Grosvenor!
+(_Louder_) ... Miss Grosvenor!... Was that the bell for prayers?
+Was that the bell for prayers?... (_Louder_) Miss Grosvenor.
+(_Louder_) Miss Gros-ve-nor! (_Tapping with his foot_.)
+    Oh!...
+
+  MISS GROSVENOR (_sweetly and, far off_): Is that Mr. Haverton?
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON: Yes! yes! yes! yes!...
+Was that the bell for prayers?
+
+  MISS GROSVENOR (_again_): Yes? Is that Mr. Haverton? Oh! Yes!
+I think it is.... I'll see--I'll ask Matilda.
+
+      (_A pause, during which the_ REV. A. HAVERTON
+        _is in a qualm_.)
+
+  MISS GROSVENOR (_rustling back_): Matilda says it
+    _is_ the bell for prayers.
+
+      (_They all come filing into the study and arranging the chairs.
+        As they enter_ MISS HARVEY, _the guest, treads heavily on
+        MATILDA'S foot._)
+
+  MISS HARVEY: Matilda? Was that you? I _beg_ your pardon.
+
+  MATILDA (_limping_): Granted, I'm sure, miss!
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_whispering to the_ REV. A. HAVERTON): Do not read
+    the Creed!
+Miss Harvey is a Unitarian.
+I should suggest some simple form of prayer,
+Some heartfelt word of charity and peace
+Common to every Christian.
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_in a deep voice_): Let us pray.
+
+                         _Curtain._
+
+
+
+
+ON A NOTEBOOK
+
+
+A dear friend of mine (John Abdullah Capricorn, to give him his full
+name) was commandeered by a publisher last year to write a book for L10.
+The work was far advanced when an editor offered him L15 and his expenses
+to visit the more desperate parts of the Sahara Desert, to which spots he
+at once proceeded upon a roving commission. Whether he will return or no
+is now doubtful, though in March we had the best hopes. With the month of
+May life becomes hard for Europeans south of the Atlas, and when my poor
+dear friend was last heard of he was chancing his popularity with a tribe
+of Touaregs about two hundred miles south of Touggourt.
+
+Under these circumstances I was asked to look through his notebook and see
+what could be done; and I confess to a pleased surprise.... It would have
+been a very entertaining book had it been published. It will be a very
+entertaining book if it is published.
+
+Capricorn seems to have prepared a hotchpotch of information of human
+follies, of contrasts, and of blunt stupidities of which he intended
+to make a very entertaining series of pages. I have not his talent for
+bringing such things together, but it may amuse the reader if I merely
+put in their order one or two of the notes which most struck me.
+
+I find first, cut out of a newspaper and pasted into the book (many of
+his notes are in this form), the following really jovial paragraph:
+
+"Archdeacon Blunderbuss (Blunderbuss is not the real name; I suppress
+that lest Capricorn's widow should lose her two or three pounds, in case
+the poor fellow has really been eaten). Archdeacon Blunderbuss was more
+distinguished as a scholar than as a Divine. He was a very poor preacher
+and never managed to identify himself with any party. Nevertheless, in
+1895 the Prime Minister appointed him to a stall in Shoreham Cathedral as
+a recognition of his great learning and good work at Durham. Two years
+later the rectory of St. Vacuums becoming vacant and it being within the
+gift of Archdeacon Blunderbuss, he excited general amazement and much
+scandal by presenting himself to the living."
+
+There the paragraph ends. It came in an ordinary society paper. It bore
+no marks of ill-will. It came in the midst of a column of the usual
+silly adulation of everybody and everything; how it got there is of no
+importance. There it stood and the keen eye of Capricorn noted it and
+treasured it for years.
+
+I will make no comment upon this paragraph. It may be read slowly or
+quickly, according to the taste of the reader; it is equally delicious
+either way.
+
+The next excerpt I find in the notebook is as follows:
+
+"More than 15,000,000 visits are paid annually to London pawnbrokers.
+
+"Jupiter is 1387 times as big as the earth, but only 300 times as heavy.
+
+"The world's coal mines yield 400,000,000 tons of coal a year.
+
+"The value of the pictures in the National Gallery is about L1,250,000."
+
+This tickled Capricorn--I don't know why. Perhaps he thought the style
+disjointed or perhaps he had got it into his head that when this
+information had been absorbed by the vulgar they would stand much where
+they stood before, and be no nearer the end of man nor the accomplishment
+of any Divine purpose in their creation. Anyhow he kept it, and I think
+he was wise to keep it. One cannot keep everything of that kind that
+is printed, so it is well to keep a specimen. Capricorn had, moreover,
+intended to perpetuate that specimen for ever in his immortal prose--pray
+Heaven he may return to do so!
+
+I next find the following excerpt from an evening paper:
+
+"No more gallant gentleman lives on the broad acres of his native England
+than Brigadier-General Sir Hammerthrust Honeybubble, who is one of the
+few survivors of the great charge at Tamulpuco, a feat of arms now
+half forgotten, but with which England rang during the Brazilian War.
+Brigadier-General, or, as he then was, plain Captain Hammerthrust
+Honeybubble, passed through five Brazilian batteries unharmed, and came
+back so terribly hacked that his head was almost severed from his body.
+Hardly able to keep his seat and continually wiping the blood from his
+left eye, he rode back to his troop at a walk, and, in spite of pursuit,
+finally completed his escape. Sir Hammerthrust, we are glad to learn, is
+still hale and hearty in his ninety-third year, and we hope he may see
+many more returns of the day upon his patrimonial estate in the Orkneys."
+
+To this excerpt I find only one marginal note in Capricorn's delicate
+and beautiful handwriting: "What day?" But whether this referred to some
+appointment of his own I was unable to discover.
+
+I next find a certain number of cuttings which I think cannot have been
+intended for the book at all, but must have been designed for poor
+Capricorn's "Oxford Anthology of Bad Verse," which, just before he
+left England, he was in process of preparing for the University Press.
+Capricorn had a very fine sense of bad taste in verse, and the authorities
+could have chosen no one better suited for the duty of editing such a
+volume. I must not give the reader too much of these lines, but the
+following quatrain deserves recognition and a permanent memory:
+
+Napoleon hoped that all the world would fall beneath his sway. He failed
+in this ambition; and where is he to-day? Neither the nations of the East
+nor the nations of the West Have thought the thing Napoleon thought was to
+their interest.
+
+This is enormous. As philosophy, as history, as rhetoric, as metre, as
+rhythm, as politics, it is positively enormous. The whole poem is a
+wonderful poem, and I wish I had space for it here. It is patriotic and it
+is written about as badly as a poem could conceivably be written. It is a
+mournful pleasure to think that my dear friend had his last days in the
+Old Country illuminated by such a treasure. It is but one of many, but I
+think it is the best.
+
+Another extract which catches my eye is drawn from the works of one in a
+distant and foreign land. Yet it was worth preserving. This personage,
+Tindersturm by name, issued a pamphlet which fell under the regulations,
+the very strict regulations, of the Prussian Government, by which any
+one of its subjects who says or prints anything calculated to stir
+up religious or racial strife within the State is subject to severe
+penalties. Now those severe penalties had fallen upon Tindersturm and
+he had been imprisoned for some years according to the paragraph that
+followed the extract I am about to give. That the aforesaid Tindersturm
+did indeed tend to "stir up religious and racial strife," nay, went
+somewhat out of his way to do it, will be clear enough when you read the
+following lines from his little broadsheet:
+
+"It is time for us to go for this caddish alien sect. If on your way home
+from the theatre you meet the blue-eyed, tow-haired, lolloping gang,
+whether they be youths or ladies, go right up to them and give them a
+smart smack, left and right, a blow in the eye; and lift your foot and
+give the tow-headed ones a kick. In this way must we begin the business.
+My Fatherland, wake up!"
+
+To this extract poor Capricorn has added the word "Excellent," and the
+same comment he makes upon the following conclusion to a letter written
+to a religious paper and dealing with some politician or other who had
+done something which the correspondent did not like:
+
+"That his eyes may be opened _while he lives_ is the prayer of
+
+"Yours truly,
+
+"AN EARNEST MEMBER OF THE FOLD"
+
+From such a series it is a recreation to turn to the little social
+paragraphs which gave Capricorn such acute and such continual joy; as, for
+instance, this:
+
+"Mrs. Harry Bacon wishes it to be known that she has ceased to have any
+connection whatsoever with the Boudoir for Lost Dogs. Her address is still
+Hermione House, Bourton-on-the-Water Fenton Marsh, Worcester."
+
+There is much more in the notebook with which I could while away the
+reader's time did space permit of it. I find among the very last entries,
+for instance, this:
+
+"It was a strenuous and thrilling contest. Some terrible blows were
+exchanged. In the last round, however, Schmidt landed his opponent a very
+nasty one under the chin, stretching him out lifeless and breaking his
+elbow; whereupon the prize was awarded him."
+
+To this joyous gem Capricorn has added a whole foison of annotations. He
+asks at the end: "Which was 'him'? Important." And he underlines in red
+ink the word "however," perhaps as mysterious a copulative as has ever
+appeared in British prose. I should add that Capricorn himself was an
+ardent sportsman and very rarely missed any of the first-class events of
+the ring, though personally he did not box, and on the few occasions when
+I have seen the exercise forced upon him in the public streets he showed
+the greatest distaste to this form of athletics.
+
+Lastly, I find this note with which I must close: it is taken from the
+verbatim report of a great case in the courts, now half forgotten, but ten
+years ago the talk of London:
+
+"The witness then said that he had been promised an independence for life
+if he could discover the defendant in the act of enclosing any part of
+the land, or any document or order of his involving such an enclosure. He
+therefore watched the defendant regularly from June, 1896, to the middle
+of July, 1900. He also watched the defendant's father and mother, three
+boys, married daughter, grandmother and grandfather, his two married
+sisters, his brother, his agent, and his agent's wife--but he had
+discovered nothing."
+
+That such a sentence should have been printed in the English language and
+delivered by an English mouth in an English witness-box was enough for
+Capricorn. Give him that alone for intellectual food in his desert lodge
+and he was happy.
+
+Shall I tempt Providence by any further extracts? ... It is difficult to
+tear oneself away from such a feast. So let me put in this very last,
+really the last, by way of savoury. There it is in black and white and no
+one can undo it: not all her piety, nor all her wit. It dates from the
+year 1904, when, Heaven knows, the internal combustion engine and its
+possibilities were not exactly new, and I give it word for word:
+
+"The Duchess is, moreover, a pioneer in the use of the motor-car. She
+finds it an agreeable and speedy means of conveyance from her country seat
+to her town house, and also a very practical way of getting to see her
+friends at week-ends. She has been heard to complain, however, that a
+substitute for the pneumatic tyre less liable to puncture than it is would
+be a priceless boon."
+
+There! There! May they all rest in peace! They have added to the gaiety of
+mankind.
+
+
+
+
+ON UNKNOWN PEOPLE
+
+
+You will often hear it said that it is astonishing such and such work
+should be present and enduring in the world, and yet the name of its
+author not known; but when one considers the variety of good work and the
+circumstances under which it is achieved, and the variety of taste also
+between different times and places, one begins to understand what is at
+first so astonishing.
+
+There are writers who have ascribed this frequent ignorance of ours to all
+sorts of heroic moods, to the self-sacrifice or the humility of a whole
+epoch or of particular artists: that is the least satisfactory of the
+reasons one could find. All men desire, if not fame, at least the one poor
+inalienable right of authorship, and unless one can find very good reasons
+indeed why a painter or a writer or a sculptor should deliberately have
+hidden himself one must look for some other cause.
+
+Among such causes the first two, I think, are the multiplicity of good
+work, and its chance character. Not that any one ever does very good work
+for once and then never again--at least, such an accident is extremely
+rare--but that many a man who has achieved some skill by long labour does
+now and then strike out a sort of spark quite individual and separate from
+the rest. Often you will find that a man who is remembered for but one
+picture or one poem is worth research. You will find that he did much
+more. It is to be remembered that for a long time Ronsard himself was
+thought to be a man of one poem.
+
+The multiplicity of good work also and the way in which accident helps it
+is a cause. There are bits of architecture (and architecture is the most
+anonymous of all the arts) which depend for their effect to-day very
+largely upon situation and the process of time, and there are a thousand
+corners in Europe intended merely for some utility which happen almost
+without deliberate design to have proved perfect: this is especially true
+of bridges.
+
+Then there is this element in the anonymity of good work, that a man very
+often has no idea how good the work is which he has done. The anecdotes
+(such as that famous one of Keats) which tell us of poets desiring to
+destroy their work, or, at any rate, casting it aside as of little value,
+are not all false. We still have the letter in which Burns enclosed "Scots
+wha' hae," and it is curious to note his misjudgment of the verse; and
+side by side with that kind of misjudgment we have men picking out for
+singular affection and with a full expectation of glory some piece of
+work of theirs to which posterity will have nothing to say. This is
+especially true of work recast by men in mature age. Writers and painters
+(sculptors luckily are restrained by the nature of their art--unless they
+deliberately go and break up their work with a hammer) retouch and change,
+in the years when they have become more critical and less creative, what
+they think to be the insufficient achievements of their youth: yet it is
+the vigour and the simplicity of their youthful work which other men often
+prefer to remember. On this account any number of good things remain
+anonymous, because the good writer or the good painter or the good
+sculptor was ashamed of them.
+
+Then there is this reason for anonymity, that at times--for quite a short
+few years--a sort of universality of good work in one or more departments
+of art seems to fall upon the world or upon some district. Nowhere do
+you see this more strikingly than in the carvings of the first third of
+the sixteenth century in Northern and Central France and on the Flemish
+border.
+
+Men seemed at that moment incapable of doing work that was not marvellous
+when they once began to express the human figure. Sometimes their mere
+name remains, more often it is doubtful, sometimes it is entirely lost.
+More curious still, you often have for this period a mixture of names. You
+come across some astonishing series of reliefs in a forgotten church of a
+small provincial town. You know at once that it is work of the moment when
+the flood of the Renaissance had at last reached the old country of the
+Gothic. You can swear that if it were not made in the time of Francis I or
+Henry II it was at least made by men who could remember or had seen those
+times. But when you turn to the names the names are nobodies.
+
+By far the most famous of these famous things, or at any rate the most
+deserving of fame, is the miracle of Brou. It is a whole world. You would
+say that either one transcendent genius had modelled every face and figure
+of those thousands (so individual are they), or that a company of inspired
+men differing in their traditions and upbringing from all the commonalty
+of mankind had done such things. When you go to the names all you find is
+that Coulombe out of Touraine began the job, that there was some sort of
+quarrel between his head-man and the paymasters, that he was replaced in
+the most everyday manner conceivable by a Fleming, Van Boghem, and that
+this Fleming had to help him a better-known Swiss, one Meyt. It is the
+same story with nearly all this kind of work and its wonderful period. The
+wealth of detail at Louviers or Gisors is almost anonymous; that of the
+first named perhaps quite anonymous.
+
+Who carved the wood in St. James's Church at Antwerp? I think the name
+is known for part of it, but no one did the whole or anything like the
+whole, and yet it is all one thing. Who carved the wood in St. Bertrand
+de Coraminges? We know who paid for it, and that is all we know. And as
+for the wood of Rouen, we must content ourselves with the vague phrase,
+"Probably Flemish artists."
+
+Of the Gothic statues where they were conventional, however grand the
+work, one can understand that they should be anonymous, but it is curious
+to note the same silence where the work is strikingly and particularly
+individual. Among the kings at Rheims are two heads, one of St. Louis,
+one of his grandson. Had some one famous sculptor done these things and
+others, were his work known and sought after, these two heads would be as
+renowned as anything in Europe. As it is they are two among hundreds that
+the latter thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries scattered broadcast;
+each probably was the work of a different workman, and the author or
+authors of each remain equally unknown.
+
+I know not whether there is more pathos or more humour or more consolation
+in considering this ignorance of ours with regard to the makers of good
+things.
+
+It is full of parable. There is something of it in Nature. There are men
+who will walk all day through a June wood and come out atheists at the end
+of it, finding no signature thereupon; and there are others who, sailing
+over the sea, come back home after seeing so many things still puzzled as
+to their authorship. That is one parable.
+
+Then there is this: the corrective of ambition. Since so much remains, the
+very names of whose authors have perished, what does it matter to you or
+to the world whether your name, so long as your work, survives? Who was
+it that carefully and cunningly fixed the sights on Gumber Corner so as
+to get upon a clear day his exact alignment with Pulborough and then the
+shoulder of Leith Hill, just to miss the two rivers and just to obtain the
+best going for a military road? He was some engineer or other among the
+thousands in the Imperial Service. He was at Chichester for some weeks
+and drew his pay, and then perhaps went on to London, and he was born in
+Africa or in Lombardy, or he was a Breton, or he was from Lusitania or
+from the Euphrates. He did that bit of work most certainly without any
+consideration of fame, for engineers (especially when they are soldiers)
+are singular among artists in this matter. But he did a very wonderful
+thing, and the Roman Road has run there for fifteen hundred years--his
+creation. Some one must have hit upon that precise line and the reason for
+it. It is exactly right, and the thing done was as great and is to-day as
+satisfying as that sculpture of Brou or the two boys Murillo painted, whom
+you may see in the Gallery at Dulwich. But he never thought of any one
+knowing his name, and no one knows it.
+
+Then there is this last thing about anonymous work, which is also a
+parable and a sad one. It shows how there is no bridge between two human
+minds.
+
+How often have I not come upon a corbel of stone carved into the shape
+of a face, and that face had upon it either horror or laughter or great
+sweetness or vision, and I have looked at it as I might have looked upon
+a living face, save that it was more wonderful than most living faces. It
+carried in it the soul and the mind of the man who made it. But he has
+been dead these hundreds of years. That corbel cannot be in communion with
+me, for it is of stone; it is dumb and will not speak to me, though it
+compels me continually to ask it questions. Its author also is dumb, for
+he has been dead so long, and I can know nothing about him whatsoever.
+
+Now so it is with any two human minds, not only when they are separated by
+centuries and by silence, but when they have their being side by side
+under one roof and are companions all their years.
+
+
+
+
+ON A VAN TROMP
+
+
+Once there was a man who, having nothing else to do and being fond of
+that kind of thing, copied with a good deal of care on to a bit of wood
+the corner of a Dutch picture in one of the public galleries.
+
+This man was not a good artist; indeed he was nothing but a humpbacked
+and very sensitive little squire with about L3000 a year of his own and
+great liking for intricate amusements. He was a pretty good mathematician
+and a tolerable fisherman. He knew an enormous amount about the Mohammedan
+conquest of Spain, and he is, I believe, writing a book upon that subject.
+I hope he will, for nearly all history wants to be rewritten. Anyhow, he,
+as I have just said, did copy a corner of one of the Dutch pictures in one
+of the galleries. It was a Dutch picture of the seventeenth century; and
+since the laws of this country are very complicated and the sanctions
+attached to them very terrible, I will not give the name of the original
+artist, but I will call him Van Tromp.
+
+Van Tromps have always been recognized, and there was a moment about fifty
+years after the artist's death when they had a considerable vogue in the
+French Court. Monsieur, who was quite ignorant of such things, bought
+a couple, and there is a whole row of them in the little pavilion at
+Louveciennes. Van Tromp has something about him at once positive and
+elusive; he is full of planes and values, and he interprets and renders,
+and the rest of it. Nay, he transfers!
+
+About thirty years ago Mr. Mayor (of Hildesheim and London) thought it his
+duty to impress upon the public how great Van Tromp was. This he did after
+taking thirteen Van Tromps in payment of a bad debt, and he succeeded. But
+the man I am writing about cared nothing for all this: he simply wanted to
+see how well he could imitate this corner of the picture, and he did it
+pretty well. He begrimed it and he rubbed at it, and then he tickled it up
+again with a knife, and then he smoked it, and then he put in some dirty
+whites which were vivid, and he played the fool with white of egg, and so
+forth, until he had the very tone and manner of the original; and as he
+had done it on an old bit of wood it was exactly right, and he was very
+proud of the result. He got an old frame from near Long Acre and stuck it
+in, and then he took the thing home. He had done several things of this
+kind, imitating miniatures, and even enamels. It amused him. When he got
+home he sat looking at it with great pleasure for an hour or two; he left
+the little thing on the table of his study and went to bed.
+
+Here begins the story, and here, therefore, I must tell you what the
+subject of this corner of the picture was.
+
+The subject of this corner of the picture which he had copied was a woman
+in a brown jacket and a red petticoat with big feet showing underneath,
+sitting on a tub and cutting up some vegetables. She had her hair bunched
+up like an onion, a fashion which, as we all know, appealed to the Dutch
+in the seventeenth century, or at any rate to the plebeian Dutch. I must
+also tell you the name of this squire before I go any further: his name
+was Hammer--Paul Hammer. He was unmarried.
+
+He went to bed at eleven o'clock, and when he came down at eight o'clock
+he had his breakfast. He went into his study at nine o'clock, and was very
+much annoyed to find that some burglars had come in during the night and
+had taken away a number of small objects which were not without value; and
+among-them, what he most regretted, his little pastiche of the corner of
+the Van Tromp.
+
+For some moments he stood filled with an acute anger and wishing that he
+knew who the burglars were and how to get at them; but the days passed,
+and though he asked everybody, and even gave some money to the police, he
+could not discover this. He put an advertisement into several newspapers,
+both London newspapers and local ones, saying that money would be given if
+the thing were restored, and pretty well hinting that no questions would
+be asked, but nothing came.
+
+Meanwhile the burglars, whose names were Charles and Lothair Femeral,
+foreigners but English-speaking, had found some of their ill-acquired
+goods saleable, others unsaleable. They wanted a pound for the little
+picture in the frame, and this they could not get, and it was a bother
+haggling it about. Lothair Femeral thought of a good plan: he stopped at
+an inn on the third day of their peregrinations, had a good dinner with
+his brother, told the innkeeper that he could not pay the bill, and
+offered to leave the Old Master in exchange. When people do this it very
+often comes off, for the alternative is only the pleasure of seeing
+the man in gaol, whereas a picture is always a picture, and there is a
+gambler's chance of its turning up trumps. So the man grumbled and took
+the little thing. He hung it up in the best room of the inn, where he gave
+his richer customers food.
+
+Thus it was that a young gentleman who had come down to ride in that
+neighbourhood, although he did not know any of the rich people round
+about, saw it one day, and on seeing it exclaimed loudly in an unknown
+tongue; but he very rapidly repressed his emotion and simply told the
+innkeeper that he had taken a fancy to the daub and would give him thirty
+shillings for it.
+
+The innkeeper, who had read in the newspapers of how pictures of the
+utmost value are sold by fools for a few pence, said boldly that his price
+was twenty pounds; whereupon the young gentleman went out gloomily, and
+the innkeeper thought that he must have made a mistake, and was for three
+hours depressed. But in the fourth hour again he was elated, for the young
+gentleman came back with twenty pounds, not even in notes but in gold,
+paid it down, and took away the picture. Then again, in the fifth hour was
+the innkeeper a little depressed, but not as much as before, for it struck
+him that the young gentleman must have been very eager to act in such a
+fashion, and that perhaps he could have got as much as twenty-one pounds
+by holding out and calling it guineas.
+
+The young gentleman telegraphed to his father (who lived in Wimbledon but
+who did business in Bond Street) saying that he had got hold of a Van
+Tromp which looked like a study for the big "Eversley" Van Tromp in the
+Gallery, and he wanted to know what his father would give for it. His
+father telegraphed back inviting him to spend one whole night under the
+family roof. This the young man did, and, though it wrung the old father's
+heart to have to do it, by the time he had seen the young gentleman's find
+(or _trouvaille_ as he called it) he had given his offspring a cheque
+for five hundred pounds. Whereupon the young gentleman left and went back
+to do some more riding, an exercise of which he was passionately fond, and
+to which he had trained several quiet horses.
+
+The father wrote to a certain lord of his acquaintance who was very
+fond of Van Tromps, and offered him this replica or study, in some ways
+finer than the original, but he said it must be a matter for private
+negotiation; so he asked for an appointment, and the lord, who was a tall,
+red-faced man with a bluff manner, made an appointment for nine o'clock
+next morning, which was rather early for Bond Street. But money talks, and
+they met. The lord was very well dressed, and when he talked he folded his
+hands (which had gloves on them) over the knob of his stick and pressed
+his stick firmly upon the ground. It was a way he had. But it did not
+frighten the old gentleman who did business in Bond Street, and the
+long and short of it was that the lord did not get the picture until he
+had paid three thousand guineas--not pounds, mind you. For this sum the
+picture was to be sent round to the lord's house, and so it was, and there
+it would have stayed but for a very curious accident. The lord had put
+the greater part of his money into a company which was developing the
+resources of the South Shetland Islands, and by some miscalculation or
+other the expense of this experiment proved larger than the revenues
+obtainable from it. His policy, as I need hardly tell you, was to hang on,
+and so he did, because in the long run the property must pay. And so it
+would if they could have gone on shelling out for ever, but they could
+not, and so the whole affair was wound up and the lord lost a great deal
+of money.
+
+Under these circumstances he bethought him of the toiling millions who
+never see a good picture and who have no more vivid appetite than the
+hunger for good pictures. He therefore lent his collection of Van Tromps
+with the least possible delay to a public gallery, and for many years they
+hung there, while the lord lived in great anxiety, but with a sufficient
+income for his needs in the delightful scenery of the Pennines at some
+distance from a railway station, surrounded by his tenants. At last even
+these--the tenants, I mean--were not sufficient, and a gentleman in the
+Government who knew the value of Van Tromps proposed that these Van Tromps
+should be bought for the nation; but a lot of cranks made a frightful row,
+both in Parliament and out of it, so that the scheme would have fallen
+through had not one of the Van Tromps--to wit, that little copy of a
+corner which was obviously a replica of or a study for the best-known of
+the Van Tromps--been proclaimed false quite suddenly by a gentleman who
+doubted its authenticity; whereupon everybody said that it was not genuine
+except three people who really counted, and these included the gentleman
+who had recommended the purchase of the Van Tromps by the nation. So
+enormous was the row upon the matter that the picture reached the very
+pinnacle of fame, and an Australian then travelling in England was
+determined to get that Van Tromp for himself, and did.
+
+This Australian was a very simple man, good and kind and childlike, and
+frightfully rich. When he had got the Van Tromp he carried it about with
+him, and at the country houses where he stopped he used to pull it out and
+show it to people. It happened that among other country houses he stopped
+once at the hunchback squire's, whose name, as you will remember, was Mr.
+Hammer, and he showed him the Van Tromp one day after dinner.
+
+Now Mr. Hammer was by this time an old man, and he had ceased to care much
+for the things of this world. He had suffered greatly, and he had begun to
+think about religion; also he had made a good deal of money in Egyptians
+(for all this was before the slump). And he was pretty well ashamed of
+his pastiches; so, one way and another, the seeing of that picture did
+not have the effect upon him which you might have expected; for you, the
+reader, have read this story in five minutes (if you have had the patience
+to get so far), but he, Mr. Hammer, had been changing and changing for
+years, and I tell you he did not care a dump what happened to the wretched
+thing. Only when the Australian, who was good and simple and kind and
+hearty, showed him the picture and asked him proudly to guess what he had
+given for it, then Mr. Hammer looked at him with a look in his eyes full
+of that not mortal sadness which accompanies irremediable despair.
+
+"I do not know," he answered gently and with a sob in his voice.
+
+"I paid for that picture," said the Australian, in the accent and language
+of his native clime, "no less a sum than L7500 ... and I'd pay it again
+to-morrow!" Saying this, the Australian hit the table with the palm, of
+his hand in a manner so manly that an aged retainer who was putting coals
+upon the fire allowed the coal-scuttle to drop.
+
+But Mr. Hammer, ruminating in his mind all the accidents and changes and
+adventures of human life, its complexity, its unfulfilled desires, its
+fading but not quite perishable ideals, well knowing how men are made
+happy and how unhappy, ventured on no reply. Two great tears gathered in
+his eyes, and he would have shed them, perhaps to be profusely followed by
+more--he was nearly breaking down--when he looked up and saw on the wall
+opposite him seven pastiches which he had made in the years gone by. There
+was a Titian and a George Morland, a Chardin, two cows after Cooper, and
+an impressionist picture after some Frenchman whose name he had forgotten.
+
+"You like pictures?" he said to the Australian, the tears still standing
+in his eyes.
+
+"I do!" said the Australian with conviction.
+
+"Will you let me give you these?" said Mr. Hammer.
+
+The Australian protested that such things could not be allowed, but he was
+a simple man, and at last he consented, for he was immensely pleased.
+
+"It is an ungracious thing to make conditions," said Mr. Hammer, "and I
+won't make any, only I should be pleased if, in your island home...."
+
+"I don't live on an island," said the Australian. Mr. Hammer remembered
+the map of Australia, with the water all round it, but he was too polite
+to argue.
+
+"No, of course not," he said; "you live on the mainland; I forgot. But
+anyhow, I _should_ be so pleased if you would promise me to hang them
+all together, these pictures with your Van Tromp, all in a line! I really
+should be so pleased!"
+
+"Why, certainly," said the Australian, a little bewildered; "I will do so,
+Mr. Hammer, if it can give you any pleasure."
+
+"The fact is," said Mr. Hammer, in a breaking voice, "I had that picture
+once, and I intended it to hang side by side with these."
+
+It was in vain that the Australian, on hearing this, poured out
+self-reproaches, offered with an expansion of soul to restore it, and then
+more prudently attempted a negotiation. Mr. Hammer resolutely shook his
+head.
+
+"I am an old man," he said, "and I have no heirs; it is not for me to
+take, but to give, and if you will do what an old man begs of you, and
+accept what I offer; if you will do more and of your courtesy keep all
+these things together which were once familiar to me, it will be enough
+reward."
+
+The next day, therefore, the Australian sailed off to his distant
+continental home, carrying with him not only the Chardin, the Titian, the
+Cooper, the impressionist picture, and the rest, but also the Van Tromp.
+And three months after they all hung in a row in the great new copper room
+at Warra-Mugga. What happened to them later on, and how they were all sold
+together as "the Warra-Mugga Collection," I will tell you when I have the
+time and you the patience. Farewell.
+
+
+
+
+HIS CHARACTER
+
+
+A certain merchant in the City of London, having retired from business,
+purchased for himself a private house upon the heights of Hampstead and
+proposed to devote his remaining years to the education and the
+establishment in life of his only son.
+
+When this youth (whose name was George) had arrived at the age of nineteen
+his father spoke to him after dinner upon his birthday with regard to the
+necessity of choosing a profession. He pointed out to him the advantages
+of a commercial career, and notably of that form of useful industry which
+is known as banking, showing how in that trade a profit was to be made by
+lending the money of one man to another, and often of a man's own money to
+himself, without engaging one's own savings or fortune.
+
+George, to whom such matters were unfamiliar, listened attentively, and it
+seemed to him with every word that dropped from his father that a wider
+and wider horizon of material comfort and worldly grandeur was spreading
+out before him. He had hitherto had no idea that such great rewards were
+attached to services so slight in themselves, and certainly so valueless
+to the community. The career sketched out for him by his father appealed
+to him most strongly, and when that gentleman had completed his advice he
+assured him that he would follow it in every particular.
+
+George's father was overjoyed to find his son so reasonable. He sat down
+at once to write the note which he had planned, to an old friend and
+connection by marriage, Mr. Repton, of Repton and Greening; he posted it
+that night and bade the lad prepare for the solemnity of a private
+interview with the head of the firm upon the morrow.
+
+Before George left the house next morning his father laid before him, with
+the pomp which so great an occasion demanded, certain rules of conduct
+which should guide not only his entry into life but his whole conduct
+throughout its course. He emphasized the value of self-respect, of a
+decent carriage, of discretion, of continuous and tenacious habits of
+industry, of promptitude, and so forth; when, urged by I know not what
+demon whose pleasure it is ever to disturb the best plans of men, the old
+gentleman had the folly to add the following words as he rose to his feet
+and laid his hand heavily upon his son's shoulder:
+
+"Above all things, George, tell the truth. I was young and now am old. I
+have seen many men fail, some few succeed; and the best advice I can give
+to my dear only son is that on all occasions he should fearlessly and
+manfully tell the truth without regard of consequence. Believe me, it is
+not only the whole root of character, but the best basis for a successful
+business career even today."
+
+Having so spoken, the old man, more moved than he cared to show, went
+upstairs to read his newspaper, and George, beautifully dressed, went out
+by the front door towards the Tube, pondering very deeply the words his
+father had just used.
+
+I cannot deny that the impression they produced upon him was
+extraordinary--far more vivid than men of mature years can easily
+conceive. It is often so in early youth when we listen to the voice of
+authority; some particular chance phrase will have an unmeasured effect
+upon one. A worn tag and platitude solemnly spoken, and at a critical
+moment, may change the whole of a career. And so it was with George,
+as you will shortly perceive. For as he rumbled along in the Tube his
+father's words became a veritable obsession within him: he saw their value
+ramifying in a multitude of directions, he perceived the strength and
+accuracy of them in a hundred aspects. He knew well that the interview he
+was approaching was one in which this virtue of truth might be severely
+tested, but he gloried in the opportunity, and he came out of the Tube
+into the fresh air within a step of Mr. Repton's office with set lips and
+his young temper braced for the ordeal.
+
+When he got to the office there was Mr. Repton, a kindly old gentleman,
+wearing large spectacles, and in general appearance one of those genial
+types from which our caricaturists have constructed the national figure of
+John Bull. It was a pleasure to be in the presence of so honest a man, and
+in spite of George's extreme nervousness he felt a certain security in
+such company. Moreover, Mr. Repton smiled paternally at him before putting
+to him the few questions which the occasion demanded. He held George's
+father's letter between two fingers of his right hand, moving it gently in
+the air as he addressed the lad:
+
+"I am very glad to see you, George," he said, "in this old office. I've
+seen you here before, Chrm! as you know, but not on such important
+business, Chrm!" He laughed genially. "So you want to come and learn your
+trade with us, do you? You're punctual I hope, Chrm?" he added, his honest
+eyes full of good nature and jest.
+
+George looked at him in a rather gloomy manner, hesitated a moment, and
+then, under the influence of an obvious effort, said in a choking voice,
+"No, Mr. Repton, I'm not."
+
+"Hey, what?" said Mr. Repton, puzzled and a little annoyed at the young
+man's manner.
+
+"I was saying, Mr. Repton, that I am not punctual. I have dreamy fits
+which sometimes make me completely forget an appointment. And I have a
+silly habit of cutting things too fine, which makes me miss trains and
+things, I think I ought to tell you while I am about it, but I simply
+cannot get up early in the morning. There are days when I manage to do
+so under the excitement of a coming journey or for some other form of
+pleasure, but as a rule I postpone my rising until the very latest
+possible moment."
+
+George having thus delivered himself closed his lips and was silent.
+
+"Humph!" said Mr. Repton. It was not what the boy had said so much as the
+impression of oddness which affected that worthy man. He did not like it,
+and he was not quite sure of his ground. He was about to put another
+question, when George volunteered a further statement:
+
+"I don't drink," he said, "and at my age it is not easy to understand
+what the vice of continual drunkenness may be, but I shouldn't wonder
+if that would be my temptation later on, and it is only fair to tell
+you that, young as I am, I have twice grossly exceeded in wine; on one
+occasion, not a year ago, the servants at a house where I was stopping
+carried me to bed."
+
+"They did?" said Mr. Repton drily.
+
+"Yes," said George, "they did." Then there was a silence for a space of
+at least three minutes.
+
+"My dear young man," said Mr. Repton, rising, "do you feel any aptitude
+for a City career?"
+
+"None," said George decisively.
+
+"Pray," said Mr. Repton (who had grown-up children of his own and could
+not help speaking with a touch of sarcasm--he thought it good for boys
+in the lunatic stage), "pray," said he, looking quizzically down at the
+unhappy but firm-minded George as he sat there in his chair, "is there
+any form of work for which you do feel an aptitude?"
+
+"Yes, certainly," said George confidently.
+
+"And what is that?" said Mr. Repton, his smile beginning again.
+
+"The drama," said George without hesitation, "the poetic drama. I ought to
+tell you that I have received no encouragement from those who are the best
+critics of this art, though I have submitted my work to many since I left
+school. Some have said that my work was commonplace, others that it was
+imitative; all have agreed that it was dull, and they have unanimously
+urged me to abandon every thought of such composition. Nevertheless I
+am convinced that I have the highest possible talents not only in this
+department of letters but in all."
+
+"You believe yourself," said Mr. Repton, with a touch of severity, "to be
+an exceptional young man?"
+
+George nodded. "I do," he said, "quite exceptional. I should have used a
+stronger term had I been speaking of the matter myself. I think I have
+genius, or, rather, I am sure I have; and, what is more, genius of a very
+high order."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Repton, sighing, "I don't think we shall get any
+forrader. Have you been working much lately?" he asked anxiously--
+"examinations or anything?"
+
+"No," said George quietly. "I always feel like this."
+
+"Indeed!" said Mr. Repton, who was now convinced that the poor boy had
+intended no discourtesy. "Well, I wonder whether you would mind taking
+back a note to your father?"
+
+"Not at all," said George courteously.
+
+Mr. Repton in his turn wrote a short letter, in which he begged George's
+father not to take offence at an old friend's advice, recalled to his
+memory the long and faithful friendship between them, pointed out that
+outsiders could often see things which members of a family could not, and
+wound up by begging George's father to give George a good holiday. "Not
+alone," he concluded; "I don't think that would be quite safe, but in
+company with some really trustworthy man a little older than himself, who
+won't get on his nerves and yet will know how to look after him. He must
+get right away for some weeks," added the kind old man, "and after that
+I should advise you to keep him at home and let him have some gentle
+occupation. Don't encourage him in writing. I think he would take kindly
+to _gardening_. But I won't write any more: I will come and see you
+about it."
+
+Bearing that missive back did George reach his home.... All this passed in
+the year 1895, and that is why George is to-day one of the best electrical
+engineers in the country, instead of being a banker; and that shows how
+good always comes, one way or another, of telling the truth.
+
+
+
+
+ON THRUPPENNY BITS
+
+
+Philip, King of Macedon, destroyer of the liberties of Greece, and father
+to Alexander who tamed the horse Bucephalus, called for the tutor of that
+lad, one Aristotle (surnamed the Teacher of the Human Race), to propound
+to him a question that had greatly troubled him; for in counting out his
+money (which was his habit upon a washing day, when the Queen's appetite
+for afternoon tea and honey had rid him of her presence) he discovered
+mixed with his treasure such an intolerable number of thruppenny bits as
+very nearly drove him to despair.
+
+On this account King Philip of Macedon, destroyer of the liberties of
+Greece, sent for Aristotle, his hanger-on, as one capable of answering any
+question whatsoever, and said to him (when he had entered with a profound
+obeisance):
+
+"Come, Aristotle, answer me straight; what is the use of a thruppenny bit?"
+
+"Dread sire," said Aristotle, standing in his presence with respect, "the
+thruppenny bit is not to be despised. Men famous in no way for their
+style, nor even for their learning, have maintained life by inscribing
+within its narrow boundaries the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten
+Commandments, while others have used it as a comparison in the classes
+of astronomy to illustrate the angle subtended by certain of the orbs of
+heaven. The moon, whose waxing and waning is doubtless familiar to Your
+Majesty, is indeed but just hidden by a thruppenny bit held between the
+finger and the thumb of the observer extended at the full length of any
+normal human arm."
+
+"Go on," said King Philip, with some irritation; "go on; go on!"
+
+"The thruppenny bit, Your Majesty, illustrates, as does no other coin, the
+wisdom and the aptness of the duodecimal system to which the Macedonians
+have so wisely clung (in common with the people of Scythia and of Thrace,
+and the dumb animals) while the too brilliant Hellenes ran wild in the
+false simplicity of the decimal system. The number twelve, Your
+Majesty...."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," said King Philip impatiently, "I have heard it a
+thousand times! It has already persuaded me to abandon the duodecimal
+method and to consign to the severest tortures any one who mentions it in
+my presence again. My ten fingers are good enough for me. Go on, go on!"
+
+"Sovran Lord!" continued Aristotle, "the thruppenny bit has further been
+proved in a thousand ways an adjuvator and prime helper of the Gods. For
+many a man too niggardly to give sixpence, and too proud to give a copper,
+has dropped this coin among the offerings at the Temple, and it is related
+of a clergyman in Armagh (a town of which Your Majesty has perhaps never
+heard) that he would frequently address his congregation from the rails
+of the altar, pointing out the excessive number of thruppenny bits which
+had been offered for the sustenance of the hierarchy, threatening to
+summon before him known culprits, and to return to them the insufficient
+oblation. Again, the thruppenny bit most powerfully disciplines the soul
+of man, for it tries the temper as does no other coin, being small, thin,
+wayward, given to hiding, and very often useless when it is discovered.
+Learn also, King of Macedon, that the thruppenny bit is of value in ritual
+phrases, and particularly so in objurgations and the calling down of
+curses, and in the settlement of evil upon enemies, and in the final
+expression of contempt. For to compare some worthless thing to a farthing,
+to a penny, or to tuppence, has no vigour left in it, and it has long
+been thought ridiculous even among provincials; a threadbare, worn, and
+worthless sort of sneer; but the thruppenny bit has a sound about it
+very valuable to one who would insist upon his superiority. Thus were
+some rebel or some demagogue of Athens (for example) to venture upon the
+criticism of Your Majesty's excursions into philosophy, in order to bring
+those august theses into contempt, his argument would never find emphasis
+or value unless he were to terminate its last phrase by a snap of the
+fingers and the mention of a thruppenny bit.
+
+"King Philip of Macedon, most prudent of men, learn further that a
+thruppenny bit, which to the foolish will often seem a mere expenditure of
+threepence, to the wise may represent a saving of that sum. For how many
+occasions are there not in which the inconsequent and lavish fool, the
+spendthrift, the young heir, the commander of cavalry, the empty, gilded
+boy, will give a sixpence to a messenger where a thruppenny bit would have
+done as well? For silver is the craving of the poor, not in its amount,
+but in its nature, for nature and number are indeed two things, the one on
+the one hand...."
+
+"Oh, I know all about that," said King Philip; "I did not send for you
+to get you off upon those rails, which have nothing whatever to do with
+thruppenny bits. Be concrete, I pray you, good Aristotle," he continued,
+and yawned. "Stick to things as they are, and do not make me remind you
+how once you said that men had thirty-six, women only thirty-four, teeth.
+Do not wander in the void."
+
+"Arbiter of Hellas," said Aristotle gravely, when the King had finished
+his tirade, "the thruppenny bit has not only all that character of
+usefulness which I have argued in it from the end it is designed to serve,
+but one may also perceive this virtue in it in another way, which is by
+observation. For you will remember how when we were all boys the fourpenny
+bit of accursed memory still lingered, and how as against it the
+thruppenny bit has conquered. Which is, indeed, a parable taken from
+nature, showing that whatever survives is destined to survive, for that
+is indeed in a way, as you may say, the end of survival."
+
+"Precisely," said King Philip, frowning intellectually; "I follow you.
+I have heard many talk in this manner, but none talk as well as you do.
+Continue, good Aristotle, continue."
+
+"Your Majesty, the matter needs but little exposition, though it contains
+the very marrow of truth," said the philosopher, holding up in a menacing
+way the five fingers of his left hand and ticking them off with the
+forefinger of his right. "For it is first useful, second beautiful, third
+valuable, fourth magnificent, and, fifthly, consonant to its nature."
+
+"Quite true," said King Philip, following carefully every word that fell
+from the wise man's lips, for he could now easily understand.
+
+"Very well then, sire," said Aristotle in a livelier tone, charmed to
+have captivated the attention of his Sovereign. "I was saying that which
+survives is proved worthy of survival, as of a man and a shark, or of
+Athens and Macedonia, or in many other ways. Now the thruppenny bit,
+having survived to our own time, has so proved itself in that test, and
+upon this all men of science are agreed.
+
+"Then, also, King Philip, consider how the thruppenny bit in another and
+actual way, not of pure reason but, if I may say so, in a material manner,
+commends itself: for is it not true that whereas all other nations
+whatsoever, being by nature servile, will use a nickel piece or some other
+denomination for whatever is small but is not of bronze, the Macedonians,
+being designed by the Gods for the command of all the human race, have
+very tenaciously clung to the thruppenny bit through good and through
+evil repute, and have even under the sternest penalties enforced it upon
+their conquered subjects? For when Your Majesty discovered (if you will
+remember) that the people of Euboea, in manifest contempt of your Crown,
+paid back into Your Majesty's treasury all their taxes in the shape of
+thruppenny bits...."
+
+At this moment King Philip gave a loud shout, uttering in Greek the word
+"Eureka," which signifies (to those who drop their aitches) "I've got it."
+
+"Got what?" said the philosopher, startled into common diction by the
+unexpected interjection of the despot.
+
+"Get out!" said King Philip. "Do you suppose that any rambling Don is
+going to take up my time when by a sheer accident his verbosity has
+started me on a true scent? Out, Aristotle, out! Or, stay, take this note
+with you to the Captain of the Guard"--and King Philip hastily scribbled
+upon a parchment an order for the immediate execution of the whole of the
+inhabitants of Euboea, saving such as could redeem themselves at the price
+of ten drachmae, the said sum upon no account whatsoever to be paid in
+coin containing so much as one thruppenny bit.
+
+But the offended philosopher had departed, and being well wound up could
+not, any more than any other member of the academies, cease from spouting;
+so that King Philip was intolerably aggravated to hear him as he waddled
+down the Palace stairs still declaiming in a loud tone:
+
+"And, sixteenthly, the thruppenny bit has about it this noble quality,
+that it represents an aliquot part of that sum which is paid to me daily
+from the Royal Treasury in silver, a metal upon which we have always
+insisted. And, seventeenthly...."
+
+But King Philip banged the door.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE HOTEL AT PALMA AND A PROPOSED GUIDE-BOOK
+
+
+The hotel at Palma is like the Savoy, but the cooking is a great deal
+better. It is large and new; its decorations are in the modern style with
+twiddly lines. Its luxury is greater than that of its London competitor.
+It has an eager, willing porter and a delightful landlord. You do what you
+like in it and there are books to read. One of these books was an English
+guide-book. I read it. It was full of lies, so gross and palpable that I
+told my host how abominably it traduced his country, and advised him first
+to beat the book well and then to burn it over a slow fire. It said that
+the people were superstitious--it is false. They have no taboo about days;
+they play about on Sundays. They have no taboo about drinks; they drink
+what they feel inclined (which is wine) when they feel inclined (which is
+when they are thirsty). They have no taboo book, Bible or Koran, no damned
+psychical rubbish, no damned "folk-lore," no triply damned mumbo-jumbo of
+social ranks; kind, really good, simple-minded dukes would have a devil of
+a time in Palma. Avoid it, my dears, keep away. If anything, the people of
+Palma have not quite enough superstition. They play there for love, money,
+and amusement. No taboo (talking of love) about love.
+
+The book said they were poor. Their populace is three or four times as
+rich as ours. They own their own excellent houses and their own land; no
+one but has all the meat and fruit and vegetables and wine he wants, and
+usually draught animals and musical instruments as well.
+
+In fact, the book told the most frightful lies and was a worthy companion
+to other guidebooks. It moved me to plan a guide-book of my own in which
+the truth should be told about all the places I know. It should be called
+"Guide to Northumberland, Sussex, Chelsea, the French frontier, South
+Holland, the Solent, Lombardy, the North Sea, and Rome, with a chapter on
+part of Cheshire and some remarks on the United States of America."
+
+In this book the fault would lie in its too great scrappiness, but the
+merit in its exactitude. Thus I would inform the reader that the best time
+to sleep in Siena is from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon,
+and that the best place to sleep is the north side of St. Domenic's ugly
+brick church there.
+
+Again, I would tell him that the man who keeps the "Turk's Head" at
+Valogne, in Normandy, was only outwardly and professedly an Atheist, but
+really and inwardly a Papist.
+
+I would tell him that it sometimes snowed in Lombardy in June, for I have
+seen it--and that any fool can cross the Alps blindfold, and that the
+sea is usually calm, not rough, and that the people of Dax are the most
+horrible in all France, and that Lourdes, contrary to the general opinion,
+does work miracles, for I have seen them.
+
+I would also tell him of the place at Toulouse where the harper plays
+to you during dinner, and of the grubby little inn at Terneuzen on the
+Scheldt where they charge you just anything they please for anything;
+five shillings for a bit of bread, or half a crown for a napkin.
+
+All these things, and hundreds of others of the same kind, would I put
+in my book, and at the end should be a list of all the hotels in Europe
+where, at the date of publication, the landlord was nice, for it is the
+character of the landlords which makes all the difference--and that
+changes as do all human things.
+
+There you could see first, like a sort of Primate of Hotels, the Railway
+Hotel at York. Then the inn at La Bruyere in the Landes, then the "Swan"
+at Petworth with its mild ale, then the "White Hart" of Storrington,
+then the rest of them, all the six or seven hundred of them, from the
+"Elephant" of Chateau Thierry to the "Feathers" of Ludlow--a truly noble
+remainder of what once was England; the "Feathers" of Ludlow, where the
+beds are of honest wood with curtains to them, and where a man may drink
+half the night with the citizens to the success of their engines and the
+putting out of all fires. For there are in West England three little inns
+in three little towns, all in a line, and all beginning with an L--
+Ledbury, Ludlow, and Leominster, all with "Feathers," all with orchards
+round, and I cannot tell which is the best.
+
+Then my guide-book will go on to talk about harbours; it will prove how
+almost every harbour was impossible to make in a little boat; but it would
+describe the difficulties of each so that a man in a little boat might
+possibly make them. It would describe the rush of the tide outside Margate
+and the still more dangerous rush outside Shoreham, and the absurd bar
+at Littlehampton that strikes out of the sea, and the place to lie at in
+Newhaven, and how not to stick upon the Platters outside Harwich; and the
+very tortuous entry to Poole, and the long channel into Christchurch past
+Hengistbury Head; and the enormous tides of South Wales; and why you often
+have to beach at Britonferry, and the terrible difficulty of mooring in
+Great Yarmouth; and the sad changes of Little Yarmouth, and the single
+black buoy at Calais which is much too far out to be of any use; and how
+to wait for the tide in the Swin. And also what no book has ever yet
+given, an exact direction of the way in which one may roll into Orford
+Haven, on the top of a spring tide if one has luck, and how if one has no
+luck one sticks on the gravel and is pounded to pieces.
+
+Then my guide-book would go on to tell of the way in which to make men
+pleasant to you according to their climate and country; of how you must
+not hurry the people of Aragon, and how it is your duty to bargain with
+the people of Catalonia; and how it is impossible to eat at Daroca; and
+how careful one must be with gloomy men who keep inns at the very top of
+glens, especially if they are silent, under Cheviot. And how one must not
+talk religion when one has got over the Scotch border, with some remarks
+about Jedburgh, and the terrible things that happened to a man there who
+would talk religion though he had been plainly warned.
+
+Then my guide-book would go on to tell how one should climb ordinary
+mountains, and why one should avoid feats; and how to lose a guide which
+is a very valuable art, for when you have lost your guide you need not pay
+him. My book will also have a note (for it is hardly worth a chapter) on
+the proper method of frightening sheep dogs when they attempt to kill you
+with their teeth upon the everlasting hills.
+
+This my good and new guide-book (oh, how it blossoms in my head as I
+write!) would further describe what trains go to what places, and in what
+way the boredom of them can best be overcome, and which expresses really
+go fast; and I should have a footnote describing those lines of steamers
+on which one can travel for nothing if one puts a sufficiently bold face
+upon the matter.
+
+My guide-book would have directions for the pacifying of Arabs, a trick
+which I learnt from a past master, a little way east of Batna in the year
+1905--I will also explain how one can tell time by the stars and by the
+shadow of the sun; upon what sort of food one can last longest and how
+best to carry it, and what rites propitiate, if they are solemnized in a
+due order, the half-malicious fairies which haunt men when they are lost
+in lonely valleys, right up under the high peaks of the world. And my book
+should have a whole chapter devoted to Ulysses.
+
+For you must know that one day I came into Narbonne where I had never been
+before, and I saw written up in large letters upon a big, ugly house:
+
+ULYSSES,
+
+Lodging for Man and Beast.
+
+So I went in and saw the master, who had a round bullet head and cropped
+hair, and I said to him: "What! Are you landed, then, after all your
+journeys? And do I find you at last, you of whom I have read so much and
+seen so little?" But with an oath he refused me lodging.
+
+This tale is true, as would be every other tale in my book.
+
+What a fine book it will be!
+
+
+
+
+THE DEATH OF WANDERING PETER
+
+
+"I will confess and I will not deny," said Wandering Peter (of whom you
+have heard little but of whom in God's good time you shall hear more). "I
+will confess and I will not deny that the chief pleasure I know is the
+contemplation of my fellow beings."
+
+He spoke thus in his bed in the inn of a village upon the River Yonne
+beyond Auxerre, in which bed he lay a-dying; but though he was dying he
+was full of words.
+
+"What energy! What cunning! What desire! I have often been upon the edge
+of a steep place, such as a chalk pit or a cliff above a plain, and
+watched them down below, hurrying around, turning about, laying down,
+putting up, leading, making, organizing, driving, considering, directing,
+exceeding, and restraining; upon my soul I was proud to be one of them! I
+have said to myself," said Wandering Peter, "lift up your heart; you also
+are one of these! For though I am," he continued, "a wandering man and
+lonely, given to the hills and to empty places, yet I glory in the workers
+on the plain, as might a poor man in his noble lineage. From these I came;
+to these in my old age I would have returned."
+
+At these words the people about his bed fell to sobbing when they thought
+how he would never wander more, but Peter Wanderwide continued with a high
+heart:
+
+"How pleasant it is to see them plough! First they cunningly contrive an
+arrangement that throws the earth aside and tosses it to the air, and
+then, since they are too weak to pull the same, they use great beasts,
+oxen or horses or even elephants, and impose them with their will, so that
+they patiently haul this contrivance through the thick clods; they tear
+up and they put into furrows, and they transform the earth. Nothing can
+withstand them. Birds you will think could escape them by flying up into
+the air. It is an error. Upon birds also my people impose their view. They
+spread nets, food, bait, trap, and lime. They hail stones and shot and
+arrows at them. They cause some by a perpetual discipline to live near
+them, to lay eggs and to be killed at will; of this sort are hens, geese,
+turkeys, ducks, and guinea-fowls. Nothing eludes the careful planning of
+man.
+
+"Moreover, they can build. They do not build this way or that, as a dull
+necessity forces them, not they! They build as they feel inclined. They
+hew down, they saw through (and how marvellous is a saw!), they trim
+timber, they mix lime and sand, they excavate the recesses of the hills.
+Oh! the fine fellows! They can at whim make your chambers or the Tower
+prison, or my aunt's new villa at Wimbledon (which is a joke of theirs),
+or St. Pancras Station, or the Crystal Palace, or Westminster Abbey, or
+St. Paul's, or Bon Secours. They are agreeable to every change in the wind
+that blows about the world. It blows Gothic, and they say 'By all means'--
+and there is your Gothic--a thing dreamt of and done! It suddenly veers
+south again and blows from the Mediterranean. The jolly little fellows are
+equal to the strain, and up goes Amboise, and Anet, and the Louvre, and
+all the Renaissance. It blows everyhow and at random as though in anger at
+seeing them so ready. They care not at all! They build the Eiffel Tower,
+the Queen Anne house, the Mary Jane house, the Modern-Style house, the
+Carlton, the Ritz, the Grand Palais, the Trocadero, Olympia, Euston, the
+Midhurst Sanatorium, and old Beit's Palace in Park Lane. They are not to
+be defeated, they have immortal certitudes.
+
+"Have you considered their lines and their drawings and their cunning
+plans?" said Wandering Peter. "They are astonishing there! Put a bit of
+charcoal into my dog's mouth or my pet monkey's paw--would he copy the
+world? Not he! But men--my brothers--_they_ take it in hand and make
+war against the unspeaking forces; the trees and the hills are of their
+own showing, and the places in which they dwell, by their own power,
+become full of their own spirit. Nature is made more by being their model,
+for in all they draw, paint, or chisel they are in touch with heaven and
+with hell.... They write (Lord! the intelligence of their men, and Lord!
+the beauty of their women). They write unimaginable things!
+
+"They write epics, they write lyrics, they write riddles and marching
+songs and drinking songs and rhetoric, and chronicles, and elegies, and
+pathetic memories; and in everything that they write they reveal things
+greater than they know. They are capable," said Peter Wanderwide, in
+his dying enthusiasm, "of so writing that the thought enlarges upon the
+writing and becomes far more than what they have written. They write that
+sort of verse called 'Stop-Short,' which when it is written makes one
+think more violently than ever, as though it were an introduction to the
+realms of the soul. And then again they write things which gently mock
+themselves and are a consolation for themselves against the doom of
+death."
+
+But when Peter Wanderwide said that word "death," the howling and the
+boo-hooing of the company assembled about his bed grew so loud that he
+could hardly hear himself think. For there was present the Mayor of
+the village, and the Priest of the village, and the Mayor's wife, and
+the Adjutant Mayor or Deputy Mayor, and the village Councillor, and
+the Road-mender, and the Schoolmaster, and the Cobbler, and all the
+notabilities, as many as could crush into the room, and none but the
+Doctor was missing.
+
+And outside the house was a great crowd of the village folk, weeping
+bitterly and begging for news of him, and mourning that so great and so
+good a man should find his death in so small a place.
+
+Peter Wanderwide was sinking very fast, and his life was going out with
+his breath, but his heart was still so high that he continued although his
+voice was failing:
+
+"Look you, good people all, in your little passage through the daylight,
+get to see as many hills and buildings and rivers, fields, books, men,
+horses, ships, and precious stones as you can possibly manage to do. Or
+else stay in one village and marry in it and die there. For one of these
+two fates is the best fate for every man. Either to be what I have been, a
+wanderer with all the bitterness of it, or to stay at home and hear in
+one's garden the voice of God.
+
+"For my part I have followed out my fate. And I propose in spite of my
+numerous iniquities, by the recollection of my many joys in the glories of
+this earth, as by corks, to float myself in the sea of nothingness until I
+reach the regions of the Blessed and the pure in heart.
+
+"For I think when I am dead Almighty God will single me out on account
+of my accoutrement, my stirrup leathers, and the things that I shall be
+talking of concerning Ireland and the Perigord, and my boat upon the
+narrow seas; and I think He will ask St. Michael, who is the Clerk and
+Registrar of battling men, who it is that stands thus ready to speak
+(unless his eyes betray him) of so many things? Then St. Michael will
+forget my name although he will know my face; he will forget my name
+because I never stayed long enough in one place for him to remember it.
+
+"But St. Peter, because he is my Patron Saint and because I have always
+had a special devotion to him, will answer for me and will have no
+argument, for he holds the keys. And he will open the door and I will come
+in. And when I am inside the door of Heaven I shall freely grow those
+wings, the pushing and nascence of which have bothered my shoulder blades
+with birth pains all my life long, and more especially since my thirtieth
+year. I say, friends and companions all, that I shall grow a very
+satisfying and supporting pair of wings, and once I am so furnished I
+shall be received among the Blessed, and I shall at once begin to tell
+them, as I told you on earth, all sorts of things, both false and true,
+with regard to the countries through which I carried forward my homeless
+feet, and in which I have been given such fulfilment for my eyes."
+
+When Peter Wanderwide had delivered himself of these remarks, which he did
+with great dignity and fire for one in such extremity, he gasped a little,
+coughed, and died.
+
+I need not tell you what solemnities attended his burial, nor with what
+fervour the people flocked to pray at his tomb; but it is worth knowing
+that the poet of that place, who was rival to the chief poet in Auxerre
+itself, gathered up the story of his death into a rhyme, written in the
+dialect of that valley, of which rhyme this is an English translation:
+
+   When Peter Wanderwide was young
+     He wandered everywhere he would;
+   And all that he approved was sung,
+     And most of what he saw was good.
+
+   When Peter Wanderwide was thrown
+     By Death himself beyond Auxerre,
+   He chanted in heroic tone
+     To Priest and people gathered there:
+
+  "If all that I have loved and seen
+     Be with me on the Judgment Day,
+   I shall be saved the crowd between
+     From Satan and his foul array.
+
+  "Almighty God will surely cry
+     'St. Michael! Who is this that stands
+   With Ireland in his dubious eye,
+     And Perigord between his hands,
+
+  "'And on his arm the stirrup thongs,
+     And in his gait the narrow seas,
+   And in his mouth Burgundian songs,
+     But in his heart the Pyrenees?'
+
+  "St. Michael then will answer right
+     (But not without angelic shame):
+   'I seem to know his face by sight;
+     I cannot recollect his name....'
+
+  "St. Peter will befriend me then,
+     Because my name is Peter too;
+   'I know him for the best of men
+     That ever wallopped barley brew.
+
+  "'And though I did not know him well,
+     And though his soul were clogged with sin,
+   _I_ hold the keys of Heaven and Hell.
+     Be welcome, noble Peterkin.'
+
+  "Then shall I spread my native wings
+     And tread secure the heavenly floor,
+   And tell the Blessed doubtful things
+     Of Val d'Aran and Perigord."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  This was the last and solemn jest
+     Of weary Peter Wanderwide,
+   He spoke it with a failing zest,
+     And having spoken it, he died.
+
+
+
+
+THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+
+The nation known to history as the Nephalo Ceclumenazenoi, or, more
+shortly, the Nepioi, inhabited a fruitful and prosperous district
+consisting in a portion of the mainland and certain islands situated in
+the Picrocholian Sea; and had there for countless centuries enjoyed a
+particular form of government which it is not difficult to describe, for
+it was religious and arranged upon the principle that no ancient custom
+might be changed.
+
+Lest such changes should come about through the lapse of time or the
+evil passions of men, the citizens of the aforesaid nation had them very
+clearly engraved in a dead language and upon bronze tablets, which they
+fixed upon the doors of their principal temple, where it stood upon a
+hill outside the city, and it was their laudable custom to entrust the
+interpretation of them not to aged judges, but to little children, for
+they argued that we increase in wickedness with years, and that no one
+is safe from the aged, but that children are, alone of the articulately
+speaking race, truth-tellers. Therefore, upon the first day of the year
+(which falls in that country at the time of sowing) they would take one
+hundred boys of ten years of age chosen by lot, they would make these
+hundred, who had previously for one year received instruction in their
+sacred language, write each a translation of the simple code engraved
+upon the bronze tablets. It was invariably discovered that these artless
+compositions varied only according to the ability of the lads to construe,
+and that some considerable proportion of them did accurately show forth
+in the vernacular of the time the meaning of those ancestral laws. They
+had further a magistrate known as the Archon. whose business it was to
+administrate these customs and to punish those who broke them. And this
+Archon, when or if he proposed something contrary to custom in the opinion
+of not less than a hundred petitioners, was judged by a court of children.
+
+In this fashion for thousands of years did the Nepioi proceed with their
+calm and ordinary lives, enjoying themselves like so many grigs, and
+utterly untroubled by those broils and imaginations of State which
+disturbed their neighbours.
+
+There was a legend among them (upon which the whole of this Constitution
+was based) that a certain Hero, one Melek, being in stature twelve foot
+high and no less than 93 inches round the chest, had landed in their
+country 150,000 years previously, and finding them very barbarous, slaying
+one another and unacquainted with the use of letters, the precious metals,
+or the art of usury, had instructed them in civilization, endowed them
+with letters, a coinage, police, lawyers, instruments of torture, and all
+the other requisites of a great State, and had finally drawn up for them
+this code of law or custom, which they carefully preserved engraved upon
+the tablets of bronze, which were set upon the walls of their chief temple
+on the hill outside the city.
+
+Within the temple itself its great shrine and, so to speak, its very cause
+of being was the Hero's tomb. He lay therein covered with plates of gold,
+and it was confidently asserted and strictly and unquestionably believed
+that at some unknown time in the future he would come out to rule them for
+ever in a millennial fashion--though heaven knows they were happy enough
+as it was.
+
+Among their customs was this: that certain appointed officers
+would at every change in the moon proclaim the former existence and virtue
+of Melek, his residence in the tomb, and his claims to authority. To enter
+the tomb, indeed, was death, but there was proof of the whole story in
+documents which were carefully preserved in the temple, and which were
+from time to time consulted and verified. The whole structure of Nepioian
+society reposed upon the sanctity of this story, upon the presence of the
+Hero in his tomb, and of his continued authority, for with this was
+intertwined, or rather upon this was based, the further sanctity of their
+customs.
+
+Things so proceeded without hurt or cloud until upon one most unfortunate
+day a certain man, bearing the vulgar name of Megalocrates, which
+signifies a person whose health requires the use of a wide head-gear,
+discovered that a certain herb which grew in great abundance in their
+territory and had hitherto been thought useless would serve almost every
+purpose of the table, sufficing, according to its preparation, for meat,
+bread, vegetables, and salt, and, if properly distilled, for a liquor that
+would make the Nepioi even more drunk than did their native spirits.
+
+From this discovery ensued a great plenty throughout the land, the
+population very rapidly increased, the fortunes of the wealthy grew to
+double, treble, and four times those which had formerly been known, the
+middle classes adopted a novel accent in speech and a gait hitherto
+unusual, while great numbers of the poor acquired the power of living upon
+so small a proportion of foul air, dull light, stagnant water, and mangy
+crusts as would have astonished their nicer forefathers. Meanwhile this
+great period of progress could not but lead to further discoveries, and
+the Nepioi had soon produced whole colleges in which were studied the arts
+useful to mankind and constantly discovered a larger and a larger number
+of surprising and useful things. At last the Nepioi (though this, perhaps,
+will hardly be credited) were capable of travelling underground, flying
+through the air, conversing with men a thousand miles away in a moment of
+time, and committing suicide painlessly whenever there arose occasion for
+that exercise.
+
+It may be imagined with what reverence the authors of all these boons, the
+members of the learned colleges, were regarded; and how their opinions had
+in the eyes and ears of the Nepioi an unanswerable character.
+
+Now it so happened that in one of these colleges a professor of more than
+ordinary position emitted one day the opinion that Melek had lived only
+half as long ago as was commonly supposed. In proof of this he put forward
+the undoubted truth that if Melek had lived at the time he was supposed
+to have lived, then he would have lived twice as long ago as he, the
+professor, said that he had lived. The more old-fashioned and stupid
+of the Nepioi murmured against such opinions, and though they humbly
+confessed themselves unable to discover any flaw in the professor's logic,
+they were sure he was wrong somewhere and they were greatly disturbed.
+But the opinion gained ground, and, what is more, this fruitful and
+intelligent surmise upon the part of the professor bred a whole series of
+further theories upon Melek, each of which contradicted the last but one,
+and the latest of which was always of so limpid and so self-evident a
+truth as to be accepted by whatever was intelligent and energetic in the
+population, and especially by the young unmarried women of the wealthier
+classes. In this manner the epoch of Melek was reduced to five, to three,
+to two, to one thousand years. Then to five hundred, and at last to one
+hundred and fifty. But here was a trouble. The records of the State, which
+had been carefully kept for many centuries, showed no trace of Melek's
+coming during any part of the time, but always referred to him as a
+long-distant forerunner. There was not even any mention of a man twelve
+foot high, nor even of one a little over 93 inches round the chest. At last
+it was proposed by an individual of great courage that he might be allowed
+to open the tomb of Melek and afterwards, if they so pleased, suffer death.
+This privilege was readily granted to him by the Archon. The worthy
+reformer, therefore, prised open the sacred shrine and found within it
+absolutely nothing whatsoever.
+
+Upon this there arose among the Nepioi all manner of schools and
+discussions, some saying this and some that, but none with the certitude
+of old. Their customs fell into disrepute, and even the very professors
+themselves were occasionally doubted when they laid down the law upon
+matters in which they alone were competent--as, for instance, when they
+asserted that the moon was made of a peculiarly delicious edible substance
+which increased in savour when it was preserved in the store-rooms of the
+housewives; or when they affirmed with every appearance of truth that no
+man did evil, and that wilful murder, arson, cruelty to the innocent and
+the weak, and deliberate fraud were of no more disadvantage to the general
+state, or to men single, than the drinking of a cup of cold water.
+
+So things proceeded until one day, when all custom and authority had
+fallen into this really lamentable deliquescence, fleets were observed
+upon the sea, manned by men-at-arms, the admiral of which sent a short
+message to the Archon proposing that the people of the country should send
+to him and his one-half of their yearly wealth for ever, "or," so the
+message proceeded, "take the consequences." Upon the Archon communicating
+this to the people there arose at once an infinity of babble, some saying
+one thing and some another, some proposing to pay neighbouring savages
+to come in and fight the invaders, others saying it would be cheaper to
+compromise with a large sum, but the most part agreeing that the wisest
+thing would be for the Archon and his great-aunt to go out to the fleet
+in a little boat and persuade the enemy's admiral (as they could surely
+easily do) that while most human acts were of doubtful responsibility and
+not really wicked, yet the invasion, and, above all, the impoverishment
+of the Nepioi was so foul a wrong as would certainly call down upon its
+fiendish perpetrator the fires of heaven.
+
+While the Archon and his great-aunt were rowing out in the little boat
+a few doddering old men and superstitious females slunk off to consult
+the bronze tablets, and there found under Schedule XII these words: "If
+an enemy threaten the State, you shall arm and repel him." In their
+superstition the poor old chaps, with their half-daft female devotees
+accompanying them, tottered back to the crowds to persuade them to some
+ridiculous fanaticism or other, based on no better authority than the
+non-existent Melek and his absurd and exploded authority.
+
+Judge of their horror when, as they neared the city, they saw from the
+height whereon the temple stood that the invaders had landed, and, having
+put to the sword all the inhabitants without exception, were proceeding to
+make an inventory of the goods and to settle the place as conquerors. The
+admiral summoned this remnant of the nation, and hearing what they had to
+say treated them with the greatest courtesy and kindness and pensioned
+them off for their remaining years, during which period they so instructed
+him and his fighting men in the mysteries of their religion as quite to
+convert them, and in a sense to found the Nepioian State over again; but
+it should be mentioned that the admiral, by way of precaution, changed
+that part of the religion which related to the tomb of Melek and situated
+the shrine in the very centre of the crater of an active volcano in the
+neighbourhood, which by night and day, at every season of the year,
+belched forth molten rock so that none could approach it within fifteen
+miles.
+
+
+
+
+A NORFOLK MAN
+
+
+Among the delights of historical study which makes it so curiously
+similar to travel, and therefore so fatally attractive to men who cannot
+afford it, is the element of discovery and surprise: notably in little
+details.
+
+When in travel one goes along a way one has never been before one often
+comes upon something odd, which one could not dream was there: for
+instance, once I was in a room in a little house in the south and thought
+there must be machinery somewhere from the noise I heard, until a man in
+the house quietly lifted up a trapdoor in the floor, and there, running
+under and through the house a long way below, was a river: the River
+Garonne.
+
+It is the same way in historical study. You come upon the most
+extraordinary things: little things, but things whose unexpectedness is
+enormous. I had an example of this the other day, as I was looking up some
+last details to make certain of the affair of Valmy.
+
+Most people have heard of the French Revolution, and many people have
+heard of the battle of Valmy, which decided the first fate of that
+movement, when it was first threatened by war. But very few people have
+read about Valmy, so it is necessary to give some idea of the action to
+understand the astonishing little thing attaching to it which I am about
+to describe.
+
+The cannonade of Valmy was exchanged between a French Army with its back
+to a range of hills and a Prussian Army about a mile away over against
+them. It was as though the French Army had stretched from Leatherhead
+to Epsom and had engaged in a cannonade with a Prussian Army lying over
+against them in a position astraddle of the road to Kingston.
+
+Through this range of hills at the back of the French Army lay a gap, just
+as there is a gap through the hills behind Leatherhead. Not only was that
+gap easily passable by an army--easily, at least, compared with the hill
+country on either side--but it had running through it the great road from
+Metz to Paris, so that advance along it was rapid and practicable.
+
+It so happened that another force of the enemy besides that which was
+cannonading the French in front was advancing through this gap from
+behind, and it is evident that if this second force of the enemy had been
+able to get through the gap it would have been all up with the French.
+Dumouriez, who commanded the French, saw this well enough; he had ordered
+the gap to be strongly fortified and well gunned and a camp to be formed
+there, largely made up of Volunteers and Irregulars. On the proper conduct
+of that post depended everything: and here comes the fun. The commander
+of the post was not what you might expect, a Frenchman of any one of the
+French types with which the Revolution has made us familiar: contrariwise,
+he was an elderly private gentleman from the county of Norfolk.
+
+His name was Money. The little that is known about him is entertaining to
+a degree. His own words prove him to be like the person in the song, "a
+very honest man," and luckily for us he has left in a book a record of the
+day (and subsequent actions) stamped vividly with his own character. John
+Money: called by his neighbours General John Money, not, as you might
+expect. General Money: a man devoted to the noble profession of arms and
+also eaten up with a passion for ballooning.
+
+I find it difficult to believe that he was first in action at the age of
+nine years or that he held King George's commission as a Cornet at the
+age of ten. He does not tell us so himself nor do any of his friends. The
+surmise is that of our Universities, and it is worthy of them. Clap on ten
+years and you are nearer the mark. At any rate he was under fire in 1761,
+and he was a Cornet in 1762; a Cornet in the Inniskilling Dragoons with a
+commission dated on the 11th of March of that year. Then he transformed
+himself into a Linesman, got his company in the 9th Foot eight years
+later, and eight years later again, at the outbreak of the American War,
+he was a major. He was quarter-master-general under Burgoyne, he was taken
+prisoner--I think at Saratoga, but anyhow during that disastrous advance
+upon the Hudson Valley. He got his lieutenant-colonelcy towards the end of
+the war. He retired from the Army and never saw active service again. When
+the Low Countries revolted against Austria he offered his services to the
+insurgents and was accepted, but the truly entertaining chapter of his
+adventures begins when he suggested himself to the French Government as
+a very proper and likely man to command a brigade on the outbreak of the
+great war with the Empire and with Prussia.
+
+Very beautifully does he tell us in his preface what moved him to that act.
+"Colonel Money," he says, in the quiet third person of a self-respecting
+Norfolk gentleman, "does not mean to assign any other reason for serving
+the armies of France than that he loves his profession and went there
+merely to improve himself in it." Spoken like Othello!
+
+He dedicates the book, by the way, to the Marquis Townshend, and carefully
+adds that he has not got permission to dedicate it to that exalted
+nobleman, nay, that he fears that he would not get permission if he asked
+for it. But Lord Townshend is such a rattling good soldier that Colonel
+Money is quite sure he will want to hear all about the war. On which
+account he has this book so dedicated and printed by E. Harlow, bookseller
+to Her Majesty, in Pall Mall.
+
+Before beginning his narrative the excellent fellow pathetically says,
+that as there was no war a little time before, nor apparently any
+likelihood of one, "Colonel Money once intended to serve the Turks"; from
+this horrid fate a Christian Providence delivered him, and sent him to the
+defence of Gaul.
+
+His commission was dated on the 19th of July, 1792; Marshal of the Camps,
+that is, virtually, brigadier-general. He is very proud of it, and he
+gives it in full. It ends up "Given in the year of Grace 1792 of our Reign
+the 19th and Liberty the 4th. Louis." The phrase, in accompaniment with
+the signature and the date, is not without irony.
+
+Colonel Money could never stomach certain traits in the French people.
+
+Before he left Paris for his command on the frontier he was witness to
+the fighting when the Palace was stormed by the populace, and he is
+our authority for the fact that the 5th Battalion of Paris Volunteers
+stationed in the Champs Elysees helped to massacre the Swiss Guard.
+
+"The lieutenant-colonel of this battalion," writes honest John Money,
+"who was under my command during part of the campaign, related to me the
+circumstances of this murder, and apparently with pleasure. He said: 'That
+the unhappy men implored mercy, but,' added he, 'we did not regard this.
+We put them all to death, and our men cut off most of their heads and
+fixed them on their bayonets.'"
+
+Colonel or, as he then was, General Money disapproves of this.
+
+He also disapproves of the officer in command of the Marseillese, and says
+he was a "Tyger." It seems that the "Tyger" was dining with Theroigne de
+Mericourt and three English gentlemen in the very hotel where Money was
+stopping, and it occurs to him that they might have broken in from their
+drunken revels next door and treated him unfriendly.
+
+Then he goes to the frontier, and after a good deal of complaint that he
+has not been given his proper command he finds himself at the head of that
+very important post which was the saving of the Army of Valmy.
+
+Dumouriez, who always talked to him in English (for English was more
+widely known abroad then than it is now, at least among gentlemen), had
+a very great opinion of Money; but he deplores the fact that Money's
+address to his soldiery was couched "in a jargon which they could not even
+begin to understand." Money does not tell us that in his account of the
+fighting, but he does tell us some very interesting things, which reveal
+him as a man at once energetic and exceedingly simple. He left the guns
+to Galbaud, remarking that no one but a gunner could attend to that sort
+of thing, which was sound sense; but the Volunteers, the Line, and the
+Cavalry he looked after himself, and when the first attack was made he
+gave the order to fire from the batteries. Just as they were blazing away
+Dillon, who was far off but his superior, sent word to the batteries to
+cease firing. Why, nobody knows. At any rate the orderly galloped up and
+told Money that those were Dillon's orders. On which Money very charmingly
+writes:
+
+"I told him to go back and tell General Dillon that I commanded there, and
+that whilst the enemy fired shot and shell on me _I_ should continue
+to fire back on them." A sentence that warms the heart. Having thus
+delivered himself to the orderly, he began pacing up and down the parapet
+"to let my men see that there was not much to be apprehended from a
+cannonade."
+
+You may if you will make a little picture of this to yourselves. A great
+herd of volunteers, some of whom had never been under fire, the rest
+of whom had bolted miserably at Verdun a few days before, men not yet
+soldiers and almost without discipline: the batteries banging away in the
+wood behind them, in front of them a long earthwork at which the enemy
+were lobbing great round lumps of iron and exploding shells, and along
+the edge of this earthwork an elderly gentleman from Norfolk, in England,
+walking up and down undisturbed, occasionally giving orders to his army,
+and teaching his command a proper contempt for fire.
+
+He adds as another reason why he did not cease fire when he was ordered
+that "without doubt the troops would have thought there was treason in it,
+and I had probably been cut in pieces."
+
+He did not understand what had happened at Valmy, though he was so useful
+in securing the success of that day. All he noted was that after the
+cannonade Kellermann had fallen back. He rode into St. Menehould, where
+Dumouriez's head-quarters were, ran up to the top of the steeple and
+surveyed the country around the enemy's camp with an enormous telescope,
+laid a bet at dinner of five to one that the enemy would attack again
+(they did not do so, and so he lost his bet, but he says nothing about
+paying it), and then heard that France had been decreed a Republic.
+His comment on this piece of news is strong but cryptical. "It was
+surprising," he says, "to see what an effect this news had on the Army."
+
+Every sentence betrays the personality: the keen, eccentric character
+which took to balloons just after the Montgolfiers, and fell with his
+balloon into the North Sea, wrote his Treatise on the use of such
+instruments in War, and was never happy unless he was seeing or doing
+something--preferably under arms. And in every sentence also there is that
+curious directness of statement which is of such advantage to vivacity
+in any memoir. Thus of Gobert, who served under him, he has a little
+footnote: "This unfortunate young man lost his head at the same time
+General Dillon suffered, and a very amiable young man he was, and an
+excellent officer."
+
+He ends his book in a phrase from which I think not a word could be taken
+nor to which a word could be added without spoiling it. I will quote it in
+full.
+
+"The reader, I trust, will excuse my having so often departed from the
+line of my profession in giving my opinion on subjects that are not
+military" (for instance, his objections to the head-cutting business),
+"but having had occasion to know the people of France I freely venture to
+submit my judgments to the public and have the satisfaction to find that
+they coincide with the opinion of those who know that extraordinary nation
+_still better than myself_."
+
+
+
+
+THE ODD PEOPLE
+
+
+The people of Monomotapa, of whom I have written more than once, I have
+recently revisited; and I confess to an astonishment at the success with
+which they deal with the various difficulties and problems arising in
+their social life.
+
+Thus, in most countries the laws of property are complex in the extreme;
+punishable acts in connexion with them are numerous and often difficult to
+define.
+
+In Monomotapa the whole thing is settled in a very simple manner: in the
+first place, instead of strict laws binding men down by written words,
+they appoint a number of citizens who shall have it in their discretion to
+decide whether a man's actions are worthy of punishment or no; and these
+appointed citizens have also the power to assign the punishment, which may
+vary from a single day's imprisonment to a lifetime. So crimeless is the
+country, however, that in a population of over thirty millions less than
+twenty such nominations are necessary; I must, however, admit that these
+score are aided by several thousand minor judges who are appointed in a
+different manner.
+
+Their method of appointment is this: it is discovered as accurately as may
+be by a man's manner of dress and the hours of his labour and the size of
+the house he inhabits, whether he have more than a certain yearly revenue;
+any man discovered to have more than this revenue is immediately appointed
+to the office of which I speak.
+
+The power of these assessors is limited, however, for though it is left to
+their discretion whether their fellow-citizens are worthy of punishment
+or not, yet the total punishment they can inflict is limited to a certain
+number of years of imprisonment. In old times this sort of minor judge
+was not appointed in Monomotapa unless he could prove that he kept dogs
+in great numbers for the purposes of hunting, and at least three horses.
+But this foolish prejudice has broken down in the progress of modern
+enlightenment, and, as I have said, the test is now extended to a general
+consideration of clothes, the size of the house inhabited, and the amount
+of leisure enjoyed, the type of tobacco smoked, and other equally
+reasonable indications of judicial capacity.
+
+The men thus chosen to consider the actions of their fellow-citizens in
+courts of law are rewarded in two ways: the first small body who are the
+more powerful magistrates are given a hundred times the income of an
+ordinary citizen, for it is claimed that in this way not only are the best
+men for the purpose obtained, but, further, so large a salary makes all
+temptation to bribery impossible and secures a strict impartiality between
+rich and poor.
+
+The lesser judges, on the other hand, are paid nothing, for it is wisely
+pointed out that a man who is paid nothing and who volunteers his services
+to the State will not be the kind of a man who would take a bribe or who
+would consider social differences in his judgments.
+
+It is further pointed out by the Monomotapans (I think very reasonably)
+that the kind of man who will give his services for nothing, even in the
+arduous work of imprisoning his fellow-citizens, will probably be the best
+man for the job, and does not need to be allured to it by the promise of
+a great salary. In this way they obtain both kinds of judges, and, oddly
+enough, each kind speaks, acts, and lives much as does the other.
+
+I must next describe the methods by which this interesting and sensible
+people secure the ends of their criminal system.
+
+When one of their magistrates has come to the conclusion that on the whole
+he will have a fellow-citizen imprisoned, that person is handed over to
+the guardianship of certain officials, whose business it is to see that
+the man does not die during the period for which he is entrusted to them.
+When some one of the numerous forms of torture which they are permitted
+to use has the effect of causing death, the official responsible is
+reprimanded and may even be dismissed. The object indeed of the whole
+system is to reform and amend the criminal. He is therefore forbidden to
+speak or to communicate in any way with human beings, and is segregated in
+a very small room devoid of all ornament, with the exception of one hour a
+day, during which he is compelled to walk round and round a deep, walled
+courtyard designed for the purpose of such an exercise. If (as is often
+the case) after some years of this treatment the criminal shows no signs
+of mental or moral improvement, he is released; and if he is a man of
+property, lives unmolested on what he has, and that usually in a quiet
+and retired way. But if he is devoid of property, the problem is indeed a
+difficult one, for it is the business of the police to forbid him to work,
+and they are rewarded if he is found committing any act which the judges
+or the magistrates are likely to disapprove. In this way even those who
+have failed to effect reform in their characters during their first term
+of imprisonment are commonly--if they are poor--re-incarcerated within
+a short time, so that the system works precisely as it was intended to,
+giving the maximum amount of reformation to the worst and the hardest
+characters. I should add that the Monomotapan character is such that in
+proportion to wealth a man's virtues increase, and it is remarkable that
+nearly all those who suffer the species of imprisonment I have described
+are of the poorer classes of society.
+
+Though they are so reasonable, and indeed afford so excellent a model to
+ourselves in most of their social relations, the people of Monomotapa
+have, I confess, certain customs which I have never clearly understood,
+and which my increasing study of them fails to explain to me.
+
+Thus, in matters which, with us, are thought susceptible of positive
+proof (such as the taste and quality of cooking, or the mental abilities
+of a fellow-citizen) the Monomotapans establish their judgment in a
+transcendental or super-rational manner. The cooking in a restaurant or
+hotel is with them excellent in proportion, not to the taste of the viands
+subjected to it, but to the rental of the premises. And when a man desires
+the most delicious food he does not consider where he has tasted such food
+in the past, but rather the situation and probable rateable value of the
+eating-house which will provide him with it. Nay, he is willing--if he
+understands that that rateable value is high--to pay far more for the same
+article than he would in a humbler hostelry.
+
+The same super-rational method, as I have called it, applies to the
+Monomotapan judgment of political ability; for here it is not what a
+man has said or written, nor whether he has proved himself capable
+of foreseeing certain events of moment to the State, it is not these
+characters that determine his political career, but a mixture of other
+indices, one of which is that his brothers shall be younger than himself,
+another that when he speaks he shall strike the palm of his open left hand
+with his clenched right hand in a particular manner by no means commonly
+or easily acquired; another that he shall not wear at one and the same
+time a coat which is bifurcated and a hat of hemispherical outline;
+another that he shall keep silence upon certain types of foreigners who
+frequent the markets of Monomotapa, and shall even pretend that they are
+not foreigners but Monomotapans; and this index of statesmanship he must
+preserve under all circumstances, even when the foreigners in question
+cannot speak the Monomotapan language.
+
+Some years ago it was required of every statesman that he should, for at
+least so many times in any one year, extravagantly praise the virtues
+of these foreign merchants, and particularly allude to their intensely
+unforeign character; but this custom has recently fallen into abeyance,
+and silence upon the subject is the most that is demanded.
+
+A further social habit of this people which we should find very strange
+and which I for my part think unaccountable is their habit of judging the
+excellence of a literary production, not by the sense or even the sound of
+it, but by the ink in which it is printed and the paper upon which it is
+impressed. And this applies not only to their letters but also to their
+foreign information, and on this account they should (one would imagine)
+obtain but a very distorted view of the world. For if a good printer
+prints with excellent ink at five shillings a pound, and with beautiful
+clear type upon the best linen paper, the statement that the British
+Islands are uninhabited, while another in bad ink and upon flimsy paper
+and with worn type affirms that they contain over forty million souls, the
+first impression and not the second would be conveyed to the Monomotapan,
+mind. As a fact, however, they are not misinformed, for this singular
+frailty of theirs (as I conceive it to be) is moderated by one very wise
+countervailing mental habit of theirs, which is to believe whatever they
+hear asserted more than twenty-six times, so that even if the assertion be
+conveyed to them in bad print and upon poor paper, they will believe it if
+they read it over and over again to the required limits of reiterations.
+
+No people in the world are fonder of animals than this genial race, but
+here again curious limits to their affection are to be discovered, for
+while they will tear to pieces some abandoned wretch who beats a llama
+with a hazel twig for its correction, they will see nothing remarkable in
+the tearing to pieces of an alpaca goat by dogs specially trained in that
+exercise.
+
+Generally speaking, the larger an animal is, the warmer is the affection
+borne it by these people. Fleas and lice are crushed without pity,
+blackbeetles with more hesitation, small birds are spared entirely, and
+so on upwards until for calves they have a special legislation to protect
+and cherish them. At the other end of the scale, microbes are pitilessly
+exterminated.
+
+Divorce is not common in Monomotapa. But such divorces as take place are
+very rightly treated differently, according to the wealth of the persons
+involved. Above a certain scale of wealth divorce is only granted after a
+lengthy trial in a court of justice; but with the poor it is established
+by the decree of a magistrate who usually, shortly after pronouncing his
+sentence, finds an occasion to imprison the innocent party. Moreover, the
+poor can be divorced in this manner, if any magistrate feels inclined to
+exercise his power, while for the divorce of the rich set conditions are
+laid down.
+
+I should add that the Monomotapans have no religion; but the tolerance of
+their Constitution is nowhere better shown than in this particular, for
+though they themselves regard religion as ridiculous, they will permit
+its exercise within the State, and even occasionally give high office and
+emoluments to those who practise it.
+
+We have, indeed, much to learn in this matter of religion from the race
+whose habits I have discovered and here describe. Nothing, perhaps, has
+done more to warp our own story than the hide-bound prejudice that a
+doctrine could not be both false and true at the same time, and the
+unreasoning certitude, inherited from the bad old days of clerical
+tyranny, that a thing either was or was not.
+
+No such narrowness troubles the Monomotapan. He will prefer--and very
+wisely prefer--an opinion that renders him comfortable to one that in any
+way interferes with his appetites; and if two such opinions contradict
+each other, he will not fall into a silly casuistry which would attempt to
+reconcile them: he will quietly accept both, and serve the Higher Purpose
+with a contented mind.
+
+It is on this account that I have said that the Monomotapans regard
+religion as ridiculous. For true religion, indeed (as they phrase it),
+they have the highest reverence; and true religion consists in following
+the inclinations of an honest man, that is, oneself; but "religion in the
+sense of fixed doctrine," as one of their priests explained to me, "is
+abhorrent to our free commonwealth." Thus such hair-splitting questions as
+whether God really exists or no, whether it be wrong to kill or to steal,
+whether we owe any duties to the State, and, if so, what duties, are
+treated by the honest Monomotapans with the contempt they deserve: they
+abandon such speculation for the worthy task of enjoying, each man, what
+his fortune permits him to enjoy.
+
+But, as I have said above, they do not persecute the small minority living
+in their midst who cling with the tenacity of all starved minds to their
+fixed ideas; and if a man who professes certitude upon doctrinal matters
+is useful in other ways, they are very far from refusing his services to
+the State. I have known more than one, for instance, of this old-fashioned
+and bigoted lot who, when he offered a sum of money in order to be
+admitted to the Senate of Monomotapa, found it accepted as readily and
+cheerfully as though it had been offered by one of the broadest principles
+and most liberal mind.
+
+Let no one be surprised that I have spoken of their priests, for though
+the Monomotapans regard religion with due contempt, it does not follow
+that they will take away the livelihood of a very honest class of people
+who in an older and barbaric state of affairs were employed to maintain
+the structure of what was then a public worship. The priesthood,
+therefore, is very justly and properly retained by the Monomotapans,
+subject only to a few simple duties and to a sacred intonation of voice
+very distressing to those not accustomed to it. If I am asked in what
+occupation they are employed, I answer, the wealthier of them in such
+sports and futilities as attract the wealthy, and the less wealthy in such
+futilities and sports as the less wealthy customarily enjoy. Nor is it a
+rigid law among them that the sons of priests should be priests, but only
+the custom--so far, at least, as I have been able to discover.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER OF ADVICE AND APOLOGY TO A YOUNG BURGLAR
+
+
+My dear Ormond,
+
+Nothing was further from my thoughts. I had imagined you knew me well
+enough--and, for the matter of that, all your mother's family--to judge
+me better. Believe me, no conception of blaming your profession entered
+my mind for a moment. Whether there be such a thing as "property" in the
+abstract I should leave it to metaphysicians to decide: in practical
+affairs everything must be judged in its own surroundings.
+
+It was not upon any musty theological whimsy that I wrote; the definition
+of stealing or "theft"--I care not by what name you call it--is not for
+practical men to discuss. Nor was I concerned with the ethical discussion
+of burglary (to give the matter its old legal and technical title); it was
+lack of judgment, sudden actions due to nothing but impulse, and what I
+think I may call "the speculative side" of a burglar's life.
+
+You have not, as yet, any great responsibilities. No one is dependent upon
+you--you have but yourself to provide for; but you must remember that such
+responsibilities will arrive in their natural course, and that if you form
+habits of rashness or obstinacy now they will cling to you through life.
+We are all looking forward to a certain event when Anne is free again; in
+plain English, my boy, we know your loyal heart, and we shall bless the
+union; but I should feel easier in my mind if I saw you settled into one
+definite branch of the profession before you undertook the nurture of a
+family.
+
+Adventure tempts you because you are brave, and something of a poet in
+you leads you to unusual scenes of action. Well, Youth has a right to its
+dreams, but beware of letting a dangerous Quixotism spoil your splendid
+chances.
+
+Take, for example, your breaking into Mr. Cowl's house. You may say Mr.
+Cowl was not a journalist, but only a reviewer; the distinction is very
+thin, but let it pass. You know and I know that the houses of _none_
+in any way connected with the daily Press should ever be approached. It is
+plain common sense. The journalist comes home at all hours of the night.
+His servant (if he keeps one) is often up before he is abed. Do you think
+to enter such houses unobserved?
+
+Again, in one capacity or another, the journalist is dealing with our
+profession all day long. Some he serves and knows as masters; others he is
+employed in denouncing at about forty-two shillings the 1600 words; others
+again it is his business to interview and to pacify or cajole in the
+lobbies of the House--do you think he would not know what you were if he
+found you in the kitchen with a dark lantern?
+
+There is another peril--I mean that of alienating friends. Mr. Cowl is an
+Imperialist--of a very unemphatic type: he wears (as you will say) gold
+spectacles, and has a nervous cough, but he _is_ an Imperialist. I
+never said that it was _wrong_ or even _foolish_ to alienate
+such a man. I said that a great and powerful section of opinion thought it
+a breach of honour in one of Ours to do it. Do not run away with the first
+impression my words convey. Believe me, I weigh them all.
+
+There has been so much misunderstanding that I hardly know what to choose.
+Take those watches. I did not say that watches were "a mere distraction."
+You have put the words into my mouth. What I said was that watches,
+especially watches at a Tariff Reform meeting, were not worth the risk.
+Of course a hatful of watches, such as your Uncle Robert would bring home
+from fires, or better still, such a load as your poor cousin Charles
+obtained upon Empire Day last year, has value. But how many gold watches
+are there, off the platform, at a Tariff Reform meeting? And what possible
+chance have you of getting _on_ the platform? Now church and purses,
+that is another thing, but your mid-Devon adventure was simple folly.
+
+Who is Lord Darrell? I never heard of him! For Heaven's sake don't get
+caught by a title. Do you know any of the servants? His butler or his
+secretary? The fellow who catalogues the library is useful. Do recollect
+that lots of the ornaments in those Mayfair houses are fastened to the
+wall. That is where your dear father failed over the large Chinese jar in
+Park Street.... Your mother would never forgive me if you were to get into
+another of your boyish scrapes.
+
+There is another little matter, my dear Ormond, which I wish you to lay
+to heart very seriously. Now do take an old man's advice and do not get
+up upon your Quixotic hobby-horse the moment you sniff what it is--for I
+suppose you have guessed it already. Yes, it is what you feared: I want to
+urge you to follow your mother's ardent wish and add commission business
+to your other work. I know very well that young men must dream their
+dreams, but the world is what it is, and after all there is nothing so
+very dreadful in the commission side of our profession. You do not come
+into direct relation with the collectors of curios and church ornaments:
+there is always an agent to break the crudeness of the connexion. And
+it is a certain and profitable source of income with none of the risks
+attached to it that the older branches of the profession unfortunately
+show. Moreover, it affords excellent opportunities for foreign travel,
+and gives one a special position very difficult to define, but easily
+appreciable among one's colleagues.
+
+George Burton made to my knowledge three thousand pounds last year in a
+short season; he got this very large commission without the necessity of
+breaking into a single public-house; he earned it entirely upon objects
+taken out of churches upon the Continent, and in only three cases had he
+to pick a pocket. It would have hurt him very much with his knowledge and
+tastes to have had to break a stained-glass window.
+
+Do consider this, my dear Ormond, for your mother's sake. Don't think for
+a moment that I am advising you to take up any of those forms of work
+which we both agree in despising, and which are quite unworthy of your
+traditions, as for instance stealing pictures on commission out of the
+houses of dealers and then turning detective to recover them again. It is
+much too easy work for a man of your talents, much too ill-paid, and much
+too dangerous. It is all very well for the picture dealer to leave the
+door open, but what if the policeman is not in the know? No, you will
+always find me on your side in your steady refusal to have anything to do
+with this kind of business.
+
+Ormond, my dear lad, bear me no ill-will. It is true of every profession,
+of the Bar and of the City, of homicide, medicine, the Services, even
+Politics--everything, that success only comes slowly, and that the
+experience of older men is the key to it.
+
+Tomorrow is Ascension Day, and I am at leisure. Come and dine with me at
+the Colonial Club at eight for eight-fifteen. I will show you a
+magnificent littla tanagra I picked up yesterday, and we will talk about
+the new prospectus.
+
+God bless you! (Dress.)
+
+Your affectionate Uncle
+
+
+
+
+THE MONKEY QUESTION: AN APPEAL TO COMMON SENSE
+
+
+A privileged body slips so easily into regarding its privileges as common
+rights that I fear the plea which the SIMIAN LEAGUE repeats in this
+pamphlet will still sound strange in the ears of many, though the work of
+the League has been increasingly successful and has reached yearly a wider
+circle of the educated public since its foundation by Lady Wayne in 1902.
+We desire to place before our fellow-citizens the claims of Monkeys, and
+we hope once more that nothing we say may seem extreme or violent, for we
+know full well what poor weapons violence and passion are in the debate of
+a practical political matter.
+
+Perhaps it is best to begin by pointing out how rarely even the best of us
+pause in our fevered race for wealth to consider the disabilities of any
+of our fellow-creatures: when that truth is grasped it will be easier to
+plead the special cause of the Simian.
+
+Were English men and women to realize the wrongs of the Race, or at any
+rate the illogical and therefore unjust position in which we have placed
+them; were the just and thoughtful men, the refined and golden-hearted
+ladies who are ready in this country to support every good cause when it
+is properly presented; were _they_ to realize the disabilities of the
+Monkey, I do not say as vividly they realize the tragedies and misfortunes
+of London life, they could not, I think, avoid an ill-ease, a pricking of
+conscience, which would lead at last to some hearty and English effort for
+the relief of the cousin and forerunner of man.
+
+The attitude adopted towards Monkeys by the mass of those who, after all,
+live in the same world, and have much the same appetites and necessities
+and sufferings as they, is an attitude I am persuaded, not of
+heartlessness, but of ignorance. To disturb that ignorance, and in some to
+awake a consciousness which, perhaps, they fear, is not a grateful task,
+but it is our duty, and we will pursue it.
+
+Let the reader consider for one moment the aspect not only of formal law
+but of the whole community, and of what is called "public opinion" towards
+this section of sentient beings.
+
+As things now are--aye! and have been for centuries in this green England
+of ours--a Monkey may not marry; he may not own land; he may not fill any
+salaried post under the Crown. The Papists themselves are debarred from
+no honour (outside Ireland) save the Lord Chancellorship. Monkeys, who
+are responsible for no persecutions in the past, whose religion presents
+no insult or outrage to our common reason, and who differ little from
+ourselves in their general practice of life and thought, _are debarred
+from all_!
+
+A Monkey may not be a Member of Parliament, a Civil Servant, an officer
+in either Service, no, not even in the Territorial Army. It is doubtful
+whether he may hold a commission for the peace. True, there is no statute
+upon the subject, and the rural magistracy is perhaps the freest and most
+open of all our offices, and the least restricted by artificial barriers
+of examination or test; nevertheless, it is the considered opinion of the
+best legal authorities that no Monkey could sit upon the Bench, and in any
+case the discussion is purely academic, for it is difficult to believe
+that any Lord-Lieutenant, under the ridiculous anachronism of our present
+Constitution, would nominate a Monkey to such a position--unless (which is
+by law impossible) he should be heir to an owner of an estate in land.
+
+Nor is this all. The mention of unpaid posts recalls the damning truth
+that all honorary positions in the Diplomatic Service, including even the
+purely formal stage in the Foreign Office, are closed to the Monkey; the
+very Court sinecures, which admittedly require no talents, are denied to
+our Simian fellow-creatures, if not by law at least by custom and in
+practice.
+
+There have been employed by the League in the British Museum the services
+of two ladies who feel most keenly upon this subject. They are (to the
+honour of their sex) as amply qualified as any person in this kingdom for
+the task which they have undertaken, and they report to the Executive
+Commission after two months of minute research that (with one doubtful
+exception occurring during the reign of Her late Majesty) no Monkey has
+held any position whatever at Court.
+
+All judicial positions are equally inaccessible to them; for though,
+perhaps, in theory a Monkey could be promoted to the Bench if he had
+served his party sufficiently long and faithfully in the House of Commons
+(to which body he is admissible--at least I can find no rule or custom,
+let alone a statute, against it), yet he is cut off from such an ambition
+at the very outset by his inadmissibility to a legal career. The Inns of
+Court are monopolist, and, like all monopolists, hopelessly conservative.
+They have admitted first one class and then another--though reluctantly--
+to their privileges, but it will be twenty or thirty years at least
+before they will give way in the matter of Monkeys. To be a physician,
+a solicitor, an engineer, or a Commissioner for Oaths is denied them as
+effectually as though they did not exist. Indeed, no occupation is left
+them save that of manual labour, and on this I would say a word. It is
+fashionable to jeer at the Monkey's disinclination to sustained physical
+effort and to concentrated toil; but it is remarkable that those who
+affect such a contempt for the Monkey's powers are the first to deny him
+access to the liberal professions in which they know (though they dare not
+confess it) he would be a serious rival to the European. As it is, in the
+few places open to Monkeys--the somewhat parasitical domestic occupation
+of "companions" and the more manly, but still humiliating, task of acting
+as assistants to organ-grinders, the Monkey has won universal if grudging
+praise.
+
+Latterly, since progress cannot be indefinitely delayed, the Monkey has
+indeed advanced by one poor step towards the civic equality which is his
+right, and has appeared as an actor upon the boards of our music-halls. It
+should surely be a sufficient rebuke for those who continue to sneer at
+the Simian League and such devoted pioneers as Miss Greeley and Lady Wayne
+that the Monkey has been honourably admitted and has done first-rate work
+in a profession which His late Gracious Majesty and His late Majesty's
+late revered mother, Queen Victoria, have seen fit to honour by the
+bestowal of knighthoods, and in one case (where the recipient was
+childless) of a baronetcy.
+
+The disabilities I have enumerated are by no means exhaustive. A Monkey
+may not sign or deliver a deed; he may not serve on a jury; he may be
+ill-treated, forsooth, and even killed by some cruel master, and the
+law will refuse to protect him or to punish his oppressor. He may be
+subjected to all the by-laws of a tyrannical or fanatical administration,
+but in preventing such abuses he has no voice. He may not enter our
+older Universities, at least as the member of a college; that is, he can
+only take a degree at Oxford or Cambridge under the implied and wholly
+unmerited stigma applying to the non-collegiate student. And these
+iniquities apply not only to the great anthropoids whose strength and
+grossness we might legitimately fear, but to the most delicately organized
+types--to the Barbary Ape, the Lemur, and the Ring-tailed Baboon.
+Finally--and this is the worst feature in the whole matter--a Monkey, by
+a legal fiction at least as old as the fourteenth century, is not a person
+in the eye of the law.
+
+We call England a free country, yet at the present day and as you read
+these lines, _any Monkey found at large may be summarily arrested_.
+He has no remedy; no action for assault will lie. He is not even allowed
+to call witnesses in his own defence, or to establish an alibi.
+
+It may be pleaded that these disabilities attach also to the Irish, but we
+must remember that the Irish are allowed a certain though modified freedom
+of the Press, and have extended to them the incalculable advantage of
+sending representatives to Westminster. The Monkey has no such remedies.
+He may be incarcerated, nay _chained_, yet he cannot sue out a writ
+for habeas corpus any more than can a British subject in time of war, and
+worst of all, through the connivance or impotence of the police, cases
+have been brought forward _and approved_ in which Monkeys have been
+openly bought and sold!
+
+We boast our sense of delicacy, and perhaps rightly, in view of our
+superiority over other nations in this particular; yet we permit the
+Monkey to exhibit revolting nakedness, and we hardly heed the omission!
+It is true that some Monkeys are covered from time to time with little
+blue coats. A cap is occasionally disdainfully permitted them, and not
+infrequently they are permitted a pair of leather breeches, through a hole
+in which the tail is permitted to protrude; but no reasonable man will
+deny that these garments are regarded in the light of mere ornaments, and
+rarely fulfil those functions which every decent Englishman requires of
+clothing.
+
+And now we come to the most important section of our appeal. _What can
+be done_?
+
+We are a kindly people and we are a just people, but we are also a very
+conservative people. The fate of all pioneers besets those who attempt to
+move in this matter. They are jeered at, or, what is worse, neglected. One
+of the most prominent of the League's workers has been certified a lunatic
+by an authority whose bitter prejudice is well known, and against whom we
+have as yet had no grant of a _mandamus_, and we have all noticed the
+quiet contempt, the sort of organized boycott or conspiracy of silence
+with which a company at dinner will receive the subject when it is brought
+forward.
+
+There are also to be met the violent prejudices with which the mass of
+the population is still filled in this regard. These prejudices are, of
+course, more common among the uneducated poor than in the upper classes,
+who in various relations come more often in contact with Monkeys, and who
+also have a wider and more tolerant, because a better cultivated, spirit.
+But the prejudice is discernible in every class of society, even in the
+very highest. We have also arrayed against us in our crusade for right and
+justice the dying but still formidable power of clericalism. Society is
+but half emancipated from its medieval trammels, and the priest, that
+Eternal Enemy of Liberty, can still put in his evil word against the
+rights of the Simian.
+
+Let us not despair! We can hope for nothing, it is true, until we have
+effected a profound change in public opinion, and that change cannot
+be effected by laws. It can only be brought about by a slow and almost
+imperceptible effort, unsleeping, tireless, and convinced: something of
+the same sort as has destroyed the power of militarism upon the Continent
+of Europe; something of the same sort as has scotched landlordism at home;
+something of the same sort as has freed the unhappy natives of the Congo
+from the misrule of depraved foreigners; something of the same sort as has
+produced the great wave in favour of temperance through the length and
+breadth of this land.
+
+We must not attempt extremes or demand full justice to the exclusion of
+excellent half-measures. No one condemns more strongly than do we the
+militant pro-Simians who have twice assaulted and once blinded for life a
+keeper in the Zoological Gardens. We do not even approve of those ardent
+but in our opinion misguided spirits of the Simian Freedom Society who
+publish side by side the photographs of Pongo the learned Ape from the
+Gaboons and that of a certain Cabinet Minister, accompanied by the legend
+"Which is Which?" It is not by actions of this kind that we shall win the
+good fight; but rather by a perseverance in reason combined with courtesy
+shall we attain our end, until at long last our Brother shall be free! As
+for the excellent but somewhat provincial reactionaries who still object
+to us that the Monkey differs fundamentally from the human race; that he
+is not possessed of human speech, and so forth, we can afford to smile at
+their waning authority. Modern science has sufficiently dealt with them;
+and if any one bring out against the Monkey the obscurantist insult that
+His Hide is Covered with Hair, we can at once point to innumerable human
+beings, fully recognized and endowed with civic rights, who, were they
+carefully examined, would prove in no better case. As to speech, the
+Monkey communicates in his own way as well or better than do we, and for
+that matter, if speech is to be the criterion, are we to deny civic rights
+to the Dumb?
+
+We have it upon the authority of all our greatest scientific men, that
+there is no substantial difference between the Ape and Man. One of the
+greatest has said that between himself and his poorer fellow-citizens
+there was a wider difference than that which separated them from the
+Monkey. Hackel has testified that while there is a _boundary_, there
+is no _gulf_ between the corps of professors to which he belongs and
+the Chimpanzee. The Gorilla is universally accepted, and if we have won
+the battle for the Gorilla, the rest will follow.
+
+Tolstoy is with us, Webb is with us, Gorky is with us, Zola and Ferrer
+were with us and fight for us from their graves. The whole current of
+modern thought is with us. WE CANNOT FAIL!
+
+_Questions submitted at the last Election by the Simian League_
+
+1. Are you in favour of removing the present disabilities of Monkeys?
+
+2. Are you in favour of a short Statute which should put adult Monkeys
+upon the same footing as other subjects of His Majesty as from the 1st of
+January, 1912? And _would you, if necessary, vote against your party in
+favour of such a measure?_
+
+3. Are you in favour of the inclusion of Monkeys under the Wild Birds Act?
+
+(A plain reply "Yes" or "No" was to be written by the candidate under each
+of these questions and forwarded to the Secretary, Mr. Consul, 73 Purbeck
+Street, W.. before the 14th January, 1910. No replies received after
+that date were admitted. The Simian League, which has agents in every
+constituency, acted according to the replies received, and treated
+the lack of reply as a negative. Of 1375 circulars sent, 309 remained
+unanswered, 264 were answered in the negative, 201 gave a qualified
+affirmative, _all the rest (no less than 799) a clear and, in some
+cases, an enthusiastic adherence to our principles_. It is a sufficient
+proof of the power of the League and the growth of the cause of justice
+that in these 799 no less than 515 are members of the present House of
+Commons.)
+
+
+
+
+THE EMPIRE BUILDER
+
+
+We possess in this country a breed of men in whom we feel a pride so
+loyal, so strong, and so frank that were I to give further expression to
+it here I should justly be accused of insisting upon a hackneyed theme.
+These are the Empire Builders, the Men Efficient, the agents whom we
+cannot but feel--however reluctantly we admit it--to be less strictly
+bound by the common laws of life than are we lesser ones.
+
+But there is something about these men not hackneyed as a theme, which is
+their youth. By what process is the great mind developed? Of what sort is
+the Empire Builder when he is young?
+
+The fellow commonly rises from below: What was his experience there below?
+In what school was he trained? What accident of fortune, how met, or how
+surmounted, or how used, produced at last the Man who Can? In _that_
+inquiry there is food for very deep reflection. It is here that our
+Masters, whose general motives are so open and so plain, touch upon
+mystery. That secret power of determining nourishment which is at the base
+of all organic life has in its own silent way built up the boyhood and the
+adolescence which we only know in their maturity.
+
+I will not pretend to a full knowledge of that strange education of the
+mind which has produced so many similar men for the advancement of the
+race, but I can point to one example which lately came straight across my
+vision--an accident, an illumination, a revealing flash of how our time
+breeds the Great Type. I was acquainted for some hours with the actions of
+a youth of whose very name I am ignorant, but whose face I am very certain
+will reappear twenty years hence in a setting of glory, recognized as yet
+one other of those superb spirits who will do all for England.
+
+The occasion was a pageant--no matter what pageant--a great public pageant
+which passed through the Strand, and was to be witnessed by hundreds of
+thousands. Let us call it "The Function."
+
+Well, I was walking down the Strand three days before this Function was
+to take place, when I saw in an empty shop window about twenty-five
+wooden chairs, arranged in tiers one above the other upon a sloping
+platform, and lettered from A to Y. In the window was a large notice,
+very clearly printed, and it was to this effect:
+
+WHY PAY FANCY PRICES WHICH MUST INEVITABLY FALL BEFORE THE FUNCTION?
+SEATS IN THIS WINDOW, COMMANDING A FULL VIEW OF THE PROCESSION, 5S.
+
+At a little desk in the gangway by which the chairs were approached sat
+a dark, pale child--I can call him by no other name, so frail and young
+did he seem--and the delicacy of his complexion led me to wonder perhaps
+whether he was not one of those whom the climate of England strikes with
+consumption, and who, in the mysterious providence of our race, wander
+abroad in search of health and find a Realm. His alertness, however, and
+the brilliance of his eye; his winning, almost obsequious address, and the
+hooked clutch of his gestures betrayed an energy that no physical weakness
+could conquer. He invited me to enter, and begged me to purchase a seat.
+
+I had no need of one, for I had made arrangements to spend the Great
+Day itself and the next at a small hotel in the extreme north of
+Sutherlandshire, but I was arrested by the evident mental power of my new
+acquaintance, and I wasted five shillings in buying the chair marked D.
+
+It was with some difficulty that I could purchase it, so eager was he that
+I should have the best place; "seeing," said he, "that they are all one
+price, and that you may as well benefit by being an early bird." I noted
+the strict rectitude which, for all that men ignorant of modern commerce
+may say, is at the basis of commercial success.
+
+Something so attracted me
+in the whole business that I was weak enough to take a chair in a tea-shop
+opposite and watch all day the actions of the Child of Fate.
+
+In less than an hour twenty different people, mainly gentlefolk, had come
+in and bought places at the sensible price at which he offered them. To
+each of them he gave a ticket corresponding to the number of the chair. He
+was courteous to all, and even expansive. He explained the advantage of
+each particular seat.
+
+So far so good; but, what was more astonishing, in the second hour another
+twenty came and appeared to purchase; in the third (which was the busiest
+time of the day) some forty, first and last, must have done business with
+the Favourite of Fortune. I pondered upon these things very deeply, and
+went home.
+
+Next morning the attraction which the place had for me drew me as with
+a magnet, and I went, somewhat stealthily I fear, to the same tea-shop
+and noticed with the greatest astonishment that the chairs were now not
+lettered, but numbered, and that the boy was sitting at his little desk
+with a series of white cards bearing the figures from one to twenty-five.
+It was very early--not ten o'clock--but the Child was as spruce and neat
+as he had been in the afternoon of the day before. He bore already that
+mark of energy combined with neatness which is the stamp of success.
+
+I crossed the road and entered. He recognized me at once (their memory for
+faces is wonderful), and said cheerfully:
+
+"Your D corresponds to the number 4."
+
+I thanked him very much, and asked him why he had changed his system of
+notation. He told me it was because several people had explained to him
+that they remembered figures more easily than letters. We then talked to
+each other, agreeing upon the maxims of simplicity and directness which
+are at the root of all mercantile stability. He told me he required
+cash from all who bought his chairs; that there was no agreement, no
+insurance--no "frills," as he wittily called them.
+
+"It is as simple," he said, "as buying a pound of tea. I am satisfied, and
+they are satisfied. As for the risk, it is covered by the low price, and
+if you ask me how I can let them at so low a price, I will tell you. It is
+because I have found exactly what was needed and have added nothing more.
+Moreover, I did not buy the chairs, but hired them."
+
+I went back to my tea-shop with head bent, murmuring to myself those
+memorable lines:
+
+   We founded many a mighty State,
+   Pray God that we may never fail
+   From craven fears of being great
+
+(or words to that effect).
+
+That day no less than 153 people did business with the Youth.
+
+Next day I found among my morning letters a note from a politician of my
+acquaintance, telling me that the Function was postponed--indefinitely.
+I wasted not a moment. I went at once to my post of observation, my
+tea-shop, and I proceeded to watch the Leader.
+
+There was as yet no knowledge of the calamity in London.
+
+My friend seemed to have noticed me; at any rate a new and somewhat
+anxious look was apparent on his face. With a firm and decided step I
+crossed the road to greet him, and when he saw me he was all at his ease.
+He told me that my seat had been especially asked for, and that a higher
+price had been offered; but a bargain, he said, was a bargain, and so we
+fell to chatting. When I mentioned, among other subjects, the very great
+success of his enterprise, he gave a slight start, which did honour to his
+heart; but he was of too stern a mould to give way. He was of the temper
+of the Pioneers.
+
+I assured him at once that it was very far from my intention to reproach
+him for the talents which he had used with so much ability and energy. I
+pointed out to him that even if I desired to injure him, which I did not,
+it would be impossible for me, or for any one, to trace more than half a
+dozen, at the most, of his numerous clients.
+
+It is frequently the case that men of small business capacity will
+perceive some important element in a commercial problem which escapes the
+eyes of Genius; and I could see that this simple observation of mine had
+relieved him almost to tears.
+
+Before he could thank me, a newsboy appeared with a very large placard,
+upon which was written
+
+"POSTPONED."
+
+In a moment his mind grasped the whole meaning of that word; but he went
+out with a steady step, and paid the sixpence which the newsboy demanded.
+Even in that uncomplaining action, the uncomplaining forfeiture of the
+comparatively large sum which necessity demanded, one could detect the
+financial grip which is the true arbiter of the fates of nations. He
+needed the paper: he did not haggle about the price. He first mastered the
+exact words of the announcement, and then, looking up at me with a face of
+paper, he said:
+
+"It is not only postponed, but all this preparation is thrown away."
+
+I have said that I have no commercial aptitude; I admit that I was
+puzzled.
+
+"Surely," said I, "this is exactly what you needed?"
+
+He shook his head, still restraining, by a powerful effort, the natural
+expression of his grief, and showed me, for all his answer, a rail way
+ticket to Boulogne which he had purchased, and which was available for the
+night boat on the eve of the Function. I then understood what he meant
+when he said that all his preparations had been thrown away.
+
+I do not know whether I did right or wrong--I felt myself to be nothing
+more than a blind instrument in the hands of the superior power which
+governs the destinies of a people.
+
+"How much did the ticket cost?" said I.
+
+"Thirty shillings," said he.
+
+I pulled out a sovereign and a half-sovereign from my pocket, and said:
+
+"Here is the money. I have leisure, and I would as soon go to Boulogne as
+to Sutherlandshire."
+
+He did not thank me effusively, as might one of the more excitable and
+less efficient races; but he grasped my hand and blessed me silently. I
+then left him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the steamer to Boulogne, as I was musing over this strange adventure, a
+sturdy Anglo-Saxon man, a true son of Drake or Raleigh, came up and asked
+me for my ticket. As I gave it him my eye fell idly upon the price of the
+ticket. It was twenty-five shillings--but I had saved a directing and
+creative mind.
+
+If he should come across these lines he will remember me. He is probably
+in the House of Commons by now. Perhaps he has bought his peerage.
+Wherever he is I hope he will remember me.
+
+
+
+
+CAEDWALLA
+
+
+Caedwalla, a prince out of Wales (though some deny it), wandered in the
+Andredsweald. He was nineteen years of age and his heart was full of anger
+for wrong that had been done him by men of his own blood. For he was
+rightfully heir to the throne of the kingdom of Sussex, but he was kept
+from it by the injustice of men.
+
+A retinue went with him of that sort which will always follow adventure
+and exile. These, the rich of the seacoast and of the Gwent called broken
+men; but they loved their Lord. So he went hunting, feeding upon what he
+slew, and proceeding from steading to steading in the sparse woods of
+Andred where is sometimes an open heath, and sometimes a mile of oak, and
+often a clay swamp, and, seen from little lifted knolls of sand where the
+broom grows and the gorse, the Downs to the south like a wall.
+
+As he so wandered upon one day, he came upon another man of a very
+different fashion, for Caedwalla would have nothing to do with the Cross
+of Christ, nor with the customs of the towns, nor with the talk of foreign
+men. But this man was a bishop wandering, and his name was Wilfrid. He
+also had his little retinue, and, by an accident of his office or of his
+exile, he had proceeded to a steading in the heaths and woods of the
+Weald where also was Caedwalla: so they met. The pride and the bearing of
+Wilfrid, seeing that he was of a Roman town and an officer of the State,
+and a bishop to boot, nay, a bishop above bishops, was not the pride
+Caedwalla loved, and the young man bore himself with another sort of
+pride, which was that of the mountains and of pagan men. Nevertheless
+Wilfrid put before him, with Roman rhetoric and with uplifted hands, the
+story of our Lord, and Caedwalla, keeping his face set during all that
+recital, could not forbid this story to sink into the depths of his heart,
+where for many years it remained, and did no more than remain.
+
+The kingdom of Sussex, cultivated by men of various kinds, received
+Wilfrid the Bishop wherever he went. He did many things that do not here
+concern me, and his chief work was to make the rich towns of the sea plain
+and of Chichester and of Lewes and of Arundel, and of the steadings of
+the Weald, and of the wealden markets also, Christian men; for he showed
+them that it was a mean thing to go about in a hairy way like pagans,
+unacquainted with letters, and of imperfect ability in the making of
+raiment or the getting of victuals. Indeed, as I have written in another
+place, it was St. Wilfrid who taught the King of Sussex and his men how to
+catch fish in nets. They revered him everywhere, and when they had given
+up their shameful barbarism and decently accepted the rules of life and
+the religion of it, they pressed upon St. Wilfrid that he should found a
+bishopric, and that it should have a cathedral and a see (all of which
+things he had explained to them), and he did this on Selsey Bill: but
+to-day the sea has swallowed all.
+
+Time passed, and the young man Caedwalla, still a very young man in the
+twenties, came to his own, and he sat on the throne that was rightfully
+his in Chichester and he ruled all Sussex to its utmost boundaries. And
+he was king of much more, as history shows, but all the while he proudly
+refused in his young man's heart the raiment and the manner of the thing
+which he had hated in his exile, nor would he accept the Latin prayers,
+nor bow to the name of the Christian God.
+
+Caedwalla, still so young but now a king, thought it shameful that he
+should rule no more than the empire God had given him, and he was filled
+with a longing to cross the sea and to conquer new land. Wherefore,
+whether well or ill advised, he set out to cross the sea and to conquer
+the Isle of Wight, of which story said that Wight the hero had established
+his kingdom there in the old time before writing was, and when there were
+only songs. So Caedwalla and his fighting men, they landed in that island
+and they fought against the many inhabitants of it, and they subdued it,
+but in these battles Caedwalla was wounded.
+
+It happened that the King of that island, whose name was Atwald, had two
+heirs, youths, whom it was pitifully hoped this conqueror would spare, for
+they fled up the Water to Stoneham; but a monk who served God by the ford
+of reeds which is near Hampton at the head of the Water, hearing that King
+Caedwalla (who was recovering of wounds he had had in the war with the men
+of Wight) had heard of the youths' hiding-place and had determined to kill
+them, sought the King and begged that at least they might be instructed
+in the Faith before they died, saying to him: "King, though you are not
+of the Faith, that is no reason that you should deprive others of such
+a gift. Let me therefore see that these young men are instructed and
+baptized, after which you may exercise your cruel will." And Caedwalla
+assented. These lads, therefore, were taken to a holy place up on Itchen,
+where they were instructed in the truths and the mysteries of religion.
+And while this so went forward Caedwalla would ask from time to time
+whether they were yet Christians.
+
+At last they had received all the knowledge the holy men could give them
+and they were baptized. When they were so received into the fold Caedwalla
+would wait no longer but had them slain. And it is said that they went to
+death joyfully, thinking it to be no more than the gate of immortality.
+
+After such deeds Caedwalla still reigned over the kingdom of Sussex and
+his other kingdoms, nor did he by speech or manner give the rich or poor
+about him to understand whether anything was passing in his heart. But
+while they sang Mass in the cathedral of Selsey and while still the
+new-comers came (now more rarely, for nearly all were enrolled): while
+the new-comers came, I say, in their last numbers from the remotest parts
+of the forest ridge, and from the loneliest combes of the Downs to hear
+of Christ and his cross and his resurrection and the salvation of men,
+Caedwalla sat in Chichester and consulted his own heart only and was a
+pagan King. No one else you may say in all the land so kept himself apart.
+
+His youth had been thus spent and he thus ruled, when as his thirtieth
+year approached he gave forth a decision to his nobles and to his earls
+and to the Welsh-speaking men and to the seafaring men and to the priests
+and to all his people. He said: "I will take ship and I will go over the
+sea to Rome, where I may worship at the tombs of the blessed Apostles, and
+there I will be baptized. But since I am a king no one but the Pope shall
+baptize me. I will do penance for my sins. I will lift my eyes to things
+worthy of a man. I will put behind me what was dear to me, and I will
+accept that which is to come." And as they could not alter Caedwalla
+in any of his previous decisions, so they could not alter him in this.
+But his people gave gladly for the furnishing of his journey, and all
+the sheep of the Downs and their fleece, and all the wheat in the clay
+steadings of the Weald, and the little vineyards in the priests' gardens
+that looked towards the sea, and the fishermen, and every sort in Sussex
+that sail or plough or clip or tend sheep or reap or forge iron at the
+hammer ponds, gave of what they had to King Caedwalla, so that he went
+forth with a good retinue and many provisions upon his journey to the
+tombs of the Apostles.
+
+When King Caedwalla came to Rome the Pope received him and said: "I hear
+that you would be instructed in the Faith." To which King Caedwalla
+answered that such was his desire, and that he would crave baptism at the
+hands of the said Pope. And meanwhile Caedwalla took up good lodgings in
+Rome, gave money to the poor, and showed himself abroad as one who had
+come from the ends of the earth, that is, from the kingdom of Sussex,
+which in those days was not yet famous. Caedwalla, now being thirty years
+old and having learnt what one should learn in order to receive baptism,
+was baptized, and they put a white robe on him which he was to wear for
+certain days.
+
+King Caedwalla, when he was thus made one with the unity of Christian men,
+was very glad. But he also said that before he had lost that white robe so
+given him, death would come and take him (though he was a young man and a
+warrior), and that not in battle. He was certain it was so.
+
+And so indeed it came about. For within the limit of days during which
+ritual demanded that the King should wear his white garment, nay, within
+that same week, he died.
+
+So those boys who had found death at his hands had died after baptism,
+up on Itchen in the Gwent, when Caedwalla the King had journeyed out of
+Sussex to conquer and to hold the Wight with his spear and his sword and
+his shield, and his captains and his armoured men.
+
+Now that you have done reading this story you may think that I have made
+it up or that it is a legend or that it comes out of some storyteller's
+book. Learn, therefore, that it is plain history, like the battle of
+Waterloo or the Licensing Bill (differing from the chronicle only in this,
+that I have put living words into the mouths of men), and be assured that
+the history of England is a very wonderful thing.
+
+
+
+
+A UNIT OF ENGLAND
+
+
+England has been lucky in its type of subdivision. All over Western
+Europe the type of subdivision following in the fall of the Empire has
+been of capital importance in the development of the great nations,
+but while these have elsewhere been exaggerated to petty kingdoms or
+diminished to mere townships in Britain, for centuries the counties have
+formed true and lasting local units, and they have survived with more
+vigour than the corresponding divisions of the other provinces of Roman
+Europe.
+
+That accident of the county moulded and sustained local feeling during
+the generations when local government and local initiative were dying
+elsewhere; it has preserved a sort of aristocratic independence, the
+survival of custom, and the differentiation of the State.
+
+It is not necessarily (as many historians unacquainted with Europe as a
+whole have taken for granted) a supreme advantage for any people to escape
+from institution of a strong central executive. Such a power is the normal
+fruit of all high civilizations. It protects the weak against the strong.
+It is necessary for rapid action in war, it makes for clarity and method
+during peace, it secures a minimum for all, and it forbids the illusions
+and vices of the rich to taint the whole commonwealth.
+
+But though such an escape from strong central government and the
+substitution for it of a ruling class is not a supreme advantage, it
+has advantages of its own which every foreign historian of England has
+recognized, and it is the divisions into counties which, after the change
+of religion in the sixteenth century, was mainly responsible for the
+slow substitution of local and oligarchic for general, central, and
+bureaucratic government in England.
+
+Not all the counties by any means are true to type. All the Welsh
+divisions, for instance, are more or less artificial and late, with the
+exception of Anglesey. And as for the non-Roman parts, Ireland and the
+Highlands of Scotland, it goes without saying that the county never was,
+and is not to this day, a true unit. The central and much of the west of
+England is the same. That is, the shires are cut as their name implies,
+somewhat arbitrarily, from the general mass of territory.
+
+When one says "arbitrarily" one does not mean that no local sentiment
+bound them, or that they had not some natural basis, for they had. They
+were the territory of central towns: Shrewsbury, Warwick, Derby, Chester,
+Oxford, Buckingham, Bedford, Nottingham. But their life was not and has
+not since been strongly individual. They have not continuous boundaries
+nor an early national root. But all round these, in a sort of ring, run
+the counties which have had true local life from the beginning. Cornwall
+is utterly different from Devon, and with a clear historic reason for the
+difference. Devon, again, is a perfectly separate unit, resulting from a
+definite political act of the early ninth century. Of Dorset and Hampshire
+one can say less, but with Sussex you get a unit which has been one
+kingdom and one diocese, set in true natural limits and lying within
+these same boundaries for much more than a thousand years. Kent, probably
+an original Roman division, has been one unit for longer still. Norfolk,
+Suffolk, and Essex are equally old, though not upon their land boundaries
+equally denned; but perhaps the most sharply defined of all--after Sussex,
+at least--was Southern and Central Lancashire.
+
+Its topography was like one of those ideal examples which military
+instructors take for their models when they wish to simplify a lesson
+upon terrain. Upon one side ran the long, high, and difficult range which
+is the backbone of England; upon the other the sea, and the sea and the
+mountains leant one towards the other, making two sides of a triangle
+that met above Morecambe Bay.
+
+How formidable the natural barriers of this triangle were it is not easy
+for the student of our time to recognize. It needs a general survey of the
+past, and a knowledge of many unfamiliar conditions in the present, to
+appreciate it.
+
+The difficulty of those Eastern moors and hills, for instance, the
+resistance they offer to human passage, meets you continually throughout
+English history. The engineers of the modern railways could give one a
+whole romance of it; the story of every army that has had to cross them,
+and of which we have record, bears the same witness. The illusion which
+the modern traveller may be under that the barrier is negligible is very
+soon dispelled when for his recreation he crosses it by any other methods
+than the railway; and perhaps in such an experience of travel nothing more
+impresses one in the character of that barrier than the _loneliness_.
+
+There is no other corresponding contrast of men and emptiness that I know
+of in Europe.
+
+The great towns lie, enormous, pullulating, millioned in the plains on
+either side; they push their limbs up far into the valleys. Between them,
+utterly deserted, you have these miles and miles of bare upland, like the
+roof of a house between two crowded streets.
+
+Merely to cross the Pennines, driving or on foot, is sufficient to teach
+one this. To go the length of the hills along the watershed from the
+Peak to Crossfell (few people have done it!) is to get an impression of
+desertion and separation which you will match nowhere else in travel,
+nowhere else, at least, within touch and almost hearing of great towns.
+
+The sea also was here more of a barrier than a bond. Ireland--not Roman,
+and later an enemy--lay over against that shore. Its ports (save one)
+silted. Its slope from the shore was shallow: the approach and the
+beaching of a fleet not easy. Its river mouths were few and dangerous.
+
+This triangle of Lancashire, so cut off from the west and from the east,
+had for its base a barrier that completed its isolation. That barrier
+was the marshy valley of the Mersey. It could be outflanked only at
+its extreme eastern point, where the valley rises to the hundred-foot
+contour line. From that point the valley rises so rapidly within half a
+dozen miles into the eastern hills that it was dry even under primitive
+conditions, and the opportunity here afforded for a passage is marked
+by the topographical point of Stockport.
+
+By that gate the main avenues of approach still enter the county. Through
+this gap passed the London Road, and passes to-day the London and
+North-Western Railway. It was this gate which gave its early strategic
+importance to Manchester, lying just north of it and holding the whole of
+this corner.
+
+Historians have noted that to hold Manchester was ultimately to hold
+Lancashire itself. It was not the industrial importance of the town, for
+that was hardly existent until quite modern times: it was its strategic
+position which gave it such a character. The Roman fort at the junction
+of the two rivers near Knott Mill represented the first good defensible
+position commanding this gate upon the south-east.
+
+To enter the county anywhere west of the hundred-foot contour and the
+Mersey Valley was, for an army deprived of modern methods, impossible:
+a little organized destruction would make it impossible again.
+
+Two artificial causeways negotiated the valley. Each bears to this day (at
+Stretford and at Stretton) the proof of its old character, for both words
+indicate the passage of a "street," that is, of a hard-made way, over the
+soft and drowned land. Stretford was but the approach to Manchester from
+Chester--and Manchester thus commanded (by the way) the two south-eastern
+approaches to the county, the one natural, the other artificial. The
+approach by Stretton gave Warrington its strategic importance in the early
+history of the county; Warrington, the central point upon the Mersey,
+standing at a clear day's march from Liverpool, the port on the one
+hand, and a clear day's march from Manchester on the other. It was from
+Warrington that Lord Strange marched upon Manchester at the very beginning
+of the Civil War, and if by some accident this stretch of territory should
+again be a scene of warfare, Warrington, in spite of the close network of
+modern communications, would be the strategic centre of the county
+boundary.
+
+So one might take the units out of which modern England has been built
+up one by one, showing that their boundaries were fixed by nature, and
+that their local separation was not the product of the pirate raids, but
+is something infinitely older, older than the Empire, and very probably
+(did we know what the Roman divisions of Britain were) accepted under
+the Empire. So one might prove or at least suggest that the strategical
+character of the English county and of its chief stronghold and barriers
+lay in an origin far beyond the limits of recorded history. To produce
+such a study would be to add to the truth and reality of our history, for
+England was not made nor even moulded by the Danish and the Saxon raids.
+The framework is far, far older and so strong that it still survives.
+
+
+
+
+THE RELIC
+
+
+It was upon an evening in Spain, but with nothing which that word evokes
+for us in the North--for it was merely a lessening of the light without
+dews, without mists, and without skies--that I came up a stony valley
+and saw against the random line of the plateau at its head the dome of a
+church. The road I travelled was but faintly marked, and was often lost
+and mingled with the rough boulders and the sand, and in the shallow
+depression of the valley there were but a few stagnant pools.
+
+The shape of the dome was Italian, and it should have stood in an Italian
+landscape, drier indeed than that to which Northerners are accustomed,
+but still surrounded by trees, and with a distance that could render
+things lightly blue. Instead of that this large building stood in the
+complete waste which I have already described at such length, which is so
+appalling and so new to an European from any other province of Europe. As
+I approached the building I saw that there gathered round it a village, or
+rather a group of dependent houses; for the church was so much larger than
+anything in the place, and the material of which the church itself and the
+habitations were built was so similar, the flat old tiled roofs all mixed
+under the advance of darkness into so united a body, that one would have
+said, as was perhaps historically the truth, that the church was not built
+for the needs of the place, but that the borough had grown round the
+shrine, and had served for little save to house its servants.
+
+When the long ascent was ended and the crest reached, where the head of
+the valley merged into the upper plain, I passed into the narrow first
+lanes. It was now quite dark. The darkness had come suddenly, and, to
+make all things consonant, there was no moon and there were not any
+stars; clouds had risen of an even and menacing sort, and one could see no
+heaven. Here and there lights began to show in the houses, but most people
+were in the street, talking loudly from their doorsteps to each other.
+They watched me as I came along because I was a foreigner, and I went down
+till I reached the central market-place, wondering how I should tell the
+best place for sleep. But long before my choice could be made my thoughts
+were turned in another direction by finding myself at a turn of the
+irregular paving, right in front of a vast facade, and behind it, somewhat
+belittled by the great length of the church itself, the dome just showed.
+I had come to the very steps of the church which had accompanied my
+thoughts and had been a goal before me during all the last hours of the
+day.
+
+In the presence of so wonderful a thing I forgot the object of my journey
+and the immediate care of the moment, and I went through the great doors
+that opened on the Place. These were carved, and by the little that
+lingered of the light and the glimmer of the electric light on the
+neighbouring wall (for there is electric light everywhere in Spain, but it
+is often of a red heat) I could perceive that these doors were wonderfully
+carved. Already at Saragossa, and several times during my walking south
+from thence, I had noted that what the Spaniards did had a strange
+affinity to the work of Flanders. The two districts differ altogether save
+in the human character of those who inhabit them: the one is pastoral,
+full of deep meadows and perpetual woods, of minerals and of coal for
+modern energy, of harbours and good tidal rivers for the industry of the
+Middle Ages; the other is a desert land, far up in the sky, with an air
+like a knife, and a complete absence of the creative sense in nature about
+one. Yet in both the creation of man runs riot; in both there is a sort
+of endlessness of imagination; in both every detail that man achieves
+in art is carefully completed and different from its neighbour; and in
+both there is an exuberance of the human soul: but with this difference,
+that something in the Spanish temper has killed the grotesque. Both
+districts have been mingled in history, yet it is not the Spaniard who has
+invigorated the Delta of the Rhine and the high country to the south of
+it, nor the Walloons and the Flemings who have taught the Spaniards; but
+each of these highly separated peoples resembles the other when it comes
+to the outward expression of the soul: why, I cannot tell.
+
+Within, there is not a complete darkness, but a series of lights showing
+against the silence of the blackness of the nave; and in the middle of
+the nave, like a great funeral thing, was the choir which these Spanish
+churches have preserved, an intact tradition, from the origins of the
+Christian Faith. Go to the earliest of the basilicas in Rome, and you
+will see that sacred enclosure standing in the middle of the edifice and
+taking up a certain proportion of the whole. We in the North, where the
+Faith lived uninterruptedly and, after the ninth century, with no great
+struggle, dwindled this feature and extended the open and popular space,
+keeping only the rood-screen as a hint of what had once been the Secret
+Mysteries and the Initiations of our origins. But here in Spain the
+earliest forms of Christian externals crystallized, as it were; they
+were thrust, like an insult or a challenge, against the Asiatic as the
+reconquest of the desolated province proceeded; and therefore in every
+Spanish church you have, side by side with the Christian riot of art, this
+original hierarchic and secret thing, almost shocking to a Northerner, the
+choir, the Coro, with high solemn walls shutting out the people from the
+priests and from the Mysteries as they had been shut out when the whole
+system was organized for defence against an inimical society around.
+
+The silence of the place was not complete nor, as I have said, was the
+darkness. At the far end of the choir, behind the high altar, was the
+light of many candles, and there were people murmuring or whispering,
+though not at prayers. There was a young priest passing me at that moment,
+and I said to him in Latin of the common sort that I could speak no
+Spanish. I asked him if he could speak to me slowly in Latin, as I was
+speaking to him. He answered me with this word, "_Paucissime_," which
+I easily understood. I then asked him very carefully, and speaking slowly,
+whether Benediction were about to be held--an evening rite; but as I did
+not know the Latin for Benediction, I called it alternately "Benedictio,"
+which is English, and "Salus," which is French. He said twice, "Si, si,"
+which, whether it were Italian or French or local, I understood by the
+nodding of his head; but at any rate he had not caught my meaning, for
+when I came behind the high altar where the candles were, and knelt there,
+I clearly saw that no preparations for Benediction were toward. There was
+not even an altar. All there was was a pair of cupboard doors, as it were,
+of very thickly carved wood, very heavily gilded and very old; indeed, the
+pattern of the carving was barbaric, and I think it must have dated from
+that turn of the Dark into the Middle Ages when so much of our Christian
+work resembled the work of savages: spirals and hideous heads, and
+serpents and other things.
+
+By this I was already enormously impressed, and by a little group of
+people around of whom perhaps half were children, when the young priest to
+whom I had spoken approached and, calling a well-dressed man of the middle
+class who stood by and who had, I suppose, some local prominence, went up
+the steps with him towards these wooden doors; he fitted a key into the
+lock and opened them wide. The candles shone at once through thick clear
+glass upon a frame of jewels which flashed wonderfully, and in their
+midst was the head of a dead man, cut off from the body, leaning somewhat
+sideways, and changed in a terrible manner from the expression of living
+men. It was so changed, not only by incalculable age, but also, as I
+presume, by the violence of his death.
+
+To those inexperienced in the practice of such worship there might be more
+excuse for the novel impression which this sight suddenly produced upon
+me. Our race from its very beginning, nay, all the races of men, have
+preserved the fleshly memorials of those to whom sanctity attached, and I
+have seen such relics in many parts of Europe almost as commonplaces; but
+for some reason my emotions upon that evening were of a different kind.
+The length of the way (for I was miles and miles southwards over this
+desert waste), the ignorance of the language which surrounded me, the
+inhuman outline hour after hour under the glare of the sun, or in the
+inhospitable darkness of this hard Iberian land, the sternness of the
+faces, the violent richness and the magnitude of the architecture about
+me, and my knowledge of the trials through which the province had passed,
+put me in this Presence into a mood very different, I think, from that
+which pilgrimage is calculated to arouse; there was in it much more of
+awe, and even of terror; there seemed to re-arise in the presence of
+that distorted face the memories of active pain and of the unconquerable
+struggle by which this ruined land was recovered. I wondered as I looked
+at that face whether he had fallen in protest against the Mohammedans, or,
+as have so many, in a Spanish endurance of torture, martyred by Pagans in
+the Pacific Seas. But no history of him was given to me, nor do I now know
+as I write what occasion it was that made this head so great.
+
+They said but a few prayers, all familiar to me, in the Latin tongue; then
+the "Our Father" and some few others which have always been recited in the
+vernacular. They next intoned the Salve Regina. But what an intonation!
+
+Had I not heard that chant often enough in my life to catch its meaning?
+I had never heard it set to such a tune! It was harsh, it was full of
+battle, and the supplication in it throbbed with present and physical
+agony. Had I cared less for the human beings about me, so much suffering,
+so much national tradition of suffering would have revolted, as it did
+indeed appal, me. The chant came to an end, and the three gracious
+epithets in which it closes were full of wailing, and the children's
+voices were very high.
+
+Then the priest shut the doors and locked them, and a boy came and blew
+the candles out one by one, and I went out into the market-place, fuller
+than ever of Spain.
+
+
+
+
+THE IRONMONGER
+
+
+When I was in the French army we came one day with the guns in July along
+a straight and dusty road and clattered into the village called Bar-le-Duc.
+Of the details of such marches I have often written. I wish now to speak of
+another thing, which, in long accounts of mere rumbling of guns, one might
+never have time to tell, but which is really the most important of all
+experiences under arms in France--I mean the older civilians, the fathers.
+
+Who made the French army? Who determined to recover from the defeats and
+to play once more that determined game which makes up half French history,
+the "Thesaurization," the gradual reaccumulation of power? The general
+answer to such questions is to say: "The nation being beaten had to set
+to and recover its old position." That answer is insufficient. It deals
+in abstractions and it tells you nothing. Plenty of political societies
+throughout history have sat down under disaster and consented to sink
+slowly. Many have done worse--they have maintained after sharp warnings
+the pride of their blind years; they have maintained that pride on into
+the great disasters, and when these came they have sullenly died. France
+neither consented to sink nor died by being overweening. Some men must
+have been at work to force their sons into the conscription, to consent
+to heavy taxation, to be vigilant, accumulative, tenacious, and, as it
+were, constantly eager. There must have been classes in which, unknown to
+themselves, the stirp of the nation survived; individuals who, aiming at
+twenty different things, managed, as a resultant, to carry up the army
+to the pitch in which I had known it and to lay a slow foundation for
+recovered vigour. Who were these men?
+
+I had read of them in Birmingham when I was at school; I had read of them
+in books when I read of the Hundred Years' War and of the Revolution.
+I was to read of them again in books at Oxford. But on that Saturday
+at Bar-le-Duc I _saw_ one of them, and by as much as the physical
+impression is worth more than the secondary effect of history, my sight
+of them is worth writing down.
+
+A man in my battery, one Matthieu, told me he had leave to go out for the
+evening, and told me also to go and get leave. He said his uncle had asked
+him to dine and bring a friend. It seemed his uncle lived in a villa on
+the heights above the town; he was an ironmonger who had retired. I went
+to my Sergeant and asked him for leave.
+
+My Sergeant was a noble who was working his way up through the ranks, and
+when I found him he was checking off forage at a barn where some of our
+men were working. He looked me hard in the eyes, and said in a drawling
+lackadaisical voice:
+
+"You are the Englishman?"
+
+"Yes, Sergeant," said I a little anxiously (for I was very keen to get a
+good dinner in town after all that marching).
+
+"Well," said he, "as you are the Englishman you can go." Such is the logic
+of the service.
+
+The army is no place to argue, and I went. I suppose what he meant was,
+"As we are both more or less in exile, take my blessing and be off," but
+he may merely have meant to be inconsequent, for inconsequence is the wit
+of schoolboys and soldiers. I went up the hill with my friend.
+
+The long twilight was still broad over the hill and the old houses of
+Bar-le-Duc, as we climbed. It was night by the clock, but one could have
+seen to read. We were tired, and talked of nothing in particular, but such
+things as we said were full of the old refrain of conscripts: "Dog of a
+trade," "When shall we be out of it?" Even as we spoke there was pride in
+our breasts at the noise of trumpets in the mist below along the river and
+the Eighth making its presence known, and our uniforms and our swords.
+
+We stopped at last before a little square house with "The Lilacs" painted
+on its gate; there was a parched little lawn, a little fountain, a tripod
+supporting a globular mirror, and we went in.
+
+Matthieu's uncle met us; he was in a cotton suit walking about among his
+flowers and enjoying the evening. He was a man of about fifty, short,
+strong, brown, and abrupt. Though it was already evening and one could see
+little, we knew well enough that his eyes were steady and dark. For he
+had the attitude and carriage of those men who invigorate France. His
+self-confidence was evident in his sturdy legs and his arms akimbo, his
+vulgarity in his gesture, his narrowness in his forward and peering look,
+his indomitable energy in every movement of his body. It did not surprise
+me to learn in his later conversation that he was a Republican. He spoke
+at once to us both, saying in a kind of grumbling shout:
+
+"Well, gunners!"
+
+Then he spoke roughly to his nephew, telling him we were late: to me
+a little too politely saying he put no blame on me, but only on his
+scapegrace of a nephew. I said that our lateness was due to having to
+find the Sergeant. He answered:
+
+"One must always put the blame on some one else," which was rank bad
+manners.
+
+He led the way into the house. The dining-room gave on to a veranda,
+and beyond this was another little lawn with trees. In the dark a few
+insects chirped, and, as the evening was warmish, one smelt the flowers.
+The windows had been left open. Everything was clean, neat, and bare. On
+the walls were two excellent old prints, a badly drawn certificate of
+membership in some society or other, a still worse portrait of a local
+worthy, and a water-colour painted, I suppose, by his daughter.
+
+He introduced me to his wife, a hard-featured woman, with thin hair, full
+of duty, busy and precise--fresh from the kitchen. We unhooked our swords
+with the conventional clatter, and sat down to the meal.
+
+I will confess that as we ate those excellent dishes (they were all
+excellent) and drank that ordinary wine, I seemed to be living in a book
+rather than among living men. Here was I, a young English boy, thrust
+by accident into the French army. Fairly acquainted with its language,
+though I spoke it with an accent; taken (of course) by my host for a pure
+Englishman, though half my blood was French. Here was I sitting at his
+side and watching things, and learning--as for him, men like him, of whom
+England has some few left in forgotten villages, and who are, when they
+can be found, the strength of a State, _they_ never bother about
+learning anything far removed from their realities.
+
+I noticed the one servant going in and out rapidly, bullied a good deal by
+her master, deft but nervous. I noticed how everything was solid and good:
+the chairs, table, clock, clothes--and especially the cooking. I saw his
+local newspaper neatly folded on the mantelpiece. I saw the pet dog of his
+retirement crouching at his side, and I heard the chance sayings he threw
+to his nephew, the maxims granted to youth long ago. I wondered how much
+that nephew would inherit. I guessed about ten thousand pounds at the
+least, and twenty at the most. I was almost inclined to cross myself at
+the thought of such a lot of money.
+
+My host grew more genial: he asked me questions on England. His wife also
+was interested in that country. They both knew more about it than their
+class in England knows about France: and this astonished me, for, in the
+gentry, English gentlemen know more about France than French gentlemen
+know about England.
+
+He asked me if agriculture were still in a bad way; why we had not more
+of the people at the Universities; why we allowed only lords into our
+Parliament, and whether there were more French commercial travellers in
+England than English commercial travellers in France. In all these points
+I admitted, supplemented, and corrected, and probably distorted his
+impressions.
+
+He asked me if English gunners were good. I said I did not know, but I
+thought so. He replied that the English drivers had a high reputation in
+his country--his brother (the brother of an ironmonger) was a Captain of
+the Horse Artillery, and had told him so. And this he said to me, who wore
+a French uniform, but whose heart was away up in Arun Valley, in my own
+woods, and at rest and alone.
+
+In the last hour when we had to be getting back a certain tenderness came
+into his somewhat mercenary look. He devoted himself more to his nephew;
+he took him aside, and, with some ceremony, gave him money. He offered us
+cigars. We took one each. His round French face became all wrinkles, like
+a cracked plate. He said:
+
+"Bah! Take them by the pocketful! We know what life is in the regiment,"
+and he crammed half a dozen each into the pocket of our tunics. But when
+he said "We know what the life is," he lied. For he had only been a
+"mobile" in '70. He had voted, but never suffered, the conscription.
+
+So we said good night to this man, our host, who had so regaled us. I may
+be wrong, but I fancy he was an anti-clerical. He was a hard man, just,
+eager, and attentive, narrow, as I have said, and unconsciously (as I have
+also said) building up the nation.
+
+There was the Ironmonger of Bar-le-Duc; and there are hundreds of
+thousands of the same kind.
+
+
+
+
+A FORCE IN GAUL
+
+
+There is a force in Gaul which is of prime consequence to all Europe. It
+has canalized European religion, fixed European law, and latterly launched
+a renewed political ideal. It is very vigorous to-day.
+
+It was this force which made the massacres of September, which overthrew
+Robespierre, which elected Napoleon. In a more concentrated form, it was
+this force which combined into so puissant a whole the separate men--not
+men of genius--who formed the Committee of Public Safety. It is this
+force which made the Commune, so that to this day no individual can quite
+tell you what the Commune was driving at. And it is this force which at
+the present moment so grievously misunderstands and overestimates the
+strength of the armies which are the rivals of the French; indeed, in that
+connexion it might truly be said that the peace of Europe is preserved
+much more by the German knowledge of what the French army is, even than
+by French ignorance of what the German army is.
+
+I say the disadvantages of this force or quality in a commonwealth are
+apparent, for the weakness and disadvantages of something extraneous to
+ourselves are never difficult to grasp. What is of more moment for us
+is to understand, with whatever difficulty, the strength which such a
+quality conveys. Not to have understood that strength, nay, not to have
+appreciated the existence of the force of which I speak, has made nearly
+all the English histories of France worthless. French turbulence is
+represented in them as anarchy, and the whole of the great story which has
+been the central pivot of Western Europe appears as an incongruous series
+of misfortunes. Even Carlyle, with his astonishing grasp of men and his
+power of rapid integration from a few details (for he read hardly anything
+of his subject), never comprehended this force. He could understand a
+master ordering about a lot of servants; indeed, he would have liked
+to have been a servant himself, and _was_ one to the best of his
+ability; but he could not understand self-organization from below. Yet
+upon the existence of that power depends the whole business of the
+Revolution. Its strength, then, (and principal advantage), lies in the
+fact that it makes democracy possible at critical moments, even in a large
+community.
+
+There is no one, or hardly any one, so wicked or so stupid as to deny the
+democratic ideal. There is no one, or hardly any one, so perverted that,
+were he the member of a small and simple community, he would be content to
+forgo his natural right to be a full member thereof. There is no one, or
+hardly any one, who would not feel his exclusion from such rights, among
+men of his own blood, to be intolerable. But while every one admits the
+democratic ideal, most men who think and nearly all the wiser of those
+who think, perceive its one great obstacle to lie in the contrast between
+the idea and the action where the obstacle of complexity--whether due
+to varied interests, to separate origins, or even to mere numbers--is
+present.
+
+The psychology of the multitude is not the psychology of the individual.
+Ask every man in West Sussex separately whether he would have bread made
+artificially dearer by Act of Parliament, and you will get an overwhelming
+majority against such economic action on the part of the State. Treat them
+collectively, and they will elect--I bargain they will elect for years
+to come--men pledged to such an action. Or again, look at a crowd when
+it roars down a street in anger--the sight is unfortunately only too
+rare to-day--you have the impression of a beast majestic in its courage,
+terrible in its ferocity, but with something evil about its cruelty and
+determination. Yet if you stop and consider the face of one of its members
+straggling on one of its outer edges, you will probably see the bewildered
+face of a poor, uncertain, weak-mouthed man whose eyes are roving from
+one object to another, and who appears all the weaker because he is under
+the influence of this collective domination. Or again, consider the jokes
+which make a great public assembly honestly shake with laughter, and
+imagine those jokes attempted in a private room! Our tricky politicians
+know well this difference between the psychologies of the individual
+and of the multitude. The cleverest of them often suffer in reputation
+precisely because they know what hopeless arguments and what still more
+hopeless jests will move collectivities, the individual units of which
+would never have listened to such humour or to such reasoning.
+
+The larger the community with which one is dealing, the truer this is; so
+that, when it comes to many millions spread upon a large territory, one
+may well despair of any machinery which shall give expression to that very
+real thing which Rousseau called the General Will.
+
+In the presence of such a difficulty most men who are concerned both for
+the good of their country and for the general order of society incline,
+especially as they grow older, to one, or other of the old traditional
+organic methods by which a State may be expressed and controlled. They
+incline to an oligarchy such as is here in England where a small group of
+families, intermarried one with the other, dining together perpetually
+and perpetually guests in each other's houses, are by a tacit agreement
+with the populace permitted to direct a nation. Or they incline to the
+old-fashioned and very stable device of a despotic bureaucracy such as
+manages to keep Prussia upright, and did until recently support the
+expansion of Russia.
+
+The evils of such a compromise with a political idea are evident enough.
+The oligarchy will be luxurious and corporately corrupt, and individually
+somewhat despicable, with a sort of softness about it in morals and in
+military affairs. The despot or the bureaucracy will be individually
+corrupt, especially in the lower branches of the system, and hatefully
+unfeeling.
+
+"But," (says your thinker, especially as he advances in age) "man is so
+made that he _cannot_ otherwise be collectively governed. He cannot
+collectively be the master, or at any rate permanently the master of his
+collective destiny, whatever power his reason and free will give him over
+his individual fate. The nation" (says he), "especially the large nation,
+certainly has a Will, but it cannot directly express that Will. And if it
+attempts to do so, whatever machinery it chooses--even the referendum--will
+but create a gross mechanical parody of that subtle organic thing, the
+National soul. The oligarchy or the bureaucracy" (he will maintain, and
+usually maintain justly) "inherit, convey, and maintain the national
+spirit more truly than would an attempted democratic system."
+
+General history, even the general history of Western Europe, is upon the
+whole on the side of such a criticism. Andorra is a perfect democracy, and
+has been a perfect democracy for at least a thousand years, perhaps since
+first men inhabited that isolated valley. But there is no great State
+which has maintained even for three generations a democratic system
+undisturbed.
+
+Now it is peculiar to the French among the great and independent nations,
+that they are capable, by some freak in their development, of rapid
+_communal_ self-expression. It is, I repeat, only in crises that
+this power appears. But such as it is, it plays a part much more real and
+much more expressive of the collective will than does the more ordinary
+organization of other peoples.
+
+Those who attacked the Tuileries upon the 10th of August acted in a manner
+entirely spontaneous, and succeeded. The arrest of the Royal Family at
+Varennes was not the action of one individual or of two; it was not Drouet
+nor was it the Saulce family. It was a great number of individuals (the
+King had been recognized all along the journey), each thinking the same
+thing under the tension of a particular episode, each vaguely tending to
+one kind of action and tending with increasing energy towards that action,
+and all combining, as it were, upon that culminating point in the long
+journey which was reached at the archway of the little town in Argonne.
+
+To have expressed and portrayed this common national power has been the
+saving of the principal French historians, notably of Michelet. It has
+furnished them with the key by which alone the history of their country
+could be made plain. Nothing is easier than to ridicule or deny so
+mystical a thing. Taine, by temperament intensely anti-national, ridiculed
+it as he ridiculed the mysteries of the Faith; but with this consequence,
+that his denial made it impossible for him to write the history of his
+country, and compelled him throughout his work, but especially in his
+history of the Revolution, to perpetual, and at last to somewhat crude,
+forms of falsehood.
+
+Not to recognize this National force has, again, led men into another
+error: they will have it that the great common actions of Frenchmen are
+due to some occult force or to a master. They will explain the Crusades
+by the cunning organization of the Papacy; the French Revolution by the
+cunning organization of the Masonic lodges; the Napoleonic episode by the
+individual cunning and plan of Bonaparte. Such explanations are puerile.
+
+The blow of 1870 was perhaps the most severe which any modern nation has
+endured. By some accident it did not terminate the activity of the French
+nation. The Southern States of America remain under the effect of the
+Civil War. All that is not Prussian in Germany remains prostrate--
+especially in ideas--under the effect of the Prussian victory over it. The
+French but barely escaped a similarly permanent dissolution of national
+character: but they did escape it; and the national mark, the power of
+spontaneous and collective action, after a few years' check, began to
+emerge.
+
+Upon two occasions an attempt was made towards such action. The first was
+in the time of Boulanger, the second during the Dreyfus business. In both
+cases the nation instinctively saw, or rather felt, its enemy. In both
+there was a moment when the cosmopolitan financier stood in physical peril
+of his life. Neither, however, matured; in neither did the people finally
+move.
+
+Latterly several partial risings have marked French life. Why none of them
+should have culminated I will consider in a moment. Meanwhile, the foreign
+observer will do well to note the character of these movements, abortive
+though they were. It is like standing upon the edge of a crater and
+watching the heave and swell of the vast energies below. There may have
+been no actual eruption for some time, but the activities of the volcano
+and its nature are certain to you as you gaze. The few days that passed
+two years ago in Herault are an example.
+
+No one who is concerned for the immediate future of Europe should neglect
+the omen: half a million men, with leaders chosen rapidly by themselves,
+converging without disaster, with ample commissariat, with precision and
+rapidity upon one spot: a common action decided upon, and that action most
+calculated to defeat the enemy; decided upon by men of no exceptional
+power, mere mouthpieces of this vast concourse: similar and exactly
+parallel decisions over the whole countryside from the great towns to the
+tiny mountain villages. It is the spirit of a swarm of bees. One incident
+in the affair was the most characteristic of it all: fearing they would
+be ordered to fire on men of their own district the private soldiers and
+corporals of the 17th of the Line mutinied. So far so good: mutinies are
+common in all actively military states--the exceptional thing was what
+followed. The men organized themselves without a single officer or
+non-commissioned officer, equipped themselves for a full day's march to
+the capital of the province, achieved it in good order, and took quarters
+in the town. All that exact movement was spontaneous. It explains the
+Marshals of the Empire. These were sent off as a punishment to the edge
+of the African desert; the mutiny seemed to the moneydealers a proof of
+military defeat. They erred: these young men, some of them of but six
+months' training, none of them of much more than two years, not one of
+them over twenty-five years of age, were a precise symbol of the power
+which made the Revolution and its victims. The reappearance of that power
+in our tranquil modern affairs seems to me of capital importance.
+
+One should end by asking one's self, "Will these unfinished movements
+breed a finished movement at last? Will Gaul move to some final purpose
+in our time, and if so, against what, with what an object and in what a
+manner?"
+
+Prophecy is vain, but it is entertaining, and I will prophesy that Gaul
+will move in our time, and that the movement will be directed against the
+pestilent humbug of the parliamentary system.
+
+For forty years this force in the nation of which I speak, though so
+frequently stirred, has not achieved its purpose. But in nearly every
+case, directly or indirectly, the thing against which it moved was the
+Parliament. It would be too lengthy a matter to discuss here why the
+representative system has sunk to be what it is in modern Europe. It
+was the glory of the Middle Ages, it was a great vital institution of
+Christendom, sprung from the monastic institution that preceded it, a true
+and living power first in Spain, where Christendom was at its most acute
+activity in the struggle against Asia, then in the north-west, in England
+and in France. And indeed, in one form or another, throughout all the old
+limits of the Empire. It died, its fossil was preserved in one or two
+small and obscure communities, its ancient rules and form were captured by
+the English squires and merchants, and it was maintained, a curious but
+vigorous survival, in this country. When the Revolution in 1789 began the
+revival of democracy in the great nations the old representative scheme of
+the French, a very perfect one, was artificially resurrected, based upon
+the old doctrine of universal suffrage and upon a direct mandate. It was
+logical, it ought to have worked, but in barely a hundred years it has
+failed.
+
+There is an instructive little anecdote upon the occupation of Rome in
+1870.
+
+When the French garrison was withdrawn and the Northern Italians had
+occupied the city, representative machinery was set to work, nominally
+to discover whether the change in Government were popular or no. A tiny
+handful of votes was recorded in the negative, let us say forty-three.
+
+Later, in the early winter of that same year, a great festival of the
+Church was celebrated in the Basilica of St. Peter and at the tombs of the
+Apostles. The huge church was crowded, many were even pressed outside the
+doors. When the ceremony was over the dense mass that streamed out into
+the darkness took up the cry, the irony of which filled the night air of
+the Trastevere and its slums of sovereign citizens. The cry was this:
+
+"We are the Forty-three!"
+
+It is an anecdote that applies continually to the modern representative
+system in every country which has the misfortune to support it. No one
+needs to be reminded of such a truth. We know in England how the one
+strong feeling in the elections of 1906 was the desire to get at the South
+African Jews and sweep away their Chinese labour from under them.
+
+The politicians and the party hacks put into power by that popular
+determination went straight to the South African Jews, hat in hand, asked
+them what was their good pleasure in the matter, and framed a scheme in
+connivance with them, by which no vengeance should be taken and not a
+penny of theirs should be imperilled.
+
+In modern France the chances of escape from the parliamentary game, tawdry
+at its best, at its worst a social peril, are much greater than in this
+country. The names and forms of the thing are not of ancient institution.
+There is therefore no opportunity for bamboozling people with a sham
+continuity, or of mixing up the interests of the party hacks with the
+instinct of patriotism. Moreover, in modern France the parliamentary
+system happened to come up vitally against the domestic habits of
+the people earlier and more violently than it has yet done in this
+country. The little gang which had captured the machine was violently
+anti-Christian; it proceeded step by step to the destruction of the
+Church, until at the end of 1905 the crisis had taken this form. The
+Church was disestablished, its endowments were cancelled, the housing of
+its hierarchy, its churches and its cathedrals and their furniture were,
+further, to be taken from it unless it adopted a Presbyterian form of
+government which could not but have cankered it and which was the very
+negative of its spirit. So far nothing that the Parliament had done really
+touched the lives of the people. Even the proposal to put the remaining
+goods of the Church under Presbyterian management was a matter for the
+theologians and not for them. Not one man in a hundred knew or cared
+about the business. The critical date approached (the 11th of December,
+if I remember rightly). Rome was to accept the anti-Catholic scheme of
+government or all the churches were to be shut. Rome refused the scheme,
+and Parliament, faced for once with a reality and brought under the
+necessity of really interfering with the popular life or of capitulating,
+capitulated.
+
+What has that example to do, you may ask, with that movement in the south
+of France, which is the text of these pages? The answer is as follows:
+
+In the south of France the one main thing actually touching the lives
+of the people, after their religion (which the complete breakdown of
+the anti-clerical threat had secured), was the sale of their principal
+manufacture. This sale was rendered difficult from a number of reasons,
+one of which, perhaps not the chief, but the most apparent and the most
+easily remediable, was the adulteration and fraud existing in the trade.
+Such adulteration and fraud are common to all the trade of our own time.
+It was winked at by the gang in power in France, just as similar dirty
+work is winked at by the gang in power in every other parliamentary
+country. When the peasants who had suffered so severely by this
+commercial corruption of our time asked that it should be put a stop to,
+the old reply, which has done duty half a million times in every case of
+corruption in France, England, or America for a generation, was given to
+them: "If you desire a policy to be effected, elect men who will effect
+it." As a fact, these four departments had elected a group of men, of whom
+Laferre, the Grand Master of the Freemasons, is a good type, with his
+absorbing interest in the destruction of Christianity, and his ignorance
+and ineptitude in any other field than that of theology.
+
+The peasants replied to this sophistry, which had done duty so often and
+had been successful so often in their case as in others, by calling upon
+their Deputies to resign. Laferre neglected to do so. He was too greatly
+occupied with his opportunity. He went down to "address his constituents."
+They chased him for miles. And in that exhilarating episode it was
+apparent that the peasants of the Aude had discovered in their simple
+fashion both where the representative system was at fault and by what
+methods it may be remedied.
+
+
+
+
+ON BRIDGES
+
+
+Stand on the side of a stream and consider two things: the imbecility of
+your private nature and the genius of your common kind.
+
+For you cannot cross the stream, you--Individual you; but Man (from whence
+you come) has found out an art for crossing it. This art is the building
+of bridges. And hence man in the general may properly be called Pontifex,
+or "The Bridge Builder"; and his symbolic summits of office will carry
+some such title.
+
+Here I will confess (Individual) that I am tempted to leave you by the
+side of the stream, to swim it if you can, to drown if you can't, or to
+go back home and be eaten out with your desire for the ulterior shore,
+while I digress upon that word Pontifex, which, note you, is not only a
+name over a shop as "Henry Pontifex, Italian Warehouseman," or "Pontifex
+Brothers, Barbers," but a true key-word breeding ideas and making one
+consider the greatness of man, or rather the greatness of what made him.
+
+For man builds bridges over streams, and he has built bridges more or less
+stable between mind and mind (a difficult art!), having designed letters
+for that purpose, which are his instrument; and man builds by prayer a
+bridge between himself and God; man also builds bridges which unite him
+with Beauty all about.
+
+Thus he paints and draws and makes statues, and builds for beauty as well
+as for shelter from the weather. And man builds bridges between knowledge
+and knowledge, co-ordinating one thing that he knows with another thing
+that he knows, and putting a bridge from each to each. And man is for ever
+building--but he has never yet completed, nor ever will--that bridge they
+call philosophy, which is to explain himself in relation to that whence
+he came. I say, when his skeleton is put in the Museum properly labelled,
+it shall be labelled not _Homo Sapiens_, but _Homo Pontifex_;
+hence also the anthem, or rather the choral response, "_Pontificem
+habemus_," which is sung so nobly by pontifical great choirs, when
+pontifications are pontificated, as behooves the court of a Pontiff.
+
+Nevertheless (Individual) I will not leave you there, for I have pity
+on you, and I will explain to you the nature of bridges. By a bridge
+was man's first worry overcome. For note you, there is no worry so
+considerable as to wail by impassable streams (as Swinburne has it).
+It is the proper occupation of the less fortunate dead.
+
+
+
+
+ON BRIDGES
+
+
+Believe me, without bridges the world would be very different to you. You
+take them for granted, you lollop along the road, you cross a bridge. You
+may be so ungrateful as to forget all about it, but it is an awful thing!
+
+A bridge is a violation of the will of nature and a challenge. "You
+desired me not to cross," says man to the River God, "but I will." And
+he does so: not easily. The god had never objected to him that he should
+swim and wet himself. Nay, when he was swimming the god could drown him at
+will, but to bridge the stream, nay, to insult it, to leap over it, that
+was man all over; in a way he knows that the earthy gods are less than
+himself and that all that he dreads is his inferior, for only that which
+he reveres and loves can properly claim his allegiance. Nor does he in the
+long run pay that allegiance save to holiness, or in a lesser way to
+valour and to worth.
+
+Man cannot build bridges everywhere. They are not multitudinous as are his
+roads, nor universal as are his pastures and his tillage. He builds from
+time to time in one rare place and another, and the bridge always remains
+a sacred thing. Moreover, the bridge is always in peril. The little
+bridge at Paris which carried the Roman road to the island was swept away
+continually; and the bridge of Staines that carried the Roman road from
+the great port to London was utterly destroyed.
+
+Bridges have always lived with fear in their hearts; and if you think
+this is only true of old bridges (Individual), have you forgotten the Tay
+Bridge with the train upon it? Or the bridge that they were building over
+the St. Lawrence some little time ago, or the bridge across the Loire
+where those peasants went to their death on a Sunday only a few months
+since? Carefully consider these things and remember that the building and
+the sustaining of a bridge is always a wonderful and therefore a perilous
+thing.
+
+No bridges more testify to the soul of man than the bridges that leap
+in one arch from height to height over the gorge of a torrent. Many of
+these are called the Devil's Bridges with good reason, for they suggest
+art beyond man's power, and there are two to be crossed and wondered at,
+one in Wales in the mountains, and another in Switzerland, also in the
+mountains. There is a third in the mountains at the gate of the Sahara, of
+the same sort, jumping from rock to rock. But it is not called the Devil's
+Bridge. It is called with Semitic simplicity "El Kantara," and that is
+the name the Arabs gave to the old bridges, to the lordly bridges of the
+Romans, wherever they came across them, for the Arabs were as incapable
+of making bridges as they were of doing anything else except singing love
+songs and riding about on horses. "Alcantara" is a name all over Spain,
+and it is in the heart of the capital of Portugal, and it is fixed in the
+wilds of Estremadura. You get it outside Constantine also where the bridge
+spans the gulf. Never did an Arab see bridges but he wondered.
+
+Our people also, though they were not of the sort to stand with their
+mouths open in front of bridges or anything else, felt the mystery of
+these things. And they put chapels in the middle of them, as you may see
+at Bale, and at Bradford-upon-Avon, and especially was there one upon old
+London Bridge, which was dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, and was very
+large. And speaking of old London Bridge, every one in London should
+revere bridges, for a great number of reasons.
+
+In the first place London never would have been London but for London
+Bridge.
+
+In the second place, bridges enable the people of London to visit the
+south of the river, which is full of pleasing and extraordinary sights,
+and in which may be seen, visibly present to the eye, Democracy. If any
+one doubts this let him take the voyage.
+
+Then again, but for bridges Londoners could not see the river except
+from the Embankment, which is an empty sort of place, or from the windows
+of hotels. Bridges also permit railways from the south to enter London.
+If this seems to you a commonplace, visit New York or for ever after hold
+your peace.
+
+All things have been degraded in our time and have also been multiplied,
+which is perhaps a condition of degradation; and your simple thing, your
+bridge, has suffered with the rest. Men have invented all manner of
+bridges: tubular bridges, suspension bridges, cantilever bridges, swing
+bridges, pontoon bridges, and the bridge called the Russian Bridge, which
+is intolerable; but they have not been able to do with the bridge what
+they have done with some other things: they have not been able to destroy
+it; it is still a bridge, still perilous, and still a triumph. The bridge
+still remains the thing which may go at any moment and yet the thing
+which, when it remains, remains our oldest monument. There is a bridge
+over the Euphrates--I forget whether it goes all the way across--which the
+Romans built. And the oldest thing in the way of bridges in the town of
+Paris, a thing three hundred years old, was the bridge that stood the late
+floods best. The bridge will remain a symbol in spite of the engineers.
+
+Look how differently men have treated bridges according to the passing
+mood of civilization. Once they thought it reasonable to tax people who
+crossed bridges. Now they think it unreasonable. Yet the one course was
+as reasonable as the other. Once they built houses on bridges, clearly
+perceiving that there was lack of room for houses, and that there was
+a housing problem, and that the bridges gave a splendid chance. Now no
+one dares to build a house upon a bridge, and the one proceeding is as
+reasonable as the other.
+
+The time has come to talk at random about bridges.
+
+The ugliest bridge in the world runs from Lambeth to the Horseferry Road,
+and takes the place of the old British trackway which here crossed the
+Thames. About the middle of it, if you will grope in the mud, you may or
+may not find the great Seal of England which James II there cast into
+the flood. If it was fished up again, why then it is not there. The most
+beautiful bridge in London is Waterloo Bridge; the most historic is London
+Bridge; and far the most useful Westminster Bridge. The most famous bridge
+in Italy to tourists is the old bridge at Florence, and the best known
+from pictures the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. That with the best chance
+of an eternal fame is the bridge which carries the road from Tizzano to
+Serchia over the gully of the muddy Apennines, for upon the 18th of June,
+1901, it was broken down in the middle of the night, and very nearly cost
+the life of a man who could ill afford it. The place where a bridge is
+most needed, and is not present, is the Ford of Fornovo. The place where
+there is most bridge and where it is least needed is the railway bridge
+at Venice. The bridge that trembles most is the Bridge of Piacenza. The
+bridge that frightens you most is the Brooklyn Bridge, and the bridge that
+frightens you least is the bridge in St. James's Park; for even if you
+are terrified by water in every form, as are too many boastful men, you
+must know, or can be told, that there is but a dampness of some inches in
+the sheet below. The longest bridge for boring one is the railway bridge
+across the Somme to St. Valery, whence Duke William started with a
+horseshoe mouth and very glum upon his doubtful adventure to invade these
+shores--but there was no bridge in his time. The shortest bridge is made
+of a plank, in the village of Loudwater in the county of Bucks, not far
+from those Chiltern Hundreds which men take in Parliament for the good of
+their health as a man might take the waters. The most entertaining bridge
+is the Tower Bridge, which lifts up and splits into two just as you are
+beginning to cross it, as can be testified by a cloud of witnesses. The
+broadest bridge is the Alexandre III Bridge in Paris, at least it looks
+the broadest, while the narrowest bridge, without a shadow of doubt, is
+the bridge that was built by ants in the moon; if the phrase startles you
+remember it is only in a novel by Wells.
+
+The first elliptical bridge was designed by a monk of Cortona, and the
+first round one by Adam....
+
+But one might go on indefinitely about bridges and I am heartily tired of
+them. Let them cross and recross the streams of the world. I for my part
+will stay upon my own side.
+
+
+
+
+A BLUE BOOK
+
+
+I have thought it of some value to contemporary history to preserve the
+following document, which concerns the discovery and survey of an island
+in the North Atlantic, which upon its discovery was annexed by the United
+States in the first moments of their imperial expansion, and was given the
+name of "Atlantis."
+
+The island, which appears to have been formed by some convulsion of
+nature, disappeared the year after its discovery, and the report drawn up
+by the Commissioners is therefore very little known, and has of course
+no importance in the field of practical finance and administration. But
+it is a document of the highest and most curious interest as an example
+of the ideas that guided the policy of the Great Republic at the moment
+when the survey was undertaken; and English readers in particular will
+be pleased to note the development and expansion of English methods and
+of characteristic English points of view and institutions throughout the
+whole document.
+
+Any one who desires to consult the maps, etc., which I have been unable
+to reproduce in this little volume, must refer to the Record Office at
+Washington. My only purpose in reprinting these really fascinating pages
+in such a volume as this is the hope that they may give pleasure to many
+who would not have had the opportunity to consult them in the public
+archives where they have hitherto been buried.
+
+     A. 2. E. 331 ff.
+
+REPORT OF THE THREE COMMISSIONERS APPOINTED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE
+REPUBLIC TO REPORT UPON THE POTENTIAL RESOURCES, SITUATION, ETC., OF THE
+NEW ISLAND KNOWN AS "ATLANTIS," RECENTLY DISCOVERED IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC
+AND ANNEXED TO THE REPUBLIC, TOGETHER WITH A RECOMMENDATION ON FUTURE
+TREATMENT OF SAME.
+
+TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC.
+
+YOUR HONOUR,
+
+[Sidenote: Preamble.]
+
+Your Honour's three Commissioners, Joshua Hogg, Abraham Bush and Jack
+Bimber, being of sound mind, solvent, and in good corporeal health, all
+citizens of more than five years' standing, and domiciled within the
+boundaries, frontiers or terms of the Republic, do make oath and say, So
+Help Them God:--
+
+[Sidenote: _Arrival off Atlantis_.]
+
+I. That on the 20th of the month of July, being at that time in or about
+Latitude 45 N. and betwixt and between Longitude 51 W. and 51.10  W., so
+near as could be made out, the captain of the steamboat "Glory of the
+Morning Star" (chartered _for this occasion only_ by the Government
+of the Republic, without any damage, precedent or future lien whatsoever),
+by name James Murphy, of Cork, Ireland, and domiciled within the aforesaid
+terms, boundaries, etc., did in a loud voice at about 4.33 a.m., when it
+was already light, cry out "That's Hur," or words to that effect. Your
+three Commissioners being at that moment in the cabin, state-room or cuddy
+in the forward part of the ship (see annexed plan), came up on deck and
+were ordered or enjoined to go below by those having authority on the
+"Glory of the Morning Star." Your three Commissioners desire individually
+and collectively to call attention to the fact that this order was
+obeyed, being given under the Maritime Acts of 1853, and desire also to
+protest against the indignity offered in their persons to the majesty of
+the Republic. (See Attorney-General's Plea, Folio 56, M.) At or about
+_6.30_ a.m. of the same day, July 20th, your Commissioners were
+called upon deck, and there was put at their disposal a beat manned by
+four sailors, who did thereupon and with all due dispatch row them towards
+the island, at that moment some two miles off the weather bow, that is
+S.S.W. by S. of the "Glory of the Morning Star." They did then each
+individually and all collectively land, disembark and set foot upon the
+Island of Atlantis and take possession thereof in the name of Your Honour
+and the Republic, displaying at the same time a small flag 19" x 6" in
+token of the same, which flag was distinctly noted, seen, recorded and
+witnessed by the undersigned, to which they put their hand and seal,
+trusting in the guidance of Divine Providence.
+
+JOSHUA HOGG
+
+ABRAHAM BUSH
+
+JACK BIMBER.
+
+[Sidenote: _Shape and Dimensions of the Island_]
+
+II. Your Commissioners proceeded at once to a measurement of the aforesaid
+island of Atlantis, which they discovered to be of a triangular or
+three-cornered shape, in dimensions as follows: On the northern face from
+Cape Providence (q.v.) to Cape Mercy (q.v.), one mile one furlong and a
+bit. On the south-western face from Cape Mercy (q.v.) to Point Liberty
+(q.v.), seven furlongs, two roods and a foot. On the south-eastern face,
+which is the shortest face, from Point Liberty (q.v.) round again to Cape
+Providence (q.v.), from which we started, something like half a mile, and
+not worth measuring. These dimensions, lines, figures, measurements and
+plans they do submit to the public office of Record as accurate and done
+to the best of their ability by the undersigned: So Help Them God. (SEAL.)
+
+[Sidenote: _Appearance and Structure of the Island_.]
+
+III. It will be seen from the above that the island is in shape an
+Isosceles triangle, as it were, pointing in a north-westerly direction
+and having a short base turned to the south-east, contains some 170 acres
+or half a square mile, and is situate in a temperate latitude suited to
+the Anglo-Saxon Race. As to material or structure, it is composed of sand
+(_see its specimens in glass phial_), the said sand being of a yellow
+colour when dry and inclining to a brown colour where it may be wet by the
+sea or by rain.
+
+[Sidenote: _Springs and Rivers_.]
+
+IV. There are no springs or rivers in the Island.
+
+[Sidenote: _Hills and Mountains_.]
+
+V. There are no mountains on the Island, but there is in the North a
+slight hummock some fifteen feet in height. To this hummock we have
+given (saving your Honour's Reverence) the name of "Mount Providence"
+in commemoration of the manifold and evident graces of Providence in
+permitting us to occupy and develop this new land in the furtherance of
+true civilization and good government. The hill is at present too small
+to make a feature in the landscape, but we have great hopes that it will
+grow. (See _Younger_ on "The Sand Dunes of Picardy," Vol. II, pp.
+199-200.)
+
+[Sidenote: Harbours.]
+
+VI. The Island is difficult of approach as it slopes up gradually from the
+sea bottom and the tides are slight. At high water there is no sounding
+of more than three fathoms for about a mile and a half from shore; but at
+a distance of two miles soundings of five and six fathoms are common, and
+it would be feasible in fine weather for a vessel of moderate draught to
+land her cargo, passengers, etc. in small boats. Moreover a harbour might
+be built as in our Recommendations (q.v.). There is on the northern side
+a bay (caused by indentation of the land) which we think suitable to the
+purpose and which, in Your Honour's honour, we have called Buggins' Bay.
+
+[Sidenote: Capes and Headlands.]
+
+VII. These are three, as above enumerated (q.v.); one, the most
+precipitous and bold, we have called Cape _Providence_ (q.v.) for
+reasons which appear above; the second, Cape _Mercy_, in recognition
+of the great mercy shown us in finding this place without running on it
+as has been the fate of many a noble vessel. The third we called Point
+_Liberty_ from the nature of those glorious institutions which are
+the pride of the Republic and which we intend to impose upon any future
+inhabitants. These titles, which are but provisional, we pray may remain
+and be Enregistered under the seal, notwithstanding the "Act to Restrain
+Nuisances and Voids" of 1819, Cap. 2.
+
+[Sidenote: _Climate_.]
+
+VIII. The climate is that of the North Atlantic known as the "Oceanic."
+Rain falls not infrequently, and between November and April snow is not
+unknown. In summer a more genial temperature prevails, but it is never so
+hot as to endanger life or to facilitate the progress of epidemic disease.
+Wheat, beans, hops, turnips, and barley could be grown did the soil permit
+of it. But we cannot regard an agricultural future as promising for the
+new territory.
+
+HERE ENDETH your Commissioners' Report.
+
+(_Seal_)
+
+JOSHUA HOGG. ABRAHAM BUSH. JACOBUS BIMBER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+RECOMMENDATIONS
+
+Your Commissioners being also entrusted with the privilege of making
+Recommendations, submit the following without prejudice and all pursuants
+to the contrary notwithstanding.
+
+As to the _land_: your Commissioners recommend that it should be
+held by the State in conformity with those principles which are gaining
+a complete ascendancy among the Leading Nations of the Earth. This might
+then be let out at its full value to private individuals who would make
+what they could of it, leaving the Economic Rent to the community. For
+the individual did not make the land, but the State did.
+
+This power of letting the land should, they recommend, be left in the
+hands of a _Chartered Company_. Your Commissioners will provide
+the names of certain reputable and wealthy citizens who will be glad to
+undertake the duty of forming and directing this company, and who will act
+on the principle of unsalaried public service by the upper classes, which
+is the chief characteristic of our civilization. I. Jacobs, Esq., and Z.
+Lewis, Esq. (to be directors of the proposed Chartered Company) have
+already volunteered in this matter.
+
+Your Commissioners recommend that the Chartered Company should be granted
+the right to strike coins of copper, nickel, silver and gold, the first
+three to be issued at three times eight times and twice the value of
+the metals respectively, the said currency to be on a gold basis and
+mono-metallic and not to exceed the amount of $100 _per capita_.
+
+Your Commissioners further recommend that the same authority be empowered
+to issue paper money in proportions of 165% to the gold reserve, the right
+to give high values to pieces of paper having proved in the past of the
+greatest value to those who have obtained it.
+
+Your Commissioners recommend the building of a stone harbour out to sea
+without encroaching on the already exiguous dimensions of the land. They
+propose two piers, each some mile and a half long, and built of Portland
+rock, an excellent quarry of which is to be discovered on the property
+of James Barber, Esq., of Maryville, Kent County, Conn. The stone could
+be brought to Atlantis at the lowest rates by the Wall Schreiner line of
+floats. In this harbour, if it be sufficiently deepened and its piers set
+wide enough apart, the navies of the world could be contained, and it
+would be a standing testimony to the energy of our race, "which maketh
+the desert to blossom like a rose" (Lev. XXII. 3, 2).
+
+Your Commissioners also recommend an artesian well to be sunk until fresh
+water be discovered. This method has been found successful in Australia,
+which is also an island and largely composed of sand. It is said that this
+method of irrigation produces astonishing results.
+
+Finally, in the matter of industry your Commissioners propose (not, of
+course, as a unique industry but as a staple) the packing of sardines. A
+sound system of fair trade based upon a tariff scientifically adjusted
+to the conditions of the Island should develop the industry rapidly.
+Everything lends itself to this: the skilled labour could be imparted
+from home, the sardines from France, and the tin and oil from Spain. It
+would need for some years an export Bounty somewhat in the nature of
+Protection, the scale of which would have to be regulated by the needs
+of the community, but they are convinced that when once the industry was
+established, the superior skill of our workmen and the enterprise of
+our capitalists would control the markets of the world.
+
+As to political rights, we recommend that Atlantis should be treated as a
+territory, and that a sharp distinction should be drawn between Rural and
+Urban conditions; that the inhabitants should not be granted the franchise
+till they have shown themselves worthy of self-government, saving, of
+course, those immigrants (such as the negroes of Carolina, etc.) who have
+been trained in the exercise of representative institutions. All Religions
+should be tolerated except those to which the bulk of the community show
+an implacable aversion. Education should be free to all, compulsory upon
+the poor, non-sectarian, absolutely elementary, and subject, of course,
+to the paramount position of that gospel which has done so much for our
+dear country. The sale of Intoxicants should be regulated by the Company,
+and these should be limited to a little spirits: wine and beer and all
+alcoholic liquors habitually used as beverages should be rigorously
+forbidden to the labouring classes, and should only be supplied in _bona
+fide_ clubs with a certain minimum yearly subscription.
+
+IN CONCLUSION your Commissioners will ever pray, etc.
+
+MS. note added at the end in the hand of Mr. Charles P. Hands, the curator
+of this section:
+
+(_The Island was lost--luckily with no one aboard--during the storms
+of the following winter. This report still possesses, however, a strong
+historical interest_).
+
+
+
+
+PERIGEUX OF THE PERIGORD
+
+
+I knew a man once. I met him in a wooden inn upon a bitterly cold day.
+He was an American, and we talked of many things. At last he said to me:
+"Have you ever seen the Matterhorn?"
+
+"No," said I; for I hated the very name of it. Then he continued:
+
+"It is the most surprising thing I ever saw."
+
+"By the Lord," said I, "'you have found the very word!" I took out a
+sketch-book and noted his word "surprising." What admirable humour had
+this American; how subtle and how excellent a spirit! I have never seen
+the Matterhorn; but it seems that one comes round a corner, and there it
+is. It is surprising! Excellent word of the American. I never shall forget
+it!
+
+An elephant escapes from a circus and puts his head in at your window
+while you are writing and thinking of a word. You look up. You may be
+alarmed, you may be astonished, you may be moved to sudden processes of
+thought; but one thing you will find about it, and you will find out quite
+quickly, and it will dominate all your other emotions of the time: the
+elephant's head will be surprising. You are caught. Your soul says loudly
+to its Creator: "Oh, this is something new!"
+
+So did I first see in the moonlight up the quite unknown and quite
+deserted valley which the peak of the Dead Man dominates in a lonely
+and savage manner the main crest of the Pyrenees. So did I first see a
+land-fall when I first went overseas. So did I first see the Snowdon range
+when I was a little boy, having, until I woke up that morning and looked
+out of the windows of the hotel, never seen anything in my life more
+uplifted than the rounded green hills of South England.
+
+Now the cathedral of St. Front in Perigeux of the Perigord is the most
+surprising thing in Europe. It is much more surprising than the hills--for
+a man made it. Man made it hundreds and hundreds of years ago; man has
+added to it, and, by the grace of his enthusiasm and his disciplined
+zeal, man has (thank God!) scraped, remodelled, and restored it. Upon my
+soul, to see such a thing I was proud to be an Anthropoid, and to claim
+cousinship with those dark citizens of the Dordogne and of Garonne and of
+the Tarn and of the Lot, and of whatever rivers fall into the Gironde. I
+know very well that they have sweated to indoctrinate, to persecute, to
+trim, to improve, to exterminate, to lift up, to cast down, to annoy, to
+amuse, to exasperate, to please, to enmusic, to offend, to glorify their
+kind. In some of these energies of theirs I blame them, in others I
+praise; but it is plainly evident that they know how to binge. I wished
+(for a moment) to be altogether of their race, like that strong cavalry
+man of their race to whom they have put up a statue pointing to his wooden
+leg. What an incredible people to build such an incredible church!
+
+The Clericals claim it, the anti-Clericals adorn it. The Christians bemoan
+within it the wickedness of the times. The Atheists are baptized in it,
+married in it, denounced in it, and when they die are, in great coffins
+surrounded by great candles, to the dirge of the _Dies Ira_, to the
+booming of the vast new organ, very formally and determinedly absolved
+in it; and holy water is sprinkled over the black cloth and cross of
+silver. The pious and the indifferent, nay, the sad little army of
+earnest, intelligent, strenuous men who still anxiously await the death
+of religion--they all draw it, photograph it, paint it; they name their
+streets, their hotels, their villages, and their very children after it.
+It is like everything else in the world: it must be seen to be believed.
+It rises up in a big cluster of white domes upon the steep bank of the
+river. And sometimes you think it a fortress, and sometimes you think it
+a town, and sometimes you think it a vision. It is simple in plan and
+multiple in the mind; and after all these years I remember it as one
+remembers a sudden and unexpected chorus. It is well worthy of Perigeux of
+the Perigord.
+
+Perigeux of the Perigord is Gaulish, and it has never died. When it was
+Roman it was Vesona; the temple of that patron Goddess still stands at its
+eastern gate, and it is one of those teaching towns which have never died,
+but in which you can find quite easily and before your eyes every chapter
+of our worthy story. In such towns I am filled as though by a book, with a
+contemplation of what we have done, and I have little doubt for our sons.
+
+The city reclines and is supported upon the steep bank of the Isle just
+where the stream bends and makes an amphitheatre, so that men coming in
+from the north (which is the way the city was meant to be entered--and
+therefore, as you may properly bet, the railway comes in at the other side
+by the back door) see it all at once: a great sight. One goes up through
+its narrow streets, especially noting that street which is very nobly
+called after the man who tossed his sword in the air riding before the
+Conqueror at Hastings, Taillefer. One turns a narrow corner between houses
+very old and very tall, and then quite close, no longer a vision, but a
+thing to be touched, you see--to use the word again--the "surprising"
+thing. You see something bigger than you thought possible.
+
+Great heavens, what a church!
+
+Where have I heard a church called "the House of God"? I think it was in
+Westmorland near an inn called "The Nag's Head"--or perhaps "The Nag's
+Head" is in Cumberland--no matter, I did once hear a church so called. But
+this church has a right to the name. It is a gathering-up of all that men
+could do. It has fifty roofs, it has a gigantic signal tower, it has blank
+walls like precipices, and round arch after round arch, and architrave
+after architrave. It is like a good and settled epic; or, better still, it
+is like the life of a healthy and adventurous man who, having accomplished
+all his journeys and taken the Fleece of Gold, comes home to tell his
+stories at evening, and to pass among his own people the years that are
+left to him of his age. It has experience and growth and intensity of
+knowledge, all caught up into one unity; it conquers the hill upon which
+it stands. I drew one window and then another, and then before I had
+finished that a cornice, and then before I had finished that a porch,
+for it was evening when I saw it, and I had not many hours.
+
+Music, they say, does something to the soul, filling it full of
+unsatisfied but transcendent desires, and making it guess, in glimpses
+that mix and fail, the soul's ultimate reward or destiny. Here, in
+Perigeux of the Perigord, where men hunt truffles with hounds, stone set
+in a certain order does what music is said to do. For in the sight of this
+standing miracle I could believe and confess, and doubt and fear, and
+control, all in one.
+
+Here is, living and continuous, the Empire in its majority and
+its determination to be eternal. The people of the Perigord, the
+truffle-hunting people, need never seek civilization nor fear its death,
+for they have its symbol, and a sacrament, as it were, to promise them
+that the arteries of the life of Europe can never be severed. The arches
+and the entablatures of this solemn thing are alive.
+
+It was built some say nine, some say eight hundred years ago; its apse was
+built yesterday, but the whole of it is outside time.
+
+In human life, which goes with a short rush and then a lull, like the wind
+among trees before rains, great moments are remembered; they comfort us
+and they help us to laugh at decay. I am very glad that I once saw this
+church in Perigeux of the Perigord.
+
+When I die I should like to be buried in my own land, but I should take it
+as a favour from the Bishop, who is master of this place, if he would come
+and give my coffin an absolution, and bring with him the cloth and the
+silver cross, and if he would carry in his hand (as some of the statues
+have) a little model of St. Front, the church which I have seen and which
+renewed my faith.
+
+
+
+
+THE POSITION
+
+
+There is a place where the valley of the Allier escapes from the central
+mountains of France and broadens out into a fertile plain.
+
+Here is a march or boundary between two things, the one familiar to most
+English travellers, the other unfamiliar. The familiar thing is the rich
+alluvium and gravel of the Northern French countrysides, the poplar trees,
+the full and quiet rivers, the many towns and villages of stone, the broad
+white roads interminable and intersecting the very fat of prosperity,
+and over it all a mild air. The unfamiliar is the mass of the Avernian
+Mountains, which mass is the core and centre of Gaul and of Gaulish
+history, and of the unseen power that lies behind the whole of that
+business.
+
+The plains are before one, the mountains behind one, and one stands in
+that borderland. I know it well.
+
+I have said that in the Avernian Mountains was the centre of Gaul and the
+power upon which the history of Gaul depends. Upon the Margeride, which is
+one of their uttermost ridges, du Guesclin was wounded to death. One may
+see the huge stones piled up on the place where he fell. In the heart of
+those mountains, at Puy, religion has effects that are eerie; it uses odd
+high peaks for shrines--needles of rock; and a long way off all round is a
+circle of hills of a black-blue in the distance, and they and the rivers
+have magical names--the river Red Cap and Chaise Dieu, "God's Chair."
+In these mountains Julius Caesar lost (the story says) his sword; and
+in these mountains the Roman armies were staved off by the Avernians.
+They are as full of wonder as anything in Europe can be, and they are
+complicated and tumbled all about, so that those who travel in them with
+difficulty remember where they have been, unless indeed they have that
+general eye for a countryside which is rare nowadays among men.
+
+Just at the place where the mountain land and the plain land meet, where
+the shallow valleys get rounder and less abrupt, I went last September,
+following the directions of a soldier who had told me how I might find
+where the centre of the manoeuvres lay. The manoeuvres, attempting to
+reproduce the conditions of war, made a drifting scheme of men upon either
+side of the River Sioule. One could never be certain where one would find
+the guns.
+
+I had come up off the main road from Vichy, walking vaguely towards the
+sound of the firing. It was unfamiliar. The old and terrible rumble has
+been lost for a generation; even the plain noise of the field-piece which
+used to be called "90" is forgotten by the young men now. The new little
+guns pop and ring. And when you are walking towards them from a long way
+off you do not seem to be marching towards anything great, but rather
+towards something clever. Nevertheless it is as easy to-day as ever it
+was to walk towards the sound of cannon.
+
+Two valleys absolutely lonely had I trudged-through since the sun rose,
+and it was perhaps eight o'clock when I came upon one of those lonely
+walled parks set in bare fields which the French gentry seem to find
+homelike enough. I asked a man at the lodge about how far the position
+was. He said he did not know, and looked upon me with suspicion.
+
+I went down into the depth of the valley, and there I met a priest who was
+reading his Breviary and erroneously believed me (if I might judge his
+looks) to be of a different religion, for he tested philosophy by clothes;
+and this, by the way, is unalterably necessary for all mankind. When,
+however, he found by my method of address that I knew his language and
+was of his own faith, he became very courteous, and when I told him that
+I wanted to find the position he became as lively as a linesman, making
+little maps with his stick in the earth, and waving his arms, and making
+great sweeps with his hand to show the way in which the army had been
+drifting all morning, northward and eastward, above the Sioule, with the
+other division on the opposite bank, and how, whenever there was a bridge
+to be fought for, the game had been to pretend that one or the other had
+got hold of it. Of this priest it might truly be said, as was said of
+the priest of Thiers in the Forez, that chance had made him a choir-boy,
+but destiny had designed him for the profession of arms; and upon this
+one could build an interesting comedy of how chance and destiny are
+perpetually at issue, and how chance, having more initiative and not
+being so bound to routine, gets the better of destiny upon all occasions
+whatsoever.
+
+Well, the priest showed me in this manner whither I should walk, and so I
+came out of the valley on to a great upland, and there a small boy (who
+was bullying a few geese near a pond) showed much the same excitement as
+the priest when he told me at what village I should find the guns.
+
+That village was a few miles further on. As I went along the straight,
+bare road, with stubble upon either side, I thought the sound of firing
+got louder; but then, again, it would diminish, as the batteries took a
+further and a further position in their advance. It was great fun, this
+sham action, with its crescent of advancing fire and one's self in the
+centre of the curve. At the next village I had come across the arteries
+of the movement. By one road provisionment was going off to the right;
+by another two men with messages, one a Hussar on horseback, the other a
+Reservist upon a bicycle, went by me very quickly. Then from behind some
+high trees in a churchyard there popped out a lot of little Engineers, who
+were rolling a great roll of wire along. So I went onwards; and at last
+I came to a cleft just before the left bank of the Sioule. This cleft
+appeared deserted: there was brushwood on its sides and a tiny stream
+running through it. On the ridge beyond were the roofs of a village. The
+firing of the pieces was now quite close and near. They were a little
+further than the houses of the hamlet, doubtless in some flat field where
+the position was favourable to them. Down that cleft I went, and in its
+hollow I saw the first post, but as yet nothing more. Then when I got to
+the top of the opposing ridge I found the whole of the 38th lolling under
+the cover of the road bank. From below you would have said there were no
+men at all. The guns were right up beyond the line, firing away. I went up
+past the linesmen till I found the guns.
+
+And what a pretty sight! They were so small and light and delicate! There
+was no clanking, and no shouting, and to fire them a man pulled a mere
+trigger. I thought to myself: "How simple and easy our civilization
+becomes. Think of the motor-cars, and how they purr. Think of the simple
+telephone, and all the other little things." And with this thought in my
+mind I continued to watch the guns. Without yells or worry a man spoke
+gently to other men, and they all limbered up, quite easily. The weight
+seemed to have gone since my time. They trotted off with the pieces, and
+when they crossed the little ditch at the edge of the field I waited for
+the heavy clank-clank and the jog that ought to go with that well-known
+episode; but I did not hear it, and I saw no shock. They got off the
+field with its little ditch on to the high road as a light cart with good
+springs might have done. And when they massed themselves under the cover
+of a roll of land it was all done again without noise. I thought a little
+sadly that the world had changed. But it was all so pretty and sensible
+that I hardly regretted the change. There was a stretch of road in front
+where nothing on earth could have given cover. The line was on its
+stomach, firing away, and it was getting fired at apparently, in the sham
+of the manoeuvre from the other side of the Sioule. As it covered this
+open space the line edged forward and upward. When a certain number of the
+38th had worked up like this, the whole bunch of them, from half a mile
+down the road, right through the village, were moved along, and the head
+of the column was scattered to follow up the firing. It was like spraying
+water out of a tap. The guns still stood massed, and then at a sudden
+order which was passed along as though in the tones of a conversation
+(and again I thought to myself, "Surely the world is turning upside down
+since I was a boy") they started off at a sharp gallop and leapt, as it
+were, the two or three hundred yards of open road between cover and cover.
+They were very well driven. The middle horses and the wheelers were doing
+their work: it was not only the leaders that kept the traces taut. It was
+wonderfully pretty to see them go by: not like a storm but like a smoke.
+No one could have hit those gunners or those teams. Whether they were on
+the sky-line or not I could not tell, but at any rate they could have been
+seen just for that moment from beyond the Sioule. And when they massed up
+again, beyond--some seconds afterwards--one heard the pop-pop from over
+the valley, which showed they had been seen just too late.
+
+Hours and hours after that I went on with the young fellows. The guns I
+could not keep with: I walked with the line. And all the while as I walked
+I kept on wondering at the change that comes over European things. This
+army of young men doing two years, with its odd silence and its sharp
+twittering movements, and the sense of eyes all round one, of men glancing
+and appreciating: individual men catching an opportunity for cover; and
+commanding men catching the whole countryside.... Then, in the early
+afternoon, the bugles and the trumpets sounded that long-drawn call which
+has attended victories and capitulations, and which is also sounded every
+night to tell people to put out the lights in the barrack-rooms. It is the
+French "Cease fire." And whether from the national irony or the national
+economy, I know not, but the stopping of either kind of fire has the
+same call attached to it, and you must turn out a light in a French
+barrack-room to the same notes as you must by command stop shooting at the
+other people.
+
+The game was over. I faced the fourteen miles back to Gannat very stiff.
+All during those hours I had been wondering at the novelty of Europe, and
+at all these young men now so different, at the silence and the cover, and
+the hefty, disposable little guns. But when I had my face turned southward
+again to get back to a meal, that other aspect of Europe, its eternity,
+was pictured all abroad. For there right before me stood the immutable
+mountains, which stand enormous and sullen, but also vague at the base,
+and, therefore, in their summits, unearthly, above the Limagne. There was
+that upper valley of the Allier down which Casar had retreated, gathering
+his legions into the North, and there was that silent and menacing sky
+which everywhere broods over Auvergne, and even in its clearest days seems
+to lend the granite and the lava land a sort of doomed hardness, as though
+Heaven in this country commanded and did not allure. Never had I seen a
+landscape more mysterious than those hills, nor at the same time anything
+more enduring.
+
+
+
+
+HOME
+
+
+There is a river called the Eure which runs between low hills often
+wooded, with a flat meadow floor in between. It so runs for many miles.
+The towns that are set upon it are for the most part small and rare,
+and though the river is well known by name, and though one of the chief
+cathedrals of Europe stands near its source, for the most part it is not
+visited by strangers.
+
+In this valley one day as I was drawing a picture of the woods I found a
+wandering Englishman who was in the oddest way. He seemed by the slight
+bend at his knees and the leaning forward of his head to have no very
+great care how much further he might go. He was in the clothes of an
+English tourist, which looked odd in such a place, as, for that matter,
+they do anywhere. He had upon his head a pork-pie hat which was of the
+same colour and texture as his clothes, a speckly brown. He carried a
+thick stick. He was a man over fifty years of age; his face was rather
+hollow and worn; his eyes were very simple and pale; he was bearded with a
+weak beard, and in his expression there appeared a constrained but kindly
+weariness. This was the man who came up to me as I was drawing my picture.
+I had heard him scrambling in the undergrowth of the woods just behind me.
+
+He came out and walked to me across the few yards of meadow. The haying
+was over, so he did the grass no harm. He came and stood near me,
+irresolutely, looking vaguely up and across the valley towards the further
+woods, and then gently towards what I was drawing. When he had so stood
+still and so looked for a moment he asked me in French the name of the
+great house whose roof showed above the more ordered trees beyond the
+river, where a park emerged from and mixed with the forest. I told him the
+name of the house, whereupon he shook his head and said that he had once
+more come to the wrong place.
+
+I asked him what he meant, and he told me, sitting down slowly and
+carefully upon the grass, this adventure:
+
+"First," said he, "are you always quite sure whether a thing is really
+there or not?"
+
+"I am always quite sure," said I; "I am always positive."
+
+He sighed, and added: "Could you understand how a man might feel that
+things were really there when they were not?"
+
+"Only," said I, "in some very vivid dream, and even then I think a man
+knows pretty well inside his own mind that he is dreaming." I said that it
+seemed to me rather like the question of the cunning of lunatics; most of
+them know at the bottom of their silly minds that they are cracked, as you
+may see by the way they plot and pretend.
+
+"You are not sympathetic with me," he said slowly, "but I will
+nevertheless tell you what I want to tell you, for it will relieve me, and
+it will explain to you why I have again come into this valley." "Why do
+you say 'again'?" said I.
+
+"Because," he answered gently, "whenever my work gives me the opportunity
+I do the same thing. I go up the valley of the Seine by train from Dieppe;
+I get out at the station at which I got out on that day, and I walk across
+these low hills, hoping that I may strike just the path and just the
+mood--but I never do."
+
+"What path and what mood?" said I.
+
+"I was telling you," he answered patiently, "only you were so brutal about
+reality." And then he sighed. He put his stick across his knees as he sat
+there on the grass, held it with a hand on either side of his knees, and
+so sitting bunched up began his tale once more.
+
+"It was ten years ago, and I was extremely tired, for you must know that
+I am a Government servant, and I find my work most wearisome. It was just
+this time of year that I took a week's holiday. I intended to take it in
+Paris, but I thought on my way, as the weather was so fine, that I would
+do something new and that I would walk a little way off the track. I had
+often wondered what country lay behind the low and steep hills on the
+right of the railway line.
+
+"I had crossed the Channel by night," he continued, a little sorry for
+himself, "to save the expense. It was dawn when reached Rouen, and there I
+very well remember drinking some coffee which I did not like, and eating
+some good bread which I did. I changed carriages at Rouen because the
+express did not stop at any of the little stations beyond. I took a slower
+train, which came immediately behind it, and stopped at most of the
+stations. I took my ticket rather at random for a little station between
+Pont de l'Arche and Mantes. I got out at that little station, and it was
+still early--only midway through the morning.
+
+"I was in an odd mixture of fatigue and exhilaration: I had not slept and
+I would willingly have done so, but the freshness of the new day was upon
+me, and I have always had a very keen curiosity to see new sights and to
+know what lies behind the hills.
+
+"The day was fine and already rather hot for June. I did not stop in the
+village near the station for more than half an hour, just the time to take
+some soup and a little wine; then I set out into the woods to cross over
+into this parallel valley. I knew that I should come to it and to the
+railway line that goes down it in a very few miles. I proposed when I came
+to that other railway line on the far side of the hills to walk quietly
+down it as nearly parallel to it as I could get, and at the first station
+to take the next train for Chartres, and then the next day to go from
+Chartres to Paris. That was my plan.
+
+"The road up into the woods was one of those great French roads which
+sometimes frighten me and always weary me by their length and insistence:
+men seem to have taken so much trouble to make them, and they make me
+feel as though I had to take trouble myself; I avoid them when I walk.
+Therefore, so soon as this great road had struck the crest of the hills
+and was well into the woods (cutting through them like the trench of a
+fortification, with the tall trees on either side) I struck out into a
+ride which had been cut through them many years ago and was already half
+overgrown, and I went along this ride for several miles.
+
+"It did not matter to me how I went, since my design was so simple and
+since any direction more or less westward would enable me to fulfil it,
+that is, to come down upon the valley of the Eure and to find the single
+railway line which leads to Chartres. The woods were very pleasant on that
+June noon, and once or twice I was inclined to linger in their shade and
+sleep an hour. But--note this clearly--I did not sleep. I remember every
+moment of the way, though I confess my fatigue oppressed me somewhat
+as the miles continued.
+
+"At last by the steepness of a new descent I
+recognized that I had crossed the watershed and was coming down into the
+valley of this river. The ride had dwindled to a path, and I was wondering
+where the path would lead me when I noticed that it was getting more
+orderly: there were patches of sand, and here and there a man had cut and
+trimmed the edges of the way. Then it became more orderly still. It was
+all sanded, and there were artificial bushes here and there--I mean bushes
+not native to the forest, until at last I was aware that my ramble had
+taken me into some one's own land, and that I was in a private ground.
+
+"I saw no great harm in this, for a traveller, if he explains himself,
+will usually be excused; moreover, I had to continue, for I knew no
+other way, and this path led me westward also. Only, whether because my
+trespassing worried me or because I felt my own dishevelment more acutely,
+the lack of sleep and the strain upon me increased as I pursued those
+last hundred yards, until I came out suddenly from behind a screen of
+rosebushes upon a large lawn, and at the end of it there was a French
+country house with a moat round it, such as they often have, and a stone
+bridge over the moat.
+
+"The chateau was simple and very grand. The mouldings upon it pleased me,
+and it was full of peace. Upon the further side of the lawn, so that I
+could hear it but not see it, a fountain was playing into a basin. By the
+sound it was one of those high French fountains which the people who built
+such houses as these two hundred years ago delighted in. The plash of it
+was very soothing, but I was so tired and drooping that at one moment it
+sounded much further than at the next.
+
+"There was an iron bench at the edge of the screen of roses, and hardly
+knowing what I did,--for it was not the right thing to do in another
+person's place--I sat down on this bench, taking pleasure in the sight of
+the moat and the house with its noble roof, and the noise of the fountain.
+I think I should have gone to sleep there and at that moment--for I felt
+upon me worse than ever the strain of that long hot morning and that long
+night journey--had not a very curious thing happened."
+
+Here the man looked up at me oddly, as though to see whether I disbelieved
+him or not; but I did not disbelieve him.
+
+I was not even very much interested, for I was trying to make the trees to
+look different one from the other, which is an extremely difficult thing:
+I had not succeeded and I was niggling away. He continued with more
+assurance:
+
+"The thing that happened was this: a young girl came out of the house
+dressed in white, with a blue scarf over her head and crossed round her
+neck. I knew her face as well as possible: it was a face I had known all
+my youth and early manhood--but for the life of me I could not remember
+her name!'
+
+"When one is very tired," I said, "that does happen to one: a name one
+knows as well as one's own escapes one. It is especially the effect of
+lack of sleep."
+
+"It is," said he, sighing profoundly; "but the oddness of my feeling it is
+impossible to describe, for there I was meeting the oldest and perhaps the
+dearest and certainly the most familiar of my friends, whom," he added,
+hesitating a moment, "I had not seen for many years. It was a very great
+pleasure ... it was a sort of comfort and an ending. I forgot, the moment
+I saw her, why I had come over the hills, and all about how I meant to get
+to Chartres.... And now I must tell you," added the man a little awkwardly,
+"that my name is Peter."
+
+"No doubt," said I gravely, for I could not see why he should not bear
+that name.
+
+"My Christian name," he continued hurriedly.
+
+"Of course," said I, as sympathetically as I could. He seemed relieved
+that I had not even smiled at it.
+
+"Yes," he went on rather quickly, "Peter--my name is Peter. Well, this
+lady came up to me and said, 'Why, Peter, we never thought you would
+come!' She did not seem very much astonished, but rather as though I had
+come earlier than she had expected. 'I will get Philip,' she said. 'You
+remember Philip?' Here I had another little trouble with my memory: I did
+remember that there was a Philip, but I could not place him. That was odd,
+you know. As for her, oh, I knew _her_ as well as the colour of the
+sky: it was her name that my brain missed, as it might have missed my own
+name or my mother's.
+
+"Philip came out as she called him, and there was a familiarity between
+them that seemed natural to me at the time, but whether he was a brother
+or a lover or a husband, or what, I could not for the life of me remember.
+
+"'You look tired,' he said to me in a kind voice that I liked very much
+and remembered clearly. 'I am,' said I, 'dog tired.' 'Come in with us,' he
+said, 'and we will give you some wine and water. When would you like to
+eat?' I said I would rather sleep than eat. He said that could easily be
+arranged.
+
+"I strolled with them towards the house across that great lawn, hearing
+the noise of the fountain, now dimmer, now nearer; sometimes it seemed
+miles away and sometimes right in my ears. Whether it was their
+conversation or my familiarity with them or my fatigue, at any rate, as I
+crossed the moat I could no longer recall anything save their presence. I
+was not even troubled by the desire to recall anything; I was full of a
+complete contentment, and this surging up of familiar things, this surging
+up of it in a foreign place, without excuse or possible connexion or any
+explanation whatsoever, seemed to me as natural as breathing.
+
+"As I crossed the bridge I wholly forgot whence I came or whither I was
+going, but I knew myself better than ever I had known myself, and every
+detail of the place was familiar to me.
+
+"Here I had passed (I thought) many hours of my childhood and my boyhood
+and my early manhood also. I ceased considering the names and the relation
+of Philip and the girl.
+
+"They gave me cold meat and bread and excellent wine, and water to mix
+with it, and as they continued to speak even the last adumbrations of care
+fell off me altogether, and my spirit seemed entirely released and free.
+My approaching sleep beckoned to me like an easy entrance into Paradise.
+I should wake from it quite simply into the perpetual enjoyment of this
+place and its companionship. Oh, it was an absolute repose!
+
+"Philip took me to a little room on the ground floor fitted with the
+exquisite care and the simplicity of the French: there was a curtained
+bed, a thing I love. He lent me night clothes, though it was broad day,
+because he said that if I undressed and got into the bed I should be much
+more rested; they would keep everything quiet at that end of the house,
+and the gentle fall of the water into the moat outside would not disturb
+me. I said on the contrary it would soothe me, and I felt the benignity of
+the place possess me like a spell. Remember that I was very tired and had
+not slept for now thirty hours.
+
+"I remember handling the white counterpane and noting the delicate French
+pattern upon it, and seeing at one corner the little red silk coronet
+embroidered, which made me smile. I remember putting my hand upon the cool
+linen of the pillow-case and smoothing it; then I got into that bed and
+fell asleep. It was broad noon, with the stillness that comes of a summer
+noon upon the woods; the air was cool and delicious above the water of the
+moat, and my windows were open to it.
+
+"The last thing I heard as I dropped asleep was her voice calling to
+Philip in the corridor. I could have told the very place. I knew that
+corridor so well. We used to play there when we were children. We used to
+play at travelling, and we used to invent the names of railway stations
+for the various doors. Remembering this and smiling at the memory, I fell
+at once into a blessed sleep.
+
+"...I do not want to annoy you," said the man apologetically, "but I
+really had to tell you this story, and I hardly know how to tell you the
+end of it."
+
+"Go on," said I hurriedly, for I had gone and made two trees one exactly
+like the other (which in nature was never seen) and I was annoyed with
+myself.
+
+"Well," said he, still hesitating and sighing with real sadness, "when
+I woke up I was in a third-class carriage; the light was that of late
+afternoon, and a man had woken me by tapping my shoulder and telling me
+that the next station was Chartres.... That's all."
+
+He sighed again. He expected me to say something. So I did. I said without
+much originality: "You must have dreamed it."
+
+"No," said he, very considerably put out, "that is the point! I didn't! I
+tell you I can remember exactly every stage from when I left the railway
+train in the Seine Valley until I got into that bed."
+
+"It's all very odd," said I.
+
+"Yes," said he, "and so was my mood; but it was real enough. It was the
+second or third most real thing that has ever happened to me. I am quite
+certain that it happened to me."
+
+I remained silent, and rubbed out the top of one of my trees so as to
+invent a new top for it, since I could not draw it as it was. Then, as he
+wanted me to say something more, I said: "Well, you must have got into the
+train somehow."
+
+"Of course," said he.
+
+"Well, where did you get into the train?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Your ticket would have told you that."
+
+"I think I must have given it up to the man," he answered doubtfully, "the
+guard who told me that the next station was Chartres."
+
+"Well, it's all very mysterious," I said.
+
+"Yes," he said, getting up rather weakly to go on again, "it is." And
+he sighed again. "I come here every year. I hope," he added a little
+wistfully, "I hope, you see, that it may happen to me again ... but it
+never does."
+
+"It will at last," said I to comfort him.
+
+And, will you believe it, that simple sentence made him in a moment
+radiantly happy; his face beamed, and he positively thanked me, thanked me
+warmly.
+
+"You speak like one inspired," he said. (I confess I did not feel like it
+at all.) "I shall go much lighter on my way after that sentence of yours."
+
+He bade me good-bye with some ceremony and slouched off, with his eyes set
+towards the west and the more distant hills.
+
+
+
+
+THE WAY TO FAIRYLAND
+
+
+A child of four years old, having read of Fairyland and of the people in
+it, asked only two days ago, in a very popular attitude of doubt, whether
+there were any such place, and, if so, where it was; for she believed in
+her heart that the whole thing was a pack of lies.
+
+I was happy to be able to tell her that her scepticism, though well
+founded, was extreme. The existence of Fairyland, I was able to point out
+to her both by documentary evidence from books and also by calling in the
+testimony of the aged, could not be doubted by any reasonable person. What
+was really difficult was the way to get there. Indeed, so obviously true
+was the existence of Fairyland, that every one in this world set out to go
+there as a matter of course, but so difficult was it to find the way that
+very few reached the place. Upon this the child very naturally asked me
+what sort of way the way was and why it was so difficult.
+
+"You must first understand," said I, "where Fairyland is: it lies a little
+way farther than the farthest hill you can see. It lies, in fact, just
+beyond that hill. The frontiers of it are sometimes a little doubtful in
+any landscape, because the landscape is confused, but if on the extreme
+limits of the horizon you see a long line of hills bounding your view
+exactly, then you may be perfectly certain that on the other side of those
+hills is Fairyland. There are times of the day and of the weather when the
+sky over Fairyland can be clearly perceived, for it has a different colour
+from any other kind of sky. That is where Fairyland is. It is not on an
+island, as some have pretended, still less is it under the earth--a
+ridiculous story, for there it is all dark."
+
+"But how do you get there?" asked the child. "Do you get there by walking
+to the hills and going over?"
+
+"No," said I, "that is just the bother of it. Several people have thought
+that that was the way of getting there; in fact, it looked plain common
+sense, but there is a trick about it; when you get to the hills everything
+changes, because the fairies have that power: the hills become ordinary,
+the people living on them turn into people just like you and me, and then
+when you get to the top of the hills, before you can say knife another
+common country just like ours has been stuck on the other side. On this
+account, through the power of the fairies, who hate particularly to be
+disturbed, no one can reach Fairyland in so simple a way as by walking
+towards it."
+
+"Then," said the child to me, "I don't see how any one can get there"--for
+this child had good brains and common sense.
+
+"But," said I, "you must have read in stories of people who get to
+Fairyland, and I think you will notice that in the stories written by
+people who know anything about it (and you know how easily these are
+distinguished from the others) there are always two ways of getting to
+Fairyland, and only two: one is by mistake, and the other is by a spell.
+In the first way to Fairyland is to lose your way, and this is one of the
+best ways of getting there; but it is dangerous, because if you get there
+that way you offend the fairies. It is better to get there by a spell.
+But the inconvenience of that is that you are blindfolded so as not to be
+allowed to remember the way there or back again. When you get there by a
+spell, one of the people from Fairyland takes you in charge. They prefer
+to do it when you are asleep, but they are quite game to do it at other
+times if they think it worth their while.
+
+"Why do they do it?" said the child.
+
+"They do it," said I, "because it annoys the fairies very much to think
+that people are stopping believing in them. They are very proud people,
+and think a lot of themselves. They can, if they like, do us good, and
+they think us ungrateful when we forget about them. Sometimes in the past
+people have gone on forgetting about fairies more and more and more,
+until at last they have stopped believing in them altogether. The fairies
+meanwhile have been looking after their own affairs, and it is their fault
+more than ours when we forget about them. But when this has gone on for
+too long a time the fairies wake up and find out by a way they have that
+men have stopped believing in them, and get very much annoyed. Then some
+fairy proposes that a map of the way to Fairyland should be drawn up and
+given to the people; but this is always voted down; and at last they make
+up their minds to wake people up to Fairyland by going and visiting this
+world, and by spells bringing several people into their kingdom and so
+getting witnesses. For, as you can imagine, it is a most unpleasant thing
+to be really important and for other people not to know it."
+
+"Yes," said the child, who had had this unpleasant experience, and greatly
+sympathized with the fairies when I explained how much they disliked it.
+Then the child asked me again:
+
+"Why do the fairies let us forget about them?"
+
+"It is," said I, "because they get so excited about their own affairs.
+Rather more than a hundred years ago, for instance, a war broke out in
+Fairyland because the King of the Fairies, whose name is Oberon, and the
+Queen of the Fairies, whose name is Titania, had asked the Trolls to
+dinner. The Gnomes were very much annoyed at this, and the Elves still
+more so, for the chief glory of the Elves was that being elfish got you to
+know people; and it was universally admitted that the Trolls ought never
+to be asked out, because they were trollish. King Oberon said that all
+that was a wicked prejudice, and that the Trolls ought to be asked out to
+dinner just as much as the Elves, in common justice. But his real reason
+was that he was bored by the perpetual elfishness of the Elves, and wanted
+to see the great ugly Trolls trying to behave like gentlemen for a change.
+So the Trolls came and tied their napkins round their necks, and ate such
+enormous quantities at dinner that King Oberon and his Queen almost died
+of laughing. The Elves were frightfully jealous, and so the war began. And
+while it was going on everybody in Earthland forgot more and more about
+Fairyland, until at last some people went so far as to say, like you, that
+Fairyland did not exist."
+
+"I did not say so," said the child, "I only asked."
+
+"But," I answered severely, "asking about such things is the beginning of
+doubting them. Anyhow, the fairies woke up one fine day about the time
+when your great-grandfather got married, to discover that they were not
+believed in, so they patched up their quarrel and they sent fairies to
+cast spells, and any amount of people began to be taken to Fairyland,
+until at last every one was forced to believe their evidence and to say
+that Fairyland existed."
+
+"Were they glad?" said the child.
+
+"Who?" said I; "the witnesses who were thus taken away and shown
+Fairyland?"
+
+"Yes," said the child. "They ought to have been glad."
+
+"Well, they _weren't_!" said I. "They were as sick as dogs. Not one
+of them but got into some dreadful trouble. From one his wife ran away,
+another starved to death, a third killed himself, a fourth was drowned
+and then burned upon the seashore, a fifth went mad (and so did several
+others), and as for poverty, and all the misfortunes that go with it, it
+simply rained upon the people who had been to Fairyland."
+
+"Why?" said the child, greatly troubled.
+
+"Ah!" said I, "that is what none of us know, but so it is, if they take
+you to Fairyland you are in for a very bad business indeed. There is only
+one way out of it."
+
+"And what is that?" said the child, interested.
+
+"Washing," said I, "washing in cold water. It has been proved over and
+over again."
+
+"Then," said the child happily, "they can take me to Fairyland as often as
+they like, and I shall not be the worse for it, for I am washed in cold
+water every day. What about the other way to Fairyland?"
+
+"Oh _that_," said I, "that, I think, is much the best way; I've gone
+there myself."
+
+"Have you really?" said the child, now intensely interested. "That
+_is_ good! How often have you been there?"
+
+"Oh I can't tell you," I said carelessly, "but at least eight times, and
+perhaps more, and the dodge is, as I told you, to lose your way; only the
+great trouble is that no one can lose his way on purpose. At first I used
+to think that one had to follow signs. There was an omnibus going down the
+King's Road which had 'To the World's End' painted on it. I got into this
+one day, and after I had gone some miles I said to the man, 'When do we
+get to the World's End?' 'Oh,' said he, 'you have passed it long ago,' and
+he rang a little bell to make me get out. So it was a fraud. Another time
+I saw another omnibus with the words, 'To the Monster,' and I got into
+that, but I heard that it was only a sort of joke, and that though the
+Monster was there all right, he was not in Fairyland. This omnibus went
+through a very uninteresting part of London, and Fairyland was nowhere in
+the neighbourhood. Another time in the country of France I came upon a
+printed placard which said: 'The excursion will pass by the Seven Winds,
+the Foolish Heath, and St. Martin under Heaven.' This time also I thought
+I had got it, but when I looked at the date on the placard I saw that the
+excursion had started several days before, so I missed it again. Another
+time up in Scotland I saw a signpost on which there was, 'To the King's
+House seven miles.' And some one had written underneath in pencil: 'And
+to the Dragon's Cave eleven.' But nothing came of it. It was a false
+lane. After that I gave up believing that one could get to Fairyland by
+signposts or omnibuses, until one day, quite by mistake, I chanced on the
+dodge of losing one's way."
+
+"How is that done?" said the child.
+
+"That is what no one can tell you," said I. "If people knew how it was
+done everybody would do it, but the whole point of losing your way is that
+you do it by mistake. You must be quite certain that you have not lost
+your way or it is no good. You walk along, and you walk along, and you
+wonder how long it will be before you get to the town, and then instead of
+getting to the town at all, there you are in Fairyland."
+
+"How do you know that you are in Fairyland?" said the little child.
+
+"It depends how far you get in," said I. "If you get in far enough trees
+and rocks change into men, rivers talk, and voices of people whom you
+cannot see tell you all sorts of things in loud and clear tones close to
+your ear. But if you only get a little way inside then you know that you
+are there by a sort of wonderment. The things ought to be like the things
+you see every day, but they are a little different, notably the trees.
+It happened to me once in a town called Lanchester. A part of that
+town (though no one would think of it to look at it) happens to be in
+Fairyland. And there I was received by three fairies, who gave me supper
+in an inn. And it happened to me once in the mountains and once it
+happened to me at sea. I lost my way and came upon a beach which was in
+Fairyland. Another time it happened to me between Goodwood and Upwaltham
+in Sussex."
+
+At this moment the child's nurse came in to take it away, so she came to
+the point:
+
+"How did you know you were in Fairyland?' she said doubtfully." Perhaps
+you are making all this up."
+
+"Nonsense!" I said reprovingly, "the only people who make things up are
+little children, for they always tell lies. Grown-up people never tell
+lies. Let me tell you that one always knows when one has been in Fairyland
+by the feeling afterwards, and because it is impossible to find it again."
+
+The child said, "Very well, I will believe you," but I could see from the
+expression of her eyes that she was not wholly convinced, and that in the
+bottom of her heart she does not believe there is any such place. She
+will, however, if she can hang on another forty years, and then I shall
+have my revenge.
+
+
+
+
+THE PORTRAIT OF A CHILD
+
+
+In a garden which must, I think, lie somewhat apart and enclosed in one
+of the valleys of central England, you came across the English grass in
+summer beneath the shade of a tree; you were running, but your arms were
+stretched before you in a sort of dance and balance as though you rather
+belonged to the air and to the growing things about you and above you than
+to the earth over which you passed; and you were not three years old.
+
+As, in jest, this charming vision was recorded by a camera which some
+guest had with him, a happy accident (designed, for all we know, by
+whatever powers arrange such things, an accident of the instrument or of
+the plate upon which your small, happy, advancing figure was recorded) so
+chanced that your figure, when the picture was printed, shone all around
+with light.
+
+I cannot, as I look at it now before me and as I write these words,
+express, however much I may seek for expression, how great a meaning
+underlies that accident nor how full of fate and of reason and of
+suggested truth that aureole grows as I gaze. Your innocence is beatified
+by it, and takes on with majesty the glory which lies behind all
+innocence, but which our eyes can never see. Your happiness seems in that
+mist of light to be removed and permanent; the common world in which you
+are moving passes, through this trick of the lens, into a stronger world
+more apt for such a sight, and one in which I am half persuaded (as I
+still look upon the picture) blessedness is not a rare adventure, but
+something native and secure.
+
+Little child, the trick which the camera has played means more and more as
+I still watch your picture, for there is present in that light not only
+blessedness, but holiness as well. The lightness of your movement and of
+your poise (as though you were blown like a blossom along the tops of the
+grass) is shone through, and your face, especially its ready and wondering
+laughter, is inspired, as though the Light had filled it from within;
+so that, looking thus, I look not on, but through. I say that in this
+portrait which I treasure there is not only blessedness, but holiness as
+well--holiness which is the cause of blessedness and which contains it,
+and by which secretly all this world is sustained.
+
+Now there is a third thing in your portrait, little child. That accident
+of light, light all about you and shining through your face, is not only
+blessed nor only holy, but it is also sacred, and with that thought there
+returns to me as I look what always should return to man if he is to find
+any stuff or profit in his consideration of divine things. In blessedness
+there is joy for which here we are not made, so that we catch it only
+in glimpses or in adumbrations. And in holiness, when we perceive it we
+perceive something far off; it is that from which we came and to which
+we should return; yet holiness is not a human thing. But things sacred--
+things devoted to a purpose, things about which there lies an awful
+necessity of sacrifice, things devoted and necessarily suffering some
+doom--these are certainly of this world; that, indeed, all men know well
+at last, and find it part of the business through which they needs must
+pass. Human memories, since they are only memories; human attachments,
+since they are offered up and end; great human fears and hopeless human
+longings--these are sacred things attached to a victim and to a sacrifice;
+and in this picture of yours, with the light so glorifying you all round,
+no one can doubt who sees it but that the sacredness of human life will be
+yours also; that is, you must learn how it is offered up to some end and
+what a sacrifice is there.
+
+I could wish, as I consider this, that the camera had played no such
+trick, and had not revealed in that haze of awful meaning all that lies
+beyond the nature of you, child. But it is a truth which is so revealed;
+and we may not, upon a penalty more terrible than death, neglect any
+ultimate truth concerning our mortal way.
+
+Your feet, which now do not seem to press upon the lawn across which they
+run, have to go more miles than you can dream of, through more places than
+you could bear to hear, and they must be directed to a goal which will not
+in your very young delight be mentioned before you, or of which, if it is
+mentioned, you will not understand by name; and your little hands which
+you bear before you with the little gesture of flying things, will grasp
+most tightly that which can least remain and will attempt to fashion what
+can never be completed, and will caress that which will not respond to
+the caress. Your eyes, which are now so principally filled with innocence
+that that bright quality drowns all the rest, will look upon so much of
+deadly suffering and of misuse in men, that they will very early change
+themselves in kind; and all your face, which now vaguely remembers nothing
+but the early vision from which childhood proceeds, will grow drawn and
+self-guarded, and will suffer some agonies, a few despairs, innumerable
+fatigues, until it has become the face of a woman grown. Nor will this
+sacred doom about you, which is that of all mankind, cease or grow less
+or be mitigated in any way; it will increase as surely and as steadily
+as increase the number of the years, until at last you will lay down the
+daylight and the knowledge of day-lit things as gladly as now you wake
+from sleep to see them.
+
+For you are sacred, and all those elders about you, whose solemn demeanour
+now and then startles you into a pretty perplexity which soon calls back
+their smiles, have hearts only quite different from your quite careless
+heart, because they have known the things to which, in the manner of
+victims, they are consecrated.
+
+All that by which we painfully may earn rectitude and a proper balance in
+the conduct of our short affairs I must believe that you will practise;
+and I must believe, as I look here into your face, seeing your confident
+advance (as though you were flying out from your babyhood into young life
+without any fear), that the virtues which now surround you in a crowd and
+make a sort of court for you and are your angels every way, will go along
+with you and will stand by you to the end. Even so, and the more so, you
+will find (if you read this some years hence) how truly it is written. By
+contrast with your demeanour, with your immortal hopes, and with your
+pious efforts the world about you will seem darker and less secure with
+every passing harvest, and in proportion as you remember the childhood
+which has led me so to write of you, in proportion as you remember
+gladness and innocence with its completed joy, in that proportion will
+you find at least a breaking burden in the weight of this world.
+
+Now you may say to me, little child (not now, but later on), to what
+purpose is all this complaint, and why should you tell me these things?
+
+It is because in the portrait before me the holiness, the blessedness, and
+therefore the sacredness are apparent that I am writing as I do. For you
+must know that there is a false way out and a seeming relief for the rack
+of human affairs, and that this way is taken by many. Since you are sacred
+do not take it, but bear the burden. It is the character of whatever is
+sacred that it does not take that way; but, like a true victim, remains
+to the end, ready to complete the sacrifice.
+
+The way out is to forget that one is sacred, and this men and women do in
+many ways. The most of them by way of treason. They betray. They break at
+first uneasily, later easily, and at last unconsciously, the word which
+each of us has passed before He was born in Paradise. All men and all
+women are conscious of that word, for though their lips cannot frame it
+here, and though the terms of the pledge are forgotten, the memory of its
+obligation fills the mind. But there comes a day, and that soon in the
+lives of many, when to break it once is to be much refreshed and to seem
+to drop the burden; and in the second and the third time it is done, and
+the fourth it is done more easily--until at last there is no more need
+for a man or a woman to break that pledged word again and once again; it
+is broken for good and for all. This is one most common way in which the
+sacred quality is lost: the way of treason. Round about such as choose
+this kind of relief grows a habit and an air of treason. They betray all
+things at last, and even common friendship is at last no longer theirs.
+The end of this false issue is despair.
+
+Another way is to take refuge from ourselves in pleasures, and this is
+easily done, not by the worse, but by the better sort; for there are some,
+some few, who would never betray nor break their ancient word, but who,
+seeing no meaning in a sacrifice nor in a burden, escape from it through
+pleasure as through a drug, and this pleasure they find in all manner of
+things, and always that spirit near them which would destroy their sacred
+mark, persuades them that they are right, and that in such pursuits the
+sacrifice is evaded. So some will steep themselves in rhyme, some in
+landscapes, some in pictures, some in the watching of the complexity and
+change of things, some in music, some in action, some in mere ease. It
+seems as though the men and women who would thus forget their sacredness
+are better loved and better warned than those who take the other path, for
+they never forget certain gracious things which should be proper to the
+mind, nor do they lose their friends. But that they have taken a wrong
+path you may easily perceive from this sign: that these pleasures, like
+any other drug, do not feed or satisfy, but must be increased with every
+dose, and even so soon pall and are continued not because they are
+pleasures any longer, but because, dull though they have become, without
+them there is active pain.
+
+Take neither the one path nor the other, but retain, I beseech you, when
+the time comes, that quality of sacredness of which I speak, for there
+is no alternative. Some trouble fell upon our race, and all of us must
+take upon ourselves the business and the burden. If you will attempt any
+way out at all it will but lead you to some worse thing. We have not all
+choices before us, but only one of very few, and each of those few choices
+is mortal, and all but one is evil.
+
+You should remember this also, dear little child, that at the beginning--
+oh, only at the very beginning of life--even your reason that God gave
+may lead you wrong. For with those memories strong upon you of perfect
+will, of clear intelligence, and of harmonious beauty all about, you will
+believe the world in which you stand to be the world from which you have
+come and to which you are also destined. You have but to treat this world
+for but a very little while as though it were the thing you think it to
+find it is not so.
+
+Do you know that that which smells most strongly in this life of
+immortality, and which a poet has called "the ultimate outpost of
+eternity," is insecure and perishes? I mean the passionate affection of
+early youth. If that does not remain, what then do you think can remain?
+I tell you that nothing which you take to be permanent round about you
+when you are very young is more than the symbol or clothes of permanence.
+Another poet has written, speaking of the chalk hills:--
+
+   Only a little while remain
+   The Downs in their solemnity.
+
+Nor is this saying forced. Men and women cannot attach themselves even to
+the hills where they first played.
+
+Some men, wise but unillumined, and not conscious of that light which I
+here physically see shining all round and through you in the picture which
+is before my eyes as I write, have said that to die young and to end the
+business early was a great blessing. We do not know. But we do know that
+to die long after and to have gone through the business must be blessed,
+since blessedness and holiness and sacredness are bound together in one.
+
+But, of these three, be certain that sacredness is your chief business,
+blessedness after your first childhood you will never know, and holiness
+you may only see as men see distant mountains lifted beyond a plain; it
+cannot be your habitation. Sacredness, which is the mark of that purpose
+whose heir is blessedness, whose end is holiness, will be upon you until
+you die; maintain it, and let it be your chief concern, for though you
+neglect it, it will remain and avenge itself.
+
+All this I have seen in your picture as you go across the grass, and it
+was an accident of the camera that did it. If any one shall say these
+things do not attach to the portrait of a child, let him ask himself
+whether they do not attach to the portrait that might be drawn, did human
+skill suffice, of the life of a woman or a man which springs from the
+demeanour of childhood; or let him ask himself whether, if a face in old
+age and that same face in childhood were equally and as by a revelation
+set down each in its full truth, and the growth of the one into the other
+were interpreted by a profound intelligence, what I have said would not
+be true of all that little passage of ours through the daylight.
+
+
+
+
+ON EXPERIENCE
+
+
+There are three phases in the life of man, so far as his thoughts upon
+his surroundings are concerned.
+
+The first of these is the phase of youth, in which he takes certain
+matured things for granted, and whether he realizes his illusion or no,
+believes them to be eternal. This phase ends sharply with every man, by
+the action of one blow. Some essence is dissolved, some binding cordage
+snaps, or some one dies.
+
+I say no matter how clearly the reason of a man tells him that all about
+him is changeable, and that perfect and matured things and characters upon
+whose perfection and maturity he reposes for his peace must disappear, his
+attitude in youth towards those things is one of a complete security as
+towards things eternal. For the young man, convinced as he is that his
+youth and he himself are there for ever, sees in one lasting framework his
+father's garden, his mother's face, the landscape from his windows, his
+friendships, and even his life; the very details of food, of clothing,
+and of lesser custom, all these are fixed for him. Fixed also are the
+mature and perfect things. This aged friend, in whose excellent humour
+and universal science he takes so continual a delight, is there for ever.
+That considered judgment of mankind upon such and such a troubling matter,
+of sex, of property, or of political right, is anchored or rooted in
+eternity. There comes a day when by some one experience he is startled out
+of that morning dream. It is not the first death, perhaps, that strikes
+him, nor the first loss--no, not even, perhaps, the first discovery that
+human affection also passes (though that should be for every man the
+deepest lesson of all). What wakes him to the reality which is for some
+dreadful, for others august, and for the faithful divine, is always an
+accident. One death, one change, one loss, among so many, unseals his
+judgment, and he sees thenceforward, nay, often from one particular moment
+upon which he can put his finger, the doom which lies upon all things
+whatsoever that live by a material change.
+
+The second phase which he next enters is for a thoughtful man in a
+sceptical and corrupted age the crucial phase, whereby will be determined,
+not indeed the fate of his soul, but the justice, and therefore the
+advantage to others, of his philosophy.
+
+He has done with all illusions of permanence and repose. Henceforward he
+sees for himself a definite end, and the road which used to lead over
+the hills and to be lost beyond in the haze of summer plains now leads
+directly to a visible place; that place is a cavern in the mountain side,
+dark and without issue. He must die. Henceforward he expects the passing
+of all to which he is attached, and he is braced against loss by something
+lent to him which is to despair as an angel is to a demon; something in
+the same category of emotion, but just and fortifying, instead of void
+and vain and tempting and without an end. A man sees in this second phase
+of his experience that he must lose. Oh, he does not lose in a gamble!
+It is not a question of winning a stake or forfeiting it, as the vulgar
+falsehood of commercial analogy would try to make our time believe. He
+knows henceforward that there is no success, no final attainment of
+desire, because there is no fixity in any material thing. As he sits at
+table with the wisest and keenest of his time, especially with the old,
+hearing true stories of the great men who came before him, looking at
+well-painted pictures, admiring the proper printing of collected books,
+and praising the just balance of some classical verse or music which
+time has judged and made worthy, he so admires and enjoys with a full
+consciousness that these things are flowing past him. He cannot rely; he
+attempts no foothold. The equilibrium of his soul is only to be discovered
+in marching and continually marching. He now knows that he must go onward,
+he may not stand, for if he did he would fall. He must go forward and see
+the river of things run by. He must go forward--but to what goal?
+
+There is a third phase, in which (as the experience of twenty Christian
+centuries determines) that goal also is discovered, and for some who so
+discover it the experience of loss begins to possess a meaning.
+
+What this third phase is I confess I do not know, and as I have not felt
+it I cannot describe it, but when that third phase is used as I have
+suggested a character of wisdom enters into those so using it; a character
+of wisdom which is the nearest thing our dull time can show to inspiration
+and to prophecy.
+
+It is to be noted also that in this third phase of man's experience of
+doom those who are not wise are most unwise indeed; and that where the age
+of experience has not produced this sort of clear maturity in the spirit,
+then it produces either despair or folly, or an exaggerated shirking of
+reality, which, being a falsehood, is wickeder than despair, and far more
+inhuman than mere foolishness. Thus those who in the third phase of which
+I speak have not attained the wisdom which I here recognize will often
+sink into a passion of avarice, accumulating wealth which they cannot
+conceivably enjoy; a stupidity so manifest that every age of satire has
+found it the most facile of commonplaces. Or, again, those who fail to
+find wisdom in that last phase will constantly pretend an unreal world,
+making plans for a future that cannot be there. So did a man eleven
+years ago in the neighbourhood of Regent Street, for this man, being
+eighty-seven years of age, wealthy, and wholly devoid of friends, or near
+kindred, took a flat, but he insisted that the lease should be one of not
+less than sixty years. In a hundred ways this last phase if it is degraded
+is most degraded; and, though it is not worst, it is most sterile when it
+falls to a mere regret for the past.
+
+Now it is here that the opposite, the wisdoms of old age appears; for the
+old, when they are wise, are able to point out to men and to women of
+middle age what these least suspect, and can provide them with a good
+medicine against the insecurity of the soul. The old in their wisdom can
+tell those just beneath them this: that though all things human pass, all
+bear their fruit. They can say: "You believe that such and such a woman,
+with her courtesy, her travel, her sharp edge of judgment, her large
+humanity, and her love of the comedy of the world, being dead can never be
+replaced. There are, growing up around you, characters quite insufficient,
+and to you, perhaps, contemptible, who will in their fruiting display all
+these things." There never was, nor has been, a time (say those who are
+acquainted with the great story of Europe) when Christendom has failed.
+Out of dead passages there has sprung up suddenly, and quite miraculously,
+whatever was thought to be lost. So it has been with our music, so with
+the splendour of our armies, so with the fabric of our temples, so with
+our deathless rhymes. The old, when they are wise, can do for men younger
+than they what history does for the reader; but they can do it far more
+poignantly, having expression in their eyes and the living tones of a
+voice. It is their business to console the world.
+
+
+
+
+ON IMMORTALITY
+
+
+Here and there, scattered rarely among men as men are now, you will
+find one man who does not pursue the same ends as his fellows; but in a
+peculiar manner leads his life as though his eyes were fixed upon some
+distant goal or his appetites subjected to some constant and individual
+influence.
+
+Such a man may be doing any one of many things. He may be a poet, and his
+occupation may be the writing of good verse, pleased at its sound and
+pleased as well by the reflection of the pleasure it will give to others.
+Or he may be devoted, and follow a creed, a single truth or a character
+which he loves, and whose influence and glory he makes it his business to
+propagate. Or he may be but a worker in some material, a carver in wood,
+or a manager of commercial affairs, or a governor and administrator of
+men, and yet so order his life that his work and his material are his
+object: not his gain in the end--not his appreciable and calculable gain
+at least--nor his immediate and ephemeral pleasures.
+
+Such men, if you will examine them, will prove intent upon one ultimate
+completion of their being which is also (whether they know it or not) a
+reward, and those who have carefully considered the matter and give it
+expression say that such men are out a-hunting for Immortality.
+
+Now what is that? There was a man, before the Normans came to England, who
+sailed from the highest Scandinavian mountains, I think, towards these
+shores, and landing, fought against men and was wounded so that he was
+certain to die. When they asked him why he had undertaken that adventure,
+he answered: "That my name might live between the lips of men."
+
+The young, the adventurous, the admired--how eagerly and how properly do
+they not crave for glory. Fame has about it a divine something as it were
+an echo of perfect worship and of perfect praise, which, though it is
+itself imperfect, may well deceive the young, the adventurous, and the
+admired. How great to think that things well done and the enlargement of
+others shall call down upon our names, even when all is lost but the mere
+names, a continuous and an increasing benediction. Nay, more than this:
+how great to think of the noise only of an achievement, and to be sure
+that the poem written, the carving concluded, or the battle won, the
+achievement of itself, though the name of the achiever be perished or
+unknown, shall awake those tremendous echoes.
+
+But wait a moment. What is that thing which so does and so desires? What
+end does _it_ find in glory? _It_ is not the receiver of the
+benefit; _it_ will not hear that large volume of recognition and of
+salute. Twist it how you will no end is here, nor in such a pursuit is the
+pursuer satisfied.
+
+It is true that men who love to create for themselves imaginary stuff, and
+to feed, their cravings, if they cannot with substance then with dreams,
+perpetually pretend a satisfaction in such acquirements which the years as
+they proceed tell them with increasing iteration that they do not feel.
+The young, the adventurous, the admired, may at first be deceived by such
+a glamour, and it is in the providential scheme of human affairs, and it
+is for the good of us all that the pleasing cheat should last while the
+good things are doing. Thus do substantial verse and noble sculpture and
+building whose stuff is lasting and whose beauty is almost imperishable,
+rise to the advantage of mankind--but oh! there is no lasting in the
+dream.
+
+There comes a day of truth inwardly but ineradicably perceived, when such
+things, such aspirations, are clearly known for what they are. Of all the
+affections that pass, of all those things which being made by a power
+itself perishable, must be unmade again, some may be less, others more
+lasting, but not one remains for ever.
+
+Nor is this all. What is it, I say, which did the thing and suffered the
+desire? Not the receiver, still less the work achieved, it was the man
+that so acted and so desired; and that part of him which was affected thus
+we call the Soul. Then, surely (one may reason) the soul has, apt to its
+own nature, a completion which is also a reward, and there is something
+before it which is not the symbol or the cheat of perfect praise, but
+is perfect praise; there is surely something before it which is not the
+symbol or the cheat of life, but life completed.
+
+Now stand at night beneath a clear heaven solemn and severe with stars,
+comprehend (as the great achievement of our race permits us now to do)
+what an emptiness and what a scale are there, and you will easily discover
+in that one glance, or you will feel at least the appalling thing which
+tempts men to deny their immortality.
+
+There is no man who has closely inquired upon this, and there is none
+who has troubled himself and admitted a reasonable anxiety upon it, who
+has not well retained the nature of despair. Those who approach their
+fellow-beings with assertion and with violence in such a matter, affirming
+their discovery, their conviction, or their acquired certitude, do an
+ill service to their kind. It is not thus that the last things should be
+approached nor the most tremendous problem which man is doomed to envisage
+be propounded and solved. Ah! the long business in this world! The way in
+which your deepest love goes up in nothingness and breaks away, and the
+way in which the strongest and the most continuous element of your dear
+self is dissipated and fails you in some moment; if I do not understand
+these things in a man nor comprehend how the turn of the years can obscure
+or obliterate a man's consciousness of what his end should be, then I act
+in brute ignorance, or what is much worse, in lack of charity.
+
+How should you not be persuaded, ephemeral intelligence? Does not every
+matter which you have held closely enough and long enough escape you and
+withdraw? Is not that doom true of things which were knit into us, and
+were of necessity, so to speak, prime parts of our being? Is it not true
+of the network and the structure which supports whatever we are, and
+without which we cannot imagine ourselves to be? We ourselves perish. Of
+that there is no doubt at all. One is here talking and alive. His friends
+are with him: on the time when they shall meet again he is utterly not
+there. The motionless flesh before his mourners is nothing. It is not a
+simulacrum, it is not an outline, it is not a recollection of the man, but
+rather something wholly gone useless. As for that voice, those meanings in
+the eyes, and that gesture of the hand, it has suddenly and entirely
+ceased to be.
+
+Then how shall we deny the dreadful conclusion (to which how many elder
+civilizations have not turned!) that we must seek in vain for any gift to
+the giver for any workers' wage, or, rather, to put it more justly, for
+a true end to the life we lead. Yet it is not so. The conclusion is more
+weighty by far that all things bear their fruit: that the comprehender and
+the master of so much, the very _mind_, suffers to no purpose and in
+one moment a tragic, final, and unworthy catastrophe agrees with nothing
+other that we know. It is not thus of the good things of the earth that
+turn kindly into the earth again. It cannot be thus with that which makes
+of all the earth a subject thing for contemplation and for description,
+for understanding, and, if it so choose--for sacrifice.
+
+Those of our race who have deliberately looked upon the scroll and found
+there nothing to read, who have lifted the curtain and found beyond it
+nothing to see, have faced their conclusions with a nobility which should
+determine us; for that nobility does prove, or, if it does not prove,
+compels us to proclaim, that the soul of man which breeds it has somewhere
+a lasting home. The conclusion is imperative.
+
+Let not any one pretend in his faith that his faith is immediately evident
+and everywhere acceptable. There is in all who pretend to judgment a sense
+of the doubt that lies between the one conviction and the other, and all
+acknowledge that the scales swing normally upon the beam for normal men.
+But they swing--and one is the heavier.
+
+The poets, who are our interpreters, know well and can set forth the
+contrast between such intimations and such despair.
+
+   The long descent of wasted days
+   To these at last have led me down:
+   Remember that I filled with praise
+   The meaningless and doubtful ways
+   That lead to an eternal town.
+
+Moreover, since we have spoken of the night it is only reasonable to
+consider the alternate dawn. The quality of light, its merry action on the
+mind, the daylit sky under whose benediction we repose and in which our
+kind has always seen the picture of its final place: are these then
+visions and deceits?
+
+
+
+
+ON SACRAMENTAL THINGS
+
+
+It is good for a man's soul to sit down in the silence by himself and to
+think of those things which happen by some accident to be in communion
+with the whole world. If he has not the faculty of remembering these
+things in their order and of calling them up one after another in his
+mind, then let him write them down as they come to him upon a piece of
+paper. They will comfort him; they will prove a sort of solace against
+the expectation of the end. To consider such things is a sacramental
+occupation. And yet the more I think of them the less I can quite
+understand in what elements their power consists.
+
+A woman smiling at a little child, not knowing that others see her, and
+holding out her hands towards it, and in one of her hands flowers; an old
+man, lean and active, with an eager face, walking at dusk upon a warm
+and windy evening westward towards a clear sunset below dark and flying
+clouds; a group of soldiers, seen suddenly in manoeuvres, each man intent
+upon his business, all working at the wonderful trade, taking their places
+with exactitude and order and yet with elasticity; a deep, strong tide
+running back to the sea, going noiselessly and flat and black and smooth,
+and heavy with purpose under an old wall; the sea smell of a Channel
+seaport town; a ship coming up at one out of the whole sea when one is
+in a little boat and is waiting for her, coming up at one with her great
+sails merry and every one doing its work, with the life of the wind in
+her, and a balance, rhythm, and give in all that she does which marries
+her to the sea--whether it be a fore and aft rig and one sees only great
+lines of the white, or a square rig and one sees what is commonly and well
+called a leaning tower of canvas, or that primal rig, the triangular sail,
+that cuts through the airs of the world and clove a way for the first
+adventures, whatever its rig, a ship so approaching an awaiting boat from
+which we watch her is one of the things I mean.
+
+I would that the taste of my time permitted a lengthy list of such things:
+they are pleasant to remember! They do so nourish the mind! A glance
+of sudden comprehension mixed with mercy and humour from the face of a
+lover or a friend; the noise of wheels when the guns are going by; the
+clatter-clank-clank of the pieces and the shouted halt at the head of the
+column; the noise of many horses, the metallic but united and harmonious
+clamour of all those ironed hoofs, rapidly occupying the highway; chief
+and most persistent memory, a great hill when the morning strikes it and
+one sees it up before one round the turning of a rock after the long passes
+and despairs of the night.
+
+When a man has journeyed and journeyed through those hours in which there
+is no colour or shape, all along the little hours that were made for sleep
+and when, therefore, the waking soul is bewildered or despairs, the morning
+is always a resurrection--but especially when it reveals a height in the
+sky.
+
+This last picture I would particularly cherish, so great a consolation is
+it, and so permanent a grace does it lend later to the burdened mind of a
+man.
+
+For when a man looks back upon his many journeys--so many rivers crossed,
+and more than one of them forded in peril; so many swinging mountain
+roads, so many difficult steeps and such long wastes of plains--of all the
+pictures that impress themselves by the art or kindness of whatever god
+presides over the success of journeys, no picture more remains than that
+picture of a great hill when the day first strikes it after the long
+burden of the night.
+
+Whatever reasons a man may have for occupying the darkness with his travel
+and his weariness, those reasons must be out of the ordinary and must go
+with some bad strain upon the mind. Perhaps one undertook the march from
+an evil necessity under the coercion of other men, or perhaps in terror,
+hoping that the darkness might hide one, or perhaps for cool, dreading the
+unnatural heat of noon in a desert land; perhaps haste, which is in itself
+so wearying a thing, compelled one, or perhaps anxiety. Or perhaps, most
+dreadful of all, one hurried through the night afoot because one feared
+what otherwise the night would bring, a night empty of sleep and a night
+whose dreams were waking dreams and evil.
+
+But whatever prompts the adventure or the necessity, when the long burden
+has been borne, and when the turn of the hours has come; when the stars
+have grown paler; when colour creeps back greyly and uncertainly to the
+earth, first into the greens of the high pastures, then here and there
+upon a rock or a pool with reeds, while all the air, still cold, is full
+of the scent of morning; while one notices the imperceptible disappearance
+of the severities of Heaven until at last only the morning star hangs
+splendid; when in the end of that miracle the landscape is fully revealed,
+and one finds into what country one has come; then a great hill before
+one, losing the forests upwards into rock and steep meadow upon its sides,
+and towering at last into the peaks and crests of the inaccessible places,
+gives a soul to the new land.... The sun, in a single moment and with the
+immediate summons of a trumpet-call, strikes the spear-head of the high
+places, and at once the valley, though still in shadow, is transfigured,
+and with the daylight all manner of things have come back to the world.
+
+Hope is the word which gathers the origins of those things together, and
+hope is the seed of what they mean, but that new light and its new quality
+is more than hope. Livelihood is come back with the sunrise, and the fixed
+certitude of the soul; number and measure and comprehension have returned,
+and a just appreciation of all reality is the gift of the new day. Glory
+(which, if men would only know it, lies behind all true certitude)
+illumines and enlivens the seen world, and the living light makes of the
+true things now revealed something more than truth absolute; they appear
+as truth acting and creative.
+
+This first shaft of the sun is to that hill and valley what a word is to a
+thought. It is to that hill and valley what verse is to the common story
+told; it is to that hill and valley what music is to verse. And there lies
+behind it, one is very sure, an infinite progress of such exaltations, so
+that one begins to understand, as the pure light shines and grows and as
+the limit of shadow descends the vast shoulder of the steep, what has been
+meant by those great phrases which still lead on, still comfort, and still
+make darkly wise, the uncomforted wondering of mankind. Such is the famous
+phrase: "Eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor can it enter into the heart
+of man what things God has prepared for those that serve Him."
+
+So much, then, is conveyed by a hill-top at sunrise when it comes upon the
+traveller or the soldier after the long march of a night, the bending of
+the shoulders, and the emptiness of the dark.
+
+Many other things put one into communion with the whole world.
+
+Who does not remember coming over a lifting road to a place where the
+ridge is topped, and where, upon the further side, a broad landscape,
+novel or endeared by memory (for either is a good thing), bursts upon the
+seized imagination as a wave from the open sea, swelling up an inland
+creek, breaks and bursts upon the rocks of the shore? There is a place
+where a man passes from the main valley of the Rhone over into the valley
+of the Isere, and where the Gresivandan so suddenly comes upon him. Two
+gates of limestone rock, high as the first shoulders of the mountains,
+lead into the valley which they guard; it is a province of itself, a level
+floor of thirty miles, nourished by one river, and walled in up to the
+clouds on either side.
+
+Or again, in the champagne country, moving between great blocks of wood
+in the Forest of Rheims and always going upward as the ride leads him, a
+man comes to a point whence he suddenly sees all that vast plain of the
+invasions stretching out to where, very far off against the horizon, two
+days away, twin summits mark the whole site sharply with a limit as a
+frame marks a picture or a punctuation a phrase.
+
+There is another place more dear to me, but which I doubt whether any
+other but a native of that place can know. After passing through the
+plough lands of an empty plateau, a traveller breaks through a little
+fringe of chestnut hedge and perceives at once before him the wealthiest
+and the most historical of European things, the chief of the great
+capitals of Christendom and the arena in which is now debated (and has
+been for how long!) the Faith, the chief problem of this world.
+
+Apart from landscape other things belong to this contemplation: Notes
+of music, and, stronger even than repeated and simple notes of music, a
+subtle scent and its association, a familiar printed page. Perhaps the
+test of these sacramental things is their power to revive the past.
+
+There is a story translated into the noblest of English writing by Dasent.
+It is to be found in his "Tales from the Norse." It is called the Story of
+the Master Maid.
+
+A man had found in his youth a woman on the Norwegian hills: this woman
+was faery, and there was a spell upon her. But he won her out of it in
+various ways, and they crossed the sea together, and he would bring her
+to his father's house, but his father was a King. As they went over-sea
+together alone, he said and swore to her that he would never forget how
+they had met and loved each other without warning, but by an act of God,
+upon the Dovrefjeld. Come near his father's house, the ordinary influences
+of the ordinary day touched him; he bade her enter a hut and wait a moment
+until he had warned his father of so strange a marriage; she, however,
+gazing into his eyes, and knowing how the divine may be transformed into
+the earthly, quite as surely as the earthly into the divine, makes him
+promise that he will not eat human food. He sits at his father's table,
+still steeped in her and in the seas. He forgets his vow and eats human
+food, and at once he forgets.
+
+Then follows much for which I have not space, but the woman in the hut by
+her magic causes herself to be at last sent for to the father's palace.
+The young man sees her, and is only slightly troubled as by a memory which
+he cannot grasp. They talk together as strangers; but looking out of the
+window by accident the King's son sees a bird and its mate; he points them
+out to the woman, and she says suddenly: "So was it with you and me high
+up upon the Dovrefjeld." Then he remembers all.
+
+Now that story is a symbol, and tells the truth. We see some one thing in
+this world, and suddenly it becomes particular and sacramental; a woman
+and a child, a man at evening, a troop of soldiers; we hear notes of
+music, we smell the smell that went with a passed time, or we discover
+after the long night a shaft of light upon the tops of the hills at
+morning: there is a resurrection, and we are refreshed and renewed.
+
+But why all these things are so neither I nor any other man can tell.
+
+
+
+
+IN PATRIA
+
+
+There is a certain valley, or rather profound cleft, through the living
+rock of certain savage mountains through which there roars and tumbles in
+its narrow trench the Segre, here but a few miles from its rising in the
+upland grass.
+
+This cleft is so disposed that the smooth limestone slabs of its western
+wall stand higher than the gloomy steps of cliff upon its eastern, and
+thus these western cliffs take the glare of the morning sunlight upon
+them, or the brilliance of the moon when she is full or waning in the
+first part of her course through the night.
+
+The only path by which men can go down that gorge clings to the eastern
+face of the abyss and is for ever plunged in shadow. Down this path I went
+very late upon a summer night, close upon midnight, and the moon just past
+the full. The air was exceedingly clear even for that high place, and the
+moon struck upon the limestone of the sheer opposing cliffs in a manner
+neither natural nor pleasing, but suggesting horror, and, as it were,
+something absolute, too simple for mankind.
+
+It was not cold, but there were no crickets at such a level in the
+mountains, nor any vegetation there except a brush here and there clinging
+between the rocks and finding a droughty rooting in their fissures.
+Though the map did not include this gorge, I could guess that it would be
+impossible for me, save by following that dreadful path all night, to find
+a village, and therefore I peered about in the dense shadow as I went for
+one of those overhanging rocks which are so common in that region, and
+soon I found one. It was a refuge better than most that I had known during
+a lonely travel of three days, for the whole bank was hollowed in, and
+there was a distinct, if shallow, cave bordering the path. Into this,
+therefore, I went and laid down, wrapping myself round in a blanket I
+had brought from the plains beyond the mountains, and, with my loaf and
+haversack and a wine-skin that I carried for a pillow, I was very soon
+asleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I woke, which I did with suddenness, it seemed to me to have turned
+uncommonly cold, and when I stepped out from my blanket (for I was broad
+awake) the cold struck me still more nearly, and was not natural in such a
+place. But I knew how a mist will gather suddenly upon these hills, and I
+went out and stood upon the path to see what weather the hour had brought
+me. The sky, the narrow strip of sky above the gorge, was filled with
+scud flying so low that now and then bulges or trails of it would strike
+against that western cliff of limestone and wreath down it, and lift and
+disappear, but fast as the scud was moving there was no noise of wind. I
+seemed not to have slept long, for the moon was still riding in heaven,
+though her light now came in rapid waxing and waning between the shreds of
+the clouds. Beneath me a little angrier than before (so that I thought to
+myself, "Up in the hills it has been raining") roared the Segre.
+
+As I stood thus irresolute and quite awakened from sleep, I saw to my
+right the figure of a little man who beckoned. No fear took me as I saw
+him, but a good deal of wonder, for he was oddly shaped, and in the
+darkness of that pathway I could not see his face. But in his presence
+by some accident of the mind many things changed their significance: the
+gorge became personal to me, the river a voice, the fitful moonlight a
+warning, and it seemed as though some safety was to be sought, or some
+certitude, upwards, whence I had come, and I felt oddly as though the
+little figure were a guide.
+
+He was so short as I watched him that I thought him almost a dwarf, though
+I have seen men as small guiding the mules over the breaches in the ridge
+of the hills. He was hunchback, or the great pack he was carrying made him
+seem so. His thin legs were long for his body, and he walked too rapidly,
+with bent knees; his right hand he leant upon a great sapling; upon his
+head was a very wide hat, the stuff of which I could not see in the
+darkness. Now and again he would turn and beckon me, and he always went
+on a little way before. As for me, partly because he beckoned, but more
+because I felt prescient of a goal, I followed him.
+
+No mountain path seems the same when you go up it and when you go down it.
+This it was which rendered unfamiliar to me the shapes of the rocks and
+the turnings of the gorge as I hurried, behind my companion. With every
+passing moment, moreover, the light grew less secure, the scud thickened,
+and as we rose towards the lower level of those clouds the mass of them
+grew more even, until at last the path and some few yards of the emptiness
+which sank away to our left was all one could discern. The mist was full
+of a diffused moonlight, but it was dense. I wondered when we should
+strike out of the gorge and begin to find the upland grasses that lead
+toward the highest summits of those hills, for thither I was sure were we
+bound.
+
+Soon I began to recognize that easier trend in the rock wall, those
+increasing and flattened gullies which mark the higher slope. Here and
+there an unmelted patch of snow appeared, grass could be seen, and at last
+we were upon the roll of the high land where it runs up steeply to the
+ridge of the chain. Moss and the sponging of moisture in the turf were
+beneath our feet, the path disappeared, and our climb got steeper and
+steeper; and still the little man went on before, pressing eagerly and
+breasting the hill. I neither felt fatigue nor noticed that I did not feel
+it. The extreme angle of the slope suited my mood, nor was I conscious of
+its danger, though its fantastic steepness exhilarated me because it was
+so novel to be trying such things at night in such a weather. The moon,
+I think, must by this time have been near its sinking, for the mist grew
+full of darkness round about us, and at last it was altogether deep night.
+I could see my companion only as a blur of difference in the darkness, but
+even as this change came I felt the steepness relax beneath my climbing
+feet, the round level of the ridge was come, and soon again we were
+hurrying across it until there came, in a hundred yards or so, a moment in
+which my companion halted, as men who know the mountains halt when they
+reach an edge below which they know the land to break away.
+
+He was waiting, and I waited with him: we had not long so to stand.
+
+The mist which so often lifts as one passes the crest of the hills lifted
+for us also, and, below, it was broad day.
+
+Ten thousand feet below, at the foot of forest cascading into forest,
+stretched out into an endless day, was the Weald. There were the places I
+had always known, but not as I had known them: they were in another air.
+There was the ridge, and the river valley far off to the eastward, and
+Pasham Pines, Amberley wild brooks, and Petworth the little town, and I
+saw the Rough clearly, and the hills out beyond the county, and beyond
+them farther plains, and all the fields and all the houses of the men I
+knew. Only it was much larger, and it was more intimate, and it was
+farther away, and it was certainly divine.
+
+A broad road such as we have not here and such as they have not in those
+hills, a road for armies, sank back and forth in great gradients down to
+the plain. These and the forests were foreign; the Weald below, so many
+thousand feet below, was not foreign but transformed. The dwarf went down
+that road. I did not follow him. I saw him clearly now. His curious little
+coat of mountain stuff, his thin, bent legs walking rapidly, and the
+chestnut sapling by he walked, holding it in his hand by the middle. I
+could see the brown colour of it, and the shininess of the bark of it, and
+the ovals of white where the branchlings had been cut away. So I watched
+him as he went down and down the road. He never once looked back and he no
+longer beckoned me.
+
+In a moment, before a word could form in the mind, the mist had closed
+again and it was mortally cold; and with that cold there came to me an
+appalling knowledge that I was alone upon such a height and knew nothing
+of my way. The hand which I put to my shoulder where my blanket was found
+it wringing wet. The mist got greyer, my mind more confused as I struggled
+to remember, and then I woke and found I was still in the cave. All that
+business had been a dream, but so vivid that I carried it all through the
+day, and carry it still.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the very early morning; the gorge was full of mist, the Segre made
+a muffled roaring through such a bank of cloud; the damp of the mist was
+on everything. The stones in the pathway glistened, the air was raw and
+fresh, awaiting the rising of the sun. I took the path and went downward.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of On Something, by H. Belloc
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of On Something, by H. Belloc
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+Title: On Something
+
+Author: H. Belloc
+
+Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7354]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 20, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON SOMETHING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by William Flis, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             ON SOMETHING
+
+                                 BY
+
+                              H. BELLOC
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                                _To
+                              Somebody_
+
+
+
+         CONTENTS
+
+A PLEA FOR THE SIMPLER DRAMA
+
+ON A NOTEBOOK
+
+ON UNKNOWN PEOPLE
+
+ON A VAN TROMP
+
+HIS CHARACTER
+
+ON THRUPPENNY BITS
+
+ON THE HOTEL AT PALMA AND A PROPOSED GUIDE-BOOK
+
+THE DEATH OF WANDERING PETER
+
+THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+A NORFOLK MAN
+
+THE ODD PEOPLE
+
+LETTER OF ADVICE AND APOLOGY TO A YOUNG BURGLAR
+
+THE MONKEY QUESTION: AN APPEAL TO COMMON SENSE
+
+THE EMPIRE BUILDER
+
+CAEDWALLA
+
+A UNIT OF ENGLAND
+
+THE RELIC
+
+THE IRONMONGER
+
+A FORCE IN GAUL
+
+ON BRIDGES
+
+A BLUE BOOK
+
+PERIGEUX OF THE PERIGORD
+
+THE POSITION
+
+HOME
+
+THE WAY TO FAIRYLAND
+
+THE PORTRAIT OF A CHILD
+
+ON EXPERIENCE
+
+ON IMMORTALITY
+
+ON SACRAMENTAL THINGS
+
+IN PATRIA
+
+
+
+
+
+Of the various sketches in this book some appear for the first time,
+others are reprinted by courtesy of the Proprietors and Editors of _The
+Westminster Gazette_, _The Clarion_, _The English Review_, _The Morning
+Post_ and _The Manchester Guardian_, in which papers they appeared.
+
+
+
+
+
+A PLEA FOR THE SIMPLER DRAMA
+
+
+It is with the drama as with plastic art and many other things: the plain
+man feels that he has a right to put in his word, but he is rather afraid
+that the art is beyond him, and he is frightened by technicalities.
+
+After all, these things are made for the plain man; his applause, in the
+long run and duly tested by time, is the main reward of the dramatist as
+of the painter or the sculptor. But if he is sensible he knows that his
+immediate judgment will be crude. However, here goes.
+
+The plain man sees that the drama of his time has gradually passed from
+one phase to another of complexity in thought coupled with simplicity of
+incident, and it occurs to him that just one further step is needed to
+make something final in British art. We seem to be just on the threshold
+of something which would give Englishmen in the twentieth century
+something of the fullness that characterized the Elizabethans: but somehow
+or other our dramatists hesitate to cross that threshold. It cannot be
+that their powers are lacking: it can only be some timidity or self-torture
+which it is the business of the plain man to exorcise.
+
+If I may make a suggestion in this essay to the masters of the craft it is
+that the goal of the completely modern thing can best be reached by taking
+the very simplest themes of daily life--things within the experience of
+the ordinary citizen--and presenting them in the majestic traditional
+cadence of that peculiarly English medium, blank verse.
+
+As to the themes taken from the everyday life of middle-class men and
+women like ourselves, it is true that the lives of the wealthy afford
+more incident, and that there is a sort of glamour about them which it is
+difficult to resist. But with a sufficient subtlety the whole poignancy
+of the lives led by those who suffer neither the tragedies of the poor
+nor the exaltation of the rich can be exactly etched. The life of
+the professional middle-class, of the business man, the dentist, the
+money-lender, the publisher, the spiritual pastor, nay of the playwright
+himself, might be put upon the stage--and what a vital change would be
+here! Here would be a kind of literary drama of which the interest would
+lie in the struggle, the pain, the danger, and the triumph which we all so
+intimately know, and next in the satisfaction (which we now do not have)
+of the mimetic sense--the satisfaction of seeing a mirror held up to a
+whole audience composed of the very class represented upon the stage.
+
+I have seen men of wealth and position absorbed in plays concerning
+gambling, cruelty, cheating, drunkenness, and other sports, and so
+absorbed chiefly because they saw _themselves_ depicted upon the
+stage; and I ask, Would not my fellows and myself largely remunerate a
+similar opportunity? For though the rich go repeatedly to the play, yet
+the middle-class are so much more numerous that the difference is amply
+compensated.
+
+I think we may take it, then, that an experiment in the depicting of
+professional life would, even from the financial standpoint, be workable;
+and I would even go so far as to suggest that a play could be written in
+which there did not appear one single lord, general, Member of Parliament,
+baronet, professional beauty, usurer (upon a large scale at least) or
+Cabinet Minister.
+
+The thing is possible: and I can modestly say that in the little effort
+appended as an example to these lines it has been done successfully; but
+here must be mentioned the second point in my thesis--I could never have
+achieved what I have here achieved in dramatic art had I not harked back
+to the great tradition of the English heroic decasyllable such as our
+Shakespeare has handled with so felicitous an effect.
+
+The play--which I have called "The Crisis," and which I design to be
+the model of the school founded by these present advices--is specially
+designed for acting with the sumptuous accessories at the disposal of
+a great manager, such as Mr. (now Sir Henry) Beerbohm Tree, or for the
+narrower circumstances of the suburban drawing-room.
+
+There is perhaps but one character which needs any long rehearsal, that
+of the dog Fido, and luckily this is one which can easily be supplied by
+mechanical means, as by the use of a toy dog of sufficient size which
+barks upon the pressure of a pneumatic attachment.
+
+In connexion with this character I would have the student note that I
+have introduced into the dog's part just before the curtain a whole line
+of _dactyls_. I hope the hint will not be wasted. Such exceptions
+relieve the monotony of our English _trochees_. But, saving in this
+instance, I have confined myself throughout to the example of William
+Shakespeare, surely the best master for those who, as I fondly hope, will
+follow me in the regeneration of the British Stage.
+
+
+
+
+THE CRISIS
+
+PLACE: _The Study at the Vicarage_. TIME 9.15 _p.m._
+
+
+DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
+
+THE REV. ARCHIBALD HAVERTON: The Vicar.
+
+MRS. HAVERTON: His Wife.
+
+MISS GROSVENOR: A Governess.
+
+MATILDA: A Maid.
+
+FIDO: A Dog.
+
+HERMIONE COBLEY: Daughter of a cottager who takes in washing.
+
+MISS HARVEY: A guest, cousin to Mrs. Haverton, a Unitarian.
+
+(_The_ REV. ARCHIBALD HAVERTON _is reading the "Standard" by a lamp
+  with a green shade_. MRS. HAVERTON _is hemming a towel_. FIDO
+  _is asleep on the rug. On the walls are three engravings from Landseer,
+  a portrait of Her late Majesty Queen Victoria, a bookcase with books in
+  it, and a looking-glass_.)
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON: My dear--I hope I do not interrupt you--
+Helen has given notice.
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_looking up suddenly_).
+                                        Given notice?
+Who? Helen? Given notice? Bless my soul!
+  (_A pause_.)
+I never thought that she would give us notice.
+  (_Ponders and frowns._)
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON: Well, but she has, and now the question is,
+What shall we do to find another cook?
+Servants are very difficult to get. (_Sighs._)
+Especially to come into the country
+To such a place as this. (_Sighs._) No wonder, either!
+Oh! Mercy! When one comes to think of it,
+One cannot blame them. (_Sighs._) Heaven only knows
+I try to do my duty! (_Sighs profoundly._)
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_uneasily_): Well, my dear,
+I cannot _make_ preferment.
+
+(_Front door-bell rings._)
+
+  FIDO:                               Bow! wow! wow!
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_patting him to soothe him_):
+    There, Fido, there!
+
+  FIDO:                               Wow! wow!
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON:                   Good dog, there!
+
+  FIDO:                                               Wow,
+    Wow, wow!
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_very nervous_): There!
+
+  FIDO:                                   Wow! wow!
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_in an agony_):  Good dog!
+
+  FIDO:                              Bow! wow! wow!
+    Wow, wow! Wow!! WOW!!!
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_very excited_): Oh, Lord, he'll
+    wake the children!
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_exploding_): How often have
+    I told you, Dorothy,
+Not to exclaim "Good Lord!"... Apart from manners--
+Which have their own importance--blasphemy
+(And I regard the phrase as blasphemous)
+Cannot--
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_uneasily_): Oh, very well!...
+    Oh, very well!
+      (_Exploding in her turn_.)
+Upon my soul, you are intolerable!
+      (_She jumps up and makes for the door. Before she gets to
+        it there is a knock and_ MATILDA _enters_.)
+
+  MATILDA: Please, m'm, it's only Mrs. Cobley's daughter
+To say the washing shall be sent to-morrow,
+And would you check the list again and see,
+Because she thinks she never had two collars
+Of what you sent, but only five, because
+You marked it seven; and Mrs. Cobley says
+There must be some mistake.
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_pompously_): I will attend to it.
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_whispering angrily_): How can
+    you, Archibald! You haven't got
+The ghost of an idea about the washing!
+Sit down. (_He does so_.) (_To Matilda_) Send the
+    Girl in here.
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON _sits down in a fume_.
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON: I think....
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_snapping_): I don't care what you think!
+      (_Groans_.)   Oh, dear!
+I'm nearly off my head!
+
+      _Enter_ MISS COBLEY. (_She bobs_.)
+
+                                Good evening, m'm.
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_by way of reply_):
+Now, then! What's all this fuss about the washing?
+
+  MISS COBLEY: Please, m'm, the seven collars, what you sent--
+I mean the seven what was marked--was wrong,
+And mother says as you'd have had the washing
+Only there weren't but five, and would you mind....
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_sharply_): I cannot understand a word you say.
+Go back and tell your mother there were _seven_.
+And if she sends home _five_ she pays for _two_.
+So there!  (_Snorts_.)
+
+  MISS COBLEY (_sobbing_): I'm sure I....
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_savagely_): Don't stand snuffling there!
+Go back and tell your mother what I say....
+Impudent hussy!...
+
+      (_Exit_ MISS COBLEY _sobbing. A pause._)
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_with assumed authority_): To return to Helen.
+Tell me concisely and without complaints,
+Why did she give you notice?
+
+      (_A hand-bell rings in the passage_.)
+
+  FIDO:                             Bow-wow-wow!
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_giving him a smart kick_): Shurrup!
+
+  FIDO (_howling_). Pen-an'-ink! Pen-an'-ink
+                            Pen-an'-ink! Pen-an'-ink!
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_controlling himself, as well as he can, goes to
+    the door and calls into the passage_): Miss Grosvenor!
+(_Louder_) ... Miss Grosvenor!... Was that the bell for prayers?
+Was that the bell for prayers?... (_Louder_) Miss Grosvenor.
+(_Louder_) Miss Gros-ve-nor! (_Tapping with his foot_.)
+    Oh!...
+
+  MISS GROSVENOR (_sweetly and, far off_): Is that Mr. Haverton?
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON: Yes! yes! yes! yes!...
+Was that the bell for prayers?
+
+  MISS GROSVENOR (_again_): Yes? Is that Mr. Haverton? Oh! Yes!
+I think it is.... I'll see--I'll ask Matilda.
+
+      (_A pause, during which the_ REV. A. HAVERTON
+        _is in a qualm_.)
+
+  MISS GROSVENOR (_rustling back_): Matilda says it
+    _is_ the bell for prayers.
+
+      (_They all come filing into the study and arranging the chairs.
+        As they enter_ MISS HARVEY, _the guest, treads heavily on
+        MATILDA'S foot._)
+
+  MISS HARVEY: Matilda? Was that you? I _beg_ your pardon.
+
+  MATILDA (_limping_): Granted, I'm sure, miss!
+
+  MRS. HAVERTON (_whispering to the_ REV. A. HAVERTON): Do not read
+    the Creed!
+Miss Harvey is a Unitarian.
+I should suggest some simple form of prayer,
+Some heartfelt word of charity and peace
+Common to every Christian.
+
+  REV. A. HAVERTON (_in a deep voice_): Let us pray.
+
+                         _Curtain._
+
+
+
+
+ON A NOTEBOOK
+
+
+A dear friend of mine (John Abdullah Capricorn, to give him his full
+name) was commandeered by a publisher last year to write a book for £10.
+The work was far advanced when an editor offered him £15 and his expenses
+to visit the more desperate parts of the Sahara Desert, to which spots he
+at once proceeded upon a roving commission. Whether he will return or no
+is now doubtful, though in March we had the best hopes. With the month of
+May life becomes hard for Europeans south of the Atlas, and when my poor
+dear friend was last heard of he was chancing his popularity with a tribe
+of Touaregs about two hundred miles south of Touggourt.
+
+Under these circumstances I was asked to look through his notebook and see
+what could be done; and I confess to a pleased surprise.... It would have
+been a very entertaining book had it been published. It will be a very
+entertaining book if it is published.
+
+Capricorn seems to have prepared a hotchpotch of information of human
+follies, of contrasts, and of blunt stupidities of which he intended
+to make a very entertaining series of pages. I have not his talent for
+bringing such things together, but it may amuse the reader if I merely
+put in their order one or two of the notes which most struck me.
+
+I find first, cut out of a newspaper and pasted into the book (many of
+his notes are in this form), the following really jovial paragraph:
+
+"Archdeacon Blunderbuss (Blunderbuss is not the real name; I suppress
+that lest Capricorn's widow should lose her two or three pounds, in case
+the poor fellow has really been eaten). Archdeacon Blunderbuss was more
+distinguished as a scholar than as a Divine. He was a very poor preacher
+and never managed to identify himself with any party. Nevertheless, in
+1895 the Prime Minister appointed him to a stall in Shoreham Cathedral as
+a recognition of his great learning and good work at Durham. Two years
+later the rectory of St. Vacuums becoming vacant and it being within the
+gift of Archdeacon Blunderbuss, he excited general amazement and much
+scandal by presenting himself to the living."
+
+There the paragraph ends. It came in an ordinary society paper. It bore
+no marks of ill-will. It came in the midst of a column of the usual
+silly adulation of everybody and everything; how it got there is of no
+importance. There it stood and the keen eye of Capricorn noted it and
+treasured it for years.
+
+I will make no comment upon this paragraph. It may be read slowly or
+quickly, according to the taste of the reader; it is equally delicious
+either way.
+
+The next excerpt I find in the notebook is as follows:
+
+"More than 15,000,000 visits are paid annually to London pawnbrokers.
+
+"Jupiter is 1387 times as big as the earth, but only 300 times as heavy.
+
+"The world's coal mines yield 400,000,000 tons of coal a year.
+
+"The value of the pictures in the National Gallery is about £1,250,000."
+
+This tickled Capricorn--I don't know why. Perhaps he thought the style
+disjointed or perhaps he had got it into his head that when this
+information had been absorbed by the vulgar they would stand much where
+they stood before, and be no nearer the end of man nor the accomplishment
+of any Divine purpose in their creation. Anyhow he kept it, and I think
+he was wise to keep it. One cannot keep everything of that kind that
+is printed, so it is well to keep a specimen. Capricorn had, moreover,
+intended to perpetuate that specimen for ever in his immortal prose--pray
+Heaven he may return to do so!
+
+I next find the following excerpt from an evening paper:
+
+"No more gallant gentleman lives on the broad acres of his native England
+than Brigadier-General Sir Hammerthrust Honeybubble, who is one of the
+few survivors of the great charge at Tamulpuco, a feat of arms now
+half forgotten, but with which England rang during the Brazilian War.
+Brigadier-General, or, as he then was, plain Captain Hammerthrust
+Honeybubble, passed through five Brazilian batteries unharmed, and came
+back so terribly hacked that his head was almost severed from his body.
+Hardly able to keep his seat and continually wiping the blood from his
+left eye, he rode back to his troop at a walk, and, in spite of pursuit,
+finally completed his escape. Sir Hammerthrust, we are glad to learn, is
+still hale and hearty in his ninety-third year, and we hope he may see
+many more returns of the day upon his patrimonial estate in the Orkneys."
+
+To this excerpt I find only one marginal note in Capricorn's delicate
+and beautiful handwriting: "What day?" But whether this referred to some
+appointment of his own I was unable to discover.
+
+I next find a certain number of cuttings which I think cannot have been
+intended for the book at all, but must have been designed for poor
+Capricorn's "Oxford Anthology of Bad Verse," which, just before he
+left England, he was in process of preparing for the University Press.
+Capricorn had a very fine sense of bad taste in verse, and the authorities
+could have chosen no one better suited for the duty of editing such a
+volume. I must not give the reader too much of these lines, but the
+following quatrain deserves recognition and a permanent memory:
+
+Napoleon hoped that all the world would fall beneath his sway. He failed
+in this ambition; and where is he to-day? Neither the nations of the East
+nor the nations of the West Have thought the thing Napoleon thought was to
+their interest.
+
+This is enormous. As philosophy, as history, as rhetoric, as metre, as
+rhythm, as politics, it is positively enormous. The whole poem is a
+wonderful poem, and I wish I had space for it here. It is patriotic and it
+is written about as badly as a poem could conceivably be written. It is a
+mournful pleasure to think that my dear friend had his last days in the
+Old Country illuminated by such a treasure. It is but one of many, but I
+think it is the best.
+
+Another extract which catches my eye is drawn from the works of one in a
+distant and foreign land. Yet it was worth preserving. This personage,
+Tindersturm by name, issued a pamphlet which fell under the regulations,
+the very strict regulations, of the Prussian Government, by which any
+one of its subjects who says or prints anything calculated to stir
+up religious or racial strife within the State is subject to severe
+penalties. Now those severe penalties had fallen upon Tindersturm and
+he had been imprisoned for some years according to the paragraph that
+followed the extract I am about to give. That the aforesaid Tindersturm
+did indeed tend to "stir up religious and racial strife," nay, went
+somewhat out of his way to do it, will be clear enough when you read the
+following lines from his little broadsheet:
+
+"It is time for us to go for this caddish alien sect. If on your way home
+from the theatre you meet the blue-eyed, tow-haired, lolloping gang,
+whether they be youths or ladies, go right up to them and give them a
+smart smack, left and right, a blow in the eye; and lift your foot and
+give the tow-headed ones a kick. In this way must we begin the business.
+My Fatherland, wake up!"
+
+To this extract poor Capricorn has added the word "Excellent," and the
+same comment he makes upon the following conclusion to a letter written
+to a religious paper and dealing with some politician or other who had
+done something which the correspondent did not like:
+
+"That his eyes may be opened _while he lives_ is the prayer of
+
+"Yours truly,
+
+"AN EARNEST MEMBER OF THE FOLD"
+
+From such a series it is a recreation to turn to the little social
+paragraphs which gave Capricorn such acute and such continual joy; as, for
+instance, this:
+
+"Mrs. Harry Bacon wishes it to be known that she has ceased to have any
+connection whatsoever with the Boudoir for Lost Dogs. Her address is still
+Hermione House, Bourton-on-the-Water Fenton Marsh, Worcester."
+
+There is much more in the notebook with which I could while away the
+reader's time did space permit of it. I find among the very last entries,
+for instance, this:
+
+"It was a strenuous and thrilling contest. Some terrible blows were
+exchanged. In the last round, however, Schmidt landed his opponent a very
+nasty one under the chin, stretching him out lifeless and breaking his
+elbow; whereupon the prize was awarded him."
+
+To this joyous gem Capricorn has added a whole foison of annotations. He
+asks at the end: "Which was 'him'? Important." And he underlines in red
+ink the word "however," perhaps as mysterious a copulative as has ever
+appeared in British prose. I should add that Capricorn himself was an
+ardent sportsman and very rarely missed any of the first-class events of
+the ring, though personally he did not box, and on the few occasions when
+I have seen the exercise forced upon him in the public streets he showed
+the greatest distaste to this form of athletics.
+
+Lastly, I find this note with which I must close: it is taken from the
+verbatim report of a great case in the courts, now half forgotten, but ten
+years ago the talk of London:
+
+"The witness then said that he had been promised an independence for life
+if he could discover the defendant in the act of enclosing any part of
+the land, or any document or order of his involving such an enclosure. He
+therefore watched the defendant regularly from June, 1896, to the middle
+of July, 1900. He also watched the defendant's father and mother, three
+boys, married daughter, grandmother and grandfather, his two married
+sisters, his brother, his agent, and his agent's wife--but he had
+discovered nothing."
+
+That such a sentence should have been printed in the English language and
+delivered by an English mouth in an English witness-box was enough for
+Capricorn. Give him that alone for intellectual food in his desert lodge
+and he was happy.
+
+Shall I tempt Providence by any further extracts? ... It is difficult to
+tear oneself away from such a feast. So let me put in this very last,
+really the last, by way of savoury. There it is in black and white and no
+one can undo it: not all her piety, nor all her wit. It dates from the
+year 1904, when, Heaven knows, the internal combustion engine and its
+possibilities were not exactly new, and I give it word for word:
+
+"The Duchess is, moreover, a pioneer in the use of the motor-car. She
+finds it an agreeable and speedy means of conveyance from her country seat
+to her town house, and also a very practical way of getting to see her
+friends at week-ends. She has been heard to complain, however, that a
+substitute for the pneumatic tyre less liable to puncture than it is would
+be a priceless boon."
+
+There! There! May they all rest in peace! They have added to the gaiety of
+mankind.
+
+
+
+
+ON UNKNOWN PEOPLE
+
+
+You will often hear it said that it is astonishing such and such work
+should be present and enduring in the world, and yet the name of its
+author not known; but when one considers the variety of good work and the
+circumstances under which it is achieved, and the variety of taste also
+between different times and places, one begins to understand what is at
+first so astonishing.
+
+There are writers who have ascribed this frequent ignorance of ours to all
+sorts of heroic moods, to the self-sacrifice or the humility of a whole
+epoch or of particular artists: that is the least satisfactory of the
+reasons one could find. All men desire, if not fame, at least the one poor
+inalienable right of authorship, and unless one can find very good reasons
+indeed why a painter or a writer or a sculptor should deliberately have
+hidden himself one must look for some other cause.
+
+Among such causes the first two, I think, are the multiplicity of good
+work, and its chance character. Not that any one ever does very good work
+for once and then never again--at least, such an accident is extremely
+rare--but that many a man who has achieved some skill by long labour does
+now and then strike out a sort of spark quite individual and separate from
+the rest. Often you will find that a man who is remembered for but one
+picture or one poem is worth research. You will find that he did much
+more. It is to be remembered that for a long time Ronsard himself was
+thought to be a man of one poem.
+
+The multiplicity of good work also and the way in which accident helps it
+is a cause. There are bits of architecture (and architecture is the most
+anonymous of all the arts) which depend for their effect to-day very
+largely upon situation and the process of time, and there are a thousand
+corners in Europe intended merely for some utility which happen almost
+without deliberate design to have proved perfect: this is especially true
+of bridges.
+
+Then there is this element in the anonymity of good work, that a man very
+often has no idea how good the work is which he has done. The anecdotes
+(such as that famous one of Keats) which tell us of poets desiring to
+destroy their work, or, at any rate, casting it aside as of little value,
+are not all false. We still have the letter in which Burns enclosed "Scots
+wha' hae," and it is curious to note his misjudgment of the verse; and
+side by side with that kind of misjudgment we have men picking out for
+singular affection and with a full expectation of glory some piece of
+work of theirs to which posterity will have nothing to say. This is
+especially true of work recast by men in mature age. Writers and painters
+(sculptors luckily are restrained by the nature of their art--unless they
+deliberately go and break up their work with a hammer) retouch and change,
+in the years when they have become more critical and less creative, what
+they think to be the insufficient achievements of their youth: yet it is
+the vigour and the simplicity of their youthful work which other men often
+prefer to remember. On this account any number of good things remain
+anonymous, because the good writer or the good painter or the good
+sculptor was ashamed of them.
+
+Then there is this reason for anonymity, that at times--for quite a short
+few years--a sort of universality of good work in one or more departments
+of art seems to fall upon the world or upon some district. Nowhere do
+you see this more strikingly than in the carvings of the first third of
+the sixteenth century in Northern and Central France and on the Flemish
+border.
+
+Men seemed at that moment incapable of doing work that was not marvellous
+when they once began to express the human figure. Sometimes their mere
+name remains, more often it is doubtful, sometimes it is entirely lost.
+More curious still, you often have for this period a mixture of names. You
+come across some astonishing series of reliefs in a forgotten church of a
+small provincial town. You know at once that it is work of the moment when
+the flood of the Renaissance had at last reached the old country of the
+Gothic. You can swear that if it were not made in the time of Francis I or
+Henry II it was at least made by men who could remember or had seen those
+times. But when you turn to the names the names are nobodies.
+
+By far the most famous of these famous things, or at any rate the most
+deserving of fame, is the miracle of Brou. It is a whole world. You would
+say that either one transcendent genius had modelled every face and figure
+of those thousands (so individual are they), or that a company of inspired
+men differing in their traditions and upbringing from all the commonalty
+of mankind had done such things. When you go to the names all you find is
+that Coulombe out of Touraine began the job, that there was some sort of
+quarrel between his head-man and the paymasters, that he was replaced in
+the most everyday manner conceivable by a Fleming, Van Boghem, and that
+this Fleming had to help him a better-known Swiss, one Meyt. It is the
+same story with nearly all this kind of work and its wonderful period. The
+wealth of detail at Louviers or Gisors is almost anonymous; that of the
+first named perhaps quite anonymous.
+
+Who carved the wood in St. James's Church at Antwerp? I think the name
+is known for part of it, but no one did the whole or anything like the
+whole, and yet it is all one thing. Who carved the wood in St. Bertrand
+de Coraminges? We know who paid for it, and that is all we know. And as
+for the wood of Rouen, we must content ourselves with the vague phrase,
+"Probably Flemish artists."
+
+Of the Gothic statues where they were conventional, however grand the
+work, one can understand that they should be anonymous, but it is curious
+to note the same silence where the work is strikingly and particularly
+individual. Among the kings at Rheims are two heads, one of St. Louis,
+one of his grandson. Had some one famous sculptor done these things and
+others, were his work known and sought after, these two heads would be as
+renowned as anything in Europe. As it is they are two among hundreds that
+the latter thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries scattered broadcast;
+each probably was the work of a different workman, and the author or
+authors of each remain equally unknown.
+
+I know not whether there is more pathos or more humour or more consolation
+in considering this ignorance of ours with regard to the makers of good
+things.
+
+It is full of parable. There is something of it in Nature. There are men
+who will walk all day through a June wood and come out atheists at the end
+of it, finding no signature thereupon; and there are others who, sailing
+over the sea, come back home after seeing so many things still puzzled as
+to their authorship. That is one parable.
+
+Then there is this: the corrective of ambition. Since so much remains, the
+very names of whose authors have perished, what does it matter to you or
+to the world whether your name, so long as your work, survives? Who was
+it that carefully and cunningly fixed the sights on Gumber Corner so as
+to get upon a clear day his exact alignment with Pulborough and then the
+shoulder of Leith Hill, just to miss the two rivers and just to obtain the
+best going for a military road? He was some engineer or other among the
+thousands in the Imperial Service. He was at Chichester for some weeks
+and drew his pay, and then perhaps went on to London, and he was born in
+Africa or in Lombardy, or he was a Breton, or he was from Lusitania or
+from the Euphrates. He did that bit of work most certainly without any
+consideration of fame, for engineers (especially when they are soldiers)
+are singular among artists in this matter. But he did a very wonderful
+thing, and the Roman Road has run there for fifteen hundred years--his
+creation. Some one must have hit upon that precise line and the reason for
+it. It is exactly right, and the thing done was as great and is to-day as
+satisfying as that sculpture of Brou or the two boys Murillo painted, whom
+you may see in the Gallery at Dulwich. But he never thought of any one
+knowing his name, and no one knows it.
+
+Then there is this last thing about anonymous work, which is also a
+parable and a sad one. It shows how there is no bridge between two human
+minds.
+
+How often have I not come upon a corbel of stone carved into the shape
+of a face, and that face had upon it either horror or laughter or great
+sweetness or vision, and I have looked at it as I might have looked upon
+a living face, save that it was more wonderful than most living faces. It
+carried in it the soul and the mind of the man who made it. But he has
+been dead these hundreds of years. That corbel cannot be in communion with
+me, for it is of stone; it is dumb and will not speak to me, though it
+compels me continually to ask it questions. Its author also is dumb, for
+he has been dead so long, and I can know nothing about him whatsoever.
+
+Now so it is with any two human minds, not only when they are separated by
+centuries and by silence, but when they have their being side by side
+under one roof and are companions all their years.
+
+
+
+
+ON A VAN TROMP
+
+
+Once there was a man who, having nothing else to do and being fond of
+that kind of thing, copied with a good deal of care on to a bit of wood
+the corner of a Dutch picture in one of the public galleries.
+
+This man was not a good artist; indeed he was nothing but a humpbacked
+and very sensitive little squire with about £3000 a year of his own and
+great liking for intricate amusements. He was a pretty good mathematician
+and a tolerable fisherman. He knew an enormous amount about the Mohammedan
+conquest of Spain, and he is, I believe, writing a book upon that subject.
+I hope he will, for nearly all history wants to be rewritten. Anyhow, he,
+as I have just said, did copy a corner of one of the Dutch pictures in one
+of the galleries. It was a Dutch picture of the seventeenth century; and
+since the laws of this country are very complicated and the sanctions
+attached to them very terrible, I will not give the name of the original
+artist, but I will call him Van Tromp.
+
+Van Tromps have always been recognized, and there was a moment about fifty
+years after the artist's death when they had a considerable vogue in the
+French Court. Monsieur, who was quite ignorant of such things, bought
+a couple, and there is a whole row of them in the little pavilion at
+Louveciennes. Van Tromp has something about him at once positive and
+elusive; he is full of planes and values, and he interprets and renders,
+and the rest of it. Nay, he transfers!
+
+About thirty years ago Mr. Mayor (of Hildesheim and London) thought it his
+duty to impress upon the public how great Van Tromp was. This he did after
+taking thirteen Van Tromps in payment of a bad debt, and he succeeded. But
+the man I am writing about cared nothing for all this: he simply wanted to
+see how well he could imitate this corner of the picture, and he did it
+pretty well. He begrimed it and he rubbed at it, and then he tickled it up
+again with a knife, and then he smoked it, and then he put in some dirty
+whites which were vivid, and he played the fool with white of egg, and so
+forth, until he had the very tone and manner of the original; and as he
+had done it on an old bit of wood it was exactly right, and he was very
+proud of the result. He got an old frame from near Long Acre and stuck it
+in, and then he took the thing home. He had done several things of this
+kind, imitating miniatures, and even enamels. It amused him. When he got
+home he sat looking at it with great pleasure for an hour or two; he left
+the little thing on the table of his study and went to bed.
+
+Here begins the story, and here, therefore, I must tell you what the
+subject of this corner of the picture was.
+
+The subject of this corner of the picture which he had copied was a woman
+in a brown jacket and a red petticoat with big feet showing underneath,
+sitting on a tub and cutting up some vegetables. She had her hair bunched
+up like an onion, a fashion which, as we all know, appealed to the Dutch
+in the seventeenth century, or at any rate to the plebeian Dutch. I must
+also tell you the name of this squire before I go any further: his name
+was Hammer--Paul Hammer. He was unmarried.
+
+He went to bed at eleven o'clock, and when he came down at eight o'clock
+he had his breakfast. He went into his study at nine o'clock, and was very
+much annoyed to find that some burglars had come in during the night and
+had taken away a number of small objects which were not without value; and
+among-them, what he most regretted, his little pastiche of the corner of
+the Van Tromp.
+
+For some moments he stood filled with an acute anger and wishing that he
+knew who the burglars were and how to get at them; but the days passed,
+and though he asked everybody, and even gave some money to the police, he
+could not discover this. He put an advertisement into several newspapers,
+both London newspapers and local ones, saying that money would be given if
+the thing were restored, and pretty well hinting that no questions would
+be asked, but nothing came.
+
+Meanwhile the burglars, whose names were Charles and Lothair Femeral,
+foreigners but English-speaking, had found some of their ill-acquired
+goods saleable, others unsaleable. They wanted a pound for the little
+picture in the frame, and this they could not get, and it was a bother
+haggling it about. Lothair Femeral thought of a good plan: he stopped at
+an inn on the third day of their peregrinations, had a good dinner with
+his brother, told the innkeeper that he could not pay the bill, and
+offered to leave the Old Master in exchange. When people do this it very
+often comes off, for the alternative is only the pleasure of seeing
+the man in gaol, whereas a picture is always a picture, and there is a
+gambler's chance of its turning up trumps. So the man grumbled and took
+the little thing. He hung it up in the best room of the inn, where he gave
+his richer customers food.
+
+Thus it was that a young gentleman who had come down to ride in that
+neighbourhood, although he did not know any of the rich people round
+about, saw it one day, and on seeing it exclaimed loudly in an unknown
+tongue; but he very rapidly repressed his emotion and simply told the
+innkeeper that he had taken a fancy to the daub and would give him thirty
+shillings for it.
+
+The innkeeper, who had read in the newspapers of how pictures of the
+utmost value are sold by fools for a few pence, said boldly that his price
+was twenty pounds; whereupon the young gentleman went out gloomily, and
+the innkeeper thought that he must have made a mistake, and was for three
+hours depressed. But in the fourth hour again he was elated, for the young
+gentleman came back with twenty pounds, not even in notes but in gold,
+paid it down, and took away the picture. Then again, in the fifth hour was
+the innkeeper a little depressed, but not as much as before, for it struck
+him that the young gentleman must have been very eager to act in such a
+fashion, and that perhaps he could have got as much as twenty-one pounds
+by holding out and calling it guineas.
+
+The young gentleman telegraphed to his father (who lived in Wimbledon but
+who did business in Bond Street) saying that he had got hold of a Van
+Tromp which looked like a study for the big "Eversley" Van Tromp in the
+Gallery, and he wanted to know what his father would give for it. His
+father telegraphed back inviting him to spend one whole night under the
+family roof. This the young man did, and, though it wrung the old father's
+heart to have to do it, by the time he had seen the young gentleman's find
+(or _trouvaille_ as he called it) he had given his offspring a cheque
+for five hundred pounds. Whereupon the young gentleman left and went back
+to do some more riding, an exercise of which he was passionately fond, and
+to which he had trained several quiet horses.
+
+The father wrote to a certain lord of his acquaintance who was very
+fond of Van Tromps, and offered him this replica or study, in some ways
+finer than the original, but he said it must be a matter for private
+negotiation; so he asked for an appointment, and the lord, who was a tall,
+red-faced man with a bluff manner, made an appointment for nine o'clock
+next morning, which was rather early for Bond Street. But money talks, and
+they met. The lord was very well dressed, and when he talked he folded his
+hands (which had gloves on them) over the knob of his stick and pressed
+his stick firmly upon the ground. It was a way he had. But it did not
+frighten the old gentleman who did business in Bond Street, and the
+long and short of it was that the lord did not get the picture until he
+had paid three thousand guineas--not pounds, mind you. For this sum the
+picture was to be sent round to the lord's house, and so it was, and there
+it would have stayed but for a very curious accident. The lord had put
+the greater part of his money into a company which was developing the
+resources of the South Shetland Islands, and by some miscalculation or
+other the expense of this experiment proved larger than the revenues
+obtainable from it. His policy, as I need hardly tell you, was to hang on,
+and so he did, because in the long run the property must pay. And so it
+would if they could have gone on shelling out for ever, but they could
+not, and so the whole affair was wound up and the lord lost a great deal
+of money.
+
+Under these circumstances he bethought him of the toiling millions who
+never see a good picture and who have no more vivid appetite than the
+hunger for good pictures. He therefore lent his collection of Van Tromps
+with the least possible delay to a public gallery, and for many years they
+hung there, while the lord lived in great anxiety, but with a sufficient
+income for his needs in the delightful scenery of the Pennines at some
+distance from a railway station, surrounded by his tenants. At last even
+these--the tenants, I mean--were not sufficient, and a gentleman in the
+Government who knew the value of Van Tromps proposed that these Van Tromps
+should be bought for the nation; but a lot of cranks made a frightful row,
+both in Parliament and out of it, so that the scheme would have fallen
+through had not one of the Van Tromps--to wit, that little copy of a
+corner which was obviously a replica of or a study for the best-known of
+the Van Tromps--been proclaimed false quite suddenly by a gentleman who
+doubted its authenticity; whereupon everybody said that it was not genuine
+except three people who really counted, and these included the gentleman
+who had recommended the purchase of the Van Tromps by the nation. So
+enormous was the row upon the matter that the picture reached the very
+pinnacle of fame, and an Australian then travelling in England was
+determined to get that Van Tromp for himself, and did.
+
+This Australian was a very simple man, good and kind and childlike, and
+frightfully rich. When he had got the Van Tromp he carried it about with
+him, and at the country houses where he stopped he used to pull it out and
+show it to people. It happened that among other country houses he stopped
+once at the hunchback squire's, whose name, as you will remember, was Mr.
+Hammer, and he showed him the Van Tromp one day after dinner.
+
+Now Mr. Hammer was by this time an old man, and he had ceased to care much
+for the things of this world. He had suffered greatly, and he had begun to
+think about religion; also he had made a good deal of money in Egyptians
+(for all this was before the slump). And he was pretty well ashamed of
+his pastiches; so, one way and another, the seeing of that picture did
+not have the effect upon him which you might have expected; for you, the
+reader, have read this story in five minutes (if you have had the patience
+to get so far), but he, Mr. Hammer, had been changing and changing for
+years, and I tell you he did not care a dump what happened to the wretched
+thing. Only when the Australian, who was good and simple and kind and
+hearty, showed him the picture and asked him proudly to guess what he had
+given for it, then Mr. Hammer looked at him with a look in his eyes full
+of that not mortal sadness which accompanies irremediable despair.
+
+"I do not know," he answered gently and with a sob in his voice.
+
+"I paid for that picture," said the Australian, in the accent and language
+of his native clime, "no less a sum than £7500 ... and I'd pay it again
+to-morrow!" Saying this, the Australian hit the table with the palm, of
+his hand in a manner so manly that an aged retainer who was putting coals
+upon the fire allowed the coal-scuttle to drop.
+
+But Mr. Hammer, ruminating in his mind all the accidents and changes and
+adventures of human life, its complexity, its unfulfilled desires, its
+fading but not quite perishable ideals, well knowing how men are made
+happy and how unhappy, ventured on no reply. Two great tears gathered in
+his eyes, and he would have shed them, perhaps to be profusely followed by
+more--he was nearly breaking down--when he looked up and saw on the wall
+opposite him seven pastiches which he had made in the years gone by. There
+was a Titian and a George Morland, a Chardin, two cows after Cooper, and
+an impressionist picture after some Frenchman whose name he had forgotten.
+
+"You like pictures?" he said to the Australian, the tears still standing
+in his eyes.
+
+"I do!" said the Australian with conviction.
+
+"Will you let me give you these?" said Mr. Hammer.
+
+The Australian protested that such things could not be allowed, but he was
+a simple man, and at last he consented, for he was immensely pleased.
+
+"It is an ungracious thing to make conditions," said Mr. Hammer, "and I
+won't make any, only I should be pleased if, in your island home...."
+
+"I don't live on an island," said the Australian. Mr. Hammer remembered
+the map of Australia, with the water all round it, but he was too polite
+to argue.
+
+"No, of course not," he said; "you live on the mainland; I forgot. But
+anyhow, I _should_ be so pleased if you would promise me to hang them
+all together, these pictures with your Van Tromp, all in a line! I really
+should be so pleased!"
+
+"Why, certainly," said the Australian, a little bewildered; "I will do so,
+Mr. Hammer, if it can give you any pleasure."
+
+"The fact is," said Mr. Hammer, in a breaking voice, "I had that picture
+once, and I intended it to hang side by side with these."
+
+It was in vain that the Australian, on hearing this, poured out
+self-reproaches, offered with an expansion of soul to restore it, and then
+more prudently attempted a negotiation. Mr. Hammer resolutely shook his
+head.
+
+"I am an old man," he said, "and I have no heirs; it is not for me to
+take, but to give, and if you will do what an old man begs of you, and
+accept what I offer; if you will do more and of your courtesy keep all
+these things together which were once familiar to me, it will be enough
+reward."
+
+The next day, therefore, the Australian sailed off to his distant
+continental home, carrying with him not only the Chardin, the Titian, the
+Cooper, the impressionist picture, and the rest, but also the Van Tromp.
+And three months after they all hung in a row in the great new copper room
+at Warra-Mugga. What happened to them later on, and how they were all sold
+together as "the Warra-Mugga Collection," I will tell you when I have the
+time and you the patience. Farewell.
+
+
+
+
+HIS CHARACTER
+
+
+A certain merchant in the City of London, having retired from business,
+purchased for himself a private house upon the heights of Hampstead and
+proposed to devote his remaining years to the education and the
+establishment in life of his only son.
+
+When this youth (whose name was George) had arrived at the age of nineteen
+his father spoke to him after dinner upon his birthday with regard to the
+necessity of choosing a profession. He pointed out to him the advantages
+of a commercial career, and notably of that form of useful industry which
+is known as banking, showing how in that trade a profit was to be made by
+lending the money of one man to another, and often of a man's own money to
+himself, without engaging one's own savings or fortune.
+
+George, to whom such matters were unfamiliar, listened attentively, and it
+seemed to him with every word that dropped from his father that a wider
+and wider horizon of material comfort and worldly grandeur was spreading
+out before him. He had hitherto had no idea that such great rewards were
+attached to services so slight in themselves, and certainly so valueless
+to the community. The career sketched out for him by his father appealed
+to him most strongly, and when that gentleman had completed his advice he
+assured him that he would follow it in every particular.
+
+George's father was overjoyed to find his son so reasonable. He sat down
+at once to write the note which he had planned, to an old friend and
+connection by marriage, Mr. Repton, of Repton and Greening; he posted it
+that night and bade the lad prepare for the solemnity of a private
+interview with the head of the firm upon the morrow.
+
+Before George left the house next morning his father laid before him, with
+the pomp which so great an occasion demanded, certain rules of conduct
+which should guide not only his entry into life but his whole conduct
+throughout its course. He emphasized the value of self-respect, of a
+decent carriage, of discretion, of continuous and tenacious habits of
+industry, of promptitude, and so forth; when, urged by I know not what
+demon whose pleasure it is ever to disturb the best plans of men, the old
+gentleman had the folly to add the following words as he rose to his feet
+and laid his hand heavily upon his son's shoulder:
+
+"Above all things, George, tell the truth. I was young and now am old. I
+have seen many men fail, some few succeed; and the best advice I can give
+to my dear only son is that on all occasions he should fearlessly and
+manfully tell the truth without regard of consequence. Believe me, it is
+not only the whole root of character, but the best basis for a successful
+business career even today."
+
+Having so spoken, the old man, more moved than he cared to show, went
+upstairs to read his newspaper, and George, beautifully dressed, went out
+by the front door towards the Tube, pondering very deeply the words his
+father had just used.
+
+I cannot deny that the impression they produced upon him was
+extraordinary--far more vivid than men of mature years can easily
+conceive. It is often so in early youth when we listen to the voice of
+authority; some particular chance phrase will have an unmeasured effect
+upon one. A worn tag and platitude solemnly spoken, and at a critical
+moment, may change the whole of a career. And so it was with George,
+as you will shortly perceive. For as he rumbled along in the Tube his
+father's words became a veritable obsession within him: he saw their value
+ramifying in a multitude of directions, he perceived the strength and
+accuracy of them in a hundred aspects. He knew well that the interview he
+was approaching was one in which this virtue of truth might be severely
+tested, but he gloried in the opportunity, and he came out of the Tube
+into the fresh air within a step of Mr. Repton's office with set lips and
+his young temper braced for the ordeal.
+
+When he got to the office there was Mr. Repton, a kindly old gentleman,
+wearing large spectacles, and in general appearance one of those genial
+types from which our caricaturists have constructed the national figure of
+John Bull. It was a pleasure to be in the presence of so honest a man, and
+in spite of George's extreme nervousness he felt a certain security in
+such company. Moreover, Mr. Repton smiled paternally at him before putting
+to him the few questions which the occasion demanded. He held George's
+father's letter between two fingers of his right hand, moving it gently in
+the air as he addressed the lad:
+
+"I am very glad to see you, George," he said, "in this old office. I've
+seen you here before, Chrm! as you know, but not on such important
+business, Chrm!" He laughed genially. "So you want to come and learn your
+trade with us, do you? You're punctual I hope, Chrm?" he added, his honest
+eyes full of good nature and jest.
+
+George looked at him in a rather gloomy manner, hesitated a moment, and
+then, under the influence of an obvious effort, said in a choking voice,
+"No, Mr. Repton, I'm not."
+
+"Hey, what?" said Mr. Repton, puzzled and a little annoyed at the young
+man's manner.
+
+"I was saying, Mr. Repton, that I am not punctual. I have dreamy fits
+which sometimes make me completely forget an appointment. And I have a
+silly habit of cutting things too fine, which makes me miss trains and
+things, I think I ought to tell you while I am about it, but I simply
+cannot get up early in the morning. There are days when I manage to do
+so under the excitement of a coming journey or for some other form of
+pleasure, but as a rule I postpone my rising until the very latest
+possible moment."
+
+George having thus delivered himself closed his lips and was silent.
+
+"Humph!" said Mr. Repton. It was not what the boy had said so much as the
+impression of oddness which affected that worthy man. He did not like it,
+and he was not quite sure of his ground. He was about to put another
+question, when George volunteered a further statement:
+
+"I don't drink," he said, "and at my age it is not easy to understand
+what the vice of continual drunkenness may be, but I shouldn't wonder
+if that would be my temptation later on, and it is only fair to tell
+you that, young as I am, I have twice grossly exceeded in wine; on one
+occasion, not a year ago, the servants at a house where I was stopping
+carried me to bed."
+
+"They did?" said Mr. Repton drily.
+
+"Yes," said George, "they did." Then there was a silence for a space of
+at least three minutes.
+
+"My dear young man," said Mr. Repton, rising, "do you feel any aptitude
+for a City career?"
+
+"None," said George decisively.
+
+"Pray," said Mr. Repton (who had grown-up children of his own and could
+not help speaking with a touch of sarcasm--he thought it good for boys
+in the lunatic stage), "pray," said he, looking quizzically down at the
+unhappy but firm-minded George as he sat there in his chair, "is there
+any form of work for which you do feel an aptitude?"
+
+"Yes, certainly," said George confidently.
+
+"And what is that?" said Mr. Repton, his smile beginning again.
+
+"The drama," said George without hesitation, "the poetic drama. I ought to
+tell you that I have received no encouragement from those who are the best
+critics of this art, though I have submitted my work to many since I left
+school. Some have said that my work was commonplace, others that it was
+imitative; all have agreed that it was dull, and they have unanimously
+urged me to abandon every thought of such composition. Nevertheless I
+am convinced that I have the highest possible talents not only in this
+department of letters but in all."
+
+"You believe yourself," said Mr. Repton, with a touch of severity, "to be
+an exceptional young man?"
+
+George nodded. "I do," he said, "quite exceptional. I should have used a
+stronger term had I been speaking of the matter myself. I think I have
+genius, or, rather, I am sure I have; and, what is more, genius of a very
+high order."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Repton, sighing, "I don't think we shall get any
+forrader. Have you been working much lately?" he asked anxiously--
+"examinations or anything?"
+
+"No," said George quietly. "I always feel like this."
+
+"Indeed!" said Mr. Repton, who was now convinced that the poor boy had
+intended no discourtesy. "Well, I wonder whether you would mind taking
+back a note to your father?"
+
+"Not at all," said George courteously.
+
+Mr. Repton in his turn wrote a short letter, in which he begged George's
+father not to take offence at an old friend's advice, recalled to his
+memory the long and faithful friendship between them, pointed out that
+outsiders could often see things which members of a family could not, and
+wound up by begging George's father to give George a good holiday. "Not
+alone," he concluded; "I don't think that would be quite safe, but in
+company with some really trustworthy man a little older than himself, who
+won't get on his nerves and yet will know how to look after him. He must
+get right away for some weeks," added the kind old man, "and after that
+I should advise you to keep him at home and let him have some gentle
+occupation. Don't encourage him in writing. I think he would take kindly
+to _gardening_. But I won't write any more: I will come and see you
+about it."
+
+Bearing that missive back did George reach his home.... All this passed in
+the year 1895, and that is why George is to-day one of the best electrical
+engineers in the country, instead of being a banker; and that shows how
+good always comes, one way or another, of telling the truth.
+
+
+
+
+ON THRUPPENNY BITS
+
+
+Philip, King of Macedon, destroyer of the liberties of Greece, and father
+to Alexander who tamed the horse Bucephalus, called for the tutor of that
+lad, one Aristotle (surnamed the Teacher of the Human Race), to propound
+to him a question that had greatly troubled him; for in counting out his
+money (which was his habit upon a washing day, when the Queen's appetite
+for afternoon tea and honey had rid him of her presence) he discovered
+mixed with his treasure such an intolerable number of thruppenny bits as
+very nearly drove him to despair.
+
+On this account King Philip of Macedon, destroyer of the liberties of
+Greece, sent for Aristotle, his hanger-on, as one capable of answering any
+question whatsoever, and said to him (when he had entered with a profound
+obeisance):
+
+"Come, Aristotle, answer me straight; what is the use of a thruppenny bit?"
+
+"Dread sire," said Aristotle, standing in his presence with respect, "the
+thruppenny bit is not to be despised. Men famous in no way for their
+style, nor even for their learning, have maintained life by inscribing
+within its narrow boundaries the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten
+Commandments, while others have used it as a comparison in the classes
+of astronomy to illustrate the angle subtended by certain of the orbs of
+heaven. The moon, whose waxing and waning is doubtless familiar to Your
+Majesty, is indeed but just hidden by a thruppenny bit held between the
+finger and the thumb of the observer extended at the full length of any
+normal human arm."
+
+"Go on," said King Philip, with some irritation; "go on; go on!"
+
+"The thruppenny bit, Your Majesty, illustrates, as does no other coin, the
+wisdom and the aptness of the duodecimal system to which the Macedonians
+have so wisely clung (in common with the people of Scythia and of Thrace,
+and the dumb animals) while the too brilliant Hellenes ran wild in the
+false simplicity of the decimal system. The number twelve, Your
+Majesty...."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," said King Philip impatiently, "I have heard it a
+thousand times! It has already persuaded me to abandon the duodecimal
+method and to consign to the severest tortures any one who mentions it in
+my presence again. My ten fingers are good enough for me. Go on, go on!"
+
+"Sovran Lord!" continued Aristotle, "the thruppenny bit has further been
+proved in a thousand ways an adjuvator and prime helper of the Gods. For
+many a man too niggardly to give sixpence, and too proud to give a copper,
+has dropped this coin among the offerings at the Temple, and it is related
+of a clergyman in Armagh (a town of which Your Majesty has perhaps never
+heard) that he would frequently address his congregation from the rails
+of the altar, pointing out the excessive number of thruppenny bits which
+had been offered for the sustenance of the hierarchy, threatening to
+summon before him known culprits, and to return to them the insufficient
+oblation. Again, the thruppenny bit most powerfully disciplines the soul
+of man, for it tries the temper as does no other coin, being small, thin,
+wayward, given to hiding, and very often useless when it is discovered.
+Learn also, King of Macedon, that the thruppenny bit is of value in ritual
+phrases, and particularly so in objurgations and the calling down of
+curses, and in the settlement of evil upon enemies, and in the final
+expression of contempt. For to compare some worthless thing to a farthing,
+to a penny, or to tuppence, has no vigour left in it, and it has long
+been thought ridiculous even among provincials; a threadbare, worn, and
+worthless sort of sneer; but the thruppenny bit has a sound about it
+very valuable to one who would insist upon his superiority. Thus were
+some rebel or some demagogue of Athens (for example) to venture upon the
+criticism of Your Majesty's excursions into philosophy, in order to bring
+those august theses into contempt, his argument would never find emphasis
+or value unless he were to terminate its last phrase by a snap of the
+fingers and the mention of a thruppenny bit.
+
+"King Philip of Macedon, most prudent of men, learn further that a
+thruppenny bit, which to the foolish will often seem a mere expenditure of
+threepence, to the wise may represent a saving of that sum. For how many
+occasions are there not in which the inconsequent and lavish fool, the
+spendthrift, the young heir, the commander of cavalry, the empty, gilded
+boy, will give a sixpence to a messenger where a thruppenny bit would have
+done as well? For silver is the craving of the poor, not in its amount,
+but in its nature, for nature and number are indeed two things, the one on
+the one hand...."
+
+"Oh, I know all about that," said King Philip; "I did not send for you
+to get you off upon those rails, which have nothing whatever to do with
+thruppenny bits. Be concrete, I pray you, good Aristotle," he continued,
+and yawned. "Stick to things as they are, and do not make me remind you
+how once you said that men had thirty-six, women only thirty-four, teeth.
+Do not wander in the void."
+
+"Arbiter of Hellas," said Aristotle gravely, when the King had finished
+his tirade, "the thruppenny bit has not only all that character of
+usefulness which I have argued in it from the end it is designed to serve,
+but one may also perceive this virtue in it in another way, which is by
+observation. For you will remember how when we were all boys the fourpenny
+bit of accursed memory still lingered, and how as against it the
+thruppenny bit has conquered. Which is, indeed, a parable taken from
+nature, showing that whatever survives is destined to survive, for that
+is indeed in a way, as you may say, the end of survival."
+
+"Precisely," said King Philip, frowning intellectually; "I follow you.
+I have heard many talk in this manner, but none talk as well as you do.
+Continue, good Aristotle, continue."
+
+"Your Majesty, the matter needs but little exposition, though it contains
+the very marrow of truth," said the philosopher, holding up in a menacing
+way the five fingers of his left hand and ticking them off with the
+forefinger of his right. "For it is first useful, second beautiful, third
+valuable, fourth magnificent, and, fifthly, consonant to its nature."
+
+"Quite true," said King Philip, following carefully every word that fell
+from the wise man's lips, for he could now easily understand.
+
+"Very well then, sire," said Aristotle in a livelier tone, charmed to
+have captivated the attention of his Sovereign. "I was saying that which
+survives is proved worthy of survival, as of a man and a shark, or of
+Athens and Macedonia, or in many other ways. Now the thruppenny bit,
+having survived to our own time, has so proved itself in that test, and
+upon this all men of science are agreed.
+
+"Then, also, King Philip, consider how the thruppenny bit in another and
+actual way, not of pure reason but, if I may say so, in a material manner,
+commends itself: for is it not true that whereas all other nations
+whatsoever, being by nature servile, will use a nickel piece or some other
+denomination for whatever is small but is not of bronze, the Macedonians,
+being designed by the Gods for the command of all the human race, have
+very tenaciously clung to the thruppenny bit through good and through
+evil repute, and have even under the sternest penalties enforced it upon
+their conquered subjects? For when Your Majesty discovered (if you will
+remember) that the people of Euboea, in manifest contempt of your Crown,
+paid back into Your Majesty's treasury all their taxes in the shape of
+thruppenny bits...."
+
+At this moment King Philip gave a loud shout, uttering in Greek the word
+"Eureka," which signifies (to those who drop their aitches) "I've got it."
+
+"Got what?" said the philosopher, startled into common diction by the
+unexpected interjection of the despot.
+
+"Get out!" said King Philip. "Do you suppose that any rambling Don is
+going to take up my time when by a sheer accident his verbosity has
+started me on a true scent? Out, Aristotle, out! Or, stay, take this note
+with you to the Captain of the Guard"--and King Philip hastily scribbled
+upon a parchment an order for the immediate execution of the whole of the
+inhabitants of Euboea, saving such as could redeem themselves at the price
+of ten drachmae, the said sum upon no account whatsoever to be paid in
+coin containing so much as one thruppenny bit.
+
+But the offended philosopher had departed, and being well wound up could
+not, any more than any other member of the academies, cease from spouting;
+so that King Philip was intolerably aggravated to hear him as he waddled
+down the Palace stairs still declaiming in a loud tone:
+
+"And, sixteenthly, the thruppenny bit has about it this noble quality,
+that it represents an aliquot part of that sum which is paid to me daily
+from the Royal Treasury in silver, a metal upon which we have always
+insisted. And, seventeenthly...."
+
+But King Philip banged the door.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE HOTEL AT PALMA AND A PROPOSED GUIDE-BOOK
+
+
+The hotel at Palma is like the Savoy, but the cooking is a great deal
+better. It is large and new; its decorations are in the modern style with
+twiddly lines. Its luxury is greater than that of its London competitor.
+It has an eager, willing porter and a delightful landlord. You do what you
+like in it and there are books to read. One of these books was an English
+guide-book. I read it. It was full of lies, so gross and palpable that I
+told my host how abominably it traduced his country, and advised him first
+to beat the book well and then to burn it over a slow fire. It said that
+the people were superstitious--it is false. They have no taboo about days;
+they play about on Sundays. They have no taboo about drinks; they drink
+what they feel inclined (which is wine) when they feel inclined (which is
+when they are thirsty). They have no taboo book, Bible or Koran, no damned
+psychical rubbish, no damned "folk-lore," no triply damned mumbo-jumbo of
+social ranks; kind, really good, simple-minded dukes would have a devil of
+a time in Palma. Avoid it, my dears, keep away. If anything, the people of
+Palma have not quite enough superstition. They play there for love, money,
+and amusement. No taboo (talking of love) about love.
+
+The book said they were poor. Their populace is three or four times as
+rich as ours. They own their own excellent houses and their own land; no
+one but has all the meat and fruit and vegetables and wine he wants, and
+usually draught animals and musical instruments as well.
+
+In fact, the book told the most frightful lies and was a worthy companion
+to other guidebooks. It moved me to plan a guide-book of my own in which
+the truth should be told about all the places I know. It should be called
+"Guide to Northumberland, Sussex, Chelsea, the French frontier, South
+Holland, the Solent, Lombardy, the North Sea, and Rome, with a chapter on
+part of Cheshire and some remarks on the United States of America."
+
+In this book the fault would lie in its too great scrappiness, but the
+merit in its exactitude. Thus I would inform the reader that the best time
+to sleep in Siena is from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon,
+and that the best place to sleep is the north side of St. Domenic's ugly
+brick church there.
+
+Again, I would tell him that the man who keeps the "Turk's Head" at
+Valogne, in Normandy, was only outwardly and professedly an Atheist, but
+really and inwardly a Papist.
+
+I would tell him that it sometimes snowed in Lombardy in June, for I have
+seen it--and that any fool can cross the Alps blindfold, and that the
+sea is usually calm, not rough, and that the people of Dax are the most
+horrible in all France, and that Lourdes, contrary to the general opinion,
+does work miracles, for I have seen them.
+
+I would also tell him of the place at Toulouse where the harper plays
+to you during dinner, and of the grubby little inn at Terneuzen on the
+Scheldt where they charge you just anything they please for anything;
+five shillings for a bit of bread, or half a crown for a napkin.
+
+All these things, and hundreds of others of the same kind, would I put
+in my book, and at the end should be a list of all the hotels in Europe
+where, at the date of publication, the landlord was nice, for it is the
+character of the landlords which makes all the difference--and that
+changes as do all human things.
+
+There you could see first, like a sort of Primate of Hotels, the Railway
+Hotel at York. Then the inn at La Bruyère in the Landes, then the "Swan"
+at Petworth with its mild ale, then the "White Hart" of Storrington,
+then the rest of them, all the six or seven hundred of them, from the
+"Elephant" of Chateau Thierry to the "Feathers" of Ludlow--a truly noble
+remainder of what once was England; the "Feathers" of Ludlow, where the
+beds are of honest wood with curtains to them, and where a man may drink
+half the night with the citizens to the success of their engines and the
+putting out of all fires. For there are in West England three little inns
+in three little towns, all in a line, and all beginning with an L--
+Ledbury, Ludlow, and Leominster, all with "Feathers," all with orchards
+round, and I cannot tell which is the best.
+
+Then my guide-book will go on to talk about harbours; it will prove how
+almost every harbour was impossible to make in a little boat; but it would
+describe the difficulties of each so that a man in a little boat might
+possibly make them. It would describe the rush of the tide outside Margate
+and the still more dangerous rush outside Shoreham, and the absurd bar
+at Littlehampton that strikes out of the sea, and the place to lie at in
+Newhaven, and how not to stick upon the Platters outside Harwich; and the
+very tortuous entry to Poole, and the long channel into Christchurch past
+Hengistbury Head; and the enormous tides of South Wales; and why you often
+have to beach at Britonferry, and the terrible difficulty of mooring in
+Great Yarmouth; and the sad changes of Little Yarmouth, and the single
+black buoy at Calais which is much too far out to be of any use; and how
+to wait for the tide in the Swin. And also what no book has ever yet
+given, an exact direction of the way in which one may roll into Orford
+Haven, on the top of a spring tide if one has luck, and how if one has no
+luck one sticks on the gravel and is pounded to pieces.
+
+Then my guide-book would go on to tell of the way in which to make men
+pleasant to you according to their climate and country; of how you must
+not hurry the people of Aragon, and how it is your duty to bargain with
+the people of Catalonia; and how it is impossible to eat at Daroca; and
+how careful one must be with gloomy men who keep inns at the very top of
+glens, especially if they are silent, under Cheviot. And how one must not
+talk religion when one has got over the Scotch border, with some remarks
+about Jedburgh, and the terrible things that happened to a man there who
+would talk religion though he had been plainly warned.
+
+Then my guide-book would go on to tell how one should climb ordinary
+mountains, and why one should avoid feats; and how to lose a guide which
+is a very valuable art, for when you have lost your guide you need not pay
+him. My book will also have a note (for it is hardly worth a chapter) on
+the proper method of frightening sheep dogs when they attempt to kill you
+with their teeth upon the everlasting hills.
+
+This my good and new guide-book (oh, how it blossoms in my head as I
+write!) would further describe what trains go to what places, and in what
+way the boredom of them can best be overcome, and which expresses really
+go fast; and I should have a footnote describing those lines of steamers
+on which one can travel for nothing if one puts a sufficiently bold face
+upon the matter.
+
+My guide-book would have directions for the pacifying of Arabs, a trick
+which I learnt from a past master, a little way east of Batna in the year
+1905--I will also explain how one can tell time by the stars and by the
+shadow of the sun; upon what sort of food one can last longest and how
+best to carry it, and what rites propitiate, if they are solemnized in a
+due order, the half-malicious fairies which haunt men when they are lost
+in lonely valleys, right up under the high peaks of the world. And my book
+should have a whole chapter devoted to Ulysses.
+
+For you must know that one day I came into Narbonne where I had never been
+before, and I saw written up in large letters upon a big, ugly house:
+
+ULYSSES,
+
+Lodging for Man and Beast.
+
+So I went in and saw the master, who had a round bullet head and cropped
+hair, and I said to him: "What! Are you landed, then, after all your
+journeys? And do I find you at last, you of whom I have read so much and
+seen so little?" But with an oath he refused me lodging.
+
+This tale is true, as would be every other tale in my book.
+
+What a fine book it will be!
+
+
+
+
+THE DEATH OF WANDERING PETER
+
+
+"I will confess and I will not deny," said Wandering Peter (of whom you
+have heard little but of whom in God's good time you shall hear more). "I
+will confess and I will not deny that the chief pleasure I know is the
+contemplation of my fellow beings."
+
+He spoke thus in his bed in the inn of a village upon the River Yonne
+beyond Auxerre, in which bed he lay a-dying; but though he was dying he
+was full of words.
+
+"What energy! What cunning! What desire! I have often been upon the edge
+of a steep place, such as a chalk pit or a cliff above a plain, and
+watched them down below, hurrying around, turning about, laying down,
+putting up, leading, making, organizing, driving, considering, directing,
+exceeding, and restraining; upon my soul I was proud to be one of them! I
+have said to myself," said Wandering Peter, "lift up your heart; you also
+are one of these! For though I am," he continued, "a wandering man and
+lonely, given to the hills and to empty places, yet I glory in the workers
+on the plain, as might a poor man in his noble lineage. From these I came;
+to these in my old age I would have returned."
+
+At these words the people about his bed fell to sobbing when they thought
+how he would never wander more, but Peter Wanderwide continued with a high
+heart:
+
+"How pleasant it is to see them plough! First they cunningly contrive an
+arrangement that throws the earth aside and tosses it to the air, and
+then, since they are too weak to pull the same, they use great beasts,
+oxen or horses or even elephants, and impose them with their will, so that
+they patiently haul this contrivance through the thick clods; they tear
+up and they put into furrows, and they transform the earth. Nothing can
+withstand them. Birds you will think could escape them by flying up into
+the air. It is an error. Upon birds also my people impose their view. They
+spread nets, food, bait, trap, and lime. They hail stones and shot and
+arrows at them. They cause some by a perpetual discipline to live near
+them, to lay eggs and to be killed at will; of this sort are hens, geese,
+turkeys, ducks, and guinea-fowls. Nothing eludes the careful planning of
+man.
+
+"Moreover, they can build. They do not build this way or that, as a dull
+necessity forces them, not they! They build as they feel inclined. They
+hew down, they saw through (and how marvellous is a saw!), they trim
+timber, they mix lime and sand, they excavate the recesses of the hills.
+Oh! the fine fellows! They can at whim make your chambers or the Tower
+prison, or my aunt's new villa at Wimbledon (which is a joke of theirs),
+or St. Pancras Station, or the Crystal Palace, or Westminster Abbey, or
+St. Paul's, or Bon Secours. They are agreeable to every change in the wind
+that blows about the world. It blows Gothic, and they say 'By all means'--
+and there is your Gothic--a thing dreamt of and done! It suddenly veers
+south again and blows from the Mediterranean. The jolly little fellows are
+equal to the strain, and up goes Amboise, and Anet, and the Louvre, and
+all the Renaissance. It blows everyhow and at random as though in anger at
+seeing them so ready. They care not at all! They build the Eiffel Tower,
+the Queen Anne house, the Mary Jane house, the Modern-Style house, the
+Carlton, the Ritz, the Grand Palais, the Trocadero, Olympia, Euston, the
+Midhurst Sanatorium, and old Beit's Palace in Park Lane. They are not to
+be defeated, they have immortal certitudes.
+
+"Have you considered their lines and their drawings and their cunning
+plans?" said Wandering Peter. "They are astonishing there! Put a bit of
+charcoal into my dog's mouth or my pet monkey's paw--would he copy the
+world? Not he! But men--my brothers--_they_ take it in hand and make
+war against the unspeaking forces; the trees and the hills are of their
+own showing, and the places in which they dwell, by their own power,
+become full of their own spirit. Nature is made more by being their model,
+for in all they draw, paint, or chisel they are in touch with heaven and
+with hell.... They write (Lord! the intelligence of their men, and Lord!
+the beauty of their women). They write unimaginable things!
+
+"They write epics, they write lyrics, they write riddles and marching
+songs and drinking songs and rhetoric, and chronicles, and elegies, and
+pathetic memories; and in everything that they write they reveal things
+greater than they know. They are capable," said Peter Wanderwide, in
+his dying enthusiasm, "of so writing that the thought enlarges upon the
+writing and becomes far more than what they have written. They write that
+sort of verse called 'Stop-Short,' which when it is written makes one
+think more violently than ever, as though it were an introduction to the
+realms of the soul. And then again they write things which gently mock
+themselves and are a consolation for themselves against the doom of
+death."
+
+But when Peter Wanderwide said that word "death," the howling and the
+boo-hooing of the company assembled about his bed grew so loud that he
+could hardly hear himself think. For there was present the Mayor of
+the village, and the Priest of the village, and the Mayor's wife, and
+the Adjutant Mayor or Deputy Mayor, and the village Councillor, and
+the Road-mender, and the Schoolmaster, and the Cobbler, and all the
+notabilities, as many as could crush into the room, and none but the
+Doctor was missing.
+
+And outside the house was a great crowd of the village folk, weeping
+bitterly and begging for news of him, and mourning that so great and so
+good a man should find his death in so small a place.
+
+Peter Wanderwide was sinking very fast, and his life was going out with
+his breath, but his heart was still so high that he continued although his
+voice was failing:
+
+"Look you, good people all, in your little passage through the daylight,
+get to see as many hills and buildings and rivers, fields, books, men,
+horses, ships, and precious stones as you can possibly manage to do. Or
+else stay in one village and marry in it and die there. For one of these
+two fates is the best fate for every man. Either to be what I have been, a
+wanderer with all the bitterness of it, or to stay at home and hear in
+one's garden the voice of God.
+
+"For my part I have followed out my fate. And I propose in spite of my
+numerous iniquities, by the recollection of my many joys in the glories of
+this earth, as by corks, to float myself in the sea of nothingness until I
+reach the regions of the Blessed and the pure in heart.
+
+"For I think when I am dead Almighty God will single me out on account
+of my accoutrement, my stirrup leathers, and the things that I shall be
+talking of concerning Ireland and the Perigord, and my boat upon the
+narrow seas; and I think He will ask St. Michael, who is the Clerk and
+Registrar of battling men, who it is that stands thus ready to speak
+(unless his eyes betray him) of so many things? Then St. Michael will
+forget my name although he will know my face; he will forget my name
+because I never stayed long enough in one place for him to remember it.
+
+"But St. Peter, because he is my Patron Saint and because I have always
+had a special devotion to him, will answer for me and will have no
+argument, for he holds the keys. And he will open the door and I will come
+in. And when I am inside the door of Heaven I shall freely grow those
+wings, the pushing and nascence of which have bothered my shoulder blades
+with birth pains all my life long, and more especially since my thirtieth
+year. I say, friends and companions all, that I shall grow a very
+satisfying and supporting pair of wings, and once I am so furnished I
+shall be received among the Blessed, and I shall at once begin to tell
+them, as I told you on earth, all sorts of things, both false and true,
+with regard to the countries through which I carried forward my homeless
+feet, and in which I have been given such fulfilment for my eyes."
+
+When Peter Wanderwide had delivered himself of these remarks, which he did
+with great dignity and fire for one in such extremity, he gasped a little,
+coughed, and died.
+
+I need not tell you what solemnities attended his burial, nor with what
+fervour the people flocked to pray at his tomb; but it is worth knowing
+that the poet of that place, who was rival to the chief poet in Auxerre
+itself, gathered up the story of his death into a rhyme, written in the
+dialect of that valley, of which rhyme this is an English translation:
+
+   When Peter Wanderwide was young
+     He wandered everywhere he would;
+   And all that he approved was sung,
+     And most of what he saw was good.
+
+   When Peter Wanderwide was thrown
+     By Death himself beyond Auxerre,
+   He chanted in heroic tone
+     To Priest and people gathered there:
+
+  "If all that I have loved and seen
+     Be with me on the Judgment Day,
+   I shall be saved the crowd between
+     From Satan and his foul array.
+
+  "Almighty God will surely cry
+     'St. Michael! Who is this that stands
+   With Ireland in his dubious eye,
+     And Perigord between his hands,
+
+  "'And on his arm the stirrup thongs,
+     And in his gait the narrow seas,
+   And in his mouth Burgundian songs,
+     But in his heart the Pyrenees?'
+
+  "St. Michael then will answer right
+     (But not without angelic shame):
+   'I seem to know his face by sight;
+     I cannot recollect his name....'
+
+  "St. Peter will befriend me then,
+     Because my name is Peter too;
+   'I know him for the best of men
+     That ever wallopped barley brew.
+
+  "'And though I did not know him well,
+     And though his soul were clogged with sin,
+   _I_ hold the keys of Heaven and Hell.
+     Be welcome, noble Peterkin.'
+
+  "Then shall I spread my native wings
+     And tread secure the heavenly floor,
+   And tell the Blessed doubtful things
+     Of Val d'Aran and Perigord."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  This was the last and solemn jest
+     Of weary Peter Wanderwide,
+   He spoke it with a failing zest,
+     And having spoken it, he died.
+
+
+
+
+THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+
+The nation known to history as the Nephalo Ceclumenazenoi, or, more
+shortly, the Nepioi, inhabited a fruitful and prosperous district
+consisting in a portion of the mainland and certain islands situated in
+the Picrocholian Sea; and had there for countless centuries enjoyed a
+particular form of government which it is not difficult to describe, for
+it was religious and arranged upon the principle that no ancient custom
+might be changed.
+
+Lest such changes should come about through the lapse of time or the
+evil passions of men, the citizens of the aforesaid nation had them very
+clearly engraved in a dead language and upon bronze tablets, which they
+fixed upon the doors of their principal temple, where it stood upon a
+hill outside the city, and it was their laudable custom to entrust the
+interpretation of them not to aged judges, but to little children, for
+they argued that we increase in wickedness with years, and that no one
+is safe from the aged, but that children are, alone of the articulately
+speaking race, truth-tellers. Therefore, upon the first day of the year
+(which falls in that country at the time of sowing) they would take one
+hundred boys of ten years of age chosen by lot, they would make these
+hundred, who had previously for one year received instruction in their
+sacred language, write each a translation of the simple code engraved
+upon the bronze tablets. It was invariably discovered that these artless
+compositions varied only according to the ability of the lads to construe,
+and that some considerable proportion of them did accurately show forth
+in the vernacular of the time the meaning of those ancestral laws. They
+had further a magistrate known as the Archon. whose business it was to
+administrate these customs and to punish those who broke them. And this
+Archon, when or if he proposed something contrary to custom in the opinion
+of not less than a hundred petitioners, was judged by a court of children.
+
+In this fashion for thousands of years did the Nepioi proceed with their
+calm and ordinary lives, enjoying themselves like so many grigs, and
+utterly untroubled by those broils and imaginations of State which
+disturbed their neighbours.
+
+There was a legend among them (upon which the whole of this Constitution
+was based) that a certain Hero, one Melek, being in stature twelve foot
+high and no less than 93 inches round the chest, had landed in their
+country 150,000 years previously, and finding them very barbarous, slaying
+one another and unacquainted with the use of letters, the precious metals,
+or the art of usury, had instructed them in civilization, endowed them
+with letters, a coinage, police, lawyers, instruments of torture, and all
+the other requisites of a great State, and had finally drawn up for them
+this code of law or custom, which they carefully preserved engraved upon
+the tablets of bronze, which were set upon the walls of their chief temple
+on the hill outside the city.
+
+Within the temple itself its great shrine and, so to speak, its very cause
+of being was the Hero's tomb. He lay therein covered with plates of gold,
+and it was confidently asserted and strictly and unquestionably believed
+that at some unknown time in the future he would come out to rule them for
+ever in a millennial fashion--though heaven knows they were happy enough
+as it was.
+
+Among their customs was this: that certain appointed officers
+would at every change in the moon proclaim the former existence and virtue
+of Melek, his residence in the tomb, and his claims to authority. To enter
+the tomb, indeed, was death, but there was proof of the whole story in
+documents which were carefully preserved in the temple, and which were
+from time to time consulted and verified. The whole structure of Nepioian
+society reposed upon the sanctity of this story, upon the presence of the
+Hero in his tomb, and of his continued authority, for with this was
+intertwined, or rather upon this was based, the further sanctity of their
+customs.
+
+Things so proceeded without hurt or cloud until upon one most unfortunate
+day a certain man, bearing the vulgar name of Megalocrates, which
+signifies a person whose health requires the use of a wide head-gear,
+discovered that a certain herb which grew in great abundance in their
+territory and had hitherto been thought useless would serve almost every
+purpose of the table, sufficing, according to its preparation, for meat,
+bread, vegetables, and salt, and, if properly distilled, for a liquor that
+would make the Nepioi even more drunk than did their native spirits.
+
+From this discovery ensued a great plenty throughout the land, the
+population very rapidly increased, the fortunes of the wealthy grew to
+double, treble, and four times those which had formerly been known, the
+middle classes adopted a novel accent in speech and a gait hitherto
+unusual, while great numbers of the poor acquired the power of living upon
+so small a proportion of foul air, dull light, stagnant water, and mangy
+crusts as would have astonished their nicer forefathers. Meanwhile this
+great period of progress could not but lead to further discoveries, and
+the Nepioi had soon produced whole colleges in which were studied the arts
+useful to mankind and constantly discovered a larger and a larger number
+of surprising and useful things. At last the Nepioi (though this, perhaps,
+will hardly be credited) were capable of travelling underground, flying
+through the air, conversing with men a thousand miles away in a moment of
+time, and committing suicide painlessly whenever there arose occasion for
+that exercise.
+
+It may be imagined with what reverence the authors of all these boons, the
+members of the learned colleges, were regarded; and how their opinions had
+in the eyes and ears of the Nepioi an unanswerable character.
+
+Now it so happened that in one of these colleges a professor of more than
+ordinary position emitted one day the opinion that Melek had lived only
+half as long ago as was commonly supposed. In proof of this he put forward
+the undoubted truth that if Melek had lived at the time he was supposed
+to have lived, then he would have lived twice as long ago as he, the
+professor, said that he had lived. The more old-fashioned and stupid
+of the Nepioi murmured against such opinions, and though they humbly
+confessed themselves unable to discover any flaw in the professor's logic,
+they were sure he was wrong somewhere and they were greatly disturbed.
+But the opinion gained ground, and, what is more, this fruitful and
+intelligent surmise upon the part of the professor bred a whole series of
+further theories upon Melek, each of which contradicted the last but one,
+and the latest of which was always of so limpid and so self-evident a
+truth as to be accepted by whatever was intelligent and energetic in the
+population, and especially by the young unmarried women of the wealthier
+classes. In this manner the epoch of Melek was reduced to five, to three,
+to two, to one thousand years. Then to five hundred, and at last to one
+hundred and fifty. But here was a trouble. The records of the State, which
+had been carefully kept for many centuries, showed no trace of Melek's
+coming during any part of the time, but always referred to him as a
+long-distant forerunner. There was not even any mention of a man twelve
+foot high, nor even of one a little over 93 inches round the chest. At last
+it was proposed by an individual of great courage that he might be allowed
+to open the tomb of Melek and afterwards, if they so pleased, suffer death.
+This privilege was readily granted to him by the Archon. The worthy
+reformer, therefore, prised open the sacred shrine and found within it
+absolutely nothing whatsoever.
+
+Upon this there arose among the Nepioi all manner of schools and
+discussions, some saying this and some that, but none with the certitude
+of old. Their customs fell into disrepute, and even the very professors
+themselves were occasionally doubted when they laid down the law upon
+matters in which they alone were competent--as, for instance, when they
+asserted that the moon was made of a peculiarly delicious edible substance
+which increased in savour when it was preserved in the store-rooms of the
+housewives; or when they affirmed with every appearance of truth that no
+man did evil, and that wilful murder, arson, cruelty to the innocent and
+the weak, and deliberate fraud were of no more disadvantage to the general
+state, or to men single, than the drinking of a cup of cold water.
+
+So things proceeded until one day, when all custom and authority had
+fallen into this really lamentable deliquescence, fleets were observed
+upon the sea, manned by men-at-arms, the admiral of which sent a short
+message to the Archon proposing that the people of the country should send
+to him and his one-half of their yearly wealth for ever, "or," so the
+message proceeded, "take the consequences." Upon the Archon communicating
+this to the people there arose at once an infinity of babble, some saying
+one thing and some another, some proposing to pay neighbouring savages
+to come in and fight the invaders, others saying it would be cheaper to
+compromise with a large sum, but the most part agreeing that the wisest
+thing would be for the Archon and his great-aunt to go out to the fleet
+in a little boat and persuade the enemy's admiral (as they could surely
+easily do) that while most human acts were of doubtful responsibility and
+not really wicked, yet the invasion, and, above all, the impoverishment
+of the Nepioi was so foul a wrong as would certainly call down upon its
+fiendish perpetrator the fires of heaven.
+
+While the Archon and his great-aunt were rowing out in the little boat
+a few doddering old men and superstitious females slunk off to consult
+the bronze tablets, and there found under Schedule XII these words: "If
+an enemy threaten the State, you shall arm and repel him." In their
+superstition the poor old chaps, with their half-daft female devotees
+accompanying them, tottered back to the crowds to persuade them to some
+ridiculous fanaticism or other, based on no better authority than the
+non-existent Melek and his absurd and exploded authority.
+
+Judge of their horror when, as they neared the city, they saw from the
+height whereon the temple stood that the invaders had landed, and, having
+put to the sword all the inhabitants without exception, were proceeding to
+make an inventory of the goods and to settle the place as conquerors. The
+admiral summoned this remnant of the nation, and hearing what they had to
+say treated them with the greatest courtesy and kindness and pensioned
+them off for their remaining years, during which period they so instructed
+him and his fighting men in the mysteries of their religion as quite to
+convert them, and in a sense to found the Nepioian State over again; but
+it should be mentioned that the admiral, by way of precaution, changed
+that part of the religion which related to the tomb of Melek and situated
+the shrine in the very centre of the crater of an active volcano in the
+neighbourhood, which by night and day, at every season of the year,
+belched forth molten rock so that none could approach it within fifteen
+miles.
+
+
+
+
+A NORFOLK MAN
+
+
+Among the delights of historical study which makes it so curiously
+similar to travel, and therefore so fatally attractive to men who cannot
+afford it, is the element of discovery and surprise: notably in little
+details.
+
+When in travel one goes along a way one has never been before one often
+comes upon something odd, which one could not dream was there: for
+instance, once I was in a room in a little house in the south and thought
+there must be machinery somewhere from the noise I heard, until a man in
+the house quietly lifted up a trapdoor in the floor, and there, running
+under and through the house a long way below, was a river: the River
+Garonne.
+
+It is the same way in historical study. You come upon the most
+extraordinary things: little things, but things whose unexpectedness is
+enormous. I had an example of this the other day, as I was looking up some
+last details to make certain of the affair of Valmy.
+
+Most people have heard of the French Revolution, and many people have
+heard of the battle of Valmy, which decided the first fate of that
+movement, when it was first threatened by war. But very few people have
+read about Valmy, so it is necessary to give some idea of the action to
+understand the astonishing little thing attaching to it which I am about
+to describe.
+
+The cannonade of Valmy was exchanged between a French Army with its back
+to a range of hills and a Prussian Army about a mile away over against
+them. It was as though the French Army had stretched from Leatherhead
+to Epsom and had engaged in a cannonade with a Prussian Army lying over
+against them in a position astraddle of the road to Kingston.
+
+Through this range of hills at the back of the French Army lay a gap, just
+as there is a gap through the hills behind Leatherhead. Not only was that
+gap easily passable by an army--easily, at least, compared with the hill
+country on either side--but it had running through it the great road from
+Metz to Paris, so that advance along it was rapid and practicable.
+
+It so happened that another force of the enemy besides that which was
+cannonading the French in front was advancing through this gap from
+behind, and it is evident that if this second force of the enemy had been
+able to get through the gap it would have been all up with the French.
+Dumouriez, who commanded the French, saw this well enough; he had ordered
+the gap to be strongly fortified and well gunned and a camp to be formed
+there, largely made up of Volunteers and Irregulars. On the proper conduct
+of that post depended everything: and here comes the fun. The commander
+of the post was not what you might expect, a Frenchman of any one of the
+French types with which the Revolution has made us familiar: contrariwise,
+he was an elderly private gentleman from the county of Norfolk.
+
+His name was Money. The little that is known about him is entertaining to
+a degree. His own words prove him to be like the person in the song, "a
+very honest man," and luckily for us he has left in a book a record of the
+day (and subsequent actions) stamped vividly with his own character. John
+Money: called by his neighbours General John Money, not, as you might
+expect. General Money: a man devoted to the noble profession of arms and
+also eaten up with a passion for ballooning.
+
+I find it difficult to believe that he was first in action at the age of
+nine years or that he held King George's commission as a Cornet at the
+age of ten. He does not tell us so himself nor do any of his friends. The
+surmise is that of our Universities, and it is worthy of them. Clap on ten
+years and you are nearer the mark. At any rate he was under fire in 1761,
+and he was a Cornet in 1762; a Cornet in the Inniskilling Dragoons with a
+commission dated on the 11th of March of that year. Then he transformed
+himself into a Linesman, got his company in the 9th Foot eight years
+later, and eight years later again, at the outbreak of the American War,
+he was a major. He was quarter-master-general under Burgoyne, he was taken
+prisoner--I think at Saratoga, but anyhow during that disastrous advance
+upon the Hudson Valley. He got his lieutenant-colonelcy towards the end of
+the war. He retired from the Army and never saw active service again. When
+the Low Countries revolted against Austria he offered his services to the
+insurgents and was accepted, but the truly entertaining chapter of his
+adventures begins when he suggested himself to the French Government as
+a very proper and likely man to command a brigade on the outbreak of the
+great war with the Empire and with Prussia.
+
+Very beautifully does he tell us in his preface what moved him to that act.
+"Colonel Money," he says, in the quiet third person of a self-respecting
+Norfolk gentleman, "does not mean to assign any other reason for serving
+the armies of France than that he loves his profession and went there
+merely to improve himself in it." Spoken like Othello!
+
+He dedicates the book, by the way, to the Marquis Townshend, and carefully
+adds that he has not got permission to dedicate it to that exalted
+nobleman, nay, that he fears that he would not get permission if he asked
+for it. But Lord Townshend is such a rattling good soldier that Colonel
+Money is quite sure he will want to hear all about the war. On which
+account he has this book so dedicated and printed by E. Harlow, bookseller
+to Her Majesty, in Pall Mall.
+
+Before beginning his narrative the excellent fellow pathetically says,
+that as there was no war a little time before, nor apparently any
+likelihood of one, "Colonel Money once intended to serve the Turks"; from
+this horrid fate a Christian Providence delivered him, and sent him to the
+defence of Gaul.
+
+His commission was dated on the 19th of July, 1792; Marshal of the Camps,
+that is, virtually, brigadier-general. He is very proud of it, and he
+gives it in full. It ends up "Given in the year of Grace 1792 of our Reign
+the 19th and Liberty the 4th. Louis." The phrase, in accompaniment with
+the signature and the date, is not without irony.
+
+Colonel Money could never stomach certain traits in the French people.
+
+Before he left Paris for his command on the frontier he was witness to
+the fighting when the Palace was stormed by the populace, and he is
+our authority for the fact that the 5th Battalion of Paris Volunteers
+stationed in the Champs Elysées helped to massacre the Swiss Guard.
+
+"The lieutenant-colonel of this battalion," writes honest John Money,
+"who was under my command during part of the campaign, related to me the
+circumstances of this murder, and apparently with pleasure. He said: 'That
+the unhappy men implored mercy, but,' added he, 'we did not regard this.
+We put them all to death, and our men cut off most of their heads and
+fixed them on their bayonets.'"
+
+Colonel or, as he then was, General Money disapproves of this.
+
+He also disapproves of the officer in command of the Marseillese, and says
+he was a "Tyger." It seems that the "Tyger" was dining with Théroigne de
+Méricourt and three English gentlemen in the very hotel where Money was
+stopping, and it occurs to him that they might have broken in from their
+drunken revels next door and treated him unfriendly.
+
+Then he goes to the frontier, and after a good deal of complaint that he
+has not been given his proper command he finds himself at the head of that
+very important post which was the saving of the Army of Valmy.
+
+Dumouriez, who always talked to him in English (for English was more
+widely known abroad then than it is now, at least among gentlemen), had
+a very great opinion of Money; but he deplores the fact that Money's
+address to his soldiery was couched "in a jargon which they could not even
+begin to understand." Money does not tell us that in his account of the
+fighting, but he does tell us some very interesting things, which reveal
+him as a man at once energetic and exceedingly simple. He left the guns
+to Galbaud, remarking that no one but a gunner could attend to that sort
+of thing, which was sound sense; but the Volunteers, the Line, and the
+Cavalry he looked after himself, and when the first attack was made he
+gave the order to fire from the batteries. Just as they were blazing away
+Dillon, who was far off but his superior, sent word to the batteries to
+cease firing. Why, nobody knows. At any rate the orderly galloped up and
+told Money that those were Dillon's orders. On which Money very charmingly
+writes:
+
+"I told him to go back and tell General Dillon that I commanded there, and
+that whilst the enemy fired shot and shell on me _I_ should continue
+to fire back on them." A sentence that warms the heart. Having thus
+delivered himself to the orderly, he began pacing up and down the parapet
+"to let my men see that there was not much to be apprehended from a
+cannonade."
+
+You may if you will make a little picture of this to yourselves. A great
+herd of volunteers, some of whom had never been under fire, the rest
+of whom had bolted miserably at Verdun a few days before, men not yet
+soldiers and almost without discipline: the batteries banging away in the
+wood behind them, in front of them a long earthwork at which the enemy
+were lobbing great round lumps of iron and exploding shells, and along
+the edge of this earthwork an elderly gentleman from Norfolk, in England,
+walking up and down undisturbed, occasionally giving orders to his army,
+and teaching his command a proper contempt for fire.
+
+He adds as another reason why he did not cease fire when he was ordered
+that "without doubt the troops would have thought there was treason in it,
+and I had probably been cut in pieces."
+
+He did not understand what had happened at Valmy, though he was so useful
+in securing the success of that day. All he noted was that after the
+cannonade Kellermann had fallen back. He rode into St. Ménehould, where
+Dumouriez's head-quarters were, ran up to the top of the steeple and
+surveyed the country around the enemy's camp with an enormous telescope,
+laid a bet at dinner of five to one that the enemy would attack again
+(they did not do so, and so he lost his bet, but he says nothing about
+paying it), and then heard that France had been decreed a Republic.
+His comment on this piece of news is strong but cryptical. "It was
+surprising," he says, "to see what an effect this news had on the Army."
+
+Every sentence betrays the personality: the keen, eccentric character
+which took to balloons just after the Montgolfiers, and fell with his
+balloon into the North Sea, wrote his Treatise on the use of such
+instruments in War, and was never happy unless he was seeing or doing
+something--preferably under arms. And in every sentence also there is that
+curious directness of statement which is of such advantage to vivacity
+in any memoir. Thus of Gobert, who served under him, he has a little
+footnote: "This unfortunate young man lost his head at the same time
+General Dillon suffered, and a very amiable young man he was, and an
+excellent officer."
+
+He ends his book in a phrase from which I think not a word could be taken
+nor to which a word could be added without spoiling it. I will quote it in
+full.
+
+"The reader, I trust, will excuse my having so often departed from the
+line of my profession in giving my opinion on subjects that are not
+military" (for instance, his objections to the head-cutting business),
+"but having had occasion to know the people of France I freely venture to
+submit my judgments to the public and have the satisfaction to find that
+they coincide with the opinion of those who know that extraordinary nation
+_still better than myself_."
+
+
+
+
+THE ODD PEOPLE
+
+
+The people of Monomotapa, of whom I have written more than once, I have
+recently revisited; and I confess to an astonishment at the success with
+which they deal with the various difficulties and problems arising in
+their social life.
+
+Thus, in most countries the laws of property are complex in the extreme;
+punishable acts in connexion with them are numerous and often difficult to
+define.
+
+In Monomotapa the whole thing is settled in a very simple manner: in the
+first place, instead of strict laws binding men down by written words,
+they appoint a number of citizens who shall have it in their discretion to
+decide whether a man's actions are worthy of punishment or no; and these
+appointed citizens have also the power to assign the punishment, which may
+vary from a single day's imprisonment to a lifetime. So crimeless is the
+country, however, that in a population of over thirty millions less than
+twenty such nominations are necessary; I must, however, admit that these
+score are aided by several thousand minor judges who are appointed in a
+different manner.
+
+Their method of appointment is this: it is discovered as accurately as may
+be by a man's manner of dress and the hours of his labour and the size of
+the house he inhabits, whether he have more than a certain yearly revenue;
+any man discovered to have more than this revenue is immediately appointed
+to the office of which I speak.
+
+The power of these assessors is limited, however, for though it is left to
+their discretion whether their fellow-citizens are worthy of punishment
+or not, yet the total punishment they can inflict is limited to a certain
+number of years of imprisonment. In old times this sort of minor judge
+was not appointed in Monomotapa unless he could prove that he kept dogs
+in great numbers for the purposes of hunting, and at least three horses.
+But this foolish prejudice has broken down in the progress of modern
+enlightenment, and, as I have said, the test is now extended to a general
+consideration of clothes, the size of the house inhabited, and the amount
+of leisure enjoyed, the type of tobacco smoked, and other equally
+reasonable indications of judicial capacity.
+
+The men thus chosen to consider the actions of their fellow-citizens in
+courts of law are rewarded in two ways: the first small body who are the
+more powerful magistrates are given a hundred times the income of an
+ordinary citizen, for it is claimed that in this way not only are the best
+men for the purpose obtained, but, further, so large a salary makes all
+temptation to bribery impossible and secures a strict impartiality between
+rich and poor.
+
+The lesser judges, on the other hand, are paid nothing, for it is wisely
+pointed out that a man who is paid nothing and who volunteers his services
+to the State will not be the kind of a man who would take a bribe or who
+would consider social differences in his judgments.
+
+It is further pointed out by the Monomotapans (I think very reasonably)
+that the kind of man who will give his services for nothing, even in the
+arduous work of imprisoning his fellow-citizens, will probably be the best
+man for the job, and does not need to be allured to it by the promise of
+a great salary. In this way they obtain both kinds of judges, and, oddly
+enough, each kind speaks, acts, and lives much as does the other.
+
+I must next describe the methods by which this interesting and sensible
+people secure the ends of their criminal system.
+
+When one of their magistrates has come to the conclusion that on the whole
+he will have a fellow-citizen imprisoned, that person is handed over to
+the guardianship of certain officials, whose business it is to see that
+the man does not die during the period for which he is entrusted to them.
+When some one of the numerous forms of torture which they are permitted
+to use has the effect of causing death, the official responsible is
+reprimanded and may even be dismissed. The object indeed of the whole
+system is to reform and amend the criminal. He is therefore forbidden to
+speak or to communicate in any way with human beings, and is segregated in
+a very small room devoid of all ornament, with the exception of one hour a
+day, during which he is compelled to walk round and round a deep, walled
+courtyard designed for the purpose of such an exercise. If (as is often
+the case) after some years of this treatment the criminal shows no signs
+of mental or moral improvement, he is released; and if he is a man of
+property, lives unmolested on what he has, and that usually in a quiet
+and retired way. But if he is devoid of property, the problem is indeed a
+difficult one, for it is the business of the police to forbid him to work,
+and they are rewarded if he is found committing any act which the judges
+or the magistrates are likely to disapprove. In this way even those who
+have failed to effect reform in their characters during their first term
+of imprisonment are commonly--if they are poor--re-incarcerated within
+a short time, so that the system works precisely as it was intended to,
+giving the maximum amount of reformation to the worst and the hardest
+characters. I should add that the Monomotapan character is such that in
+proportion to wealth a man's virtues increase, and it is remarkable that
+nearly all those who suffer the species of imprisonment I have described
+are of the poorer classes of society.
+
+Though they are so reasonable, and indeed afford so excellent a model to
+ourselves in most of their social relations, the people of Monomotapa
+have, I confess, certain customs which I have never clearly understood,
+and which my increasing study of them fails to explain to me.
+
+Thus, in matters which, with us, are thought susceptible of positive
+proof (such as the taste and quality of cooking, or the mental abilities
+of a fellow-citizen) the Monomotapans establish their judgment in a
+transcendental or super-rational manner. The cooking in a restaurant or
+hotel is with them excellent in proportion, not to the taste of the viands
+subjected to it, but to the rental of the premises. And when a man desires
+the most delicious food he does not consider where he has tasted such food
+in the past, but rather the situation and probable rateable value of the
+eating-house which will provide him with it. Nay, he is willing--if he
+understands that that rateable value is high--to pay far more for the same
+article than he would in a humbler hostelry.
+
+The same super-rational method, as I have called it, applies to the
+Monomotapan judgment of political ability; for here it is not what a
+man has said or written, nor whether he has proved himself capable
+of foreseeing certain events of moment to the State, it is not these
+characters that determine his political career, but a mixture of other
+indices, one of which is that his brothers shall be younger than himself,
+another that when he speaks he shall strike the palm of his open left hand
+with his clenched right hand in a particular manner by no means commonly
+or easily acquired; another that he shall not wear at one and the same
+time a coat which is bifurcated and a hat of hemispherical outline;
+another that he shall keep silence upon certain types of foreigners who
+frequent the markets of Monomotapa, and shall even pretend that they are
+not foreigners but Monomotapans; and this index of statesmanship he must
+preserve under all circumstances, even when the foreigners in question
+cannot speak the Monomotapan language.
+
+Some years ago it was required of every statesman that he should, for at
+least so many times in any one year, extravagantly praise the virtues
+of these foreign merchants, and particularly allude to their intensely
+unforeign character; but this custom has recently fallen into abeyance,
+and silence upon the subject is the most that is demanded.
+
+A further social habit of this people which we should find very strange
+and which I for my part think unaccountable is their habit of judging the
+excellence of a literary production, not by the sense or even the sound of
+it, but by the ink in which it is printed and the paper upon which it is
+impressed. And this applies not only to their letters but also to their
+foreign information, and on this account they should (one would imagine)
+obtain but a very distorted view of the world. For if a good printer
+prints with excellent ink at five shillings a pound, and with beautiful
+clear type upon the best linen paper, the statement that the British
+Islands are uninhabited, while another in bad ink and upon flimsy paper
+and with worn type affirms that they contain over forty million souls, the
+first impression and not the second would be conveyed to the Monomotapan,
+mind. As a fact, however, they are not misinformed, for this singular
+frailty of theirs (as I conceive it to be) is moderated by one very wise
+countervailing mental habit of theirs, which is to believe whatever they
+hear asserted more than twenty-six times, so that even if the assertion be
+conveyed to them in bad print and upon poor paper, they will believe it if
+they read it over and over again to the required limits of reiterations.
+
+No people in the world are fonder of animals than this genial race, but
+here again curious limits to their affection are to be discovered, for
+while they will tear to pieces some abandoned wretch who beats a llama
+with a hazel twig for its correction, they will see nothing remarkable in
+the tearing to pieces of an alpaca goat by dogs specially trained in that
+exercise.
+
+Generally speaking, the larger an animal is, the warmer is the affection
+borne it by these people. Fleas and lice are crushed without pity,
+blackbeetles with more hesitation, small birds are spared entirely, and
+so on upwards until for calves they have a special legislation to protect
+and cherish them. At the other end of the scale, microbes are pitilessly
+exterminated.
+
+Divorce is not common in Monomotapa. But such divorces as take place are
+very rightly treated differently, according to the wealth of the persons
+involved. Above a certain scale of wealth divorce is only granted after a
+lengthy trial in a court of justice; but with the poor it is established
+by the decree of a magistrate who usually, shortly after pronouncing his
+sentence, finds an occasion to imprison the innocent party. Moreover, the
+poor can be divorced in this manner, if any magistrate feels inclined to
+exercise his power, while for the divorce of the rich set conditions are
+laid down.
+
+I should add that the Monomotapans have no religion; but the tolerance of
+their Constitution is nowhere better shown than in this particular, for
+though they themselves regard religion as ridiculous, they will permit
+its exercise within the State, and even occasionally give high office and
+emoluments to those who practise it.
+
+We have, indeed, much to learn in this matter of religion from the race
+whose habits I have discovered and here describe. Nothing, perhaps, has
+done more to warp our own story than the hide-bound prejudice that a
+doctrine could not be both false and true at the same time, and the
+unreasoning certitude, inherited from the bad old days of clerical
+tyranny, that a thing either was or was not.
+
+No such narrowness troubles the Monomotapan. He will prefer--and very
+wisely prefer--an opinion that renders him comfortable to one that in any
+way interferes with his appetites; and if two such opinions contradict
+each other, he will not fall into a silly casuistry which would attempt to
+reconcile them: he will quietly accept both, and serve the Higher Purpose
+with a contented mind.
+
+It is on this account that I have said that the Monomotapans regard
+religion as ridiculous. For true religion, indeed (as they phrase it),
+they have the highest reverence; and true religion consists in following
+the inclinations of an honest man, that is, oneself; but "religion in the
+sense of fixed doctrine," as one of their priests explained to me, "is
+abhorrent to our free commonwealth." Thus such hair-splitting questions as
+whether God really exists or no, whether it be wrong to kill or to steal,
+whether we owe any duties to the State, and, if so, what duties, are
+treated by the honest Monomotapans with the contempt they deserve: they
+abandon such speculation for the worthy task of enjoying, each man, what
+his fortune permits him to enjoy.
+
+But, as I have said above, they do not persecute the small minority living
+in their midst who cling with the tenacity of all starved minds to their
+fixed ideas; and if a man who professes certitude upon doctrinal matters
+is useful in other ways, they are very far from refusing his services to
+the State. I have known more than one, for instance, of this old-fashioned
+and bigoted lot who, when he offered a sum of money in order to be
+admitted to the Senate of Monomotapa, found it accepted as readily and
+cheerfully as though it had been offered by one of the broadest principles
+and most liberal mind.
+
+Let no one be surprised that I have spoken of their priests, for though
+the Monomotapans regard religion with due contempt, it does not follow
+that they will take away the livelihood of a very honest class of people
+who in an older and barbaric state of affairs were employed to maintain
+the structure of what was then a public worship. The priesthood,
+therefore, is very justly and properly retained by the Monomotapans,
+subject only to a few simple duties and to a sacred intonation of voice
+very distressing to those not accustomed to it. If I am asked in what
+occupation they are employed, I answer, the wealthier of them in such
+sports and futilities as attract the wealthy, and the less wealthy in such
+futilities and sports as the less wealthy customarily enjoy. Nor is it a
+rigid law among them that the sons of priests should be priests, but only
+the custom--so far, at least, as I have been able to discover.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER OF ADVICE AND APOLOGY TO A YOUNG BURGLAR
+
+
+My dear Ormond,
+
+Nothing was further from my thoughts. I had imagined you knew me well
+enough--and, for the matter of that, all your mother's family--to judge
+me better. Believe me, no conception of blaming your profession entered
+my mind for a moment. Whether there be such a thing as "property" in the
+abstract I should leave it to metaphysicians to decide: in practical
+affairs everything must be judged in its own surroundings.
+
+It was not upon any musty theological whimsy that I wrote; the definition
+of stealing or "theft"--I care not by what name you call it--is not for
+practical men to discuss. Nor was I concerned with the ethical discussion
+of burglary (to give the matter its old legal and technical title); it was
+lack of judgment, sudden actions due to nothing but impulse, and what I
+think I may call "the speculative side" of a burglar's life.
+
+You have not, as yet, any great responsibilities. No one is dependent upon
+you--you have but yourself to provide for; but you must remember that such
+responsibilities will arrive in their natural course, and that if you form
+habits of rashness or obstinacy now they will cling to you through life.
+We are all looking forward to a certain event when Anne is free again; in
+plain English, my boy, we know your loyal heart, and we shall bless the
+union; but I should feel easier in my mind if I saw you settled into one
+definite branch of the profession before you undertook the nurture of a
+family.
+
+Adventure tempts you because you are brave, and something of a poet in
+you leads you to unusual scenes of action. Well, Youth has a right to its
+dreams, but beware of letting a dangerous Quixotism spoil your splendid
+chances.
+
+Take, for example, your breaking into Mr. Cowl's house. You may say Mr.
+Cowl was not a journalist, but only a reviewer; the distinction is very
+thin, but let it pass. You know and I know that the houses of _none_
+in any way connected with the daily Press should ever be approached. It is
+plain common sense. The journalist comes home at all hours of the night.
+His servant (if he keeps one) is often up before he is abed. Do you think
+to enter such houses unobserved?
+
+Again, in one capacity or another, the journalist is dealing with our
+profession all day long. Some he serves and knows as masters; others he is
+employed in denouncing at about forty-two shillings the 1600 words; others
+again it is his business to interview and to pacify or cajole in the
+lobbies of the House--do you think he would not know what you were if he
+found you in the kitchen with a dark lantern?
+
+There is another peril--I mean that of alienating friends. Mr. Cowl is an
+Imperialist--of a very unemphatic type: he wears (as you will say) gold
+spectacles, and has a nervous cough, but he _is_ an Imperialist. I
+never said that it was _wrong_ or even _foolish_ to alienate
+such a man. I said that a great and powerful section of opinion thought it
+a breach of honour in one of Ours to do it. Do not run away with the first
+impression my words convey. Believe me, I weigh them all.
+
+There has been so much misunderstanding that I hardly know what to choose.
+Take those watches. I did not say that watches were "a mere distraction."
+You have put the words into my mouth. What I said was that watches,
+especially watches at a Tariff Reform meeting, were not worth the risk.
+Of course a hatful of watches, such as your Uncle Robert would bring home
+from fires, or better still, such a load as your poor cousin Charles
+obtained upon Empire Day last year, has value. But how many gold watches
+are there, off the platform, at a Tariff Reform meeting? And what possible
+chance have you of getting _on_ the platform? Now church and purses,
+that is another thing, but your mid-Devon adventure was simple folly.
+
+Who is Lord Darrell? I never heard of him! For Heaven's sake don't get
+caught by a title. Do you know any of the servants? His butler or his
+secretary? The fellow who catalogues the library is useful. Do recollect
+that lots of the ornaments in those Mayfair houses are fastened to the
+wall. That is where your dear father failed over the large Chinese jar in
+Park Street.... Your mother would never forgive me if you were to get into
+another of your boyish scrapes.
+
+There is another little matter, my dear Ormond, which I wish you to lay
+to heart very seriously. Now do take an old man's advice and do not get
+up upon your Quixotic hobby-horse the moment you sniff what it is--for I
+suppose you have guessed it already. Yes, it is what you feared: I want to
+urge you to follow your mother's ardent wish and add commission business
+to your other work. I know very well that young men must dream their
+dreams, but the world is what it is, and after all there is nothing so
+very dreadful in the commission side of our profession. You do not come
+into direct relation with the collectors of curios and church ornaments:
+there is always an agent to break the crudeness of the connexion. And
+it is a certain and profitable source of income with none of the risks
+attached to it that the older branches of the profession unfortunately
+show. Moreover, it affords excellent opportunities for foreign travel,
+and gives one a special position very difficult to define, but easily
+appreciable among one's colleagues.
+
+George Burton made to my knowledge three thousand pounds last year in a
+short season; he got this very large commission without the necessity of
+breaking into a single public-house; he earned it entirely upon objects
+taken out of churches upon the Continent, and in only three cases had he
+to pick a pocket. It would have hurt him very much with his knowledge and
+tastes to have had to break a stained-glass window.
+
+Do consider this, my dear Ormond, for your mother's sake. Don't think for
+a moment that I am advising you to take up any of those forms of work
+which we both agree in despising, and which are quite unworthy of your
+traditions, as for instance stealing pictures on commission out of the
+houses of dealers and then turning detective to recover them again. It is
+much too easy work for a man of your talents, much too ill-paid, and much
+too dangerous. It is all very well for the picture dealer to leave the
+door open, but what if the policeman is not in the know? No, you will
+always find me on your side in your steady refusal to have anything to do
+with this kind of business.
+
+Ormond, my dear lad, bear me no ill-will. It is true of every profession,
+of the Bar and of the City, of homicide, medicine, the Services, even
+Politics--everything, that success only comes slowly, and that the
+experience of older men is the key to it.
+
+Tomorrow is Ascension Day, and I am at leisure. Come and dine with me at
+the Colonial Club at eight for eight-fifteen. I will show you a
+magnificent littla tanagra I picked up yesterday, and we will talk about
+the new prospectus.
+
+God bless you! (Dress.)
+
+Your affectionate Uncle
+
+
+
+
+THE MONKEY QUESTION: AN APPEAL TO COMMON SENSE
+
+
+A privileged body slips so easily into regarding its privileges as common
+rights that I fear the plea which the SIMIAN LEAGUE repeats in this
+pamphlet will still sound strange in the ears of many, though the work of
+the League has been increasingly successful and has reached yearly a wider
+circle of the educated public since its foundation by Lady Wayne in 1902.
+We desire to place before our fellow-citizens the claims of Monkeys, and
+we hope once more that nothing we say may seem extreme or violent, for we
+know full well what poor weapons violence and passion are in the debate of
+a practical political matter.
+
+Perhaps it is best to begin by pointing out how rarely even the best of us
+pause in our fevered race for wealth to consider the disabilities of any
+of our fellow-creatures: when that truth is grasped it will be easier to
+plead the special cause of the Simian.
+
+Were English men and women to realize the wrongs of the Race, or at any
+rate the illogical and therefore unjust position in which we have placed
+them; were the just and thoughtful men, the refined and golden-hearted
+ladies who are ready in this country to support every good cause when it
+is properly presented; were _they_ to realize the disabilities of the
+Monkey, I do not say as vividly they realize the tragedies and misfortunes
+of London life, they could not, I think, avoid an ill-ease, a pricking of
+conscience, which would lead at last to some hearty and English effort for
+the relief of the cousin and forerunner of man.
+
+The attitude adopted towards Monkeys by the mass of those who, after all,
+live in the same world, and have much the same appetites and necessities
+and sufferings as they, is an attitude I am persuaded, not of
+heartlessness, but of ignorance. To disturb that ignorance, and in some to
+awake a consciousness which, perhaps, they fear, is not a grateful task,
+but it is our duty, and we will pursue it.
+
+Let the reader consider for one moment the aspect not only of formal law
+but of the whole community, and of what is called "public opinion" towards
+this section of sentient beings.
+
+As things now are--aye! and have been for centuries in this green England
+of ours--a Monkey may not marry; he may not own land; he may not fill any
+salaried post under the Crown. The Papists themselves are debarred from
+no honour (outside Ireland) save the Lord Chancellorship. Monkeys, who
+are responsible for no persecutions in the past, whose religion presents
+no insult or outrage to our common reason, and who differ little from
+ourselves in their general practice of life and thought, _are debarred
+from all_!
+
+A Monkey may not be a Member of Parliament, a Civil Servant, an officer
+in either Service, no, not even in the Territorial Army. It is doubtful
+whether he may hold a commission for the peace. True, there is no statute
+upon the subject, and the rural magistracy is perhaps the freest and most
+open of all our offices, and the least restricted by artificial barriers
+of examination or test; nevertheless, it is the considered opinion of the
+best legal authorities that no Monkey could sit upon the Bench, and in any
+case the discussion is purely academic, for it is difficult to believe
+that any Lord-Lieutenant, under the ridiculous anachronism of our present
+Constitution, would nominate a Monkey to such a position--unless (which is
+by law impossible) he should be heir to an owner of an estate in land.
+
+Nor is this all. The mention of unpaid posts recalls the damning truth
+that all honorary positions in the Diplomatic Service, including even the
+purely formal stage in the Foreign Office, are closed to the Monkey; the
+very Court sinecures, which admittedly require no talents, are denied to
+our Simian fellow-creatures, if not by law at least by custom and in
+practice.
+
+There have been employed by the League in the British Museum the services
+of two ladies who feel most keenly upon this subject. They are (to the
+honour of their sex) as amply qualified as any person in this kingdom for
+the task which they have undertaken, and they report to the Executive
+Commission after two months of minute research that (with one doubtful
+exception occurring during the reign of Her late Majesty) no Monkey has
+held any position whatever at Court.
+
+All judicial positions are equally inaccessible to them; for though,
+perhaps, in theory a Monkey could be promoted to the Bench if he had
+served his party sufficiently long and faithfully in the House of Commons
+(to which body he is admissible--at least I can find no rule or custom,
+let alone a statute, against it), yet he is cut off from such an ambition
+at the very outset by his inadmissibility to a legal career. The Inns of
+Court are monopolist, and, like all monopolists, hopelessly conservative.
+They have admitted first one class and then another--though reluctantly--
+to their privileges, but it will be twenty or thirty years at least
+before they will give way in the matter of Monkeys. To be a physician,
+a solicitor, an engineer, or a Commissioner for Oaths is denied them as
+effectually as though they did not exist. Indeed, no occupation is left
+them save that of manual labour, and on this I would say a word. It is
+fashionable to jeer at the Monkey's disinclination to sustained physical
+effort and to concentrated toil; but it is remarkable that those who
+affect such a contempt for the Monkey's powers are the first to deny him
+access to the liberal professions in which they know (though they dare not
+confess it) he would be a serious rival to the European. As it is, in the
+few places open to Monkeys--the somewhat parasitical domestic occupation
+of "companions" and the more manly, but still humiliating, task of acting
+as assistants to organ-grinders, the Monkey has won universal if grudging
+praise.
+
+Latterly, since progress cannot be indefinitely delayed, the Monkey has
+indeed advanced by one poor step towards the civic equality which is his
+right, and has appeared as an actor upon the boards of our music-halls. It
+should surely be a sufficient rebuke for those who continue to sneer at
+the Simian League and such devoted pioneers as Miss Greeley and Lady Wayne
+that the Monkey has been honourably admitted and has done first-rate work
+in a profession which His late Gracious Majesty and His late Majesty's
+late revered mother, Queen Victoria, have seen fit to honour by the
+bestowal of knighthoods, and in one case (where the recipient was
+childless) of a baronetcy.
+
+The disabilities I have enumerated are by no means exhaustive. A Monkey
+may not sign or deliver a deed; he may not serve on a jury; he may be
+ill-treated, forsooth, and even killed by some cruel master, and the
+law will refuse to protect him or to punish his oppressor. He may be
+subjected to all the by-laws of a tyrannical or fanatical administration,
+but in preventing such abuses he has no voice. He may not enter our
+older Universities, at least as the member of a college; that is, he can
+only take a degree at Oxford or Cambridge under the implied and wholly
+unmerited stigma applying to the non-collegiate student. And these
+iniquities apply not only to the great anthropoids whose strength and
+grossness we might legitimately fear, but to the most delicately organized
+types--to the Barbary Ape, the Lemur, and the Ring-tailed Baboon.
+Finally--and this is the worst feature in the whole matter--a Monkey, by
+a legal fiction at least as old as the fourteenth century, is not a person
+in the eye of the law.
+
+We call England a free country, yet at the present day and as you read
+these lines, _any Monkey found at large may be summarily arrested_.
+He has no remedy; no action for assault will lie. He is not even allowed
+to call witnesses in his own defence, or to establish an alibi.
+
+It may be pleaded that these disabilities attach also to the Irish, but we
+must remember that the Irish are allowed a certain though modified freedom
+of the Press, and have extended to them the incalculable advantage of
+sending representatives to Westminster. The Monkey has no such remedies.
+He may be incarcerated, nay _chained_, yet he cannot sue out a writ
+for habeas corpus any more than can a British subject in time of war, and
+worst of all, through the connivance or impotence of the police, cases
+have been brought forward _and approved_ in which Monkeys have been
+openly bought and sold!
+
+We boast our sense of delicacy, and perhaps rightly, in view of our
+superiority over other nations in this particular; yet we permit the
+Monkey to exhibit revolting nakedness, and we hardly heed the omission!
+It is true that some Monkeys are covered from time to time with little
+blue coats. A cap is occasionally disdainfully permitted them, and not
+infrequently they are permitted a pair of leather breeches, through a hole
+in which the tail is permitted to protrude; but no reasonable man will
+deny that these garments are regarded in the light of mere ornaments, and
+rarely fulfil those functions which every decent Englishman requires of
+clothing.
+
+And now we come to the most important section of our appeal. _What can
+be done_?
+
+We are a kindly people and we are a just people, but we are also a very
+conservative people. The fate of all pioneers besets those who attempt to
+move in this matter. They are jeered at, or, what is worse, neglected. One
+of the most prominent of the League's workers has been certified a lunatic
+by an authority whose bitter prejudice is well known, and against whom we
+have as yet had no grant of a _mandamus_, and we have all noticed the
+quiet contempt, the sort of organized boycott or conspiracy of silence
+with which a company at dinner will receive the subject when it is brought
+forward.
+
+There are also to be met the violent prejudices with which the mass of
+the population is still filled in this regard. These prejudices are, of
+course, more common among the uneducated poor than in the upper classes,
+who in various relations come more often in contact with Monkeys, and who
+also have a wider and more tolerant, because a better cultivated, spirit.
+But the prejudice is discernible in every class of society, even in the
+very highest. We have also arrayed against us in our crusade for right and
+justice the dying but still formidable power of clericalism. Society is
+but half emancipated from its medieval trammels, and the priest, that
+Eternal Enemy of Liberty, can still put in his evil word against the
+rights of the Simian.
+
+Let us not despair! We can hope for nothing, it is true, until we have
+effected a profound change in public opinion, and that change cannot
+be effected by laws. It can only be brought about by a slow and almost
+imperceptible effort, unsleeping, tireless, and convinced: something of
+the same sort as has destroyed the power of militarism upon the Continent
+of Europe; something of the same sort as has scotched landlordism at home;
+something of the same sort as has freed the unhappy natives of the Congo
+from the misrule of depraved foreigners; something of the same sort as has
+produced the great wave in favour of temperance through the length and
+breadth of this land.
+
+We must not attempt extremes or demand full justice to the exclusion of
+excellent half-measures. No one condemns more strongly than do we the
+militant pro-Simians who have twice assaulted and once blinded for life a
+keeper in the Zoological Gardens. We do not even approve of those ardent
+but in our opinion misguided spirits of the Simian Freedom Society who
+publish side by side the photographs of Pongo the learned Ape from the
+Gaboons and that of a certain Cabinet Minister, accompanied by the legend
+"Which is Which?" It is not by actions of this kind that we shall win the
+good fight; but rather by a perseverance in reason combined with courtesy
+shall we attain our end, until at long last our Brother shall be free! As
+for the excellent but somewhat provincial reactionaries who still object
+to us that the Monkey differs fundamentally from the human race; that he
+is not possessed of human speech, and so forth, we can afford to smile at
+their waning authority. Modern science has sufficiently dealt with them;
+and if any one bring out against the Monkey the obscurantist insult that
+His Hide is Covered with Hair, we can at once point to innumerable human
+beings, fully recognized and endowed with civic rights, who, were they
+carefully examined, would prove in no better case. As to speech, the
+Monkey communicates in his own way as well or better than do we, and for
+that matter, if speech is to be the criterion, are we to deny civic rights
+to the Dumb?
+
+We have it upon the authority of all our greatest scientific men, that
+there is no substantial difference between the Ape and Man. One of the
+greatest has said that between himself and his poorer fellow-citizens
+there was a wider difference than that which separated them from the
+Monkey. Hackel has testified that while there is a _boundary_, there
+is no _gulf_ between the corps of professors to which he belongs and
+the Chimpanzee. The Gorilla is universally accepted, and if we have won
+the battle for the Gorilla, the rest will follow.
+
+Tolstoy is with us, Webb is with us, Gorky is with us, Zola and Ferrer
+were with us and fight for us from their graves. The whole current of
+modern thought is with us. WE CANNOT FAIL!
+
+_Questions submitted at the last Election by the Simian League_
+
+1. Are you in favour of removing the present disabilities of Monkeys?
+
+2. Are you in favour of a short Statute which should put adult Monkeys
+upon the same footing as other subjects of His Majesty as from the 1st of
+January, 1912? And _would you, if necessary, vote against your party in
+favour of such a measure?_
+
+3. Are you in favour of the inclusion of Monkeys under the Wild Birds Act?
+
+(A plain reply "Yes" or "No" was to be written by the candidate under each
+of these questions and forwarded to the Secretary, Mr. Consul, 73 Purbeck
+Street, W.. before the 14th January, 1910. No replies received after
+that date were admitted. The Simian League, which has agents in every
+constituency, acted according to the replies received, and treated
+the lack of reply as a negative. Of 1375 circulars sent, 309 remained
+unanswered, 264 were answered in the negative, 201 gave a qualified
+affirmative, _all the rest (no less than 799) a clear and, in some
+cases, an enthusiastic adherence to our principles_. It is a sufficient
+proof of the power of the League and the growth of the cause of justice
+that in these 799 no less than 515 are members of the present House of
+Commons.)
+
+
+
+
+THE EMPIRE BUILDER
+
+
+We possess in this country a breed of men in whom we feel a pride so
+loyal, so strong, and so frank that were I to give further expression to
+it here I should justly be accused of insisting upon a hackneyed theme.
+These are the Empire Builders, the Men Efficient, the agents whom we
+cannot but feel--however reluctantly we admit it--to be less strictly
+bound by the common laws of life than are we lesser ones.
+
+But there is something about these men not hackneyed as a theme, which is
+their youth. By what process is the great mind developed? Of what sort is
+the Empire Builder when he is young?
+
+The fellow commonly rises from below: What was his experience there below?
+In what school was he trained? What accident of fortune, how met, or how
+surmounted, or how used, produced at last the Man who Can? In _that_
+inquiry there is food for very deep reflection. It is here that our
+Masters, whose general motives are so open and so plain, touch upon
+mystery. That secret power of determining nourishment which is at the base
+of all organic life has in its own silent way built up the boyhood and the
+adolescence which we only know in their maturity.
+
+I will not pretend to a full knowledge of that strange education of the
+mind which has produced so many similar men for the advancement of the
+race, but I can point to one example which lately came straight across my
+vision--an accident, an illumination, a revealing flash of how our time
+breeds the Great Type. I was acquainted for some hours with the actions of
+a youth of whose very name I am ignorant, but whose face I am very certain
+will reappear twenty years hence in a setting of glory, recognized as yet
+one other of those superb spirits who will do all for England.
+
+The occasion was a pageant--no matter what pageant--a great public pageant
+which passed through the Strand, and was to be witnessed by hundreds of
+thousands. Let us call it "The Function."
+
+Well, I was walking down the Strand three days before this Function was
+to take place, when I saw in an empty shop window about twenty-five
+wooden chairs, arranged in tiers one above the other upon a sloping
+platform, and lettered from A to Y. In the window was a large notice,
+very clearly printed, and it was to this effect:
+
+WHY PAY FANCY PRICES WHICH MUST INEVITABLY FALL BEFORE THE FUNCTION?
+SEATS IN THIS WINDOW, COMMANDING A FULL VIEW OF THE PROCESSION, 5S.
+
+At a little desk in the gangway by which the chairs were approached sat
+a dark, pale child--I can call him by no other name, so frail and young
+did he seem--and the delicacy of his complexion led me to wonder perhaps
+whether he was not one of those whom the climate of England strikes with
+consumption, and who, in the mysterious providence of our race, wander
+abroad in search of health and find a Realm. His alertness, however, and
+the brilliance of his eye; his winning, almost obsequious address, and the
+hooked clutch of his gestures betrayed an energy that no physical weakness
+could conquer. He invited me to enter, and begged me to purchase a seat.
+
+I had no need of one, for I had made arrangements to spend the Great
+Day itself and the next at a small hotel in the extreme north of
+Sutherlandshire, but I was arrested by the evident mental power of my new
+acquaintance, and I wasted five shillings in buying the chair marked D.
+
+It was with some difficulty that I could purchase it, so eager was he that
+I should have the best place; "seeing," said he, "that they are all one
+price, and that you may as well benefit by being an early bird." I noted
+the strict rectitude which, for all that men ignorant of modern commerce
+may say, is at the basis of commercial success.
+
+Something so attracted me
+in the whole business that I was weak enough to take a chair in a tea-shop
+opposite and watch all day the actions of the Child of Fate.
+
+In less than an hour twenty different people, mainly gentlefolk, had come
+in and bought places at the sensible price at which he offered them. To
+each of them he gave a ticket corresponding to the number of the chair. He
+was courteous to all, and even expansive. He explained the advantage of
+each particular seat.
+
+So far so good; but, what was more astonishing, in the second hour another
+twenty came and appeared to purchase; in the third (which was the busiest
+time of the day) some forty, first and last, must have done business with
+the Favourite of Fortune. I pondered upon these things very deeply, and
+went home.
+
+Next morning the attraction which the place had for me drew me as with
+a magnet, and I went, somewhat stealthily I fear, to the same tea-shop
+and noticed with the greatest astonishment that the chairs were now not
+lettered, but numbered, and that the boy was sitting at his little desk
+with a series of white cards bearing the figures from one to twenty-five.
+It was very early--not ten o'clock--but the Child was as spruce and neat
+as he had been in the afternoon of the day before. He bore already that
+mark of energy combined with neatness which is the stamp of success.
+
+I crossed the road and entered. He recognized me at once (their memory for
+faces is wonderful), and said cheerfully:
+
+"Your D corresponds to the number 4."
+
+I thanked him very much, and asked him why he had changed his system of
+notation. He told me it was because several people had explained to him
+that they remembered figures more easily than letters. We then talked to
+each other, agreeing upon the maxims of simplicity and directness which
+are at the root of all mercantile stability. He told me he required
+cash from all who bought his chairs; that there was no agreement, no
+insurance--no "frills," as he wittily called them.
+
+"It is as simple," he said, "as buying a pound of tea. I am satisfied, and
+they are satisfied. As for the risk, it is covered by the low price, and
+if you ask me how I can let them at so low a price, I will tell you. It is
+because I have found exactly what was needed and have added nothing more.
+Moreover, I did not buy the chairs, but hired them."
+
+I went back to my tea-shop with head bent, murmuring to myself those
+memorable lines:
+
+   We founded many a mighty State,
+   Pray God that we may never fail
+   From craven fears of being great
+
+(or words to that effect).
+
+That day no less than 153 people did business with the Youth.
+
+Next day I found among my morning letters a note from a politician of my
+acquaintance, telling me that the Function was postponed--indefinitely.
+I wasted not a moment. I went at once to my post of observation, my
+tea-shop, and I proceeded to watch the Leader.
+
+There was as yet no knowledge of the calamity in London.
+
+My friend seemed to have noticed me; at any rate a new and somewhat
+anxious look was apparent on his face. With a firm and decided step I
+crossed the road to greet him, and when he saw me he was all at his ease.
+He told me that my seat had been especially asked for, and that a higher
+price had been offered; but a bargain, he said, was a bargain, and so we
+fell to chatting. When I mentioned, among other subjects, the very great
+success of his enterprise, he gave a slight start, which did honour to his
+heart; but he was of too stern a mould to give way. He was of the temper
+of the Pioneers.
+
+I assured him at once that it was very far from my intention to reproach
+him for the talents which he had used with so much ability and energy. I
+pointed out to him that even if I desired to injure him, which I did not,
+it would be impossible for me, or for any one, to trace more than half a
+dozen, at the most, of his numerous clients.
+
+It is frequently the case that men of small business capacity will
+perceive some important element in a commercial problem which escapes the
+eyes of Genius; and I could see that this simple observation of mine had
+relieved him almost to tears.
+
+Before he could thank me, a newsboy appeared with a very large placard,
+upon which was written
+
+"POSTPONED."
+
+In a moment his mind grasped the whole meaning of that word; but he went
+out with a steady step, and paid the sixpence which the newsboy demanded.
+Even in that uncomplaining action, the uncomplaining forfeiture of the
+comparatively large sum which necessity demanded, one could detect the
+financial grip which is the true arbiter of the fates of nations. He
+needed the paper: he did not haggle about the price. He first mastered the
+exact words of the announcement, and then, looking up at me with a face of
+paper, he said:
+
+"It is not only postponed, but all this preparation is thrown away."
+
+I have said that I have no commercial aptitude; I admit that I was
+puzzled.
+
+"Surely," said I, "this is exactly what you needed?"
+
+He shook his head, still restraining, by a powerful effort, the natural
+expression of his grief, and showed me, for all his answer, a rail way
+ticket to Boulogne which he had purchased, and which was available for the
+night boat on the eve of the Function. I then understood what he meant
+when he said that all his preparations had been thrown away.
+
+I do not know whether I did right or wrong--I felt myself to be nothing
+more than a blind instrument in the hands of the superior power which
+governs the destinies of a people.
+
+"How much did the ticket cost?" said I.
+
+"Thirty shillings," said he.
+
+I pulled out a sovereign and a half-sovereign from my pocket, and said:
+
+"Here is the money. I have leisure, and I would as soon go to Boulogne as
+to Sutherlandshire."
+
+He did not thank me effusively, as might one of the more excitable and
+less efficient races; but he grasped my hand and blessed me silently. I
+then left him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the steamer to Boulogne, as I was musing over this strange adventure, a
+sturdy Anglo-Saxon man, a true son of Drake or Raleigh, came up and asked
+me for my ticket. As I gave it him my eye fell idly upon the price of the
+ticket. It was twenty-five shillings--but I had saved a directing and
+creative mind.
+
+If he should come across these lines he will remember me. He is probably
+in the House of Commons by now. Perhaps he has bought his peerage.
+Wherever he is I hope he will remember me.
+
+
+
+
+CAEDWALLA
+
+
+Caedwalla, a prince out of Wales (though some deny it), wandered in the
+Andredsweald. He was nineteen years of age and his heart was full of anger
+for wrong that had been done him by men of his own blood. For he was
+rightfully heir to the throne of the kingdom of Sussex, but he was kept
+from it by the injustice of men.
+
+A retinue went with him of that sort which will always follow adventure
+and exile. These, the rich of the seacoast and of the Gwent called broken
+men; but they loved their Lord. So he went hunting, feeding upon what he
+slew, and proceeding from steading to steading in the sparse woods of
+Andred where is sometimes an open heath, and sometimes a mile of oak, and
+often a clay swamp, and, seen from little lifted knolls of sand where the
+broom grows and the gorse, the Downs to the south like a wall.
+
+As he so wandered upon one day, he came upon another man of a very
+different fashion, for Caedwalla would have nothing to do with the Cross
+of Christ, nor with the customs of the towns, nor with the talk of foreign
+men. But this man was a bishop wandering, and his name was Wilfrid. He
+also had his little retinue, and, by an accident of his office or of his
+exile, he had proceeded to a steading in the heaths and woods of the
+Weald where also was Caedwalla: so they met. The pride and the bearing of
+Wilfrid, seeing that he was of a Roman town and an officer of the State,
+and a bishop to boot, nay, a bishop above bishops, was not the pride
+Caedwalla loved, and the young man bore himself with another sort of
+pride, which was that of the mountains and of pagan men. Nevertheless
+Wilfrid put before him, with Roman rhetoric and with uplifted hands, the
+story of our Lord, and Caedwalla, keeping his face set during all that
+recital, could not forbid this story to sink into the depths of his heart,
+where for many years it remained, and did no more than remain.
+
+The kingdom of Sussex, cultivated by men of various kinds, received
+Wilfrid the Bishop wherever he went. He did many things that do not here
+concern me, and his chief work was to make the rich towns of the sea plain
+and of Chichester and of Lewes and of Arundel, and of the steadings of
+the Weald, and of the wealden markets also, Christian men; for he showed
+them that it was a mean thing to go about in a hairy way like pagans,
+unacquainted with letters, and of imperfect ability in the making of
+raiment or the getting of victuals. Indeed, as I have written in another
+place, it was St. Wilfrid who taught the King of Sussex and his men how to
+catch fish in nets. They revered him everywhere, and when they had given
+up their shameful barbarism and decently accepted the rules of life and
+the religion of it, they pressed upon St. Wilfrid that he should found a
+bishopric, and that it should have a cathedral and a see (all of which
+things he had explained to them), and he did this on Selsey Bill: but
+to-day the sea has swallowed all.
+
+Time passed, and the young man Caedwalla, still a very young man in the
+twenties, came to his own, and he sat on the throne that was rightfully
+his in Chichester and he ruled all Sussex to its utmost boundaries. And
+he was king of much more, as history shows, but all the while he proudly
+refused in his young man's heart the raiment and the manner of the thing
+which he had hated in his exile, nor would he accept the Latin prayers,
+nor bow to the name of the Christian God.
+
+Caedwalla, still so young but now a king, thought it shameful that he
+should rule no more than the empire God had given him, and he was filled
+with a longing to cross the sea and to conquer new land. Wherefore,
+whether well or ill advised, he set out to cross the sea and to conquer
+the Isle of Wight, of which story said that Wight the hero had established
+his kingdom there in the old time before writing was, and when there were
+only songs. So Caedwalla and his fighting men, they landed in that island
+and they fought against the many inhabitants of it, and they subdued it,
+but in these battles Caedwalla was wounded.
+
+It happened that the King of that island, whose name was Atwald, had two
+heirs, youths, whom it was pitifully hoped this conqueror would spare, for
+they fled up the Water to Stoneham; but a monk who served God by the ford
+of reeds which is near Hampton at the head of the Water, hearing that King
+Caedwalla (who was recovering of wounds he had had in the war with the men
+of Wight) had heard of the youths' hiding-place and had determined to kill
+them, sought the King and begged that at least they might be instructed
+in the Faith before they died, saying to him: "King, though you are not
+of the Faith, that is no reason that you should deprive others of such
+a gift. Let me therefore see that these young men are instructed and
+baptized, after which you may exercise your cruel will." And Caedwalla
+assented. These lads, therefore, were taken to a holy place up on Itchen,
+where they were instructed in the truths and the mysteries of religion.
+And while this so went forward Caedwalla would ask from time to time
+whether they were yet Christians.
+
+At last they had received all the knowledge the holy men could give them
+and they were baptized. When they were so received into the fold Caedwalla
+would wait no longer but had them slain. And it is said that they went to
+death joyfully, thinking it to be no more than the gate of immortality.
+
+After such deeds Caedwalla still reigned over the kingdom of Sussex and
+his other kingdoms, nor did he by speech or manner give the rich or poor
+about him to understand whether anything was passing in his heart. But
+while they sang Mass in the cathedral of Selsey and while still the
+new-comers came (now more rarely, for nearly all were enrolled): while
+the new-comers came, I say, in their last numbers from the remotest parts
+of the forest ridge, and from the loneliest combes of the Downs to hear
+of Christ and his cross and his resurrection and the salvation of men,
+Caedwalla sat in Chichester and consulted his own heart only and was a
+pagan King. No one else you may say in all the land so kept himself apart.
+
+His youth had been thus spent and he thus ruled, when as his thirtieth
+year approached he gave forth a decision to his nobles and to his earls
+and to the Welsh-speaking men and to the seafaring men and to the priests
+and to all his people. He said: "I will take ship and I will go over the
+sea to Rome, where I may worship at the tombs of the blessed Apostles, and
+there I will be baptized. But since I am a king no one but the Pope shall
+baptize me. I will do penance for my sins. I will lift my eyes to things
+worthy of a man. I will put behind me what was dear to me, and I will
+accept that which is to come." And as they could not alter Caedwalla
+in any of his previous decisions, so they could not alter him in this.
+But his people gave gladly for the furnishing of his journey, and all
+the sheep of the Downs and their fleece, and all the wheat in the clay
+steadings of the Weald, and the little vineyards in the priests' gardens
+that looked towards the sea, and the fishermen, and every sort in Sussex
+that sail or plough or clip or tend sheep or reap or forge iron at the
+hammer ponds, gave of what they had to King Caedwalla, so that he went
+forth with a good retinue and many provisions upon his journey to the
+tombs of the Apostles.
+
+When King Caedwalla came to Rome the Pope received him and said: "I hear
+that you would be instructed in the Faith." To which King Caedwalla
+answered that such was his desire, and that he would crave baptism at the
+hands of the said Pope. And meanwhile Caedwalla took up good lodgings in
+Rome, gave money to the poor, and showed himself abroad as one who had
+come from the ends of the earth, that is, from the kingdom of Sussex,
+which in those days was not yet famous. Caedwalla, now being thirty years
+old and having learnt what one should learn in order to receive baptism,
+was baptized, and they put a white robe on him which he was to wear for
+certain days.
+
+King Caedwalla, when he was thus made one with the unity of Christian men,
+was very glad. But he also said that before he had lost that white robe so
+given him, death would come and take him (though he was a young man and a
+warrior), and that not in battle. He was certain it was so.
+
+And so indeed it came about. For within the limit of days during which
+ritual demanded that the King should wear his white garment, nay, within
+that same week, he died.
+
+So those boys who had found death at his hands had died after baptism,
+up on Itchen in the Gwent, when Caedwalla the King had journeyed out of
+Sussex to conquer and to hold the Wight with his spear and his sword and
+his shield, and his captains and his armoured men.
+
+Now that you have done reading this story you may think that I have made
+it up or that it is a legend or that it comes out of some storyteller's
+book. Learn, therefore, that it is plain history, like the battle of
+Waterloo or the Licensing Bill (differing from the chronicle only in this,
+that I have put living words into the mouths of men), and be assured that
+the history of England is a very wonderful thing.
+
+
+
+
+A UNIT OF ENGLAND
+
+
+England has been lucky in its type of subdivision. All over Western
+Europe the type of subdivision following in the fall of the Empire has
+been of capital importance in the development of the great nations,
+but while these have elsewhere been exaggerated to petty kingdoms or
+diminished to mere townships in Britain, for centuries the counties have
+formed true and lasting local units, and they have survived with more
+vigour than the corresponding divisions of the other provinces of Roman
+Europe.
+
+That accident of the county moulded and sustained local feeling during
+the generations when local government and local initiative were dying
+elsewhere; it has preserved a sort of aristocratic independence, the
+survival of custom, and the differentiation of the State.
+
+It is not necessarily (as many historians unacquainted with Europe as a
+whole have taken for granted) a supreme advantage for any people to escape
+from institution of a strong central executive. Such a power is the normal
+fruit of all high civilizations. It protects the weak against the strong.
+It is necessary for rapid action in war, it makes for clarity and method
+during peace, it secures a minimum for all, and it forbids the illusions
+and vices of the rich to taint the whole commonwealth.
+
+But though such an escape from strong central government and the
+substitution for it of a ruling class is not a supreme advantage, it
+has advantages of its own which every foreign historian of England has
+recognized, and it is the divisions into counties which, after the change
+of religion in the sixteenth century, was mainly responsible for the
+slow substitution of local and oligarchic for general, central, and
+bureaucratic government in England.
+
+Not all the counties by any means are true to type. All the Welsh
+divisions, for instance, are more or less artificial and late, with the
+exception of Anglesey. And as for the non-Roman parts, Ireland and the
+Highlands of Scotland, it goes without saying that the county never was,
+and is not to this day, a true unit. The central and much of the west of
+England is the same. That is, the shires are cut as their name implies,
+somewhat arbitrarily, from the general mass of territory.
+
+When one says "arbitrarily" one does not mean that no local sentiment
+bound them, or that they had not some natural basis, for they had. They
+were the territory of central towns: Shrewsbury, Warwick, Derby, Chester,
+Oxford, Buckingham, Bedford, Nottingham. But their life was not and has
+not since been strongly individual. They have not continuous boundaries
+nor an early national root. But all round these, in a sort of ring, run
+the counties which have had true local life from the beginning. Cornwall
+is utterly different from Devon, and with a clear historic reason for the
+difference. Devon, again, is a perfectly separate unit, resulting from a
+definite political act of the early ninth century. Of Dorset and Hampshire
+one can say less, but with Sussex you get a unit which has been one
+kingdom and one diocese, set in true natural limits and lying within
+these same boundaries for much more than a thousand years. Kent, probably
+an original Roman division, has been one unit for longer still. Norfolk,
+Suffolk, and Essex are equally old, though not upon their land boundaries
+equally denned; but perhaps the most sharply defined of all--after Sussex,
+at least--was Southern and Central Lancashire.
+
+Its topography was like one of those ideal examples which military
+instructors take for their models when they wish to simplify a lesson
+upon terrain. Upon one side ran the long, high, and difficult range which
+is the backbone of England; upon the other the sea, and the sea and the
+mountains leant one towards the other, making two sides of a triangle
+that met above Morecambe Bay.
+
+How formidable the natural barriers of this triangle were it is not easy
+for the student of our time to recognize. It needs a general survey of the
+past, and a knowledge of many unfamiliar conditions in the present, to
+appreciate it.
+
+The difficulty of those Eastern moors and hills, for instance, the
+resistance they offer to human passage, meets you continually throughout
+English history. The engineers of the modern railways could give one a
+whole romance of it; the story of every army that has had to cross them,
+and of which we have record, bears the same witness. The illusion which
+the modern traveller may be under that the barrier is negligible is very
+soon dispelled when for his recreation he crosses it by any other methods
+than the railway; and perhaps in such an experience of travel nothing more
+impresses one in the character of that barrier than the _loneliness_.
+
+There is no other corresponding contrast of men and emptiness that I know
+of in Europe.
+
+The great towns lie, enormous, pullulating, millioned in the plains on
+either side; they push their limbs up far into the valleys. Between them,
+utterly deserted, you have these miles and miles of bare upland, like the
+roof of a house between two crowded streets.
+
+Merely to cross the Pennines, driving or on foot, is sufficient to teach
+one this. To go the length of the hills along the watershed from the
+Peak to Crossfell (few people have done it!) is to get an impression of
+desertion and separation which you will match nowhere else in travel,
+nowhere else, at least, within touch and almost hearing of great towns.
+
+The sea also was here more of a barrier than a bond. Ireland--not Roman,
+and later an enemy--lay over against that shore. Its ports (save one)
+silted. Its slope from the shore was shallow: the approach and the
+beaching of a fleet not easy. Its river mouths were few and dangerous.
+
+This triangle of Lancashire, so cut off from the west and from the east,
+had for its base a barrier that completed its isolation. That barrier
+was the marshy valley of the Mersey. It could be outflanked only at
+its extreme eastern point, where the valley rises to the hundred-foot
+contour line. From that point the valley rises so rapidly within half a
+dozen miles into the eastern hills that it was dry even under primitive
+conditions, and the opportunity here afforded for a passage is marked
+by the topographical point of Stockport.
+
+By that gate the main avenues of approach still enter the county. Through
+this gap passed the London Road, and passes to-day the London and
+North-Western Railway. It was this gate which gave its early strategic
+importance to Manchester, lying just north of it and holding the whole of
+this corner.
+
+Historians have noted that to hold Manchester was ultimately to hold
+Lancashire itself. It was not the industrial importance of the town, for
+that was hardly existent until quite modern times: it was its strategic
+position which gave it such a character. The Roman fort at the junction
+of the two rivers near Knott Mill represented the first good defensible
+position commanding this gate upon the south-east.
+
+To enter the county anywhere west of the hundred-foot contour and the
+Mersey Valley was, for an army deprived of modern methods, impossible:
+a little organized destruction would make it impossible again.
+
+Two artificial causeways negotiated the valley. Each bears to this day (at
+Stretford and at Stretton) the proof of its old character, for both words
+indicate the passage of a "street," that is, of a hard-made way, over the
+soft and drowned land. Stretford was but the approach to Manchester from
+Chester--and Manchester thus commanded (by the way) the two south-eastern
+approaches to the county, the one natural, the other artificial. The
+approach by Stretton gave Warrington its strategic importance in the early
+history of the county; Warrington, the central point upon the Mersey,
+standing at a clear day's march from Liverpool, the port on the one
+hand, and a clear day's march from Manchester on the other. It was from
+Warrington that Lord Strange marched upon Manchester at the very beginning
+of the Civil War, and if by some accident this stretch of territory should
+again be a scene of warfare, Warrington, in spite of the close network of
+modern communications, would be the strategic centre of the county
+boundary.
+
+So one might take the units out of which modern England has been built
+up one by one, showing that their boundaries were fixed by nature, and
+that their local separation was not the product of the pirate raids, but
+is something infinitely older, older than the Empire, and very probably
+(did we know what the Roman divisions of Britain were) accepted under
+the Empire. So one might prove or at least suggest that the strategical
+character of the English county and of its chief stronghold and barriers
+lay in an origin far beyond the limits of recorded history. To produce
+such a study would be to add to the truth and reality of our history, for
+England was not made nor even moulded by the Danish and the Saxon raids.
+The framework is far, far older and so strong that it still survives.
+
+
+
+
+THE RELIC
+
+
+It was upon an evening in Spain, but with nothing which that word evokes
+for us in the North--for it was merely a lessening of the light without
+dews, without mists, and without skies--that I came up a stony valley
+and saw against the random line of the plateau at its head the dome of a
+church. The road I travelled was but faintly marked, and was often lost
+and mingled with the rough boulders and the sand, and in the shallow
+depression of the valley there were but a few stagnant pools.
+
+The shape of the dome was Italian, and it should have stood in an Italian
+landscape, drier indeed than that to which Northerners are accustomed,
+but still surrounded by trees, and with a distance that could render
+things lightly blue. Instead of that this large building stood in the
+complete waste which I have already described at such length, which is so
+appalling and so new to an European from any other province of Europe. As
+I approached the building I saw that there gathered round it a village, or
+rather a group of dependent houses; for the church was so much larger than
+anything in the place, and the material of which the church itself and the
+habitations were built was so similar, the flat old tiled roofs all mixed
+under the advance of darkness into so united a body, that one would have
+said, as was perhaps historically the truth, that the church was not built
+for the needs of the place, but that the borough had grown round the
+shrine, and had served for little save to house its servants.
+
+When the long ascent was ended and the crest reached, where the head of
+the valley merged into the upper plain, I passed into the narrow first
+lanes. It was now quite dark. The darkness had come suddenly, and, to
+make all things consonant, there was no moon and there were not any
+stars; clouds had risen of an even and menacing sort, and one could see no
+heaven. Here and there lights began to show in the houses, but most people
+were in the street, talking loudly from their doorsteps to each other.
+They watched me as I came along because I was a foreigner, and I went down
+till I reached the central market-place, wondering how I should tell the
+best place for sleep. But long before my choice could be made my thoughts
+were turned in another direction by finding myself at a turn of the
+irregular paving, right in front of a vast façade, and behind it, somewhat
+belittled by the great length of the church itself, the dome just showed.
+I had come to the very steps of the church which had accompanied my
+thoughts and had been a goal before me during all the last hours of the
+day.
+
+In the presence of so wonderful a thing I forgot the object of my journey
+and the immediate care of the moment, and I went through the great doors
+that opened on the Place. These were carved, and by the little that
+lingered of the light and the glimmer of the electric light on the
+neighbouring wall (for there is electric light everywhere in Spain, but it
+is often of a red heat) I could perceive that these doors were wonderfully
+carved. Already at Saragossa, and several times during my walking south
+from thence, I had noted that what the Spaniards did had a strange
+affinity to the work of Flanders. The two districts differ altogether save
+in the human character of those who inhabit them: the one is pastoral,
+full of deep meadows and perpetual woods, of minerals and of coal for
+modern energy, of harbours and good tidal rivers for the industry of the
+Middle Ages; the other is a desert land, far up in the sky, with an air
+like a knife, and a complete absence of the creative sense in nature about
+one. Yet in both the creation of man runs riot; in both there is a sort
+of endlessness of imagination; in both every detail that man achieves
+in art is carefully completed and different from its neighbour; and in
+both there is an exuberance of the human soul: but with this difference,
+that something in the Spanish temper has killed the grotesque. Both
+districts have been mingled in history, yet it is not the Spaniard who has
+invigorated the Delta of the Rhine and the high country to the south of
+it, nor the Walloons and the Flemings who have taught the Spaniards; but
+each of these highly separated peoples resembles the other when it comes
+to the outward expression of the soul: why, I cannot tell.
+
+Within, there is not a complete darkness, but a series of lights showing
+against the silence of the blackness of the nave; and in the middle of
+the nave, like a great funeral thing, was the choir which these Spanish
+churches have preserved, an intact tradition, from the origins of the
+Christian Faith. Go to the earliest of the basilicas in Rome, and you
+will see that sacred enclosure standing in the middle of the edifice and
+taking up a certain proportion of the whole. We in the North, where the
+Faith lived uninterruptedly and, after the ninth century, with no great
+struggle, dwindled this feature and extended the open and popular space,
+keeping only the rood-screen as a hint of what had once been the Secret
+Mysteries and the Initiations of our origins. But here in Spain the
+earliest forms of Christian externals crystallized, as it were; they
+were thrust, like an insult or a challenge, against the Asiatic as the
+reconquest of the desolated province proceeded; and therefore in every
+Spanish church you have, side by side with the Christian riot of art, this
+original hierarchic and secret thing, almost shocking to a Northerner, the
+choir, the Coro, with high solemn walls shutting out the people from the
+priests and from the Mysteries as they had been shut out when the whole
+system was organized for defence against an inimical society around.
+
+The silence of the place was not complete nor, as I have said, was the
+darkness. At the far end of the choir, behind the high altar, was the
+light of many candles, and there were people murmuring or whispering,
+though not at prayers. There was a young priest passing me at that moment,
+and I said to him in Latin of the common sort that I could speak no
+Spanish. I asked him if he could speak to me slowly in Latin, as I was
+speaking to him. He answered me with this word, "_Paucissime_," which
+I easily understood. I then asked him very carefully, and speaking slowly,
+whether Benediction were about to be held--an evening rite; but as I did
+not know the Latin for Benediction, I called it alternately "Benedictio,"
+which is English, and "Salus," which is French. He said twice, "Si, si,"
+which, whether it were Italian or French or local, I understood by the
+nodding of his head; but at any rate he had not caught my meaning, for
+when I came behind the high altar where the candles were, and knelt there,
+I clearly saw that no preparations for Benediction were toward. There was
+not even an altar. All there was was a pair of cupboard doors, as it were,
+of very thickly carved wood, very heavily gilded and very old; indeed, the
+pattern of the carving was barbaric, and I think it must have dated from
+that turn of the Dark into the Middle Ages when so much of our Christian
+work resembled the work of savages: spirals and hideous heads, and
+serpents and other things.
+
+By this I was already enormously impressed, and by a little group of
+people around of whom perhaps half were children, when the young priest to
+whom I had spoken approached and, calling a well-dressed man of the middle
+class who stood by and who had, I suppose, some local prominence, went up
+the steps with him towards these wooden doors; he fitted a key into the
+lock and opened them wide. The candles shone at once through thick clear
+glass upon a frame of jewels which flashed wonderfully, and in their
+midst was the head of a dead man, cut off from the body, leaning somewhat
+sideways, and changed in a terrible manner from the expression of living
+men. It was so changed, not only by incalculable age, but also, as I
+presume, by the violence of his death.
+
+To those inexperienced in the practice of such worship there might be more
+excuse for the novel impression which this sight suddenly produced upon
+me. Our race from its very beginning, nay, all the races of men, have
+preserved the fleshly memorials of those to whom sanctity attached, and I
+have seen such relics in many parts of Europe almost as commonplaces; but
+for some reason my emotions upon that evening were of a different kind.
+The length of the way (for I was miles and miles southwards over this
+desert waste), the ignorance of the language which surrounded me, the
+inhuman outline hour after hour under the glare of the sun, or in the
+inhospitable darkness of this hard Iberian land, the sternness of the
+faces, the violent richness and the magnitude of the architecture about
+me, and my knowledge of the trials through which the province had passed,
+put me in this Presence into a mood very different, I think, from that
+which pilgrimage is calculated to arouse; there was in it much more of
+awe, and even of terror; there seemed to re-arise in the presence of
+that distorted face the memories of active pain and of the unconquerable
+struggle by which this ruined land was recovered. I wondered as I looked
+at that face whether he had fallen in protest against the Mohammedans, or,
+as have so many, in a Spanish endurance of torture, martyred by Pagans in
+the Pacific Seas. But no history of him was given to me, nor do I now know
+as I write what occasion it was that made this head so great.
+
+They said but a few prayers, all familiar to me, in the Latin tongue; then
+the "Our Father" and some few others which have always been recited in the
+vernacular. They next intoned the Salve Regina. But what an intonation!
+
+Had I not heard that chant often enough in my life to catch its meaning?
+I had never heard it set to such a tune! It was harsh, it was full of
+battle, and the supplication in it throbbed with present and physical
+agony. Had I cared less for the human beings about me, so much suffering,
+so much national tradition of suffering would have revolted, as it did
+indeed appal, me. The chant came to an end, and the three gracious
+epithets in which it closes were full of wailing, and the children's
+voices were very high.
+
+Then the priest shut the doors and locked them, and a boy came and blew
+the candles out one by one, and I went out into the market-place, fuller
+than ever of Spain.
+
+
+
+
+THE IRONMONGER
+
+
+When I was in the French army we came one day with the guns in July along
+a straight and dusty road and clattered into the village called Bar-le-Duc.
+Of the details of such marches I have often written. I wish now to speak of
+another thing, which, in long accounts of mere rumbling of guns, one might
+never have time to tell, but which is really the most important of all
+experiences under arms in France--I mean the older civilians, the fathers.
+
+Who made the French army? Who determined to recover from the defeats and
+to play once more that determined game which makes up half French history,
+the "Thesaurization," the gradual reaccumulation of power? The general
+answer to such questions is to say: "The nation being beaten had to set
+to and recover its old position." That answer is insufficient. It deals
+in abstractions and it tells you nothing. Plenty of political societies
+throughout history have sat down under disaster and consented to sink
+slowly. Many have done worse--they have maintained after sharp warnings
+the pride of their blind years; they have maintained that pride on into
+the great disasters, and when these came they have sullenly died. France
+neither consented to sink nor died by being overweening. Some men must
+have been at work to force their sons into the conscription, to consent
+to heavy taxation, to be vigilant, accumulative, tenacious, and, as it
+were, constantly eager. There must have been classes in which, unknown to
+themselves, the stirp of the nation survived; individuals who, aiming at
+twenty different things, managed, as a resultant, to carry up the army
+to the pitch in which I had known it and to lay a slow foundation for
+recovered vigour. Who were these men?
+
+I had read of them in Birmingham when I was at school; I had read of them
+in books when I read of the Hundred Years' War and of the Revolution.
+I was to read of them again in books at Oxford. But on that Saturday
+at Bar-le-Duc I _saw_ one of them, and by as much as the physical
+impression is worth more than the secondary effect of history, my sight
+of them is worth writing down.
+
+A man in my battery, one Matthieu, told me he had leave to go out for the
+evening, and told me also to go and get leave. He said his uncle had asked
+him to dine and bring a friend. It seemed his uncle lived in a villa on
+the heights above the town; he was an ironmonger who had retired. I went
+to my Sergeant and asked him for leave.
+
+My Sergeant was a noble who was working his way up through the ranks, and
+when I found him he was checking off forage at a barn where some of our
+men were working. He looked me hard in the eyes, and said in a drawling
+lackadaisical voice:
+
+"You are the Englishman?"
+
+"Yes, Sergeant," said I a little anxiously (for I was very keen to get a
+good dinner in town after all that marching).
+
+"Well," said he, "as you are the Englishman you can go." Such is the logic
+of the service.
+
+The army is no place to argue, and I went. I suppose what he meant was,
+"As we are both more or less in exile, take my blessing and be off," but
+he may merely have meant to be inconsequent, for inconsequence is the wit
+of schoolboys and soldiers. I went up the hill with my friend.
+
+The long twilight was still broad over the hill and the old houses of
+Bar-le-Duc, as we climbed. It was night by the clock, but one could have
+seen to read. We were tired, and talked of nothing in particular, but such
+things as we said were full of the old refrain of conscripts: "Dog of a
+trade," "When shall we be out of it?" Even as we spoke there was pride in
+our breasts at the noise of trumpets in the mist below along the river and
+the Eighth making its presence known, and our uniforms and our swords.
+
+We stopped at last before a little square house with "The Lilacs" painted
+on its gate; there was a parched little lawn, a little fountain, a tripod
+supporting a globular mirror, and we went in.
+
+Matthieu's uncle met us; he was in a cotton suit walking about among his
+flowers and enjoying the evening. He was a man of about fifty, short,
+strong, brown, and abrupt. Though it was already evening and one could see
+little, we knew well enough that his eyes were steady and dark. For he
+had the attitude and carriage of those men who invigorate France. His
+self-confidence was evident in his sturdy legs and his arms akimbo, his
+vulgarity in his gesture, his narrowness in his forward and peering look,
+his indomitable energy in every movement of his body. It did not surprise
+me to learn in his later conversation that he was a Republican. He spoke
+at once to us both, saying in a kind of grumbling shout:
+
+"Well, gunners!"
+
+Then he spoke roughly to his nephew, telling him we were late: to me
+a little too politely saying he put no blame on me, but only on his
+scapegrace of a nephew. I said that our lateness was due to having to
+find the Sergeant. He answered:
+
+"One must always put the blame on some one else," which was rank bad
+manners.
+
+He led the way into the house. The dining-room gave on to a veranda,
+and beyond this was another little lawn with trees. In the dark a few
+insects chirped, and, as the evening was warmish, one smelt the flowers.
+The windows had been left open. Everything was clean, neat, and bare. On
+the walls were two excellent old prints, a badly drawn certificate of
+membership in some society or other, a still worse portrait of a local
+worthy, and a water-colour painted, I suppose, by his daughter.
+
+He introduced me to his wife, a hard-featured woman, with thin hair, full
+of duty, busy and precise--fresh from the kitchen. We unhooked our swords
+with the conventional clatter, and sat down to the meal.
+
+I will confess that as we ate those excellent dishes (they were all
+excellent) and drank that ordinary wine, I seemed to be living in a book
+rather than among living men. Here was I, a young English boy, thrust
+by accident into the French army. Fairly acquainted with its language,
+though I spoke it with an accent; taken (of course) by my host for a pure
+Englishman, though half my blood was French. Here was I sitting at his
+side and watching things, and learning--as for him, men like him, of whom
+England has some few left in forgotten villages, and who are, when they
+can be found, the strength of a State, _they_ never bother about
+learning anything far removed from their realities.
+
+I noticed the one servant going in and out rapidly, bullied a good deal by
+her master, deft but nervous. I noticed how everything was solid and good:
+the chairs, table, clock, clothes--and especially the cooking. I saw his
+local newspaper neatly folded on the mantelpiece. I saw the pet dog of his
+retirement crouching at his side, and I heard the chance sayings he threw
+to his nephew, the maxims granted to youth long ago. I wondered how much
+that nephew would inherit. I guessed about ten thousand pounds at the
+least, and twenty at the most. I was almost inclined to cross myself at
+the thought of such a lot of money.
+
+My host grew more genial: he asked me questions on England. His wife also
+was interested in that country. They both knew more about it than their
+class in England knows about France: and this astonished me, for, in the
+gentry, English gentlemen know more about France than French gentlemen
+know about England.
+
+He asked me if agriculture were still in a bad way; why we had not more
+of the people at the Universities; why we allowed only lords into our
+Parliament, and whether there were more French commercial travellers in
+England than English commercial travellers in France. In all these points
+I admitted, supplemented, and corrected, and probably distorted his
+impressions.
+
+He asked me if English gunners were good. I said I did not know, but I
+thought so. He replied that the English drivers had a high reputation in
+his country--his brother (the brother of an ironmonger) was a Captain of
+the Horse Artillery, and had told him so. And this he said to me, who wore
+a French uniform, but whose heart was away up in Arun Valley, in my own
+woods, and at rest and alone.
+
+In the last hour when we had to be getting back a certain tenderness came
+into his somewhat mercenary look. He devoted himself more to his nephew;
+he took him aside, and, with some ceremony, gave him money. He offered us
+cigars. We took one each. His round French face became all wrinkles, like
+a cracked plate. He said:
+
+"Bah! Take them by the pocketful! We know what life is in the regiment,"
+and he crammed half a dozen each into the pocket of our tunics. But when
+he said "We know what the life is," he lied. For he had only been a
+"mobile" in '70. He had voted, but never suffered, the conscription.
+
+So we said good night to this man, our host, who had so regaled us. I may
+be wrong, but I fancy he was an anti-clerical. He was a hard man, just,
+eager, and attentive, narrow, as I have said, and unconsciously (as I have
+also said) building up the nation.
+
+There was the Ironmonger of Bar-le-Duc; and there are hundreds of
+thousands of the same kind.
+
+
+
+
+A FORCE IN GAUL
+
+
+There is a force in Gaul which is of prime consequence to all Europe. It
+has canalized European religion, fixed European law, and latterly launched
+a renewed political ideal. It is very vigorous to-day.
+
+It was this force which made the massacres of September, which overthrew
+Robespierre, which elected Napoleon. In a more concentrated form, it was
+this force which combined into so puissant a whole the separate men--not
+men of genius--who formed the Committee of Public Safety. It is this
+force which made the Commune, so that to this day no individual can quite
+tell you what the Commune was driving at. And it is this force which at
+the present moment so grievously misunderstands and overestimates the
+strength of the armies which are the rivals of the French; indeed, in that
+connexion it might truly be said that the peace of Europe is preserved
+much more by the German knowledge of what the French army is, even than
+by French ignorance of what the German army is.
+
+I say the disadvantages of this force or quality in a commonwealth are
+apparent, for the weakness and disadvantages of something extraneous to
+ourselves are never difficult to grasp. What is of more moment for us
+is to understand, with whatever difficulty, the strength which such a
+quality conveys. Not to have understood that strength, nay, not to have
+appreciated the existence of the force of which I speak, has made nearly
+all the English histories of France worthless. French turbulence is
+represented in them as anarchy, and the whole of the great story which has
+been the central pivot of Western Europe appears as an incongruous series
+of misfortunes. Even Carlyle, with his astonishing grasp of men and his
+power of rapid integration from a few details (for he read hardly anything
+of his subject), never comprehended this force. He could understand a
+master ordering about a lot of servants; indeed, he would have liked
+to have been a servant himself, and _was_ one to the best of his
+ability; but he could not understand self-organization from below. Yet
+upon the existence of that power depends the whole business of the
+Revolution. Its strength, then, (and principal advantage), lies in the
+fact that it makes democracy possible at critical moments, even in a large
+community.
+
+There is no one, or hardly any one, so wicked or so stupid as to deny the
+democratic ideal. There is no one, or hardly any one, so perverted that,
+were he the member of a small and simple community, he would be content to
+forgo his natural right to be a full member thereof. There is no one, or
+hardly any one, who would not feel his exclusion from such rights, among
+men of his own blood, to be intolerable. But while every one admits the
+democratic ideal, most men who think and nearly all the wiser of those
+who think, perceive its one great obstacle to lie in the contrast between
+the idea and the action where the obstacle of complexity--whether due
+to varied interests, to separate origins, or even to mere numbers--is
+present.
+
+The psychology of the multitude is not the psychology of the individual.
+Ask every man in West Sussex separately whether he would have bread made
+artificially dearer by Act of Parliament, and you will get an overwhelming
+majority against such economic action on the part of the State. Treat them
+collectively, and they will elect--I bargain they will elect for years
+to come--men pledged to such an action. Or again, look at a crowd when
+it roars down a street in anger--the sight is unfortunately only too
+rare to-day--you have the impression of a beast majestic in its courage,
+terrible in its ferocity, but with something evil about its cruelty and
+determination. Yet if you stop and consider the face of one of its members
+straggling on one of its outer edges, you will probably see the bewildered
+face of a poor, uncertain, weak-mouthed man whose eyes are roving from
+one object to another, and who appears all the weaker because he is under
+the influence of this collective domination. Or again, consider the jokes
+which make a great public assembly honestly shake with laughter, and
+imagine those jokes attempted in a private room! Our tricky politicians
+know well this difference between the psychologies of the individual
+and of the multitude. The cleverest of them often suffer in reputation
+precisely because they know what hopeless arguments and what still more
+hopeless jests will move collectivities, the individual units of which
+would never have listened to such humour or to such reasoning.
+
+The larger the community with which one is dealing, the truer this is; so
+that, when it comes to many millions spread upon a large territory, one
+may well despair of any machinery which shall give expression to that very
+real thing which Rousseau called the General Will.
+
+In the presence of such a difficulty most men who are concerned both for
+the good of their country and for the general order of society incline,
+especially as they grow older, to one, or other of the old traditional
+organic methods by which a State may be expressed and controlled. They
+incline to an oligarchy such as is here in England where a small group of
+families, intermarried one with the other, dining together perpetually
+and perpetually guests in each other's houses, are by a tacit agreement
+with the populace permitted to direct a nation. Or they incline to the
+old-fashioned and very stable device of a despotic bureaucracy such as
+manages to keep Prussia upright, and did until recently support the
+expansion of Russia.
+
+The evils of such a compromise with a political idea are evident enough.
+The oligarchy will be luxurious and corporately corrupt, and individually
+somewhat despicable, with a sort of softness about it in morals and in
+military affairs. The despot or the bureaucracy will be individually
+corrupt, especially in the lower branches of the system, and hatefully
+unfeeling.
+
+"But," (says your thinker, especially as he advances in age) "man is so
+made that he _cannot_ otherwise be collectively governed. He cannot
+collectively be the master, or at any rate permanently the master of his
+collective destiny, whatever power his reason and free will give him over
+his individual fate. The nation" (says he), "especially the large nation,
+certainly has a Will, but it cannot directly express that Will. And if it
+attempts to do so, whatever machinery it chooses--even the referendum--will
+but create a gross mechanical parody of that subtle organic thing, the
+National soul. The oligarchy or the bureaucracy" (he will maintain, and
+usually maintain justly) "inherit, convey, and maintain the national
+spirit more truly than would an attempted democratic system."
+
+General history, even the general history of Western Europe, is upon the
+whole on the side of such a criticism. Andorra is a perfect democracy, and
+has been a perfect democracy for at least a thousand years, perhaps since
+first men inhabited that isolated valley. But there is no great State
+which has maintained even for three generations a democratic system
+undisturbed.
+
+Now it is peculiar to the French among the great and independent nations,
+that they are capable, by some freak in their development, of rapid
+_communal_ self-expression. It is, I repeat, only in crises that
+this power appears. But such as it is, it plays a part much more real and
+much more expressive of the collective will than does the more ordinary
+organization of other peoples.
+
+Those who attacked the Tuileries upon the 10th of August acted in a manner
+entirely spontaneous, and succeeded. The arrest of the Royal Family at
+Varennes was not the action of one individual or of two; it was not Drouet
+nor was it the Saulce family. It was a great number of individuals (the
+King had been recognized all along the journey), each thinking the same
+thing under the tension of a particular episode, each vaguely tending to
+one kind of action and tending with increasing energy towards that action,
+and all combining, as it were, upon that culminating point in the long
+journey which was reached at the archway of the little town in Argonne.
+
+To have expressed and portrayed this common national power has been the
+saving of the principal French historians, notably of Michelet. It has
+furnished them with the key by which alone the history of their country
+could be made plain. Nothing is easier than to ridicule or deny so
+mystical a thing. Taine, by temperament intensely anti-national, ridiculed
+it as he ridiculed the mysteries of the Faith; but with this consequence,
+that his denial made it impossible for him to write the history of his
+country, and compelled him throughout his work, but especially in his
+history of the Revolution, to perpetual, and at last to somewhat crude,
+forms of falsehood.
+
+Not to recognize this National force has, again, led men into another
+error: they will have it that the great common actions of Frenchmen are
+due to some occult force or to a master. They will explain the Crusades
+by the cunning organization of the Papacy; the French Revolution by the
+cunning organization of the Masonic lodges; the Napoleonic episode by the
+individual cunning and plan of Bonaparte. Such explanations are puerile.
+
+The blow of 1870 was perhaps the most severe which any modern nation has
+endured. By some accident it did not terminate the activity of the French
+nation. The Southern States of America remain under the effect of the
+Civil War. All that is not Prussian in Germany remains prostrate--
+especially in ideas--under the effect of the Prussian victory over it. The
+French but barely escaped a similarly permanent dissolution of national
+character: but they did escape it; and the national mark, the power of
+spontaneous and collective action, after a few years' check, began to
+emerge.
+
+Upon two occasions an attempt was made towards such action. The first was
+in the time of Boulanger, the second during the Dreyfus business. In both
+cases the nation instinctively saw, or rather felt, its enemy. In both
+there was a moment when the cosmopolitan financier stood in physical peril
+of his life. Neither, however, matured; in neither did the people finally
+move.
+
+Latterly several partial risings have marked French life. Why none of them
+should have culminated I will consider in a moment. Meanwhile, the foreign
+observer will do well to note the character of these movements, abortive
+though they were. It is like standing upon the edge of a crater and
+watching the heave and swell of the vast energies below. There may have
+been no actual eruption for some time, but the activities of the volcano
+and its nature are certain to you as you gaze. The few days that passed
+two years ago in Herault are an example.
+
+No one who is concerned for the immediate future of Europe should neglect
+the omen: half a million men, with leaders chosen rapidly by themselves,
+converging without disaster, with ample commissariat, with precision and
+rapidity upon one spot: a common action decided upon, and that action most
+calculated to defeat the enemy; decided upon by men of no exceptional
+power, mere mouthpieces of this vast concourse: similar and exactly
+parallel decisions over the whole countryside from the great towns to the
+tiny mountain villages. It is the spirit of a swarm of bees. One incident
+in the affair was the most characteristic of it all: fearing they would
+be ordered to fire on men of their own district the private soldiers and
+corporals of the 17th of the Line mutinied. So far so good: mutinies are
+common in all actively military states--the exceptional thing was what
+followed. The men organized themselves without a single officer or
+non-commissioned officer, equipped themselves for a full day's march to
+the capital of the province, achieved it in good order, and took quarters
+in the town. All that exact movement was spontaneous. It explains the
+Marshals of the Empire. These were sent off as a punishment to the edge
+of the African desert; the mutiny seemed to the moneydealers a proof of
+military defeat. They erred: these young men, some of them of but six
+months' training, none of them of much more than two years, not one of
+them over twenty-five years of age, were a precise symbol of the power
+which made the Revolution and its victims. The reappearance of that power
+in our tranquil modern affairs seems to me of capital importance.
+
+One should end by asking one's self, "Will these unfinished movements
+breed a finished movement at last? Will Gaul move to some final purpose
+in our time, and if so, against what, with what an object and in what a
+manner?"
+
+Prophecy is vain, but it is entertaining, and I will prophesy that Gaul
+will move in our time, and that the movement will be directed against the
+pestilent humbug of the parliamentary system.
+
+For forty years this force in the nation of which I speak, though so
+frequently stirred, has not achieved its purpose. But in nearly every
+case, directly or indirectly, the thing against which it moved was the
+Parliament. It would be too lengthy a matter to discuss here why the
+representative system has sunk to be what it is in modern Europe. It
+was the glory of the Middle Ages, it was a great vital institution of
+Christendom, sprung from the monastic institution that preceded it, a true
+and living power first in Spain, where Christendom was at its most acute
+activity in the struggle against Asia, then in the north-west, in England
+and in France. And indeed, in one form or another, throughout all the old
+limits of the Empire. It died, its fossil was preserved in one or two
+small and obscure communities, its ancient rules and form were captured by
+the English squires and merchants, and it was maintained, a curious but
+vigorous survival, in this country. When the Revolution in 1789 began the
+revival of democracy in the great nations the old representative scheme of
+the French, a very perfect one, was artificially resurrected, based upon
+the old doctrine of universal suffrage and upon a direct mandate. It was
+logical, it ought to have worked, but in barely a hundred years it has
+failed.
+
+There is an instructive little anecdote upon the occupation of Rome in
+1870.
+
+When the French garrison was withdrawn and the Northern Italians had
+occupied the city, representative machinery was set to work, nominally
+to discover whether the change in Government were popular or no. A tiny
+handful of votes was recorded in the negative, let us say forty-three.
+
+Later, in the early winter of that same year, a great festival of the
+Church was celebrated in the Basilica of St. Peter and at the tombs of the
+Apostles. The huge church was crowded, many were even pressed outside the
+doors. When the ceremony was over the dense mass that streamed out into
+the darkness took up the cry, the irony of which filled the night air of
+the Trastevere and its slums of sovereign citizens. The cry was this:
+
+"We are the Forty-three!"
+
+It is an anecdote that applies continually to the modern representative
+system in every country which has the misfortune to support it. No one
+needs to be reminded of such a truth. We know in England how the one
+strong feeling in the elections of 1906 was the desire to get at the South
+African Jews and sweep away their Chinese labour from under them.
+
+The politicians and the party hacks put into power by that popular
+determination went straight to the South African Jews, hat in hand, asked
+them what was their good pleasure in the matter, and framed a scheme in
+connivance with them, by which no vengeance should be taken and not a
+penny of theirs should be imperilled.
+
+In modern France the chances of escape from the parliamentary game, tawdry
+at its best, at its worst a social peril, are much greater than in this
+country. The names and forms of the thing are not of ancient institution.
+There is therefore no opportunity for bamboozling people with a sham
+continuity, or of mixing up the interests of the party hacks with the
+instinct of patriotism. Moreover, in modern France the parliamentary
+system happened to come up vitally against the domestic habits of
+the people earlier and more violently than it has yet done in this
+country. The little gang which had captured the machine was violently
+anti-Christian; it proceeded step by step to the destruction of the
+Church, until at the end of 1905 the crisis had taken this form. The
+Church was disestablished, its endowments were cancelled, the housing of
+its hierarchy, its churches and its cathedrals and their furniture were,
+further, to be taken from it unless it adopted a Presbyterian form of
+government which could not but have cankered it and which was the very
+negative of its spirit. So far nothing that the Parliament had done really
+touched the lives of the people. Even the proposal to put the remaining
+goods of the Church under Presbyterian management was a matter for the
+theologians and not for them. Not one man in a hundred knew or cared
+about the business. The critical date approached (the 11th of December,
+if I remember rightly). Rome was to accept the anti-Catholic scheme of
+government or all the churches were to be shut. Rome refused the scheme,
+and Parliament, faced for once with a reality and brought under the
+necessity of really interfering with the popular life or of capitulating,
+capitulated.
+
+What has that example to do, you may ask, with that movement in the south
+of France, which is the text of these pages? The answer is as follows:
+
+In the south of France the one main thing actually touching the lives
+of the people, after their religion (which the complete breakdown of
+the anti-clerical threat had secured), was the sale of their principal
+manufacture. This sale was rendered difficult from a number of reasons,
+one of which, perhaps not the chief, but the most apparent and the most
+easily remediable, was the adulteration and fraud existing in the trade.
+Such adulteration and fraud are common to all the trade of our own time.
+It was winked at by the gang in power in France, just as similar dirty
+work is winked at by the gang in power in every other parliamentary
+country. When the peasants who had suffered so severely by this
+commercial corruption of our time asked that it should be put a stop to,
+the old reply, which has done duty half a million times in every case of
+corruption in France, England, or America for a generation, was given to
+them: "If you desire a policy to be effected, elect men who will effect
+it." As a fact, these four departments had elected a group of men, of whom
+Laferre, the Grand Master of the Freemasons, is a good type, with his
+absorbing interest in the destruction of Christianity, and his ignorance
+and ineptitude in any other field than that of theology.
+
+The peasants replied to this sophistry, which had done duty so often and
+had been successful so often in their case as in others, by calling upon
+their Deputies to resign. Laferre neglected to do so. He was too greatly
+occupied with his opportunity. He went down to "address his constituents."
+They chased him for miles. And in that exhilarating episode it was
+apparent that the peasants of the Aude had discovered in their simple
+fashion both where the representative system was at fault and by what
+methods it may be remedied.
+
+
+
+
+ON BRIDGES
+
+
+Stand on the side of a stream and consider two things: the imbecility of
+your private nature and the genius of your common kind.
+
+For you cannot cross the stream, you--Individual you; but Man (from whence
+you come) has found out an art for crossing it. This art is the building
+of bridges. And hence man in the general may properly be called Pontifex,
+or "The Bridge Builder"; and his symbolic summits of office will carry
+some such title.
+
+Here I will confess (Individual) that I am tempted to leave you by the
+side of the stream, to swim it if you can, to drown if you can't, or to
+go back home and be eaten out with your desire for the ulterior shore,
+while I digress upon that word Pontifex, which, note you, is not only a
+name over a shop as "Henry Pontifex, Italian Warehouseman," or "Pontifex
+Brothers, Barbers," but a true key-word breeding ideas and making one
+consider the greatness of man, or rather the greatness of what made him.
+
+For man builds bridges over streams, and he has built bridges more or less
+stable between mind and mind (a difficult art!), having designed letters
+for that purpose, which are his instrument; and man builds by prayer a
+bridge between himself and God; man also builds bridges which unite him
+with Beauty all about.
+
+Thus he paints and draws and makes statues, and builds for beauty as well
+as for shelter from the weather. And man builds bridges between knowledge
+and knowledge, co-ordinating one thing that he knows with another thing
+that he knows, and putting a bridge from each to each. And man is for ever
+building--but he has never yet completed, nor ever will--that bridge they
+call philosophy, which is to explain himself in relation to that whence
+he came. I say, when his skeleton is put in the Museum properly labelled,
+it shall be labelled not _Homo Sapiens_, but _Homo Pontifex_;
+hence also the anthem, or rather the choral response, "_Pontificem
+habemus_," which is sung so nobly by pontifical great choirs, when
+pontifications are pontificated, as behooves the court of a Pontiff.
+
+Nevertheless (Individual) I will not leave you there, for I have pity
+on you, and I will explain to you the nature of bridges. By a bridge
+was man's first worry overcome. For note you, there is no worry so
+considerable as to wail by impassable streams (as Swinburne has it).
+It is the proper occupation of the less fortunate dead.
+
+
+
+
+ON BRIDGES
+
+
+Believe me, without bridges the world would be very different to you. You
+take them for granted, you lollop along the road, you cross a bridge. You
+may be so ungrateful as to forget all about it, but it is an awful thing!
+
+A bridge is a violation of the will of nature and a challenge. "You
+desired me not to cross," says man to the River God, "but I will." And
+he does so: not easily. The god had never objected to him that he should
+swim and wet himself. Nay, when he was swimming the god could drown him at
+will, but to bridge the stream, nay, to insult it, to leap over it, that
+was man all over; in a way he knows that the earthy gods are less than
+himself and that all that he dreads is his inferior, for only that which
+he reveres and loves can properly claim his allegiance. Nor does he in the
+long run pay that allegiance save to holiness, or in a lesser way to
+valour and to worth.
+
+Man cannot build bridges everywhere. They are not multitudinous as are his
+roads, nor universal as are his pastures and his tillage. He builds from
+time to time in one rare place and another, and the bridge always remains
+a sacred thing. Moreover, the bridge is always in peril. The little
+bridge at Paris which carried the Roman road to the island was swept away
+continually; and the bridge of Staines that carried the Roman road from
+the great port to London was utterly destroyed.
+
+Bridges have always lived with fear in their hearts; and if you think
+this is only true of old bridges (Individual), have you forgotten the Tay
+Bridge with the train upon it? Or the bridge that they were building over
+the St. Lawrence some little time ago, or the bridge across the Loire
+where those peasants went to their death on a Sunday only a few months
+since? Carefully consider these things and remember that the building and
+the sustaining of a bridge is always a wonderful and therefore a perilous
+thing.
+
+No bridges more testify to the soul of man than the bridges that leap
+in one arch from height to height over the gorge of a torrent. Many of
+these are called the Devil's Bridges with good reason, for they suggest
+art beyond man's power, and there are two to be crossed and wondered at,
+one in Wales in the mountains, and another in Switzerland, also in the
+mountains. There is a third in the mountains at the gate of the Sahara, of
+the same sort, jumping from rock to rock. But it is not called the Devil's
+Bridge. It is called with Semitic simplicity "El Kantara," and that is
+the name the Arabs gave to the old bridges, to the lordly bridges of the
+Romans, wherever they came across them, for the Arabs were as incapable
+of making bridges as they were of doing anything else except singing love
+songs and riding about on horses. "Alcantara" is a name all over Spain,
+and it is in the heart of the capital of Portugal, and it is fixed in the
+wilds of Estremadura. You get it outside Constantine also where the bridge
+spans the gulf. Never did an Arab see bridges but he wondered.
+
+Our people also, though they were not of the sort to stand with their
+mouths open in front of bridges or anything else, felt the mystery of
+these things. And they put chapels in the middle of them, as you may see
+at Bale, and at Bradford-upon-Avon, and especially was there one upon old
+London Bridge, which was dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, and was very
+large. And speaking of old London Bridge, every one in London should
+revere bridges, for a great number of reasons.
+
+In the first place London never would have been London but for London
+Bridge.
+
+In the second place, bridges enable the people of London to visit the
+south of the river, which is full of pleasing and extraordinary sights,
+and in which may be seen, visibly present to the eye, Democracy. If any
+one doubts this let him take the voyage.
+
+Then again, but for bridges Londoners could not see the river except
+from the Embankment, which is an empty sort of place, or from the windows
+of hotels. Bridges also permit railways from the south to enter London.
+If this seems to you a commonplace, visit New York or for ever after hold
+your peace.
+
+All things have been degraded in our time and have also been multiplied,
+which is perhaps a condition of degradation; and your simple thing, your
+bridge, has suffered with the rest. Men have invented all manner of
+bridges: tubular bridges, suspension bridges, cantilever bridges, swing
+bridges, pontoon bridges, and the bridge called the Russian Bridge, which
+is intolerable; but they have not been able to do with the bridge what
+they have done with some other things: they have not been able to destroy
+it; it is still a bridge, still perilous, and still a triumph. The bridge
+still remains the thing which may go at any moment and yet the thing
+which, when it remains, remains our oldest monument. There is a bridge
+over the Euphrates--I forget whether it goes all the way across--which the
+Romans built. And the oldest thing in the way of bridges in the town of
+Paris, a thing three hundred years old, was the bridge that stood the late
+floods best. The bridge will remain a symbol in spite of the engineers.
+
+Look how differently men have treated bridges according to the passing
+mood of civilization. Once they thought it reasonable to tax people who
+crossed bridges. Now they think it unreasonable. Yet the one course was
+as reasonable as the other. Once they built houses on bridges, clearly
+perceiving that there was lack of room for houses, and that there was
+a housing problem, and that the bridges gave a splendid chance. Now no
+one dares to build a house upon a bridge, and the one proceeding is as
+reasonable as the other.
+
+The time has come to talk at random about bridges.
+
+The ugliest bridge in the world runs from Lambeth to the Horseferry Road,
+and takes the place of the old British trackway which here crossed the
+Thames. About the middle of it, if you will grope in the mud, you may or
+may not find the great Seal of England which James II there cast into
+the flood. If it was fished up again, why then it is not there. The most
+beautiful bridge in London is Waterloo Bridge; the most historic is London
+Bridge; and far the most useful Westminster Bridge. The most famous bridge
+in Italy to tourists is the old bridge at Florence, and the best known
+from pictures the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. That with the best chance
+of an eternal fame is the bridge which carries the road from Tizzano to
+Serchia over the gully of the muddy Apennines, for upon the 18th of June,
+1901, it was broken down in the middle of the night, and very nearly cost
+the life of a man who could ill afford it. The place where a bridge is
+most needed, and is not present, is the Ford of Fornovo. The place where
+there is most bridge and where it is least needed is the railway bridge
+at Venice. The bridge that trembles most is the Bridge of Piacenza. The
+bridge that frightens you most is the Brooklyn Bridge, and the bridge that
+frightens you least is the bridge in St. James's Park; for even if you
+are terrified by water in every form, as are too many boastful men, you
+must know, or can be told, that there is but a dampness of some inches in
+the sheet below. The longest bridge for boring one is the railway bridge
+across the Somme to St. Valery, whence Duke William started with a
+horseshoe mouth and very glum upon his doubtful adventure to invade these
+shores--but there was no bridge in his time. The shortest bridge is made
+of a plank, in the village of Loudwater in the county of Bucks, not far
+from those Chiltern Hundreds which men take in Parliament for the good of
+their health as a man might take the waters. The most entertaining bridge
+is the Tower Bridge, which lifts up and splits into two just as you are
+beginning to cross it, as can be testified by a cloud of witnesses. The
+broadest bridge is the Alexandre III Bridge in Paris, at least it looks
+the broadest, while the narrowest bridge, without a shadow of doubt, is
+the bridge that was built by ants in the moon; if the phrase startles you
+remember it is only in a novel by Wells.
+
+The first elliptical bridge was designed by a monk of Cortona, and the
+first round one by Adam....
+
+But one might go on indefinitely about bridges and I am heartily tired of
+them. Let them cross and recross the streams of the world. I for my part
+will stay upon my own side.
+
+
+
+
+A BLUE BOOK
+
+
+I have thought it of some value to contemporary history to preserve the
+following document, which concerns the discovery and survey of an island
+in the North Atlantic, which upon its discovery was annexed by the United
+States in the first moments of their imperial expansion, and was given the
+name of "Atlantis."
+
+The island, which appears to have been formed by some convulsion of
+nature, disappeared the year after its discovery, and the report drawn up
+by the Commissioners is therefore very little known, and has of course
+no importance in the field of practical finance and administration. But
+it is a document of the highest and most curious interest as an example
+of the ideas that guided the policy of the Great Republic at the moment
+when the survey was undertaken; and English readers in particular will
+be pleased to note the development and expansion of English methods and
+of characteristic English points of view and institutions throughout the
+whole document.
+
+Any one who desires to consult the maps, etc., which I have been unable
+to reproduce in this little volume, must refer to the Record Office at
+Washington. My only purpose in reprinting these really fascinating pages
+in such a volume as this is the hope that they may give pleasure to many
+who would not have had the opportunity to consult them in the public
+archives where they have hitherto been buried.
+
+     A. 2. E. 331 ff.
+
+REPORT OF THE THREE COMMISSIONERS APPOINTED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE
+REPUBLIC TO REPORT UPON THE POTENTIAL RESOURCES, SITUATION, ETC., OF THE
+NEW ISLAND KNOWN AS "ATLANTIS," RECENTLY DISCOVERED IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC
+AND ANNEXED TO THE REPUBLIC, TOGETHER WITH A RECOMMENDATION ON FUTURE
+TREATMENT OF SAME.
+
+TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC.
+
+YOUR HONOUR,
+
+[Sidenote: Preamble.]
+
+Your Honour's three Commissioners, Joshua Hogg, Abraham Bush and Jack
+Bimber, being of sound mind, solvent, and in good corporeal health, all
+citizens of more than five years' standing, and domiciled within the
+boundaries, frontiers or terms of the Republic, do make oath and say, So
+Help Them God:--
+
+[Sidenote: _Arrival off Atlantis_.]
+
+I. That on the 20th of the month of July, being at that time in or about
+Latitude 45 N. and betwixt and between Longitude 51 W. and 51.10° W., so
+near as could be made out, the captain of the steamboat "Glory of the
+Morning Star" (chartered _for this occasion only_ by the Government
+of the Republic, without any damage, precedent or future lien whatsoever),
+by name James Murphy, of Cork, Ireland, and domiciled within the aforesaid
+terms, boundaries, etc., did in a loud voice at about 4.33 a.m., when it
+was already light, cry out "That's Hur," or words to that effect. Your
+three Commissioners being at that moment in the cabin, state-room or cuddy
+in the forward part of the ship (see annexed plan), came up on deck and
+were ordered or enjoined to go below by those having authority on the
+"Glory of the Morning Star." Your three Commissioners desire individually
+and collectively to call attention to the fact that this order was
+obeyed, being given under the Maritime Acts of 1853, and desire also to
+protest against the indignity offered in their persons to the majesty of
+the Republic. (See Attorney-General's Plea, Folio 56, M.) At or about
+_6.30_ a.m. of the same day, July 20th, your Commissioners were
+called upon deck, and there was put at their disposal a beat manned by
+four sailors, who did thereupon and with all due dispatch row them towards
+the island, at that moment some two miles off the weather bow, that is
+S.S.W. by S. of the "Glory of the Morning Star." They did then each
+individually and all collectively land, disembark and set foot upon the
+Island of Atlantis and take possession thereof in the name of Your Honour
+and the Republic, displaying at the same time a small flag 19" x 6" in
+token of the same, which flag was distinctly noted, seen, recorded and
+witnessed by the undersigned, to which they put their hand and seal,
+trusting in the guidance of Divine Providence.
+
+JOSHUA HOGG
+
+ABRAHAM BUSH
+
+JACK BIMBER.
+
+[Sidenote: _Shape and Dimensions of the Island_]
+
+II. Your Commissioners proceeded at once to a measurement of the aforesaid
+island of Atlantis, which they discovered to be of a triangular or
+three-cornered shape, in dimensions as follows: On the northern face from
+Cape Providence (q.v.) to Cape Mercy (q.v.), one mile one furlong and a
+bit. On the south-western face from Cape Mercy (q.v.) to Point Liberty
+(q.v.), seven furlongs, two roods and a foot. On the south-eastern face,
+which is the shortest face, from Point Liberty (q.v.) round again to Cape
+Providence (q.v.), from which we started, something like half a mile, and
+not worth measuring. These dimensions, lines, figures, measurements and
+plans they do submit to the public office of Record as accurate and done
+to the best of their ability by the undersigned: So Help Them God. (SEAL.)
+
+[Sidenote: _Appearance and Structure of the Island_.]
+
+III. It will be seen from the above that the island is in shape an
+Isosceles triangle, as it were, pointing in a north-westerly direction
+and having a short base turned to the south-east, contains some 170 acres
+or half a square mile, and is situate in a temperate latitude suited to
+the Anglo-Saxon Race. As to material or structure, it is composed of sand
+(_see its specimens in glass phial_), the said sand being of a yellow
+colour when dry and inclining to a brown colour where it may be wet by the
+sea or by rain.
+
+[Sidenote: _Springs and Rivers_.]
+
+IV. There are no springs or rivers in the Island.
+
+[Sidenote: _Hills and Mountains_.]
+
+V. There are no mountains on the Island, but there is in the North a
+slight hummock some fifteen feet in height. To this hummock we have
+given (saving your Honour's Reverence) the name of "Mount Providence"
+in commemoration of the manifold and evident graces of Providence in
+permitting us to occupy and develop this new land in the furtherance of
+true civilization and good government. The hill is at present too small
+to make a feature in the landscape, but we have great hopes that it will
+grow. (See _Younger_ on "The Sand Dunes of Picardy," Vol. II, pp.
+199-200.)
+
+[Sidenote: Harbours.]
+
+VI. The Island is difficult of approach as it slopes up gradually from the
+sea bottom and the tides are slight. At high water there is no sounding
+of more than three fathoms for about a mile and a half from shore; but at
+a distance of two miles soundings of five and six fathoms are common, and
+it would be feasible in fine weather for a vessel of moderate draught to
+land her cargo, passengers, etc. in small boats. Moreover a harbour might
+be built as in our Recommendations (q.v.). There is on the northern side
+a bay (caused by indentation of the land) which we think suitable to the
+purpose and which, in Your Honour's honour, we have called Buggins' Bay.
+
+[Sidenote: Capes and Headlands.]
+
+VII. These are three, as above enumerated (q.v.); one, the most
+precipitous and bold, we have called Cape _Providence_ (q.v.) for
+reasons which appear above; the second, Cape _Mercy_, in recognition
+of the great mercy shown us in finding this place without running on it
+as has been the fate of many a noble vessel. The third we called Point
+_Liberty_ from the nature of those glorious institutions which are
+the pride of the Republic and which we intend to impose upon any future
+inhabitants. These titles, which are but provisional, we pray may remain
+and be Enregistered under the seal, notwithstanding the "Act to Restrain
+Nuisances and Voids" of 1819, Cap. 2.
+
+[Sidenote: _Climate_.]
+
+VIII. The climate is that of the North Atlantic known as the "Oceanic."
+Rain falls not infrequently, and between November and April snow is not
+unknown. In summer a more genial temperature prevails, but it is never so
+hot as to endanger life or to facilitate the progress of epidemic disease.
+Wheat, beans, hops, turnips, and barley could be grown did the soil permit
+of it. But we cannot regard an agricultural future as promising for the
+new territory.
+
+HERE ENDETH your Commissioners' Report.
+
+(_Seal_)
+
+JOSHUA HOGG. ABRAHAM BUSH. JACOBUS BIMBER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+RECOMMENDATIONS
+
+Your Commissioners being also entrusted with the privilege of making
+Recommendations, submit the following without prejudice and all pursuants
+to the contrary notwithstanding.
+
+As to the _land_: your Commissioners recommend that it should be
+held by the State in conformity with those principles which are gaining
+a complete ascendancy among the Leading Nations of the Earth. This might
+then be let out at its full value to private individuals who would make
+what they could of it, leaving the Economic Rent to the community. For
+the individual did not make the land, but the State did.
+
+This power of letting the land should, they recommend, be left in the
+hands of a _Chartered Company_. Your Commissioners will provide
+the names of certain reputable and wealthy citizens who will be glad to
+undertake the duty of forming and directing this company, and who will act
+on the principle of unsalaried public service by the upper classes, which
+is the chief characteristic of our civilization. I. Jacobs, Esq., and Z.
+Lewis, Esq. (to be directors of the proposed Chartered Company) have
+already volunteered in this matter.
+
+Your Commissioners recommend that the Chartered Company should be granted
+the right to strike coins of copper, nickel, silver and gold, the first
+three to be issued at three times eight times and twice the value of
+the metals respectively, the said currency to be on a gold basis and
+mono-metallic and not to exceed the amount of $100 _per capita_.
+
+Your Commissioners further recommend that the same authority be empowered
+to issue paper money in proportions of 165% to the gold reserve, the right
+to give high values to pieces of paper having proved in the past of the
+greatest value to those who have obtained it.
+
+Your Commissioners recommend the building of a stone harbour out to sea
+without encroaching on the already exiguous dimensions of the land. They
+propose two piers, each some mile and a half long, and built of Portland
+rock, an excellent quarry of which is to be discovered on the property
+of James Barber, Esq., of Maryville, Kent County, Conn. The stone could
+be brought to Atlantis at the lowest rates by the Wall Schreiner line of
+floats. In this harbour, if it be sufficiently deepened and its piers set
+wide enough apart, the navies of the world could be contained, and it
+would be a standing testimony to the energy of our race, "which maketh
+the desert to blossom like a rose" (Lev. XXII. 3, 2).
+
+Your Commissioners also recommend an artesian well to be sunk until fresh
+water be discovered. This method has been found successful in Australia,
+which is also an island and largely composed of sand. It is said that this
+method of irrigation produces astonishing results.
+
+Finally, in the matter of industry your Commissioners propose (not, of
+course, as a unique industry but as a staple) the packing of sardines. A
+sound system of fair trade based upon a tariff scientifically adjusted
+to the conditions of the Island should develop the industry rapidly.
+Everything lends itself to this: the skilled labour could be imparted
+from home, the sardines from France, and the tin and oil from Spain. It
+would need for some years an export Bounty somewhat in the nature of
+Protection, the scale of which would have to be regulated by the needs
+of the community, but they are convinced that when once the industry was
+established, the superior skill of our workmen and the enterprise of
+our capitalists would control the markets of the world.
+
+As to political rights, we recommend that Atlantis should be treated as a
+territory, and that a sharp distinction should be drawn between Rural and
+Urban conditions; that the inhabitants should not be granted the franchise
+till they have shown themselves worthy of self-government, saving, of
+course, those immigrants (such as the negroes of Carolina, etc.) who have
+been trained in the exercise of representative institutions. All Religions
+should be tolerated except those to which the bulk of the community show
+an implacable aversion. Education should be free to all, compulsory upon
+the poor, non-sectarian, absolutely elementary, and subject, of course,
+to the paramount position of that gospel which has done so much for our
+dear country. The sale of Intoxicants should be regulated by the Company,
+and these should be limited to a little spirits: wine and beer and all
+alcoholic liquors habitually used as beverages should be rigorously
+forbidden to the labouring classes, and should only be supplied in _bona
+fide_ clubs with a certain minimum yearly subscription.
+
+IN CONCLUSION your Commissioners will ever pray, etc.
+
+MS. note added at the end in the hand of Mr. Charles P. Hands, the curator
+of this section:
+
+(_The Island was lost--luckily with no one aboard--during the storms
+of the following winter. This report still possesses, however, a strong
+historical interest_).
+
+
+
+
+PERIGEUX OF THE PERIGORD
+
+
+I knew a man once. I met him in a wooden inn upon a bitterly cold day.
+He was an American, and we talked of many things. At last he said to me:
+"Have you ever seen the Matterhorn?"
+
+"No," said I; for I hated the very name of it. Then he continued:
+
+"It is the most surprising thing I ever saw."
+
+"By the Lord," said I, "'you have found the very word!" I took out a
+sketch-book and noted his word "surprising." What admirable humour had
+this American; how subtle and how excellent a spirit! I have never seen
+the Matterhorn; but it seems that one comes round a corner, and there it
+is. It is surprising! Excellent word of the American. I never shall forget
+it!
+
+An elephant escapes from a circus and puts his head in at your window
+while you are writing and thinking of a word. You look up. You may be
+alarmed, you may be astonished, you may be moved to sudden processes of
+thought; but one thing you will find about it, and you will find out quite
+quickly, and it will dominate all your other emotions of the time: the
+elephant's head will be surprising. You are caught. Your soul says loudly
+to its Creator: "Oh, this is something new!"
+
+So did I first see in the moonlight up the quite unknown and quite
+deserted valley which the peak of the Dead Man dominates in a lonely
+and savage manner the main crest of the Pyrenees. So did I first see a
+land-fall when I first went overseas. So did I first see the Snowdon range
+when I was a little boy, having, until I woke up that morning and looked
+out of the windows of the hotel, never seen anything in my life more
+uplifted than the rounded green hills of South England.
+
+Now the cathedral of St. Front in Perigeux of the Perigord is the most
+surprising thing in Europe. It is much more surprising than the hills--for
+a man made it. Man made it hundreds and hundreds of years ago; man has
+added to it, and, by the grace of his enthusiasm and his disciplined
+zeal, man has (thank God!) scraped, remodelled, and restored it. Upon my
+soul, to see such a thing I was proud to be an Anthropoid, and to claim
+cousinship with those dark citizens of the Dordogne and of Garonne and of
+the Tarn and of the Lot, and of whatever rivers fall into the Gironde. I
+know very well that they have sweated to indoctrinate, to persecute, to
+trim, to improve, to exterminate, to lift up, to cast down, to annoy, to
+amuse, to exasperate, to please, to enmusic, to offend, to glorify their
+kind. In some of these energies of theirs I blame them, in others I
+praise; but it is plainly evident that they know how to binge. I wished
+(for a moment) to be altogether of their race, like that strong cavalry
+man of their race to whom they have put up a statue pointing to his wooden
+leg. What an incredible people to build such an incredible church!
+
+The Clericals claim it, the anti-Clericals adorn it. The Christians bemoan
+within it the wickedness of the times. The Atheists are baptized in it,
+married in it, denounced in it, and when they die are, in great coffins
+surrounded by great candles, to the dirge of the _Dies Iræ_, to the
+booming of the vast new organ, very formally and determinedly absolved
+in it; and holy water is sprinkled over the black cloth and cross of
+silver. The pious and the indifferent, nay, the sad little army of
+earnest, intelligent, strenuous men who still anxiously await the death
+of religion--they all draw it, photograph it, paint it; they name their
+streets, their hotels, their villages, and their very children after it.
+It is like everything else in the world: it must be seen to be believed.
+It rises up in a big cluster of white domes upon the steep bank of the
+river. And sometimes you think it a fortress, and sometimes you think it
+a town, and sometimes you think it a vision. It is simple in plan and
+multiple in the mind; and after all these years I remember it as one
+remembers a sudden and unexpected chorus. It is well worthy of Perigeux of
+the Perigord.
+
+Perigeux of the Perigord is Gaulish, and it has never died. When it was
+Roman it was Vesona; the temple of that patron Goddess still stands at its
+eastern gate, and it is one of those teaching towns which have never died,
+but in which you can find quite easily and before your eyes every chapter
+of our worthy story. In such towns I am filled as though by a book, with a
+contemplation of what we have done, and I have little doubt for our sons.
+
+The city reclines and is supported upon the steep bank of the Isle just
+where the stream bends and makes an amphitheatre, so that men coming in
+from the north (which is the way the city was meant to be entered--and
+therefore, as you may properly bet, the railway comes in at the other side
+by the back door) see it all at once: a great sight. One goes up through
+its narrow streets, especially noting that street which is very nobly
+called after the man who tossed his sword in the air riding before the
+Conqueror at Hastings, Taillefer. One turns a narrow corner between houses
+very old and very tall, and then quite close, no longer a vision, but a
+thing to be touched, you see--to use the word again--the "surprising"
+thing. You see something bigger than you thought possible.
+
+Great heavens, what a church!
+
+Where have I heard a church called "the House of God"? I think it was in
+Westmorland near an inn called "The Nag's Head"--or perhaps "The Nag's
+Head" is in Cumberland--no matter, I did once hear a church so called. But
+this church has a right to the name. It is a gathering-up of all that men
+could do. It has fifty roofs, it has a gigantic signal tower, it has blank
+walls like precipices, and round arch after round arch, and architrave
+after architrave. It is like a good and settled epic; or, better still, it
+is like the life of a healthy and adventurous man who, having accomplished
+all his journeys and taken the Fleece of Gold, comes home to tell his
+stories at evening, and to pass among his own people the years that are
+left to him of his age. It has experience and growth and intensity of
+knowledge, all caught up into one unity; it conquers the hill upon which
+it stands. I drew one window and then another, and then before I had
+finished that a cornice, and then before I had finished that a porch,
+for it was evening when I saw it, and I had not many hours.
+
+Music, they say, does something to the soul, filling it full of
+unsatisfied but transcendent desires, and making it guess, in glimpses
+that mix and fail, the soul's ultimate reward or destiny. Here, in
+Perigeux of the Perigord, where men hunt truffles with hounds, stone set
+in a certain order does what music is said to do. For in the sight of this
+standing miracle I could believe and confess, and doubt and fear, and
+control, all in one.
+
+Here is, living and continuous, the Empire in its majority and
+its determination to be eternal. The people of the Perigord, the
+truffle-hunting people, need never seek civilization nor fear its death,
+for they have its symbol, and a sacrament, as it were, to promise them
+that the arteries of the life of Europe can never be severed. The arches
+and the entablatures of this solemn thing are alive.
+
+It was built some say nine, some say eight hundred years ago; its apse was
+built yesterday, but the whole of it is outside time.
+
+In human life, which goes with a short rush and then a lull, like the wind
+among trees before rains, great moments are remembered; they comfort us
+and they help us to laugh at decay. I am very glad that I once saw this
+church in Perigeux of the Perigord.
+
+When I die I should like to be buried in my own land, but I should take it
+as a favour from the Bishop, who is master of this place, if he would come
+and give my coffin an absolution, and bring with him the cloth and the
+silver cross, and if he would carry in his hand (as some of the statues
+have) a little model of St. Front, the church which I have seen and which
+renewed my faith.
+
+
+
+
+THE POSITION
+
+
+There is a place where the valley of the Allier escapes from the central
+mountains of France and broadens out into a fertile plain.
+
+Here is a march or boundary between two things, the one familiar to most
+English travellers, the other unfamiliar. The familiar thing is the rich
+alluvium and gravel of the Northern French countrysides, the poplar trees,
+the full and quiet rivers, the many towns and villages of stone, the broad
+white roads interminable and intersecting the very fat of prosperity,
+and over it all a mild air. The unfamiliar is the mass of the Avernian
+Mountains, which mass is the core and centre of Gaul and of Gaulish
+history, and of the unseen power that lies behind the whole of that
+business.
+
+The plains are before one, the mountains behind one, and one stands in
+that borderland. I know it well.
+
+I have said that in the Avernian Mountains was the centre of Gaul and the
+power upon which the history of Gaul depends. Upon the Margeride, which is
+one of their uttermost ridges, du Guesclin was wounded to death. One may
+see the huge stones piled up on the place where he fell. In the heart of
+those mountains, at Puy, religion has effects that are eerie; it uses odd
+high peaks for shrines--needles of rock; and a long way off all round is a
+circle of hills of a black-blue in the distance, and they and the rivers
+have magical names--the river Red Cap and Chaise Dieu, "God's Chair."
+In these mountains Julius Caesar lost (the story says) his sword; and
+in these mountains the Roman armies were staved off by the Avernians.
+They are as full of wonder as anything in Europe can be, and they are
+complicated and tumbled all about, so that those who travel in them with
+difficulty remember where they have been, unless indeed they have that
+general eye for a countryside which is rare nowadays among men.
+
+Just at the place where the mountain land and the plain land meet, where
+the shallow valleys get rounder and less abrupt, I went last September,
+following the directions of a soldier who had told me how I might find
+where the centre of the manoeuvres lay. The manoeuvres, attempting to
+reproduce the conditions of war, made a drifting scheme of men upon either
+side of the River Sioule. One could never be certain where one would find
+the guns.
+
+I had come up off the main road from Vichy, walking vaguely towards the
+sound of the firing. It was unfamiliar. The old and terrible rumble has
+been lost for a generation; even the plain noise of the field-piece which
+used to be called "90" is forgotten by the young men now. The new little
+guns pop and ring. And when you are walking towards them from a long way
+off you do not seem to be marching towards anything great, but rather
+towards something clever. Nevertheless it is as easy to-day as ever it
+was to walk towards the sound of cannon.
+
+Two valleys absolutely lonely had I trudged-through since the sun rose,
+and it was perhaps eight o'clock when I came upon one of those lonely
+walled parks set in bare fields which the French gentry seem to find
+homelike enough. I asked a man at the lodge about how far the position
+was. He said he did not know, and looked upon me with suspicion.
+
+I went down into the depth of the valley, and there I met a priest who was
+reading his Breviary and erroneously believed me (if I might judge his
+looks) to be of a different religion, for he tested philosophy by clothes;
+and this, by the way, is unalterably necessary for all mankind. When,
+however, he found by my method of address that I knew his language and
+was of his own faith, he became very courteous, and when I told him that
+I wanted to find the position he became as lively as a linesman, making
+little maps with his stick in the earth, and waving his arms, and making
+great sweeps with his hand to show the way in which the army had been
+drifting all morning, northward and eastward, above the Sioule, with the
+other division on the opposite bank, and how, whenever there was a bridge
+to be fought for, the game had been to pretend that one or the other had
+got hold of it. Of this priest it might truly be said, as was said of
+the priest of Thiers in the Forez, that chance had made him a choir-boy,
+but destiny had designed him for the profession of arms; and upon this
+one could build an interesting comedy of how chance and destiny are
+perpetually at issue, and how chance, having more initiative and not
+being so bound to routine, gets the better of destiny upon all occasions
+whatsoever.
+
+Well, the priest showed me in this manner whither I should walk, and so I
+came out of the valley on to a great upland, and there a small boy (who
+was bullying a few geese near a pond) showed much the same excitement as
+the priest when he told me at what village I should find the guns.
+
+That village was a few miles further on. As I went along the straight,
+bare road, with stubble upon either side, I thought the sound of firing
+got louder; but then, again, it would diminish, as the batteries took a
+further and a further position in their advance. It was great fun, this
+sham action, with its crescent of advancing fire and one's self in the
+centre of the curve. At the next village I had come across the arteries
+of the movement. By one road provisionment was going off to the right;
+by another two men with messages, one a Hussar on horseback, the other a
+Reservist upon a bicycle, went by me very quickly. Then from behind some
+high trees in a churchyard there popped out a lot of little Engineers, who
+were rolling a great roll of wire along. So I went onwards; and at last
+I came to a cleft just before the left bank of the Sioule. This cleft
+appeared deserted: there was brushwood on its sides and a tiny stream
+running through it. On the ridge beyond were the roofs of a village. The
+firing of the pieces was now quite close and near. They were a little
+further than the houses of the hamlet, doubtless in some flat field where
+the position was favourable to them. Down that cleft I went, and in its
+hollow I saw the first post, but as yet nothing more. Then when I got to
+the top of the opposing ridge I found the whole of the 38th lolling under
+the cover of the road bank. From below you would have said there were no
+men at all. The guns were right up beyond the line, firing away. I went up
+past the linesmen till I found the guns.
+
+And what a pretty sight! They were so small and light and delicate! There
+was no clanking, and no shouting, and to fire them a man pulled a mere
+trigger. I thought to myself: "How simple and easy our civilization
+becomes. Think of the motor-cars, and how they purr. Think of the simple
+telephone, and all the other little things." And with this thought in my
+mind I continued to watch the guns. Without yells or worry a man spoke
+gently to other men, and they all limbered up, quite easily. The weight
+seemed to have gone since my time. They trotted off with the pieces, and
+when they crossed the little ditch at the edge of the field I waited for
+the heavy clank-clank and the jog that ought to go with that well-known
+episode; but I did not hear it, and I saw no shock. They got off the
+field with its little ditch on to the high road as a light cart with good
+springs might have done. And when they massed themselves under the cover
+of a roll of land it was all done again without noise. I thought a little
+sadly that the world had changed. But it was all so pretty and sensible
+that I hardly regretted the change. There was a stretch of road in front
+where nothing on earth could have given cover. The line was on its
+stomach, firing away, and it was getting fired at apparently, in the sham
+of the manoeuvre from the other side of the Sioule. As it covered this
+open space the line edged forward and upward. When a certain number of the
+38th had worked up like this, the whole bunch of them, from half a mile
+down the road, right through the village, were moved along, and the head
+of the column was scattered to follow up the firing. It was like spraying
+water out of a tap. The guns still stood massed, and then at a sudden
+order which was passed along as though in the tones of a conversation
+(and again I thought to myself, "Surely the world is turning upside down
+since I was a boy") they started off at a sharp gallop and leapt, as it
+were, the two or three hundred yards of open road between cover and cover.
+They were very well driven. The middle horses and the wheelers were doing
+their work: it was not only the leaders that kept the traces taut. It was
+wonderfully pretty to see them go by: not like a storm but like a smoke.
+No one could have hit those gunners or those teams. Whether they were on
+the sky-line or not I could not tell, but at any rate they could have been
+seen just for that moment from beyond the Sioule. And when they massed up
+again, beyond--some seconds afterwards--one heard the pop-pop from over
+the valley, which showed they had been seen just too late.
+
+Hours and hours after that I went on with the young fellows. The guns I
+could not keep with: I walked with the line. And all the while as I walked
+I kept on wondering at the change that comes over European things. This
+army of young men doing two years, with its odd silence and its sharp
+twittering movements, and the sense of eyes all round one, of men glancing
+and appreciating: individual men catching an opportunity for cover; and
+commanding men catching the whole countryside.... Then, in the early
+afternoon, the bugles and the trumpets sounded that long-drawn call which
+has attended victories and capitulations, and which is also sounded every
+night to tell people to put out the lights in the barrack-rooms. It is the
+French "Cease fire." And whether from the national irony or the national
+economy, I know not, but the stopping of either kind of fire has the
+same call attached to it, and you must turn out a light in a French
+barrack-room to the same notes as you must by command stop shooting at the
+other people.
+
+The game was over. I faced the fourteen miles back to Gannat very stiff.
+All during those hours I had been wondering at the novelty of Europe, and
+at all these young men now so different, at the silence and the cover, and
+the hefty, disposable little guns. But when I had my face turned southward
+again to get back to a meal, that other aspect of Europe, its eternity,
+was pictured all abroad. For there right before me stood the immutable
+mountains, which stand enormous and sullen, but also vague at the base,
+and, therefore, in their summits, unearthly, above the Limagne. There was
+that upper valley of the Allier down which Cæsar had retreated, gathering
+his legions into the North, and there was that silent and menacing sky
+which everywhere broods over Auvergne, and even in its clearest days seems
+to lend the granite and the lava land a sort of doomed hardness, as though
+Heaven in this country commanded and did not allure. Never had I seen a
+landscape more mysterious than those hills, nor at the same time anything
+more enduring.
+
+
+
+
+HOME
+
+
+There is a river called the Eure which runs between low hills often
+wooded, with a flat meadow floor in between. It so runs for many miles.
+The towns that are set upon it are for the most part small and rare,
+and though the river is well known by name, and though one of the chief
+cathedrals of Europe stands near its source, for the most part it is not
+visited by strangers.
+
+In this valley one day as I was drawing a picture of the woods I found a
+wandering Englishman who was in the oddest way. He seemed by the slight
+bend at his knees and the leaning forward of his head to have no very
+great care how much further he might go. He was in the clothes of an
+English tourist, which looked odd in such a place, as, for that matter,
+they do anywhere. He had upon his head a pork-pie hat which was of the
+same colour and texture as his clothes, a speckly brown. He carried a
+thick stick. He was a man over fifty years of age; his face was rather
+hollow and worn; his eyes were very simple and pale; he was bearded with a
+weak beard, and in his expression there appeared a constrained but kindly
+weariness. This was the man who came up to me as I was drawing my picture.
+I had heard him scrambling in the undergrowth of the woods just behind me.
+
+He came out and walked to me across the few yards of meadow. The haying
+was over, so he did the grass no harm. He came and stood near me,
+irresolutely, looking vaguely up and across the valley towards the further
+woods, and then gently towards what I was drawing. When he had so stood
+still and so looked for a moment he asked me in French the name of the
+great house whose roof showed above the more ordered trees beyond the
+river, where a park emerged from and mixed with the forest. I told him the
+name of the house, whereupon he shook his head and said that he had once
+more come to the wrong place.
+
+I asked him what he meant, and he told me, sitting down slowly and
+carefully upon the grass, this adventure:
+
+"First," said he, "are you always quite sure whether a thing is really
+there or not?"
+
+"I am always quite sure," said I; "I am always positive."
+
+He sighed, and added: "Could you understand how a man might feel that
+things were really there when they were not?"
+
+"Only," said I, "in some very vivid dream, and even then I think a man
+knows pretty well inside his own mind that he is dreaming." I said that it
+seemed to me rather like the question of the cunning of lunatics; most of
+them know at the bottom of their silly minds that they are cracked, as you
+may see by the way they plot and pretend.
+
+"You are not sympathetic with me," he said slowly, "but I will
+nevertheless tell you what I want to tell you, for it will relieve me, and
+it will explain to you why I have again come into this valley." "Why do
+you say 'again'?" said I.
+
+"Because," he answered gently, "whenever my work gives me the opportunity
+I do the same thing. I go up the valley of the Seine by train from Dieppe;
+I get out at the station at which I got out on that day, and I walk across
+these low hills, hoping that I may strike just the path and just the
+mood--but I never do."
+
+"What path and what mood?" said I.
+
+"I was telling you," he answered patiently, "only you were so brutal about
+reality." And then he sighed. He put his stick across his knees as he sat
+there on the grass, held it with a hand on either side of his knees, and
+so sitting bunched up began his tale once more.
+
+"It was ten years ago, and I was extremely tired, for you must know that
+I am a Government servant, and I find my work most wearisome. It was just
+this time of year that I took a week's holiday. I intended to take it in
+Paris, but I thought on my way, as the weather was so fine, that I would
+do something new and that I would walk a little way off the track. I had
+often wondered what country lay behind the low and steep hills on the
+right of the railway line.
+
+"I had crossed the Channel by night," he continued, a little sorry for
+himself, "to save the expense. It was dawn when reached Rouen, and there I
+very well remember drinking some coffee which I did not like, and eating
+some good bread which I did. I changed carriages at Rouen because the
+express did not stop at any of the little stations beyond. I took a slower
+train, which came immediately behind it, and stopped at most of the
+stations. I took my ticket rather at random for a little station between
+Pont de l'Arche and Mantes. I got out at that little station, and it was
+still early--only midway through the morning.
+
+"I was in an odd mixture of fatigue and exhilaration: I had not slept and
+I would willingly have done so, but the freshness of the new day was upon
+me, and I have always had a very keen curiosity to see new sights and to
+know what lies behind the hills.
+
+"The day was fine and already rather hot for June. I did not stop in the
+village near the station for more than half an hour, just the time to take
+some soup and a little wine; then I set out into the woods to cross over
+into this parallel valley. I knew that I should come to it and to the
+railway line that goes down it in a very few miles. I proposed when I came
+to that other railway line on the far side of the hills to walk quietly
+down it as nearly parallel to it as I could get, and at the first station
+to take the next train for Chartres, and then the next day to go from
+Chartres to Paris. That was my plan.
+
+"The road up into the woods was one of those great French roads which
+sometimes frighten me and always weary me by their length and insistence:
+men seem to have taken so much trouble to make them, and they make me
+feel as though I had to take trouble myself; I avoid them when I walk.
+Therefore, so soon as this great road had struck the crest of the hills
+and was well into the woods (cutting through them like the trench of a
+fortification, with the tall trees on either side) I struck out into a
+ride which had been cut through them many years ago and was already half
+overgrown, and I went along this ride for several miles.
+
+"It did not matter to me how I went, since my design was so simple and
+since any direction more or less westward would enable me to fulfil it,
+that is, to come down upon the valley of the Eure and to find the single
+railway line which leads to Chartres. The woods were very pleasant on that
+June noon, and once or twice I was inclined to linger in their shade and
+sleep an hour. But--note this clearly--I did not sleep. I remember every
+moment of the way, though I confess my fatigue oppressed me somewhat
+as the miles continued.
+
+"At last by the steepness of a new descent I
+recognized that I had crossed the watershed and was coming down into the
+valley of this river. The ride had dwindled to a path, and I was wondering
+where the path would lead me when I noticed that it was getting more
+orderly: there were patches of sand, and here and there a man had cut and
+trimmed the edges of the way. Then it became more orderly still. It was
+all sanded, and there were artificial bushes here and there--I mean bushes
+not native to the forest, until at last I was aware that my ramble had
+taken me into some one's own land, and that I was in a private ground.
+
+"I saw no great harm in this, for a traveller, if he explains himself,
+will usually be excused; moreover, I had to continue, for I knew no
+other way, and this path led me westward also. Only, whether because my
+trespassing worried me or because I felt my own dishevelment more acutely,
+the lack of sleep and the strain upon me increased as I pursued those
+last hundred yards, until I came out suddenly from behind a screen of
+rosebushes upon a large lawn, and at the end of it there was a French
+country house with a moat round it, such as they often have, and a stone
+bridge over the moat.
+
+"The château was simple and very grand. The mouldings upon it pleased me,
+and it was full of peace. Upon the further side of the lawn, so that I
+could hear it but not see it, a fountain was playing into a basin. By the
+sound it was one of those high French fountains which the people who built
+such houses as these two hundred years ago delighted in. The plash of it
+was very soothing, but I was so tired and drooping that at one moment it
+sounded much further than at the next.
+
+"There was an iron bench at the edge of the screen of roses, and hardly
+knowing what I did,--for it was not the right thing to do in another
+person's place--I sat down on this bench, taking pleasure in the sight of
+the moat and the house with its noble roof, and the noise of the fountain.
+I think I should have gone to sleep there and at that moment--for I felt
+upon me worse than ever the strain of that long hot morning and that long
+night journey--had not a very curious thing happened."
+
+Here the man looked up at me oddly, as though to see whether I disbelieved
+him or not; but I did not disbelieve him.
+
+I was not even very much interested, for I was trying to make the trees to
+look different one from the other, which is an extremely difficult thing:
+I had not succeeded and I was niggling away. He continued with more
+assurance:
+
+"The thing that happened was this: a young girl came out of the house
+dressed in white, with a blue scarf over her head and crossed round her
+neck. I knew her face as well as possible: it was a face I had known all
+my youth and early manhood--but for the life of me I could not remember
+her name!'
+
+"When one is very tired," I said, "that does happen to one: a name one
+knows as well as one's own escapes one. It is especially the effect of
+lack of sleep."
+
+"It is," said he, sighing profoundly; "but the oddness of my feeling it is
+impossible to describe, for there I was meeting the oldest and perhaps the
+dearest and certainly the most familiar of my friends, whom," he added,
+hesitating a moment, "I had not seen for many years. It was a very great
+pleasure ... it was a sort of comfort and an ending. I forgot, the moment
+I saw her, why I had come over the hills, and all about how I meant to get
+to Chartres.... And now I must tell you," added the man a little awkwardly,
+"that my name is Peter."
+
+"No doubt," said I gravely, for I could not see why he should not bear
+that name.
+
+"My Christian name," he continued hurriedly.
+
+"Of course," said I, as sympathetically as I could. He seemed relieved
+that I had not even smiled at it.
+
+"Yes," he went on rather quickly, "Peter--my name is Peter. Well, this
+lady came up to me and said, 'Why, Peter, we never thought you would
+come!' She did not seem very much astonished, but rather as though I had
+come earlier than she had expected. 'I will get Philip,' she said. 'You
+remember Philip?' Here I had another little trouble with my memory: I did
+remember that there was a Philip, but I could not place him. That was odd,
+you know. As for her, oh, I knew _her_ as well as the colour of the
+sky: it was her name that my brain missed, as it might have missed my own
+name or my mother's.
+
+"Philip came out as she called him, and there was a familiarity between
+them that seemed natural to me at the time, but whether he was a brother
+or a lover or a husband, or what, I could not for the life of me remember.
+
+"'You look tired,' he said to me in a kind voice that I liked very much
+and remembered clearly. 'I am,' said I, 'dog tired.' 'Come in with us,' he
+said, 'and we will give you some wine and water. When would you like to
+eat?' I said I would rather sleep than eat. He said that could easily be
+arranged.
+
+"I strolled with them towards the house across that great lawn, hearing
+the noise of the fountain, now dimmer, now nearer; sometimes it seemed
+miles away and sometimes right in my ears. Whether it was their
+conversation or my familiarity with them or my fatigue, at any rate, as I
+crossed the moat I could no longer recall anything save their presence. I
+was not even troubled by the desire to recall anything; I was full of a
+complete contentment, and this surging up of familiar things, this surging
+up of it in a foreign place, without excuse or possible connexion or any
+explanation whatsoever, seemed to me as natural as breathing.
+
+"As I crossed the bridge I wholly forgot whence I came or whither I was
+going, but I knew myself better than ever I had known myself, and every
+detail of the place was familiar to me.
+
+"Here I had passed (I thought) many hours of my childhood and my boyhood
+and my early manhood also. I ceased considering the names and the relation
+of Philip and the girl.
+
+"They gave me cold meat and bread and excellent wine, and water to mix
+with it, and as they continued to speak even the last adumbrations of care
+fell off me altogether, and my spirit seemed entirely released and free.
+My approaching sleep beckoned to me like an easy entrance into Paradise.
+I should wake from it quite simply into the perpetual enjoyment of this
+place and its companionship. Oh, it was an absolute repose!
+
+"Philip took me to a little room on the ground floor fitted with the
+exquisite care and the simplicity of the French: there was a curtained
+bed, a thing I love. He lent me night clothes, though it was broad day,
+because he said that if I undressed and got into the bed I should be much
+more rested; they would keep everything quiet at that end of the house,
+and the gentle fall of the water into the moat outside would not disturb
+me. I said on the contrary it would soothe me, and I felt the benignity of
+the place possess me like a spell. Remember that I was very tired and had
+not slept for now thirty hours.
+
+"I remember handling the white counterpane and noting the delicate French
+pattern upon it, and seeing at one corner the little red silk coronet
+embroidered, which made me smile. I remember putting my hand upon the cool
+linen of the pillow-case and smoothing it; then I got into that bed and
+fell asleep. It was broad noon, with the stillness that comes of a summer
+noon upon the woods; the air was cool and delicious above the water of the
+moat, and my windows were open to it.
+
+"The last thing I heard as I dropped asleep was her voice calling to
+Philip in the corridor. I could have told the very place. I knew that
+corridor so well. We used to play there when we were children. We used to
+play at travelling, and we used to invent the names of railway stations
+for the various doors. Remembering this and smiling at the memory, I fell
+at once into a blessed sleep.
+
+"...I do not want to annoy you," said the man apologetically, "but I
+really had to tell you this story, and I hardly know how to tell you the
+end of it."
+
+"Go on," said I hurriedly, for I had gone and made two trees one exactly
+like the other (which in nature was never seen) and I was annoyed with
+myself.
+
+"Well," said he, still hesitating and sighing with real sadness, "when
+I woke up I was in a third-class carriage; the light was that of late
+afternoon, and a man had woken me by tapping my shoulder and telling me
+that the next station was Chartres.... That's all."
+
+He sighed again. He expected me to say something. So I did. I said without
+much originality: "You must have dreamed it."
+
+"No," said he, very considerably put out, "that is the point! I didn't! I
+tell you I can remember exactly every stage from when I left the railway
+train in the Seine Valley until I got into that bed."
+
+"It's all very odd," said I.
+
+"Yes," said he, "and so was my mood; but it was real enough. It was the
+second or third most real thing that has ever happened to me. I am quite
+certain that it happened to me."
+
+I remained silent, and rubbed out the top of one of my trees so as to
+invent a new top for it, since I could not draw it as it was. Then, as he
+wanted me to say something more, I said: "Well, you must have got into the
+train somehow."
+
+"Of course," said he.
+
+"Well, where did you get into the train?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Your ticket would have told you that."
+
+"I think I must have given it up to the man," he answered doubtfully, "the
+guard who told me that the next station was Chartres."
+
+"Well, it's all very mysterious," I said.
+
+"Yes," he said, getting up rather weakly to go on again, "it is." And
+he sighed again. "I come here every year. I hope," he added a little
+wistfully, "I hope, you see, that it may happen to me again ... but it
+never does."
+
+"It will at last," said I to comfort him.
+
+And, will you believe it, that simple sentence made him in a moment
+radiantly happy; his face beamed, and he positively thanked me, thanked me
+warmly.
+
+"You speak like one inspired," he said. (I confess I did not feel like it
+at all.) "I shall go much lighter on my way after that sentence of yours."
+
+He bade me good-bye with some ceremony and slouched off, with his eyes set
+towards the west and the more distant hills.
+
+
+
+
+THE WAY TO FAIRYLAND
+
+
+A child of four years old, having read of Fairyland and of the people in
+it, asked only two days ago, in a very popular attitude of doubt, whether
+there were any such place, and, if so, where it was; for she believed in
+her heart that the whole thing was a pack of lies.
+
+I was happy to be able to tell her that her scepticism, though well
+founded, was extreme. The existence of Fairyland, I was able to point out
+to her both by documentary evidence from books and also by calling in the
+testimony of the aged, could not be doubted by any reasonable person. What
+was really difficult was the way to get there. Indeed, so obviously true
+was the existence of Fairyland, that every one in this world set out to go
+there as a matter of course, but so difficult was it to find the way that
+very few reached the place. Upon this the child very naturally asked me
+what sort of way the way was and why it was so difficult.
+
+"You must first understand," said I, "where Fairyland is: it lies a little
+way farther than the farthest hill you can see. It lies, in fact, just
+beyond that hill. The frontiers of it are sometimes a little doubtful in
+any landscape, because the landscape is confused, but if on the extreme
+limits of the horizon you see a long line of hills bounding your view
+exactly, then you may be perfectly certain that on the other side of those
+hills is Fairyland. There are times of the day and of the weather when the
+sky over Fairyland can be clearly perceived, for it has a different colour
+from any other kind of sky. That is where Fairyland is. It is not on an
+island, as some have pretended, still less is it under the earth--a
+ridiculous story, for there it is all dark."
+
+"But how do you get there?" asked the child. "Do you get there by walking
+to the hills and going over?"
+
+"No," said I, "that is just the bother of it. Several people have thought
+that that was the way of getting there; in fact, it looked plain common
+sense, but there is a trick about it; when you get to the hills everything
+changes, because the fairies have that power: the hills become ordinary,
+the people living on them turn into people just like you and me, and then
+when you get to the top of the hills, before you can say knife another
+common country just like ours has been stuck on the other side. On this
+account, through the power of the fairies, who hate particularly to be
+disturbed, no one can reach Fairyland in so simple a way as by walking
+towards it."
+
+"Then," said the child to me, "I don't see how any one can get there"--for
+this child had good brains and common sense.
+
+"But," said I, "you must have read in stories of people who get to
+Fairyland, and I think you will notice that in the stories written by
+people who know anything about it (and you know how easily these are
+distinguished from the others) there are always two ways of getting to
+Fairyland, and only two: one is by mistake, and the other is by a spell.
+In the first way to Fairyland is to lose your way, and this is one of the
+best ways of getting there; but it is dangerous, because if you get there
+that way you offend the fairies. It is better to get there by a spell.
+But the inconvenience of that is that you are blindfolded so as not to be
+allowed to remember the way there or back again. When you get there by a
+spell, one of the people from Fairyland takes you in charge. They prefer
+to do it when you are asleep, but they are quite game to do it at other
+times if they think it worth their while.
+
+"Why do they do it?" said the child.
+
+"They do it," said I, "because it annoys the fairies very much to think
+that people are stopping believing in them. They are very proud people,
+and think a lot of themselves. They can, if they like, do us good, and
+they think us ungrateful when we forget about them. Sometimes in the past
+people have gone on forgetting about fairies more and more and more,
+until at last they have stopped believing in them altogether. The fairies
+meanwhile have been looking after their own affairs, and it is their fault
+more than ours when we forget about them. But when this has gone on for
+too long a time the fairies wake up and find out by a way they have that
+men have stopped believing in them, and get very much annoyed. Then some
+fairy proposes that a map of the way to Fairyland should be drawn up and
+given to the people; but this is always voted down; and at last they make
+up their minds to wake people up to Fairyland by going and visiting this
+world, and by spells bringing several people into their kingdom and so
+getting witnesses. For, as you can imagine, it is a most unpleasant thing
+to be really important and for other people not to know it."
+
+"Yes," said the child, who had had this unpleasant experience, and greatly
+sympathized with the fairies when I explained how much they disliked it.
+Then the child asked me again:
+
+"Why do the fairies let us forget about them?"
+
+"It is," said I, "because they get so excited about their own affairs.
+Rather more than a hundred years ago, for instance, a war broke out in
+Fairyland because the King of the Fairies, whose name is Oberon, and the
+Queen of the Fairies, whose name is Titania, had asked the Trolls to
+dinner. The Gnomes were very much annoyed at this, and the Elves still
+more so, for the chief glory of the Elves was that being elfish got you to
+know people; and it was universally admitted that the Trolls ought never
+to be asked out, because they were trollish. King Oberon said that all
+that was a wicked prejudice, and that the Trolls ought to be asked out to
+dinner just as much as the Elves, in common justice. But his real reason
+was that he was bored by the perpetual elfishness of the Elves, and wanted
+to see the great ugly Trolls trying to behave like gentlemen for a change.
+So the Trolls came and tied their napkins round their necks, and ate such
+enormous quantities at dinner that King Oberon and his Queen almost died
+of laughing. The Elves were frightfully jealous, and so the war began. And
+while it was going on everybody in Earthland forgot more and more about
+Fairyland, until at last some people went so far as to say, like you, that
+Fairyland did not exist."
+
+"I did not say so," said the child, "I only asked."
+
+"But," I answered severely, "asking about such things is the beginning of
+doubting them. Anyhow, the fairies woke up one fine day about the time
+when your great-grandfather got married, to discover that they were not
+believed in, so they patched up their quarrel and they sent fairies to
+cast spells, and any amount of people began to be taken to Fairyland,
+until at last every one was forced to believe their evidence and to say
+that Fairyland existed."
+
+"Were they glad?" said the child.
+
+"Who?" said I; "the witnesses who were thus taken away and shown
+Fairyland?"
+
+"Yes," said the child. "They ought to have been glad."
+
+"Well, they _weren't_!" said I. "They were as sick as dogs. Not one
+of them but got into some dreadful trouble. From one his wife ran away,
+another starved to death, a third killed himself, a fourth was drowned
+and then burned upon the seashore, a fifth went mad (and so did several
+others), and as for poverty, and all the misfortunes that go with it, it
+simply rained upon the people who had been to Fairyland."
+
+"Why?" said the child, greatly troubled.
+
+"Ah!" said I, "that is what none of us know, but so it is, if they take
+you to Fairyland you are in for a very bad business indeed. There is only
+one way out of it."
+
+"And what is that?" said the child, interested.
+
+"Washing," said I, "washing in cold water. It has been proved over and
+over again."
+
+"Then," said the child happily, "they can take me to Fairyland as often as
+they like, and I shall not be the worse for it, for I am washed in cold
+water every day. What about the other way to Fairyland?"
+
+"Oh _that_," said I, "that, I think, is much the best way; I've gone
+there myself."
+
+"Have you really?" said the child, now intensely interested. "That
+_is_ good! How often have you been there?"
+
+"Oh I can't tell you," I said carelessly, "but at least eight times, and
+perhaps more, and the dodge is, as I told you, to lose your way; only the
+great trouble is that no one can lose his way on purpose. At first I used
+to think that one had to follow signs. There was an omnibus going down the
+King's Road which had 'To the World's End' painted on it. I got into this
+one day, and after I had gone some miles I said to the man, 'When do we
+get to the World's End?' 'Oh,' said he, 'you have passed it long ago,' and
+he rang a little bell to make me get out. So it was a fraud. Another time
+I saw another omnibus with the words, 'To the Monster,' and I got into
+that, but I heard that it was only a sort of joke, and that though the
+Monster was there all right, he was not in Fairyland. This omnibus went
+through a very uninteresting part of London, and Fairyland was nowhere in
+the neighbourhood. Another time in the country of France I came upon a
+printed placard which said: 'The excursion will pass by the Seven Winds,
+the Foolish Heath, and St. Martin under Heaven.' This time also I thought
+I had got it, but when I looked at the date on the placard I saw that the
+excursion had started several days before, so I missed it again. Another
+time up in Scotland I saw a signpost on which there was, 'To the King's
+House seven miles.' And some one had written underneath in pencil: 'And
+to the Dragon's Cave eleven.' But nothing came of it. It was a false
+lane. After that I gave up believing that one could get to Fairyland by
+signposts or omnibuses, until one day, quite by mistake, I chanced on the
+dodge of losing one's way."
+
+"How is that done?" said the child.
+
+"That is what no one can tell you," said I. "If people knew how it was
+done everybody would do it, but the whole point of losing your way is that
+you do it by mistake. You must be quite certain that you have not lost
+your way or it is no good. You walk along, and you walk along, and you
+wonder how long it will be before you get to the town, and then instead of
+getting to the town at all, there you are in Fairyland."
+
+"How do you know that you are in Fairyland?" said the little child.
+
+"It depends how far you get in," said I. "If you get in far enough trees
+and rocks change into men, rivers talk, and voices of people whom you
+cannot see tell you all sorts of things in loud and clear tones close to
+your ear. But if you only get a little way inside then you know that you
+are there by a sort of wonderment. The things ought to be like the things
+you see every day, but they are a little different, notably the trees.
+It happened to me once in a town called Lanchester. A part of that
+town (though no one would think of it to look at it) happens to be in
+Fairyland. And there I was received by three fairies, who gave me supper
+in an inn. And it happened to me once in the mountains and once it
+happened to me at sea. I lost my way and came upon a beach which was in
+Fairyland. Another time it happened to me between Goodwood and Upwaltham
+in Sussex."
+
+At this moment the child's nurse came in to take it away, so she came to
+the point:
+
+"How did you know you were in Fairyland?' she said doubtfully." Perhaps
+you are making all this up."
+
+"Nonsense!" I said reprovingly, "the only people who make things up are
+little children, for they always tell lies. Grown-up people never tell
+lies. Let me tell you that one always knows when one has been in Fairyland
+by the feeling afterwards, and because it is impossible to find it again."
+
+The child said, "Very well, I will believe you," but I could see from the
+expression of her eyes that she was not wholly convinced, and that in the
+bottom of her heart she does not believe there is any such place. She
+will, however, if she can hang on another forty years, and then I shall
+have my revenge.
+
+
+
+
+THE PORTRAIT OF A CHILD
+
+
+In a garden which must, I think, lie somewhat apart and enclosed in one
+of the valleys of central England, you came across the English grass in
+summer beneath the shade of a tree; you were running, but your arms were
+stretched before you in a sort of dance and balance as though you rather
+belonged to the air and to the growing things about you and above you than
+to the earth over which you passed; and you were not three years old.
+
+As, in jest, this charming vision was recorded by a camera which some
+guest had with him, a happy accident (designed, for all we know, by
+whatever powers arrange such things, an accident of the instrument or of
+the plate upon which your small, happy, advancing figure was recorded) so
+chanced that your figure, when the picture was printed, shone all around
+with light.
+
+I cannot, as I look at it now before me and as I write these words,
+express, however much I may seek for expression, how great a meaning
+underlies that accident nor how full of fate and of reason and of
+suggested truth that aureole grows as I gaze. Your innocence is beatified
+by it, and takes on with majesty the glory which lies behind all
+innocence, but which our eyes can never see. Your happiness seems in that
+mist of light to be removed and permanent; the common world in which you
+are moving passes, through this trick of the lens, into a stronger world
+more apt for such a sight, and one in which I am half persuaded (as I
+still look upon the picture) blessedness is not a rare adventure, but
+something native and secure.
+
+Little child, the trick which the camera has played means more and more as
+I still watch your picture, for there is present in that light not only
+blessedness, but holiness as well. The lightness of your movement and of
+your poise (as though you were blown like a blossom along the tops of the
+grass) is shone through, and your face, especially its ready and wondering
+laughter, is inspired, as though the Light had filled it from within;
+so that, looking thus, I look not on, but through. I say that in this
+portrait which I treasure there is not only blessedness, but holiness as
+well--holiness which is the cause of blessedness and which contains it,
+and by which secretly all this world is sustained.
+
+Now there is a third thing in your portrait, little child. That accident
+of light, light all about you and shining through your face, is not only
+blessed nor only holy, but it is also sacred, and with that thought there
+returns to me as I look what always should return to man if he is to find
+any stuff or profit in his consideration of divine things. In blessedness
+there is joy for which here we are not made, so that we catch it only
+in glimpses or in adumbrations. And in holiness, when we perceive it we
+perceive something far off; it is that from which we came and to which
+we should return; yet holiness is not a human thing. But things sacred--
+things devoted to a purpose, things about which there lies an awful
+necessity of sacrifice, things devoted and necessarily suffering some
+doom--these are certainly of this world; that, indeed, all men know well
+at last, and find it part of the business through which they needs must
+pass. Human memories, since they are only memories; human attachments,
+since they are offered up and end; great human fears and hopeless human
+longings--these are sacred things attached to a victim and to a sacrifice;
+and in this picture of yours, with the light so glorifying you all round,
+no one can doubt who sees it but that the sacredness of human life will be
+yours also; that is, you must learn how it is offered up to some end and
+what a sacrifice is there.
+
+I could wish, as I consider this, that the camera had played no such
+trick, and had not revealed in that haze of awful meaning all that lies
+beyond the nature of you, child. But it is a truth which is so revealed;
+and we may not, upon a penalty more terrible than death, neglect any
+ultimate truth concerning our mortal way.
+
+Your feet, which now do not seem to press upon the lawn across which they
+run, have to go more miles than you can dream of, through more places than
+you could bear to hear, and they must be directed to a goal which will not
+in your very young delight be mentioned before you, or of which, if it is
+mentioned, you will not understand by name; and your little hands which
+you bear before you with the little gesture of flying things, will grasp
+most tightly that which can least remain and will attempt to fashion what
+can never be completed, and will caress that which will not respond to
+the caress. Your eyes, which are now so principally filled with innocence
+that that bright quality drowns all the rest, will look upon so much of
+deadly suffering and of misuse in men, that they will very early change
+themselves in kind; and all your face, which now vaguely remembers nothing
+but the early vision from which childhood proceeds, will grow drawn and
+self-guarded, and will suffer some agonies, a few despairs, innumerable
+fatigues, until it has become the face of a woman grown. Nor will this
+sacred doom about you, which is that of all mankind, cease or grow less
+or be mitigated in any way; it will increase as surely and as steadily
+as increase the number of the years, until at last you will lay down the
+daylight and the knowledge of day-lit things as gladly as now you wake
+from sleep to see them.
+
+For you are sacred, and all those elders about you, whose solemn demeanour
+now and then startles you into a pretty perplexity which soon calls back
+their smiles, have hearts only quite different from your quite careless
+heart, because they have known the things to which, in the manner of
+victims, they are consecrated.
+
+All that by which we painfully may earn rectitude and a proper balance in
+the conduct of our short affairs I must believe that you will practise;
+and I must believe, as I look here into your face, seeing your confident
+advance (as though you were flying out from your babyhood into young life
+without any fear), that the virtues which now surround you in a crowd and
+make a sort of court for you and are your angels every way, will go along
+with you and will stand by you to the end. Even so, and the more so, you
+will find (if you read this some years hence) how truly it is written. By
+contrast with your demeanour, with your immortal hopes, and with your
+pious efforts the world about you will seem darker and less secure with
+every passing harvest, and in proportion as you remember the childhood
+which has led me so to write of you, in proportion as you remember
+gladness and innocence with its completed joy, in that proportion will
+you find at least a breaking burden in the weight of this world.
+
+Now you may say to me, little child (not now, but later on), to what
+purpose is all this complaint, and why should you tell me these things?
+
+It is because in the portrait before me the holiness, the blessedness, and
+therefore the sacredness are apparent that I am writing as I do. For you
+must know that there is a false way out and a seeming relief for the rack
+of human affairs, and that this way is taken by many. Since you are sacred
+do not take it, but bear the burden. It is the character of whatever is
+sacred that it does not take that way; but, like a true victim, remains
+to the end, ready to complete the sacrifice.
+
+The way out is to forget that one is sacred, and this men and women do in
+many ways. The most of them by way of treason. They betray. They break at
+first uneasily, later easily, and at last unconsciously, the word which
+each of us has passed before He was born in Paradise. All men and all
+women are conscious of that word, for though their lips cannot frame it
+here, and though the terms of the pledge are forgotten, the memory of its
+obligation fills the mind. But there comes a day, and that soon in the
+lives of many, when to break it once is to be much refreshed and to seem
+to drop the burden; and in the second and the third time it is done, and
+the fourth it is done more easily--until at last there is no more need
+for a man or a woman to break that pledged word again and once again; it
+is broken for good and for all. This is one most common way in which the
+sacred quality is lost: the way of treason. Round about such as choose
+this kind of relief grows a habit and an air of treason. They betray all
+things at last, and even common friendship is at last no longer theirs.
+The end of this false issue is despair.
+
+Another way is to take refuge from ourselves in pleasures, and this is
+easily done, not by the worse, but by the better sort; for there are some,
+some few, who would never betray nor break their ancient word, but who,
+seeing no meaning in a sacrifice nor in a burden, escape from it through
+pleasure as through a drug, and this pleasure they find in all manner of
+things, and always that spirit near them which would destroy their sacred
+mark, persuades them that they are right, and that in such pursuits the
+sacrifice is evaded. So some will steep themselves in rhyme, some in
+landscapes, some in pictures, some in the watching of the complexity and
+change of things, some in music, some in action, some in mere ease. It
+seems as though the men and women who would thus forget their sacredness
+are better loved and better warned than those who take the other path, for
+they never forget certain gracious things which should be proper to the
+mind, nor do they lose their friends. But that they have taken a wrong
+path you may easily perceive from this sign: that these pleasures, like
+any other drug, do not feed or satisfy, but must be increased with every
+dose, and even so soon pall and are continued not because they are
+pleasures any longer, but because, dull though they have become, without
+them there is active pain.
+
+Take neither the one path nor the other, but retain, I beseech you, when
+the time comes, that quality of sacredness of which I speak, for there
+is no alternative. Some trouble fell upon our race, and all of us must
+take upon ourselves the business and the burden. If you will attempt any
+way out at all it will but lead you to some worse thing. We have not all
+choices before us, but only one of very few, and each of those few choices
+is mortal, and all but one is evil.
+
+You should remember this also, dear little child, that at the beginning--
+oh, only at the very beginning of life--even your reason that God gave
+may lead you wrong. For with those memories strong upon you of perfect
+will, of clear intelligence, and of harmonious beauty all about, you will
+believe the world in which you stand to be the world from which you have
+come and to which you are also destined. You have but to treat this world
+for but a very little while as though it were the thing you think it to
+find it is not so.
+
+Do you know that that which smells most strongly in this life of
+immortality, and which a poet has called "the ultimate outpost of
+eternity," is insecure and perishes? I mean the passionate affection of
+early youth. If that does not remain, what then do you think can remain?
+I tell you that nothing which you take to be permanent round about you
+when you are very young is more than the symbol or clothes of permanence.
+Another poet has written, speaking of the chalk hills:--
+
+   Only a little while remain
+   The Downs in their solemnity.
+
+Nor is this saying forced. Men and women cannot attach themselves even to
+the hills where they first played.
+
+Some men, wise but unillumined, and not conscious of that light which I
+here physically see shining all round and through you in the picture which
+is before my eyes as I write, have said that to die young and to end the
+business early was a great blessing. We do not know. But we do know that
+to die long after and to have gone through the business must be blessed,
+since blessedness and holiness and sacredness are bound together in one.
+
+But, of these three, be certain that sacredness is your chief business,
+blessedness after your first childhood you will never know, and holiness
+you may only see as men see distant mountains lifted beyond a plain; it
+cannot be your habitation. Sacredness, which is the mark of that purpose
+whose heir is blessedness, whose end is holiness, will be upon you until
+you die; maintain it, and let it be your chief concern, for though you
+neglect it, it will remain and avenge itself.
+
+All this I have seen in your picture as you go across the grass, and it
+was an accident of the camera that did it. If any one shall say these
+things do not attach to the portrait of a child, let him ask himself
+whether they do not attach to the portrait that might be drawn, did human
+skill suffice, of the life of a woman or a man which springs from the
+demeanour of childhood; or let him ask himself whether, if a face in old
+age and that same face in childhood were equally and as by a revelation
+set down each in its full truth, and the growth of the one into the other
+were interpreted by a profound intelligence, what I have said would not
+be true of all that little passage of ours through the daylight.
+
+
+
+
+ON EXPERIENCE
+
+
+There are three phases in the life of man, so far as his thoughts upon
+his surroundings are concerned.
+
+The first of these is the phase of youth, in which he takes certain
+matured things for granted, and whether he realizes his illusion or no,
+believes them to be eternal. This phase ends sharply with every man, by
+the action of one blow. Some essence is dissolved, some binding cordage
+snaps, or some one dies.
+
+I say no matter how clearly the reason of a man tells him that all about
+him is changeable, and that perfect and matured things and characters upon
+whose perfection and maturity he reposes for his peace must disappear, his
+attitude in youth towards those things is one of a complete security as
+towards things eternal. For the young man, convinced as he is that his
+youth and he himself are there for ever, sees in one lasting framework his
+father's garden, his mother's face, the landscape from his windows, his
+friendships, and even his life; the very details of food, of clothing,
+and of lesser custom, all these are fixed for him. Fixed also are the
+mature and perfect things. This aged friend, in whose excellent humour
+and universal science he takes so continual a delight, is there for ever.
+That considered judgment of mankind upon such and such a troubling matter,
+of sex, of property, or of political right, is anchored or rooted in
+eternity. There comes a day when by some one experience he is startled out
+of that morning dream. It is not the first death, perhaps, that strikes
+him, nor the first loss--no, not even, perhaps, the first discovery that
+human affection also passes (though that should be for every man the
+deepest lesson of all). What wakes him to the reality which is for some
+dreadful, for others august, and for the faithful divine, is always an
+accident. One death, one change, one loss, among so many, unseals his
+judgment, and he sees thenceforward, nay, often from one particular moment
+upon which he can put his finger, the doom which lies upon all things
+whatsoever that live by a material change.
+
+The second phase which he next enters is for a thoughtful man in a
+sceptical and corrupted age the crucial phase, whereby will be determined,
+not indeed the fate of his soul, but the justice, and therefore the
+advantage to others, of his philosophy.
+
+He has done with all illusions of permanence and repose. Henceforward he
+sees for himself a definite end, and the road which used to lead over
+the hills and to be lost beyond in the haze of summer plains now leads
+directly to a visible place; that place is a cavern in the mountain side,
+dark and without issue. He must die. Henceforward he expects the passing
+of all to which he is attached, and he is braced against loss by something
+lent to him which is to despair as an angel is to a demon; something in
+the same category of emotion, but just and fortifying, instead of void
+and vain and tempting and without an end. A man sees in this second phase
+of his experience that he must lose. Oh, he does not lose in a gamble!
+It is not a question of winning a stake or forfeiting it, as the vulgar
+falsehood of commercial analogy would try to make our time believe. He
+knows henceforward that there is no success, no final attainment of
+desire, because there is no fixity in any material thing. As he sits at
+table with the wisest and keenest of his time, especially with the old,
+hearing true stories of the great men who came before him, looking at
+well-painted pictures, admiring the proper printing of collected books,
+and praising the just balance of some classical verse or music which
+time has judged and made worthy, he so admires and enjoys with a full
+consciousness that these things are flowing past him. He cannot rely; he
+attempts no foothold. The equilibrium of his soul is only to be discovered
+in marching and continually marching. He now knows that he must go onward,
+he may not stand, for if he did he would fall. He must go forward and see
+the river of things run by. He must go forward--but to what goal?
+
+There is a third phase, in which (as the experience of twenty Christian
+centuries determines) that goal also is discovered, and for some who so
+discover it the experience of loss begins to possess a meaning.
+
+What this third phase is I confess I do not know, and as I have not felt
+it I cannot describe it, but when that third phase is used as I have
+suggested a character of wisdom enters into those so using it; a character
+of wisdom which is the nearest thing our dull time can show to inspiration
+and to prophecy.
+
+It is to be noted also that in this third phase of man's experience of
+doom those who are not wise are most unwise indeed; and that where the age
+of experience has not produced this sort of clear maturity in the spirit,
+then it produces either despair or folly, or an exaggerated shirking of
+reality, which, being a falsehood, is wickeder than despair, and far more
+inhuman than mere foolishness. Thus those who in the third phase of which
+I speak have not attained the wisdom which I here recognize will often
+sink into a passion of avarice, accumulating wealth which they cannot
+conceivably enjoy; a stupidity so manifest that every age of satire has
+found it the most facile of commonplaces. Or, again, those who fail to
+find wisdom in that last phase will constantly pretend an unreal world,
+making plans for a future that cannot be there. So did a man eleven
+years ago in the neighbourhood of Regent Street, for this man, being
+eighty-seven years of age, wealthy, and wholly devoid of friends, or near
+kindred, took a flat, but he insisted that the lease should be one of not
+less than sixty years. In a hundred ways this last phase if it is degraded
+is most degraded; and, though it is not worst, it is most sterile when it
+falls to a mere regret for the past.
+
+Now it is here that the opposite, the wisdoms of old age appears; for the
+old, when they are wise, are able to point out to men and to women of
+middle age what these least suspect, and can provide them with a good
+medicine against the insecurity of the soul. The old in their wisdom can
+tell those just beneath them this: that though all things human pass, all
+bear their fruit. They can say: "You believe that such and such a woman,
+with her courtesy, her travel, her sharp edge of judgment, her large
+humanity, and her love of the comedy of the world, being dead can never be
+replaced. There are, growing up around you, characters quite insufficient,
+and to you, perhaps, contemptible, who will in their fruiting display all
+these things." There never was, nor has been, a time (say those who are
+acquainted with the great story of Europe) when Christendom has failed.
+Out of dead passages there has sprung up suddenly, and quite miraculously,
+whatever was thought to be lost. So it has been with our music, so with
+the splendour of our armies, so with the fabric of our temples, so with
+our deathless rhymes. The old, when they are wise, can do for men younger
+than they what history does for the reader; but they can do it far more
+poignantly, having expression in their eyes and the living tones of a
+voice. It is their business to console the world.
+
+
+
+
+ON IMMORTALITY
+
+
+Here and there, scattered rarely among men as men are now, you will
+find one man who does not pursue the same ends as his fellows; but in a
+peculiar manner leads his life as though his eyes were fixed upon some
+distant goal or his appetites subjected to some constant and individual
+influence.
+
+Such a man may be doing any one of many things. He may be a poet, and his
+occupation may be the writing of good verse, pleased at its sound and
+pleased as well by the reflection of the pleasure it will give to others.
+Or he may be devoted, and follow a creed, a single truth or a character
+which he loves, and whose influence and glory he makes it his business to
+propagate. Or he may be but a worker in some material, a carver in wood,
+or a manager of commercial affairs, or a governor and administrator of
+men, and yet so order his life that his work and his material are his
+object: not his gain in the end--not his appreciable and calculable gain
+at least--nor his immediate and ephemeral pleasures.
+
+Such men, if you will examine them, will prove intent upon one ultimate
+completion of their being which is also (whether they know it or not) a
+reward, and those who have carefully considered the matter and give it
+expression say that such men are out a-hunting for Immortality.
+
+Now what is that? There was a man, before the Normans came to England, who
+sailed from the highest Scandinavian mountains, I think, towards these
+shores, and landing, fought against men and was wounded so that he was
+certain to die. When they asked him why he had undertaken that adventure,
+he answered: "That my name might live between the lips of men."
+
+The young, the adventurous, the admired--how eagerly and how properly do
+they not crave for glory. Fame has about it a divine something as it were
+an echo of perfect worship and of perfect praise, which, though it is
+itself imperfect, may well deceive the young, the adventurous, and the
+admired. How great to think that things well done and the enlargement of
+others shall call down upon our names, even when all is lost but the mere
+names, a continuous and an increasing benediction. Nay, more than this:
+how great to think of the noise only of an achievement, and to be sure
+that the poem written, the carving concluded, or the battle won, the
+achievement of itself, though the name of the achiever be perished or
+unknown, shall awake those tremendous echoes.
+
+But wait a moment. What is that thing which so does and so desires? What
+end does _it_ find in glory? _It_ is not the receiver of the
+benefit; _it_ will not hear that large volume of recognition and of
+salute. Twist it how you will no end is here, nor in such a pursuit is the
+pursuer satisfied.
+
+It is true that men who love to create for themselves imaginary stuff, and
+to feed, their cravings, if they cannot with substance then with dreams,
+perpetually pretend a satisfaction in such acquirements which the years as
+they proceed tell them with increasing iteration that they do not feel.
+The young, the adventurous, the admired, may at first be deceived by such
+a glamour, and it is in the providential scheme of human affairs, and it
+is for the good of us all that the pleasing cheat should last while the
+good things are doing. Thus do substantial verse and noble sculpture and
+building whose stuff is lasting and whose beauty is almost imperishable,
+rise to the advantage of mankind--but oh! there is no lasting in the
+dream.
+
+There comes a day of truth inwardly but ineradicably perceived, when such
+things, such aspirations, are clearly known for what they are. Of all the
+affections that pass, of all those things which being made by a power
+itself perishable, must be unmade again, some may be less, others more
+lasting, but not one remains for ever.
+
+Nor is this all. What is it, I say, which did the thing and suffered the
+desire? Not the receiver, still less the work achieved, it was the man
+that so acted and so desired; and that part of him which was affected thus
+we call the Soul. Then, surely (one may reason) the soul has, apt to its
+own nature, a completion which is also a reward, and there is something
+before it which is not the symbol or the cheat of perfect praise, but
+is perfect praise; there is surely something before it which is not the
+symbol or the cheat of life, but life completed.
+
+Now stand at night beneath a clear heaven solemn and severe with stars,
+comprehend (as the great achievement of our race permits us now to do)
+what an emptiness and what a scale are there, and you will easily discover
+in that one glance, or you will feel at least the appalling thing which
+tempts men to deny their immortality.
+
+There is no man who has closely inquired upon this, and there is none
+who has troubled himself and admitted a reasonable anxiety upon it, who
+has not well retained the nature of despair. Those who approach their
+fellow-beings with assertion and with violence in such a matter, affirming
+their discovery, their conviction, or their acquired certitude, do an
+ill service to their kind. It is not thus that the last things should be
+approached nor the most tremendous problem which man is doomed to envisage
+be propounded and solved. Ah! the long business in this world! The way in
+which your deepest love goes up in nothingness and breaks away, and the
+way in which the strongest and the most continuous element of your dear
+self is dissipated and fails you in some moment; if I do not understand
+these things in a man nor comprehend how the turn of the years can obscure
+or obliterate a man's consciousness of what his end should be, then I act
+in brute ignorance, or what is much worse, in lack of charity.
+
+How should you not be persuaded, ephemeral intelligence? Does not every
+matter which you have held closely enough and long enough escape you and
+withdraw? Is not that doom true of things which were knit into us, and
+were of necessity, so to speak, prime parts of our being? Is it not true
+of the network and the structure which supports whatever we are, and
+without which we cannot imagine ourselves to be? We ourselves perish. Of
+that there is no doubt at all. One is here talking and alive. His friends
+are with him: on the time when they shall meet again he is utterly not
+there. The motionless flesh before his mourners is nothing. It is not a
+simulacrum, it is not an outline, it is not a recollection of the man, but
+rather something wholly gone useless. As for that voice, those meanings in
+the eyes, and that gesture of the hand, it has suddenly and entirely
+ceased to be.
+
+Then how shall we deny the dreadful conclusion (to which how many elder
+civilizations have not turned!) that we must seek in vain for any gift to
+the giver for any workers' wage, or, rather, to put it more justly, for
+a true end to the life we lead. Yet it is not so. The conclusion is more
+weighty by far that all things bear their fruit: that the comprehender and
+the master of so much, the very _mind_, suffers to no purpose and in
+one moment a tragic, final, and unworthy catastrophe agrees with nothing
+other that we know. It is not thus of the good things of the earth that
+turn kindly into the earth again. It cannot be thus with that which makes
+of all the earth a subject thing for contemplation and for description,
+for understanding, and, if it so choose--for sacrifice.
+
+Those of our race who have deliberately looked upon the scroll and found
+there nothing to read, who have lifted the curtain and found beyond it
+nothing to see, have faced their conclusions with a nobility which should
+determine us; for that nobility does prove, or, if it does not prove,
+compels us to proclaim, that the soul of man which breeds it has somewhere
+a lasting home. The conclusion is imperative.
+
+Let not any one pretend in his faith that his faith is immediately evident
+and everywhere acceptable. There is in all who pretend to judgment a sense
+of the doubt that lies between the one conviction and the other, and all
+acknowledge that the scales swing normally upon the beam for normal men.
+But they swing--and one is the heavier.
+
+The poets, who are our interpreters, know well and can set forth the
+contrast between such intimations and such despair.
+
+   The long descent of wasted days
+   To these at last have led me down:
+   Remember that I filled with praise
+   The meaningless and doubtful ways
+   That lead to an eternal town.
+
+Moreover, since we have spoken of the night it is only reasonable to
+consider the alternate dawn. The quality of light, its merry action on the
+mind, the daylit sky under whose benediction we repose and in which our
+kind has always seen the picture of its final place: are these then
+visions and deceits?
+
+
+
+
+ON SACRAMENTAL THINGS
+
+
+It is good for a man's soul to sit down in the silence by himself and to
+think of those things which happen by some accident to be in communion
+with the whole world. If he has not the faculty of remembering these
+things in their order and of calling them up one after another in his
+mind, then let him write them down as they come to him upon a piece of
+paper. They will comfort him; they will prove a sort of solace against
+the expectation of the end. To consider such things is a sacramental
+occupation. And yet the more I think of them the less I can quite
+understand in what elements their power consists.
+
+A woman smiling at a little child, not knowing that others see her, and
+holding out her hands towards it, and in one of her hands flowers; an old
+man, lean and active, with an eager face, walking at dusk upon a warm
+and windy evening westward towards a clear sunset below dark and flying
+clouds; a group of soldiers, seen suddenly in manoeuvres, each man intent
+upon his business, all working at the wonderful trade, taking their places
+with exactitude and order and yet with elasticity; a deep, strong tide
+running back to the sea, going noiselessly and flat and black and smooth,
+and heavy with purpose under an old wall; the sea smell of a Channel
+seaport town; a ship coming up at one out of the whole sea when one is
+in a little boat and is waiting for her, coming up at one with her great
+sails merry and every one doing its work, with the life of the wind in
+her, and a balance, rhythm, and give in all that she does which marries
+her to the sea--whether it be a fore and aft rig and one sees only great
+lines of the white, or a square rig and one sees what is commonly and well
+called a leaning tower of canvas, or that primal rig, the triangular sail,
+that cuts through the airs of the world and clove a way for the first
+adventures, whatever its rig, a ship so approaching an awaiting boat from
+which we watch her is one of the things I mean.
+
+I would that the taste of my time permitted a lengthy list of such things:
+they are pleasant to remember! They do so nourish the mind! A glance
+of sudden comprehension mixed with mercy and humour from the face of a
+lover or a friend; the noise of wheels when the guns are going by; the
+clatter-clank-clank of the pieces and the shouted halt at the head of the
+column; the noise of many horses, the metallic but united and harmonious
+clamour of all those ironed hoofs, rapidly occupying the highway; chief
+and most persistent memory, a great hill when the morning strikes it and
+one sees it up before one round the turning of a rock after the long passes
+and despairs of the night.
+
+When a man has journeyed and journeyed through those hours in which there
+is no colour or shape, all along the little hours that were made for sleep
+and when, therefore, the waking soul is bewildered or despairs, the morning
+is always a resurrection--but especially when it reveals a height in the
+sky.
+
+This last picture I would particularly cherish, so great a consolation is
+it, and so permanent a grace does it lend later to the burdened mind of a
+man.
+
+For when a man looks back upon his many journeys--so many rivers crossed,
+and more than one of them forded in peril; so many swinging mountain
+roads, so many difficult steeps and such long wastes of plains--of all the
+pictures that impress themselves by the art or kindness of whatever god
+presides over the success of journeys, no picture more remains than that
+picture of a great hill when the day first strikes it after the long
+burden of the night.
+
+Whatever reasons a man may have for occupying the darkness with his travel
+and his weariness, those reasons must be out of the ordinary and must go
+with some bad strain upon the mind. Perhaps one undertook the march from
+an evil necessity under the coercion of other men, or perhaps in terror,
+hoping that the darkness might hide one, or perhaps for cool, dreading the
+unnatural heat of noon in a desert land; perhaps haste, which is in itself
+so wearying a thing, compelled one, or perhaps anxiety. Or perhaps, most
+dreadful of all, one hurried through the night afoot because one feared
+what otherwise the night would bring, a night empty of sleep and a night
+whose dreams were waking dreams and evil.
+
+But whatever prompts the adventure or the necessity, when the long burden
+has been borne, and when the turn of the hours has come; when the stars
+have grown paler; when colour creeps back greyly and uncertainly to the
+earth, first into the greens of the high pastures, then here and there
+upon a rock or a pool with reeds, while all the air, still cold, is full
+of the scent of morning; while one notices the imperceptible disappearance
+of the severities of Heaven until at last only the morning star hangs
+splendid; when in the end of that miracle the landscape is fully revealed,
+and one finds into what country one has come; then a great hill before
+one, losing the forests upwards into rock and steep meadow upon its sides,
+and towering at last into the peaks and crests of the inaccessible places,
+gives a soul to the new land.... The sun, in a single moment and with the
+immediate summons of a trumpet-call, strikes the spear-head of the high
+places, and at once the valley, though still in shadow, is transfigured,
+and with the daylight all manner of things have come back to the world.
+
+Hope is the word which gathers the origins of those things together, and
+hope is the seed of what they mean, but that new light and its new quality
+is more than hope. Livelihood is come back with the sunrise, and the fixed
+certitude of the soul; number and measure and comprehension have returned,
+and a just appreciation of all reality is the gift of the new day. Glory
+(which, if men would only know it, lies behind all true certitude)
+illumines and enlivens the seen world, and the living light makes of the
+true things now revealed something more than truth absolute; they appear
+as truth acting and creative.
+
+This first shaft of the sun is to that hill and valley what a word is to a
+thought. It is to that hill and valley what verse is to the common story
+told; it is to that hill and valley what music is to verse. And there lies
+behind it, one is very sure, an infinite progress of such exaltations, so
+that one begins to understand, as the pure light shines and grows and as
+the limit of shadow descends the vast shoulder of the steep, what has been
+meant by those great phrases which still lead on, still comfort, and still
+make darkly wise, the uncomforted wondering of mankind. Such is the famous
+phrase: "Eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor can it enter into the heart
+of man what things God has prepared for those that serve Him."
+
+So much, then, is conveyed by a hill-top at sunrise when it comes upon the
+traveller or the soldier after the long march of a night, the bending of
+the shoulders, and the emptiness of the dark.
+
+Many other things put one into communion with the whole world.
+
+Who does not remember coming over a lifting road to a place where the
+ridge is topped, and where, upon the further side, a broad landscape,
+novel or endeared by memory (for either is a good thing), bursts upon the
+seized imagination as a wave from the open sea, swelling up an inland
+creek, breaks and bursts upon the rocks of the shore? There is a place
+where a man passes from the main valley of the Rhone over into the valley
+of the Isère, and where the Grésivandan so suddenly comes upon him. Two
+gates of limestone rock, high as the first shoulders of the mountains,
+lead into the valley which they guard; it is a province of itself, a level
+floor of thirty miles, nourished by one river, and walled in up to the
+clouds on either side.
+
+Or again, in the champagne country, moving between great blocks of wood
+in the Forest of Rheims and always going upward as the ride leads him, a
+man comes to a point whence he suddenly sees all that vast plain of the
+invasions stretching out to where, very far off against the horizon, two
+days away, twin summits mark the whole site sharply with a limit as a
+frame marks a picture or a punctuation a phrase.
+
+There is another place more dear to me, but which I doubt whether any
+other but a native of that place can know. After passing through the
+plough lands of an empty plateau, a traveller breaks through a little
+fringe of chestnut hedge and perceives at once before him the wealthiest
+and the most historical of European things, the chief of the great
+capitals of Christendom and the arena in which is now debated (and has
+been for how long!) the Faith, the chief problem of this world.
+
+Apart from landscape other things belong to this contemplation: Notes
+of music, and, stronger even than repeated and simple notes of music, a
+subtle scent and its association, a familiar printed page. Perhaps the
+test of these sacramental things is their power to revive the past.
+
+There is a story translated into the noblest of English writing by Dasent.
+It is to be found in his "Tales from the Norse." It is called the Story of
+the Master Maid.
+
+A man had found in his youth a woman on the Norwegian hills: this woman
+was faëry, and there was a spell upon her. But he won her out of it in
+various ways, and they crossed the sea together, and he would bring her
+to his father's house, but his father was a King. As they went over-sea
+together alone, he said and swore to her that he would never forget how
+they had met and loved each other without warning, but by an act of God,
+upon the Dovrefjeld. Come near his father's house, the ordinary influences
+of the ordinary day touched him; he bade her enter a hut and wait a moment
+until he had warned his father of so strange a marriage; she, however,
+gazing into his eyes, and knowing how the divine may be transformed into
+the earthly, quite as surely as the earthly into the divine, makes him
+promise that he will not eat human food. He sits at his father's table,
+still steeped in her and in the seas. He forgets his vow and eats human
+food, and at once he forgets.
+
+Then follows much for which I have not space, but the woman in the hut by
+her magic causes herself to be at last sent for to the father's palace.
+The young man sees her, and is only slightly troubled as by a memory which
+he cannot grasp. They talk together as strangers; but looking out of the
+window by accident the King's son sees a bird and its mate; he points them
+out to the woman, and she says suddenly: "So was it with you and me high
+up upon the Dovrefjeld." Then he remembers all.
+
+Now that story is a symbol, and tells the truth. We see some one thing in
+this world, and suddenly it becomes particular and sacramental; a woman
+and a child, a man at evening, a troop of soldiers; we hear notes of
+music, we smell the smell that went with a passed time, or we discover
+after the long night a shaft of light upon the tops of the hills at
+morning: there is a resurrection, and we are refreshed and renewed.
+
+But why all these things are so neither I nor any other man can tell.
+
+
+
+
+IN PATRIA
+
+
+There is a certain valley, or rather profound cleft, through the living
+rock of certain savage mountains through which there roars and tumbles in
+its narrow trench the Segre, here but a few miles from its rising in the
+upland grass.
+
+This cleft is so disposed that the smooth limestone slabs of its western
+wall stand higher than the gloomy steps of cliff upon its eastern, and
+thus these western cliffs take the glare of the morning sunlight upon
+them, or the brilliance of the moon when she is full or waning in the
+first part of her course through the night.
+
+The only path by which men can go down that gorge clings to the eastern
+face of the abyss and is for ever plunged in shadow. Down this path I went
+very late upon a summer night, close upon midnight, and the moon just past
+the full. The air was exceedingly clear even for that high place, and the
+moon struck upon the limestone of the sheer opposing cliffs in a manner
+neither natural nor pleasing, but suggesting horror, and, as it were,
+something absolute, too simple for mankind.
+
+It was not cold, but there were no crickets at such a level in the
+mountains, nor any vegetation there except a brush here and there clinging
+between the rocks and finding a droughty rooting in their fissures.
+Though the map did not include this gorge, I could guess that it would be
+impossible for me, save by following that dreadful path all night, to find
+a village, and therefore I peered about in the dense shadow as I went for
+one of those overhanging rocks which are so common in that region, and
+soon I found one. It was a refuge better than most that I had known during
+a lonely travel of three days, for the whole bank was hollowed in, and
+there was a distinct, if shallow, cave bordering the path. Into this,
+therefore, I went and laid down, wrapping myself round in a blanket I
+had brought from the plains beyond the mountains, and, with my loaf and
+haversack and a wine-skin that I carried for a pillow, I was very soon
+asleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I woke, which I did with suddenness, it seemed to me to have turned
+uncommonly cold, and when I stepped out from my blanket (for I was broad
+awake) the cold struck me still more nearly, and was not natural in such a
+place. But I knew how a mist will gather suddenly upon these hills, and I
+went out and stood upon the path to see what weather the hour had brought
+me. The sky, the narrow strip of sky above the gorge, was filled with
+scud flying so low that now and then bulges or trails of it would strike
+against that western cliff of limestone and wreath down it, and lift and
+disappear, but fast as the scud was moving there was no noise of wind. I
+seemed not to have slept long, for the moon was still riding in heaven,
+though her light now came in rapid waxing and waning between the shreds of
+the clouds. Beneath me a little angrier than before (so that I thought to
+myself, "Up in the hills it has been raining") roared the Segre.
+
+As I stood thus irresolute and quite awakened from sleep, I saw to my
+right the figure of a little man who beckoned. No fear took me as I saw
+him, but a good deal of wonder, for he was oddly shaped, and in the
+darkness of that pathway I could not see his face. But in his presence
+by some accident of the mind many things changed their significance: the
+gorge became personal to me, the river a voice, the fitful moonlight a
+warning, and it seemed as though some safety was to be sought, or some
+certitude, upwards, whence I had come, and I felt oddly as though the
+little figure were a guide.
+
+He was so short as I watched him that I thought him almost a dwarf, though
+I have seen men as small guiding the mules over the breaches in the ridge
+of the hills. He was hunchback, or the great pack he was carrying made him
+seem so. His thin legs were long for his body, and he walked too rapidly,
+with bent knees; his right hand he leant upon a great sapling; upon his
+head was a very wide hat, the stuff of which I could not see in the
+darkness. Now and again he would turn and beckon me, and he always went
+on a little way before. As for me, partly because he beckoned, but more
+because I felt prescient of a goal, I followed him.
+
+No mountain path seems the same when you go up it and when you go down it.
+This it was which rendered unfamiliar to me the shapes of the rocks and
+the turnings of the gorge as I hurried, behind my companion. With every
+passing moment, moreover, the light grew less secure, the scud thickened,
+and as we rose towards the lower level of those clouds the mass of them
+grew more even, until at last the path and some few yards of the emptiness
+which sank away to our left was all one could discern. The mist was full
+of a diffused moonlight, but it was dense. I wondered when we should
+strike out of the gorge and begin to find the upland grasses that lead
+toward the highest summits of those hills, for thither I was sure were we
+bound.
+
+Soon I began to recognize that easier trend in the rock wall, those
+increasing and flattened gullies which mark the higher slope. Here and
+there an unmelted patch of snow appeared, grass could be seen, and at last
+we were upon the roll of the high land where it runs up steeply to the
+ridge of the chain. Moss and the sponging of moisture in the turf were
+beneath our feet, the path disappeared, and our climb got steeper and
+steeper; and still the little man went on before, pressing eagerly and
+breasting the hill. I neither felt fatigue nor noticed that I did not feel
+it. The extreme angle of the slope suited my mood, nor was I conscious of
+its danger, though its fantastic steepness exhilarated me because it was
+so novel to be trying such things at night in such a weather. The moon,
+I think, must by this time have been near its sinking, for the mist grew
+full of darkness round about us, and at last it was altogether deep night.
+I could see my companion only as a blur of difference in the darkness, but
+even as this change came I felt the steepness relax beneath my climbing
+feet, the round level of the ridge was come, and soon again we were
+hurrying across it until there came, in a hundred yards or so, a moment in
+which my companion halted, as men who know the mountains halt when they
+reach an edge below which they know the land to break away.
+
+He was waiting, and I waited with him: we had not long so to stand.
+
+The mist which so often lifts as one passes the crest of the hills lifted
+for us also, and, below, it was broad day.
+
+Ten thousand feet below, at the foot of forest cascading into forest,
+stretched out into an endless day, was the Weald. There were the places I
+had always known, but not as I had known them: they were in another air.
+There was the ridge, and the river valley far off to the eastward, and
+Pasham Pines, Amberley wild brooks, and Petworth the little town, and I
+saw the Rough clearly, and the hills out beyond the county, and beyond
+them farther plains, and all the fields and all the houses of the men I
+knew. Only it was much larger, and it was more intimate, and it was
+farther away, and it was certainly divine.
+
+A broad road such as we have not here and such as they have not in those
+hills, a road for armies, sank back and forth in great gradients down to
+the plain. These and the forests were foreign; the Weald below, so many
+thousand feet below, was not foreign but transformed. The dwarf went down
+that road. I did not follow him. I saw him clearly now. His curious little
+coat of mountain stuff, his thin, bent legs walking rapidly, and the
+chestnut sapling by he walked, holding it in his hand by the middle. I
+could see the brown colour of it, and the shininess of the bark of it, and
+the ovals of white where the branchlings had been cut away. So I watched
+him as he went down and down the road. He never once looked back and he no
+longer beckoned me.
+
+In a moment, before a word could form in the mind, the mist had closed
+again and it was mortally cold; and with that cold there came to me an
+appalling knowledge that I was alone upon such a height and knew nothing
+of my way. The hand which I put to my shoulder where my blanket was found
+it wringing wet. The mist got greyer, my mind more confused as I struggled
+to remember, and then I woke and found I was still in the cave. All that
+business had been a dream, but so vivid that I carried it all through the
+day, and carry it still.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the very early morning; the gorge was full of mist, the Segre made
+a muffled roaring through such a bank of cloud; the damp of the mist was
+on everything. The stones in the pathway glistened, the air was raw and
+fresh, awaiting the rising of the sun. I took the path and went downward.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of On Something, by H. Belloc
+
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