Ex Libris 
 \ C. K. OGDEN

 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT,
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT, 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 CHARLES BUXTON, M.P. 
 
 PRECEDED BT 
 
 A BIOGBAPHICAL SKETCH, 
 
 BY REV. J. LLEWELYN DAVIES, M.A. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 1883.
 
 LOKDOK : 
 
 BRADBCRY, AGNF.W, & CO., PRINTERS, WH1IEFRIARS.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 IT has been thought desirable to prefix to these 
 Notes of Thought a brief Memoir of their author. It is 
 an advantage to the readers of any book, and especially 
 of a book like this, to have some personal knowledge of 
 the man whose literary utterances they are invited to 
 study. But besides serving as an introduction to his 
 book, it is hoped that a biographical sketch of Charles 
 Buxton will be interesting to not a few for its own sake. 
 Neither his powers nor his achievements were such as to 
 place him in the rank of those who have exerted a 
 marked influence on their generation, nor did his career 
 bring him into any special contact with great affairs or 
 illustrious persons ; but he was a man whose work in 
 life had a touch of originality and distinction about it 
 not unworthy of notice, and whose character as a whole 
 was of a noble and attractive quality, which ought to 
 lend to these memorial pages something of its own 
 charm. 
 
 Charles Buxton was the youngest son of Sir Thomas 
 Fowell Buxton, baronet, and Hannah, daughter of John 
 (Jurney, of Earlham Hall. Of what kind of stock he 
 came may be learnt from the well-known biography in 
 which he has himself recorded his father's energetic 
 and successful labours. The principal dates of his life 
 are as follows : He was born at Cromer Hall, in 
 Norfolk, on the 18th November, 1822. When he was 
 four years old his family removed to Northrepps Hall, 
 about a mile and a half from Cromer. He had a home 
 education, with its advantages and defects, up to the age 
 
 2000250
 
 [6] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 of seventeen, when he was gent as a private pupil, first to 
 the Rev. T. Fisher, at Luccombe, and then to the Rev. 
 H. Altbrd (afterwards Dean of Canterbury), at Wymes- 
 wold. In October, 1841, he went to Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, and proceeded to his degree in due course. 
 On leaving college he became a partner in the great 
 brewery of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton, and Co. In the 
 same year, 1845, his father having died, he was entrusted 
 by his family with the charge of writing his life. In 
 1850 (February 7th) he married the eldest daughter of 
 Sir Henry Holland, Bart., M.D. In 1857 he entered 
 the House of Commons, and remained in Parliament 
 continuously, representing Newport first, then Maidstone, 
 and finally East Surrey, till his death, which took place 
 at Lochearnhead, August 10th, 1871. 
 
 This is the outline of a prosperous English gentleman's 
 career ; and Charles Buxton's life, though cut short at 
 an age which made his death a terrible blow to his 
 family and friends, must be reckoned a singularly 
 favoured one. The lines fell to him in very pleasant 
 places, and he had no troubles but those from which no 
 man can be exempt. But he was not spoilt or over- 
 mastered by his good fortune. And though there must 
 always be a profounder interest in observing how a strong 
 nature is deepened and ennobled by trials, it is good 
 also to see how a life may ripen uncorrupted in the 
 sunshine, and may be disciplined in the gracious dis- 
 charge of the duties of prosperity. In considering how 
 I may hope to give in a short space the truest picture of 
 Charles Buxton, from the point of view thus indicated, 
 especially, I mean, as filling with an unusual felicity the 
 part of an English gentleman of good fortune in the 
 present day, the plan which has on the whole seemed 
 to me the best to follow, is that of tracing along some 
 principal lines successively the development of his 
 character and activity. 
 
 1. 
 
 In the first place, Charles Buxton was brought up 
 from a child in the fear of God, and continued to be
 
 RELIGION. [7] 
 
 through life an earnest and reverent Christian. His 
 excellent father and mother were both very devout 
 persons, of the Evangelical type of their generation. 
 Sir Fowell Buxton was one of the manliest of men an 
 ardent sportsman as well as an energetic philanthropist ; 
 and the Quakerism of the Gurney family, with the spirit 
 of which he was in the most cordial sympathy, contri- 
 buted its peculiar refinement and culture, rather than 
 any gloom or narrowness, to the religious life of the 
 Buxton home. But there was an uncompromising 
 sincerity in the religion of both the parents, and the 
 principles they professed were thoroughly dominant over 
 the mode of life pursued at Northrepps. The children 
 were most carefully trained in the reading of Scripture 
 and in prayer, and in the habit of referring all things to 
 the will of God. They were encouraged to keep journals, 
 with the chief purpose of recording religious memoranda. 
 Charles began what grew to be a long series of journals 
 when he was ten years old. " The first thing that I can 
 recollect," he says, " was going to church in a cart with 
 Lizzy my maid. They said I was very good and quiet. 
 Some time after, I can perfectly remember that I was 
 very much struck by a sermon in London ; the clergy- 
 man mentioned that Christ would come, so I kept 
 looking about the church, expecting Him to oome in 
 directly, and I was very much surprised not to see Him." 
 From the first there are regretful allusions to his 
 " irritability," which continued to be in after years a 
 chief topic of his self-reproach. In the same year's journal 
 there is the following touching entry : " We received 
 two very sorrowful letters from London about slavery, 
 and that papa's countenance was quite changed because 
 of slavery. I thought that all we could do was to pray 
 for him, and God is a merciful Father, and will hear 
 us when we call upon Him." The keeping of such 
 journals is a practice which has its dangers, but there 
 appears to be nothing either morbid or artificial in 
 Charles Buxton's confessions. One safeguard of the 
 sweetness and humility of his disposition was the thank- 
 fulness which he had learnt to cherish as a duty. From 
 time to time he would sum up the blessings for which he
 
 [8] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 felt himself with good reason bound to be grateful. 
 Thus, at the end of the year 1837, when he was fifteen 
 years of age, he dwells on the prosperity, spiritual and 
 temporal, enjoyed by the whole family ; one point of it 
 being, " that we are such a comfortably large family, 
 instead of my being a single child ; how mmh happier I 
 am, with all my brothers and sisters ! " and he adds, 
 " But if any of our family receive blessings, I receive 
 them doubly. The elder part have their trials, . . . 
 while I, young, in health, with every prospect of earthly 
 happiness, at home with my friends instead of being at 
 school, brought up in the fear of the Lord, and with 
 numberless friends whose kindness is uninterrupted, 
 have indeed cause for gratitude." In such youthful 
 piety was nourished and strengthened a living root of 
 reverence, conscientiousness, purity, and self-judgment, 
 which never ceased to bear fruits and flowers. 
 
 When he became a man, his inherited opinions on 
 theological subjects underwent considerable change. His 
 Evangelical creed yielded in various points to the 
 influence of the modern liberal scientific views with 
 which he became familiar, and ceased to retain its 
 strict dogmatic form. Some beliefs in which he had 
 once acquiesced grew decidedly distasteful to him. He 
 alludes to this change when he says, " It is startling 
 sometimes to find that one's mind has drifted so far 
 away from its old moorings, that it heartily relishes 
 sentiments which thirty years back had struck it with 
 horror as almost blasphemous " ( " Notes," 628). But 
 the inevitable disturbance of his early creed came later 
 than one would have thought probable, and with no 
 very violent shock. He disengaged himself gently and 
 gradually of what he could no longer hold in the theology 
 of Evangelical Puritanism, and was never at any stage 
 fanatical or intolerant. At the age of thirty-six, he thus 
 writes : " I do want to clarify and settle my religious 
 views. They are like rolling clouds. I have faith, I do 
 believe in Christ, but amid a wandering fog of doubt 
 which at times obscures it. A good deal of the orthodox 
 evangelical doctrine has disappeared from my mind 
 altogether ; but I increase in my sense of Christ's love to
 
 THE CHURCH. [9] 
 
 man." His most characteristic repugnance was to the 
 Athanasian Creed, the harsh-sounding notes of which 
 had from the first jarred upon his gentle feelings and 
 his straightforward intelligence. " It gives me almost a 
 thrill of horror," he writes in 1849, "to hear a school in 
 the gallery bawling out the Athanasian Creed." He 
 thinks it extreme presumption " to attempt to mark out 
 and nicely portray what Scripture leaves in all its 
 majestic obscurity, veiled in clouds which the angels 
 themselves seek not to penetrate." And the following 
 entry occurs in his diary for 1858 : " To Fox Warren ; 
 the sunlight on the firs and ferns splendid. I thought a 
 little over the Athanasian Creed. I have a notion of 
 moving that its use be no longer compulsory." 
 
 The cause of Church Reform had engaged his 
 interest and ambition from early years. In 1849, he 
 records : " Had much talk about Church Government 
 and Church Reforms. I think very likely I shall take a 
 leading part in endeavouring to bring them about. 
 There seems to be a surprising lack of conrage in those 
 who would gladly see some changes made." After he 
 became a member of Parliament he took an active part 
 in various movements which had for their aim to 
 reconcile the constitution of the Church of England with 
 the circumstances of the country or with the advanced 
 knowledge of the time. He had the distinction of 
 introducing in the House of Commons (June 9, 1863) 
 the question of the subscriptions of the clergy to the 
 Articles and Prayer-book, and so of promoting the 
 appointment in that year of a Royal Commission, which 
 recommended the important modification of the terms of 
 these subscriptions, of which the Church has since had 
 the benefit. His speech in moving his Resolution was 
 conceived in the true spirit of Church Reform, and 
 expressed warm but discriminating hopes for the future 
 of the Church. Mr. Buxton's enthusiasm was roused 
 both by the past greatness of the Church of England, 
 and by the idea of a National Church still moving with 
 the advances of the time, and ministering to all the 
 religious wants of the people. He applied to the Church 
 the words of the poet-
 
 [10] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 " Higher yet her star ascends ; 
 
 Traveller, blessedness and light, 
 Peace and truth her course portends.'' 
 
 The good work of the Commission on clerical subscrip- 
 tion was followed up after an interval by the appointment 
 of the better-known Ritual Commission, of which Mr. 
 Buxton became a member, and in whose discussions he 
 took a zealous part, advocating, as a general rule, the 
 relaxation of restrictions and the removal of stumbling- 
 blocks. Of his connection with these movements, the 
 Dean of Westminster thus writes : "It was a constant 
 pleasure to converse with him on matters connected with 
 Church policy. A man born and bred in the famous old 
 Quaker circle of Norfolk, and with the kindliest feelings 
 towards Nonconformists, but with a keen appreciation 
 almost like that of a convert for the services of the 
 Church of England ; a Liberal, but (as a general rule) 
 viewing the progress of the Church, not as an incumbrance 
 to be resisted or despised, but as a necessary element in 
 the harmonious working of society and civilization ; 
 a philosophic student, who combined the instincts of 
 fearless inquiry with the reverence of high and holy 
 things ; this combination produced an atmosphere in 
 which one was sure to find, not a bitter partisan, but a 
 candid listener and a wise counsellor. On the two occa- 
 sions which have been mentioned as bringing him 
 directly into contact with ecclesiastical questions the 
 repeal of the old clerical subscriptions and the revision of 
 the rubrics of the Prayer-book I was brought into 
 constant communication with him. On the first of those 
 questions, it was only from our common interest in the 
 subject, as I was not a member of the Commission 
 in which he took so active a part. But we often 
 discussed the matter, and I would particularly specify the 
 benefit which he conferred on the Church when, on the 
 occasion of the passing of the new Subscription Act, he, 
 in his place in Parliament, stated as one of the 
 Commissioners the motive and intention of the changes 
 introduced. ' It was of the greatest importance to 
 observe that all those phrases which indicated that the
 
 THE CHURCH. [11] 
 
 subscriber declared his acceptance of every dogma of the 
 Church had been swept away ; and this had been 
 done expressly and of forethought. As regarded the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, the Commission had agreed to 
 sweep away the words " each and every of them ; " 
 implying, therefore, that the subscriber was only to take 
 them as a whole, even though he might disagree with 
 them here and there. As regards the Prayer-book, the 
 change was even still more marked ; for, instead of 
 declaring his " assent and consent to all and everything 
 it contained," he only declared his assent to the 
 Book of Prayer that is to say, to the book as a whole, 
 and his belief that the doctrine of the Church therein set 
 forth was agreeable to the Word of God. Observe, that 
 he would not declare that " the doctrines," in the plural 
 number, or that each and all of the doctrines, were 
 agreeable to the Word of God, but only " the doctrine " 
 of the Church, in the singular number. It was expressly 
 and unanimously agreed by the Commission that the 
 word " doctrine " should be used in the singular number, 
 in order that it might be understood that it was the 
 general teaching, and not every part and parcel of that 
 teaching, to which assent was given.' I remember his 
 describing the anxiety with which he made this 
 announcement, fearing lest possibly some other Commis- 
 sioner present might endeavour, by subsequent remarks, 
 to qualify or contradict the impression which he wished 
 to produce. But none such were made, and his words, 
 therefore, remain the only authoritative interpretation of 
 the beneficent legislation then introduced, and of which 
 the results have hardly yet been sufficiently appreciated. 
 The other occasion was the Ritual Commission. He 
 unfortunately entered the Commission only during that 
 later stage of its proceedings when, from the illness of 
 several of the leading members of the body, the original 
 balance of its elements was destroyed, and the improve- 
 ments, which at the earlier stages had been started with 
 hopes of success, were thwarted by adverse influences, 
 which are sufficiently indicated by the published minutes 
 of the Commission. But he had the opportunity of de- 
 livering his testimony with clearness and earnestness on
 
 [12] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 behalf of the changes which will, no doubt, be at last 
 ratified by the Legislature, unless the obstructive and 
 dilatory policy of our ecclesiastical rulers and the indiffer- 
 ence of our statesmen should condemn the Church to 
 hopeless inaction. No one in the Commission spoke with 
 a deeper feeling of the grace and solemnity of the finer 
 parts of the English Liturgy ; but no one, on the other 
 hand, felt more keenly the injustice done to it by the re- 
 tention of practices or expressions of which the soul and 
 spirit is either altogether dead or is altogether uncongenial 
 with the better spirit of true Christianity. One such was 
 the exclusion from Christian burial of those who, like the 
 saintly members of his own family, Joseph John Gurney 
 and Mrs. Fry, had not been brought into contact with 
 the outward ceremony of baptism. Another such was 
 the enforcement of the Athanasian Creed in the public 
 services of the Church, thus pledging its members to the 
 condemnation of the Greek Christians, or any others who 
 fail to perceive the necessity of intricate, ambiguous, and 
 obsolete forms of speech to describe the intimate relations 
 of the human spirit to the Divine, or the diverse expres- 
 sions of the Divine nature itself." 
 
 In 1870 he joined, at my request, a small society 
 called the Church Reform Union, most of the proposals 
 of which he approved ; but I was rather surprised to find 
 that he was not favourable to the legal constitution of 
 Parochial Councils. Although an advocate of the rights 
 of the laity, he had at the same time so much consideration 
 for the clergy (See "Notes," 481) that he felt some 
 repugnance to a scheme which would expose them to the 
 chance of being thwarted by ignorant and factious 
 parishioners. In the same year Mr. Buxton gave notice, 
 early in the session, of a resolution in favour of a revision 
 of the authorized translation of the Bible. He was 
 induced by the Government to postpone it, and in the 
 meantime the subject was taken up by the Southern 
 Convocation. Mr. Buxton's national religious feeling 
 made him very desirous that the Revision should be under- 
 taken by the country rather than by the clergy, and he 
 brought forward his Resolution in the House of Commons 
 on the 14th June, in a well-prepared speech ; but Mr.
 
 THOUGHT AND WRITING. [13] 
 
 Gladstone declared his disinclination to accept, on the 
 part of the Government, a task of so much delicacy, of 
 which the Convocation had already determined to 
 encounter the difficulties and risks, and Mr. Buxton was 
 unfortunately compelled to give way and to withdraw his 
 motion. 
 
 2. 
 
 A love of thinking and of expressing his thoughts in 
 careful language was characteristic of Charles Buxton 
 from his boyhood. Much as he delighted in society and 
 in the play of intelligent conversation, he enjoyed 
 occasional solitude with equal zest. It belonged to his 
 temperament to be happy in anything he was doing, if he 
 was doing it in earnest ; and it gave him intense pleasure 
 to be occupied in thinking. As he advanced in life 
 society came to be of more interest to him than solitude ; 
 but in his youth there seems to have been nothing that 
 he liked better than to be alone with his own thoughts. 
 
 It was a rule of the family that the children should 
 never be idle. They had plenty of play provided for 
 them, but the play was to be always energetic ; no moment 
 was to be without its definite occupation. Charles began 
 early to apply this rule to his opportunities of private 
 reflection. He acquired or strengthened by practice the 
 power of keeping his thoughts close to the subjects he 
 selected to think about. He studied deliberately him- 
 self, his friends, the ways of God, the problems of exis- 
 tence ; and he was accustomed to write down his obser- 
 vations, very fully in his early years, and by degrees 
 more sparsely, in the journals which he kept almost 
 without intermission to the end of his life. His ordinary 
 manner gave little indication of the intense seriousness, 
 of the almost formal directness, of his constant medita- 
 tions. But there never was a man whose work and 
 recreation were more thoroughly rooted in reflection. 
 And it will be evident that the originality and indepen- 
 dence of his character owed much to this habit of com- 
 muning with himself. 
 
 Before he is twelve years old, he remarks, " I think that 
 almost the happiest times in my life are when I am
 
 [14] CHARLES BVXTON. 
 
 alone on a Sunday." At eighteen, he aspires to a more 
 complete mastery over his mind, but yet he feels " I 
 can sometimes force my mind to great exertion when I 
 am interested in any particular subject." At Cambridge 
 his intellect is delightfully stimulated by the wider range 
 of reading and inquiry which opens itself to him. He 
 writes, " I always thoroughly enjoy my Sundays here. 
 There is so much philosophy, and so much poetry which 
 has a religious tendency, that I can devote myself to 
 reading on Sunday with an intense relish. I doubt 
 whether any parts of my life have been more fraught 
 with high and holy enjoyment than those I have spent 
 on Sunday in my easy-chair, with my desk and book, 
 
 and feet on the fender My reading chiefly 
 
 lies in Butler, whom I am intensely fond of, Coleridge, 
 and Wordsworth, i. e., ' The Friend ' of the former, 
 and ' The Excursion,' and some other parts of the latter, 
 Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, South, Pascal, Isaac Taylor, 
 Milton, the German Testament, Bossuet, Melvill, Arnold." 
 His friend and tutor, Mr. Richards, observes, "It was a 
 marked epoch in his mental development when I first 
 introduced to him, and read and discussed with him, 
 Coleridge's works ( ' Aids to Reflection' and ' The Friend'). 
 I well remember his joyous surprise, as one or other of 
 the great truths enunciated by the mighty seer dawned 
 upon him. He more than once acknowledged to me in 
 after life that no master-mind had had so large a share 
 in moulding his own as that of Coleridge. It is to this 
 influence more especially that I attribute the breadth of 
 his views." He continued in after life to feel a craving 
 for serious meditation on Sundays. Sometimes, when it 
 came in his way, he would enjoy going to a Friends' 
 meeting. He would often substitute a solitary meditation 
 out of doors for a Church service. He was impatient of 
 long services, but the remedy he proposed was not one 
 which would be acceptable to the ordinary kind of im- 
 patience. "I should like," he says in one of these 
 " Notes" (306), " to put a little patch of Quakerism into 
 our Church service. Ten minutes' silence in the middle 
 of the prayers, and instead of some of them, would be a 
 .huge good to the soul"
 
 THOUGHT AND WRITING. [15] 
 
 The following notes from his diaries illustrate his habit 
 of " meditating in the field." Oct. 1849. I wonder 
 others do not do what is my greatest delight, to read 
 passages of some thought-exciting book out of doors, and 
 then cast them about in my mind, while enjoying the 
 deep solemn influence of Nature." "Jan. 1853. Lovely 
 day ; a very pleasant day's shooting at Trimingham, 
 all the boys, etc. Too much shooting and row to think 
 much, but I did a little, on my old but exploded theory 
 of the classification of characters ; but I fear that people 
 are like ruffs and reeves, every one a new combination of 
 colours." " Jan. 1854. Wandered home, sitting for a 
 long time on a gate, and enjoying the stillness of the 
 winter twilight ; the sheep baaing from the folds, the 
 blackbird in high excitement in the hedge near, and the 
 voices of boys far away ; the whole country deep in 
 snow. I mused on various matters, amongst others on 
 the affections ; and I observed how difficult it is to test 
 one's love for any one unless they are in suffering ; then 
 the depths of one's love for them are stirred up by pity, 
 and one feels how dear they are ; one's pity fathoms 
 one's love." 
 
 Having been very ambitious of academical distinction, 
 and having worked industriously at the Cambridge sub- 
 jects, he was disappointed at not obtaining a higher 
 place than a second class in classics ; but this was partly 
 to be explained by his not having had a public school 
 education. His first work as an author was the writing 
 of his father's life, which was undertaken immediately 
 on his leaving college, and which was executed in a way 
 which brought him much credit,* and encouraged the 
 literary aspirations which formed his chief ambition until 
 the time of his entering Parliament. He cherished ideas 
 of contributions to the reflective thought of the age, 
 
 * Mr. Hampden Gurney said, in a published lecture, that, next to 
 the Bible, the book he would put in a boy's hands would be the life of 
 Sir T. F. Buxton, whereupon the Saturday Revieio asked whether the 
 old invocation must not be thus amended "Matthew, Mark, Luke, 
 John, and Charles Buxton, Bless the bed that I lie on." The Life has 
 passed through thirteen editions, numbering 19,000 copies, and has 
 been translated into French and German.
 
 [16] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 which were imperfectly realised by his " Ideas of the 
 Day on Policy," and by these " Notes of Thought." He 
 spared himself no labour that promised to mature his 
 powers of reflection or to improve his style. He was 
 continually writing short essays on the most various sub- 
 jects, speculative and practical, and by degrees came to 
 publish his opinions largely on the questions of the day, 
 in pamphlets, lectures, and contributions to newspapers 
 and reviews. These were always received with respect, 
 partly for their ability and practical value, partly for 
 the character which they were known and felt to repre- 
 sent. They were recognised as the productions of an 
 intellect not in the first rank as regards largeness or 
 power, but clear, healthy, acute, and eminently delicate 
 in its sensitiveness to truth and to the higher kind of 
 influences. 
 
 His two books " Ideas of the Day on Policy " and 
 the present posthumous publication are exactly illus- 
 trative of the bent of his mind. The former was published 
 in December, 1865, when he had been in the House of 
 Commons for eight years; and it shows how he was 
 accustomed to study the questions which presented them- 
 selves to him as a politician looking at them from all 
 sides, and trying to estimate candidly what could be 
 said for every opinion. This book, although it professed 
 only to register the thoughts of others, had the interest 
 of originality in its method, and was welcomed as a valu- 
 able contribution to political study. Its perfect fairness 
 was very striking, and no less so its painstaking intelli- 
 gence; and these essential qualities of his book were 
 recognised both by journalists and by leading politicians 
 with a heartiness which gave Mr. Buxton much pleasure. 
 The "Notes of Thought" are the fruits of occasional 
 work during many years. He began very early to con- 
 template the publication of some such book, and he spent 
 from time to time a good deal of labour on the sitting 
 and polishing of his reflections. He mentions, in 1852, 
 a phrase from Bacon, which had occurred to him as a 
 good title " Sudden thoughts set down to profit." He 
 himself found books of detached reflections and short 
 papers very useful in stimulating thought, and it was
 
 POLITICS. [17] 
 
 his hope that his own book might serve the same purpose. 
 The quality specially aimed at in the observations here 
 collected was that they should be such as either by their 
 unexpectedness, or by coming home to ordinary experi- 
 ence, would set the reader thinking. 
 
 3. 
 
 Considering that Mr. Buxton was best known as an 
 active and patriotic member of Parliament, and that it is 
 so common for boys to be strongly fascinated by politics, 
 we might have expected to find that he was an ardent 
 politician in his youth. But this was not so. Until ifc 
 became almost a matter of course for him as an English 
 gentleman of wealth, leisure, intelligence, and public 
 spirit, to seek a seat in Parliament, he was little interested 
 by the party struggles or the political schemes of his 
 day. He thought that he had more turn for literature 
 than for public life. " It gives me a little gleam of 
 pleasure," he wrote, when urged to go into Parliament, 
 " to imagine myself in the House, but I know a literary 
 life would suit me better." He did, in fact, never be- 
 come a thorough-going party-man. He went his own 
 way, and gained an influence which was chiefly due to 
 his known independence. He brought the mind of an 
 honourable and cultivated man, anxious to make himself 
 as useful as possible to his country, to the discussion of 
 every political question. But it was by sufferings wan- 
 tonly or needlessly inflicted that he was most thoroughly 
 drawn out. It may have seemed the traditional rdle for 
 him, as his father's son, to interest himself in the behalf 
 of negroes ; but it was by no means with any such feeling 
 that he took up the cause with which he was most pro- 
 minently identified, th;it of the sufferers in the unhappy 
 Jamaica troubles. Detestation of cruelty was in his 
 blood. The near contemplation of it stirred in him a 
 horror which thrilled through every fibre of his system. 
 
 He had from the first this sensitiveness about suffer- 
 ings. " It is curious," he once wrote, " how I shrink 
 from a subject which excites my feelings. My indig- 
 nation is so great that it gives me sharp pain. 1 feel all 
 
 b
 
 [18] CHAELES BUXTON. 
 
 the time as if it were a cloth rubbing a raw, but this 
 lessens when I feel a hope of helping on the remedy." 
 A characteristic entry occurs amongst memoranda written 
 when he was eighteen : " I was much shocked last night 
 at reading, in Sir S. Romilly's Life, an account of 
 cruelties practised in the army, one poor soldier flogged 
 till he died, for coming on to parade dirty. I could not 
 sleep for thinking how to abolish such barbarities." He 
 goes on to sketch a plan of action for the effectual 
 attainment of this end, which includes, amongst other 
 projects, the establishment of lending libraries and 
 schools for the benefit of soldiers. 
 
 Two letters have been preserved which describe, with a 
 pleasant freshness, his first experience of electioneering. 
 It was in 1847, when his brother, Sir Edward Buxton, 
 was elected by a small majority member for South Essex. 
 " How pleasant it is," writes Charles, "to be safe on the 
 calm shore after our stormy week of electioneering ! I 
 quite enjoy the quiet of the brewery, though it seems 
 strange to stop so suddenly in our career of extreme 
 interest and excitement. I am very glad I was not away 
 at the time ; I would not have missed it for anything ; 
 not only on account of the mere animal excitement, but I 
 feel as if I have learned much more about my fellow- 
 creatures in these last six days than I ever knew before ; 
 we have all been thrown together with such an immense 
 variety of people, who have unfolded their characters far 
 more than they would have done in the quiet routine of 
 common affairs. One thing has amused and instructed 
 me very much, the excessive inclination of every one to 
 attribute to themselves the whole glory of every success 
 in which they shared at all. Sometimes half-a-dozen 
 people canvassed one voter ; in that case, if his having 
 voted happened to be mentioned, each one was certain to 
 give an animated account of his own extraordinary ex- 
 ertions in converting the hapless elector, and how difficult 
 it had been to bring him round. I feel as if I had had a 
 flood of light poured upon history, by having seen how 
 men actually behave in a contest. The power of public- 
 feeling in making everything fall into it and increase its 
 tide, was very remarkable. At first the Dissenters stood
 
 POLITICS. [19] 
 
 out ; they would not join in it ; they were restrained by 
 principle from supporting a friend of national education, 
 &c. Ultimately A, B, C, and all the most crotchetty of 
 that whimsically conscientious crew, were obliged to swim 
 in the same shoal with Lord Petre the Papist and the 
 friends of the Church of England. ... On Friday 
 evening we were exceedingly alarmed. Edward came to 
 Stratford about seven o'clock, and there was a high bustle 
 for about an hour and an half ; it made me realise with 
 intense vividness the scene in a general's camp after a 
 partial defeat, aud another battle expected next day. I 
 was on horseback at five the next morning, and had 
 secured one vote in London before six ; then I rode 
 back to Stratford, to the desolate and dirty committee 
 room. Two maids, with their frowsy hair in curl-papers, 
 were sweeping it up, and through the dust were visible 
 
 the forms of G. F at his breakfast and two members 
 
 of the committee. Others soon poured in ; G set off 
 
 in a post-chaise ; I mounted another with my Waltham- 
 stow list, and went to every elector who had not voted, 
 and who could possibly be induced to vote ; I brushed up 
 some ten or twelve good voters, came back, and found 
 things looking up at Stratford. Then I was sent off on 
 horseback to Woodford, as a voter there would not come 
 ' unless a ymtlfman asked him ; ' so they brushed my 
 hat, and I cocked it very furiously, and put on my Sun- 
 day coat, and looked quite like a gentleman, the voter 
 thought, for he soon ' mounted his steed and ra.de can- 
 nilie,' and gave Sir Edward a plumper. ... I noticed 
 that everybody was exclaiming about the importance of 
 system and organisation, and everybody was blaming 
 every one else for the want of it, yet no individual was 
 
 really systematic, except a Mr. D , who assumed the 
 
 command suddenly on Friday night, and organised a 
 system of canvassing for the next day, by which every 
 impelled voter within ten miles of Stratford was placed 
 under a regular fire of applications, and every canvasser 
 had a certain definite amount of responsibility placed 
 upon him. That, I am sure, is the secret of success, to 
 let each man be limited in his sphere of action ; then he 
 leels responsible for it. But it is very easy to talk, and 
 
 b 2
 
 [20] CHARLES KUXTON. 
 
 very difficult to effect things with such wilful materials 
 as one's fello\v-creatures." In this way Charles Buxton 
 was accustomed to study what happened around him, 
 and to take lessons in the science of human nature. 
 
 In 1852 he paid a visit to Ireland, and was inspired 
 with an interest in that country and its people, which 
 bore considerable fruit. He immediately bought an 
 estate at Dingle, in Kerry, which he determined should 
 be an example of good cultivation, and he took great 
 pains about the improving of it. He leased it on special 
 terms to a Scotch farmer, under whom the aspect of the 
 estate was completely changed, and it became a very 
 thriving property. He thus describes the condition in 
 which he found it a few years later : " Lovely fresh 
 morning, so we were off by eight to our farm, and highly 
 delighted we were by the splendid improvements from a 
 mass of hovels and most wretched farms, to a very fine 
 dwelling-house and buildings, and great fields in the 
 nighest state of cultivation." In the following year, 
 1 853, he wrote a pamphlet on the subject of National 
 Education in Ireland, in which he shewed himself no 
 extreme theorist but a fair and candid inquirer, anxious 
 to make the best of existing circumstances. In a similar 
 spirit he dealt with other Irish questions, always desiring 
 to take into account what was peculiar in the condition 
 of the country or in the Irish nature. He was before 
 many Liberals in advocating the separation of the 
 Church from the State in Ireland ; and in 1869 he took 
 up earnestly the question of security of tenure, urging that 
 it was a point of paramount necessity to make such 
 terms with the people as might extinguish the chronic 
 discontent and disaffection of that portion of the empire. 
 The policy which he supported, and which he pressed 
 upon public attention in letters to the Pall Mall Gazelle 
 and the Times, as well as in Parliament, was that of 
 giving legal recognition to none but long leases. 
 
 It was to be expected that he should have a keen 
 sense of the evils of war. Although entirely free from 
 Quaker notions about non-resistance, he retained perhaps 
 something of the Quaker feeling towards war. He 
 seemed to me to be so impressed by the bad side of it
 
 WAR. [21] 
 
 as to give to war a disproportionate rank amongst the 
 evils of the world. He was a zealous economist, hating 
 waste, and regarding all needless taxation as wickedly 
 diminishing the general happiness ; and he saw in war 
 the prime cause of waste of the public resources. But it 
 was the direct suffering inflicted by battles and cam- 
 paigns that chiefly moved him ; the pangs of the 
 wounded and the grief's of non-combatants entered into 
 his soul. He certainly could not be accused of sympathy 
 with the Southern slave - owners, and yet he strongly 
 condemned the Northern States for resorting to arms 
 to put down secession. It was one of the interests of 
 his life to do what he could towards shutting up war 
 within the narrowest possible limits. The volume of 
 " Cambridge Essays," published in 1855, contains a 
 paper by him on " The Limitations to Severity in 
 War;" an admirable discussion of a difficult subject, 
 which probably had considerable influence upon public 
 opinion. When the seizure of the Trent occurred, in 
 1861, Mr. Buxton made an eloquent appeal in an 
 address to his constituents at Maidstone, in favour of 
 referring the question to arbitration. In Parliament he 
 took every opportunity of advocating the principle of the 
 protection of private property during war, and the 
 general amendment of International Law in the interest 
 of peace. He contributed munificently towards the 
 relief of the suffering French peasantry during the 
 Franco-German war. The last important task which 
 occupied him when his health was beginning to fail was 
 the preparation of a speech with which he was to intro- 
 duce a motion urging the international adoption of 
 certain rules in time of war. He was most reluctantly 
 persuaded to put off his motion, and his speech, for 
 which he had carefully collected and digested his 
 materials, was never delivered. 
 
 The character which some persons associate with de- 
 nunciations of war, and still more with protests against 
 barbarous treatment of Indians or negroes, is one deficient 
 in chivalry and patriotic spirit. But there was assuredly 
 no such deficiency in Charles Buxton's character. He was 
 as unlike as possible to the vulgar idea of a " sophister,
 
 [22] CHAPLES BUXTON. 
 
 economist, and calculator." He was ready enough to 
 stand up for the honour of his country, and shrank from 
 no bloodshed that was necessary for the vindication of it. 
 lint it was for the honour of his country that he was 
 jealous ; and when representatives of English authority 
 began to kill in cold blood without judicial processes, 
 that honour seemed to him to be compromised, and as a 
 g-enerous Englishman he felt a patriotic shame. When 
 the news came of the Indian mutiny, he shared the 
 universal emotion ; and the reports, afterwards proved to 
 be greatly exaggerated, of mutilations and other atrocities 
 committed by the Sepoys filled him, like others, with in- 
 dignant horror. When he had just heard " the dreadful 
 news of the massacre at Cawnpore," he writes : " I trust 
 we shall show the world that the vengance of England is 
 terrible as the vengeance of God." After the brilliant 
 achievements of the English in the suppression of the 
 mutiny, he often dwelt on the deep satisfaction to be 
 derived from the evidence thus given of the force and 
 manliness of the English race. " What a blow it would 
 have been had Englishmen proved cowardly ! " But 
 when the English were triumphant, and too authentic 
 reports arrived of the bloody and undiscriminating ven- 
 geance with which soldiers and magistrates were pursuing 
 not only the Sepoys but the unarmed inhabitants, Mr. 
 Buxton was one of those who supported the high-minded 
 policy of restraint and moderation which earned for the 
 Governor-General the nickname of Clemency Canning. 
 In a speech in Parliament (March 18th, 1858) of 
 exemplary fairness and dignity, he expanded the sense 
 of the words which he himself felicitously quoted : 
 
 " Though by their high wrongs we are strook to the quick, 
 Yet with our nobler reason 'gainst our fury 
 Will we take part : the rarer action is 
 In virtue than in vengeance." 
 
 He incurred no great unpopularity by the course he 
 took on this occasion. But it was otherwise a few years 
 later, when a similar crisis on a reduced scale occurred in 
 Jamaica. Most unfortunately, Mr. Eyre, the Governor, 
 showed himself just wanting in those qualities of a
 
 JAMAICA. [23] 
 
 colonial ruler for which the English nation owes so deep 
 a debt of gratitude to Lord Canning. He let himself 
 swim with the tide of panic and revenge which it was 
 his particular business to moderate. Mr. Buxton was now 
 called upon to confront a storm of anger and invective. 
 We ought to know by this time what our English nature 
 is, abroad and at home ; what an untamed fierceness 
 there is in our blood, how sensitive our peculiar position 
 has made us in our relations with inferior races, how the 
 courage of a proud people leaps to the rescue on the least 
 hint of danger to English women and children. In this 
 case, also, we were wounded at first by exaggerated 
 rumours ; we were told that the insurgent negroes acted 
 much more brutally than they really did ; and the im- 
 pression made by the false reports was never effaced from 
 the public mind. It was natural for people to feel, 
 " Better that every black in the island should perish in 
 tortures, than that Englishmen and their families should 
 be at the mercy of savages ! " Then there was an 
 unlucky combination of circumstances to bring discredit 
 upon our action in Jamaica, and to make the case a 
 vexatious one. The Governor had fine qualities and a 
 good reputation, but lost his head ; the mean politics of 
 the island were intricate and disagreeable ; the negroes 
 were childish liars ; we were most unfortunate in some of 
 the officers to whom the stamping out of the insurrection 
 was committed. Mr. Buxlon's complaint from first to last 
 was this : that after the insurrection was declared by the 
 Governor himself to be completely put down and no fear 
 any longer to exist, men and women were hung and 
 flogged in great numbers and week after week upon vague 
 or frivolous charges, in a kind of revel of angry cruelty. 
 There was no refuting this accusation. But an embittered 
 conflict soon began to rage in this country, between those 
 who held that almost anything ought to be condoned to 
 men who had suppressed with vigour a rising of blacks 
 against the English, and those who urged that it was of 
 the highest importance that English administrators 
 should be warned that ferocious treatment of the inferior 
 races under their control would not be condoned. 
 
 It was in November, 18G5, that we learned the chief
 
 [24] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 facts of the outbreak and its suppression. There was 
 immediate and authentic evidence in the Governor's own 
 despatches, of the gratuitous severities practised for the 
 punishment or the intimidation of the negroes. Mr. 
 Eyre'fl Report created a very general impression that 
 further explanation was needed to justify those severities, 
 and it was supposed that such explanation would be 
 forthcoming. But the additional statements supplied by 
 the actors themselves only showed more plainly that, in 
 the excitement produced by anger, aversion, and sense 
 of danger, the reins of justice and consideration had been 
 cast loose. The levity of some of these accounts was 
 revolting. Mr. Buxton was deeply moved by these ex- 
 cesses, and joined at once in the indignant protests which 
 they called forth. Being chairman of a dinner given to 
 celebrate the return of Mr. Hughes for Lambeth, on the 
 4th December, he made the Jamaica proceedings the 
 subject of his speech. On the day before this dinner he 
 thus writes in his diary : " It is most grievous to find 
 that Englishmen are just as great brutes as any people 
 in any age when their blood is up. I cannot endure to 
 read of such cruelties, and I do long to be of such weight 
 as to be able to lift up my voice with power against 
 them. I hope to speak about it to-morrow." He wrote 
 letters, which appeared in the Times (December 7th and 
 13th), calling attention to the facts which he set forth in a 
 detailed narrative. By the 19th he was acting as chair- 
 man of a " Jamaica Committee," in which he was asso 
 ciated with well-known politicians of a different stamp from 
 himself. Party spirit was plentifully infused into the con- 
 troversy, and extreme vehemence was displayed both by 
 the accusers and the defenders of Mr. Eyre. When the 
 Commission of Inquiry, consisting of Mr. Russell Gurney 
 and two colleagues, which had been sent out to investi- 
 gate the whole matter on the spot, had made their Report 
 of a tenor certainly not too hostile to the English 
 authorities in the island the Jamaica Committee deter- 
 mined by a majority to prosecute Governor Eyre on a 
 charge of murder. In this action Mr. Buxton refused to 
 concur, but he at the same time brought the question 
 before the House of Commons (July 31, 1866) in the
 
 JAMAICA. [25] 
 
 form of four resolutions, declaring that the punishments 
 inflicted had been excessive ; that grave excesses of se- 
 verity on the part of any civil, military, or naval officers 
 ought not to be passed over wi h impunity ; that com- 
 pensation ought to be awarded to those who had suffered 
 unjustly ; and that all further punishment on account of 
 the disturbances ought to be remitted. The first reso- 
 lution was accepted ; the others were withdrawn, on the 
 understanding that the Government were engaged in 
 inquiries with the purpose of substantially carrying out 
 the objects of the resolutions. In the year 1868 Mr. 
 Buxton became again personally prominent in connection 
 with the movement against Governor Eyre, by contribut- 
 ing 300/. towards the expenses of the prosecution, when 
 the Jamaica Commitee had resolved to prosecute him 
 upon a charge of misdemeanour only. He found it 
 necessary to address a vindication of his conduct to some 
 of the Liberal electors of East Surrey, in view of the 
 approaching election. This vindication, an elaborate and 
 exhaustive document, was circulated amongst the con- 
 stituency, and afterwards appeared in the public journals 
 on the 7th December of the same year. 
 
 This was the severest trial of his integrity that Charles 
 Buxton had to pass through. No one but those who 
 were very intimate with him knew how much pain the 
 discharge of his duty in this matter cost him. He was 
 haunted night and day by the details of the cruelties 
 which he had to master and narrate and renarrate, and 
 the subject grew so distressing to him that he could not 
 bear to talk of it. It was his lot to exasperate Mr. 
 Eyre's supporters, and not to please his accusers. He 
 was sustained by no natural combativeness, by no partisan 
 Radicalism. He was a moderate politician, and he loved 
 to be on pleasant terms with everybody. He was sensi- 
 tive to excess as to the feeling of society towards him. 
 " Everybody against me about Eyre (May 22, 1868). I 
 was right, but it is very painful, and I have rarely been 
 so wretched." " Feeling the tide of disapproval hard to 
 bear (May 24) ; no one is moved to indignation as I am 
 by cruelties." His persistence in calling for an effectual 
 censure and repudiation of the conduct of Mr. Eyre and
 
 [26] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 his subordinates was a pure fruit of Christian feeling and 
 the sense of honour. 
 
 In general politics, Mr. Buxton was an independent 
 Liberal, sometimes taking up a cause which allied him to 
 the more advanced sections of his party, but occasionally 
 leaning towards Conservatism. He devoted a great deal 
 of labour to his Parliamentary duties, doing his best to 
 master every question of importance which came before 
 the Legislature, speaking frequently, and almost always 
 after careful study and preparation. His speeches, though 
 lucid, animated, and sometimes warm with a genuine 
 fervour, never won for him the reputation of an orator ; 
 but he was universally regarded as an excellent member 
 of Parliament, attracting the esteem and confidence of 
 his fellow-members by his high-mindedness, and their 
 affection by his engaging qualities. He zealously advo- 
 cated, both with pen and voice, the system of Cumulative 
 Voting, as an expedient for giving some representation to 
 minorities, and he gave notice of a motion for the adop- 
 tion of this scheme, which he was prevented by a dis- 
 abling accident from bringing forward himself, and which 
 was therefore taken up by Mr. Hughes as his substitute. 
 He was always anxious to promote the improvement of 
 the metropolis, for which he felt much respect and some 
 hearty admiration ; and he was induced to become the 
 active Parliamentary champion of a scheme for reforming 
 the municipal constitution of London, to which Mr. Mill 
 had previously given the sanction of his high authority. 
 He had a familiar knowledge of the working of primary 
 schools, and appreciated highly both the voluntary and 
 the religious elements in our system of national educa- 
 tion ; and he was a prominent supporter of the policy 
 embodied in the Education Act of his relative, Mr. W. 
 E. Forster. 
 
 He was like Mr. Forster also in throwing himself 
 vigorously into another national movement, less congenial 
 to their Quaker extraction. Mr. Buxton became a leader 
 amongst the Metropolitan Volunteers. Before the move- 
 ment began, he had had no special knowledge of military 
 matters. When a corps was formed out of the men at 
 the brewery, Mr. Buxton declined to accept a higher ap-
 
 VOLUNTEERING. [27] 
 
 pointment than that of Lieutenant, not expecting to feel 
 much interest in the work ; but no sooner had he begun 
 to drill, than his new duties took a wonderfully strong 
 hold of him. There was a combination of features in 
 Volunteering which fascinated him the physical excite- 
 ment, the picturesqueness, the call on mental ingenuity, 
 the mixture of classes, the development of character, even 
 the opportunity of patriotic expenditure. He not only 
 took great pains with the drill of his corps, he began at 
 once to devise interesting exercises. " I feel now," he 
 says, in February, 1861, " that I have got my battalion 
 into a most vigorous state with warm life in it. Every 
 one full of zeal and the whole organisation perfect ; quite 
 different from six months ago. But how much thought 
 and heart have I given it ; I have in a year and a half 
 learnt to put a brigade of four battalions through thirty 
 or forty movements in the field." He studied tactics 
 with enthusiasm, and whilst still a lieutenant, he arranged 
 small sham-fights at Hampstead, Cromer, and Fox 
 Warren. He thus describes one of these : " Oct. 6, 
 1860. Cromer. The morning looked horrible, windy 
 and black ; but in the afternoon it was still and warm 
 and dry. I planned the sham fight again with Mr. Scott, 
 
 and made a great variety of arrangements 
 
 By 1.30 the various corps assembled, and marched to 
 the shore, where it took a long while to serve out ammu- 
 nition, &c. I arranged the corps in two bodies ; 
 the Cromer, Stalham, and Norwich corps as enemy along 
 the sea, with boats to represent the landing ; my men, 
 the Aylsham and Fakenham, with my seventeen Cavalry 
 at the foot of the cliff. We soon began to ascend, firing 
 fiercely on the enemy, and great fun it was ; then they 
 attacked us on the new Lighthouse hill ; were repulsed 
 and pursued ; but charged us, and we retreated. Finally 
 we made a grand charge with fixed bayonets and cavalry, 
 and drove them from the old Lighthouse, and gradually 
 along the cliffs and fields to the gangway, below which 
 they turned at bay, and ended with a grand charge and 
 hurrah. It lasted two and a half hours, and was 
 immensely successful ; many thousands of spectators, who 
 seemed to enjoy it much. Then we had a most capital
 
 [28] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 dinner, and very good speeches. After this we hod a 
 brief night attack and firing as a finale. Altogether it was 
 a most successful day. I was so glad to find that, when 
 sufficiently interested, I can manage a complicated piece 
 of business, which this really was, as I had to get the 
 various corps together, plan the sham-fight and command 
 both sides, provide a dinner, &c., &c." He was speedily 
 promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1st 
 Tower Hamlets Administrative Battalion, and acted 
 several times as one of the brigadiers at the Easter 
 Monday Reviews. Nothing delighted him more than to 
 give a sham-fight. It was his pride to invent the move- 
 ments himself, and to make them more lively and 
 interesting than those of the ordinary field days. What, 
 indeed, could be more delightful to all concerned than 
 such a day as that of his last sham-fight at Fox Warren, 
 on Saturday, the 30th July, 1870 ? It was a splendid 
 and munificent fete, with the incomparable entertainment 
 of military movement and show. The lovely Surrey 
 landscape, with its woods and hills, made a perfect scene, 
 of which Fox Warren was the central gem. There Mr. 
 and Mrs. Buxton had collected a host of friends, whilst 
 3,000 Volunteers, gathered from London and the county, 
 drew together under the two standards of attack and 
 defence. The movements were arranged so as to offer 
 the chief points of interest to the view of spectators 
 clustered on the brow of the Hanger Hill ; and the 
 excitement culminated when Colonel Buxton, at the head 
 of the English force, after he had skilfully thrown for- 
 ward his riflemen into the woods on the right and the 
 left, drove the enemy up the open pasture that stretches 
 down from the hill. It is pleasant to remember him in 
 his generous pride on that sunny afternoon, as he led his 
 battalion to the charge, or as he afterwards presided with 
 his own thoughtful kindness over several hundred guests 
 on the Fox Warren lawn. 
 
 4. 
 
 Fox W T arren, Mr. Bnxton's seat near Weybridge, was 
 his own creation, and the embodiment and illustration of 
 his most cherished tastes. He was a devoted lover of
 
 LOVE OF ANIMALS. [31] 
 
 rural scenery, of animal life, and of picturesque archi- 
 tecture ; and these he could enjoy with ever increasing 
 richness at Fox Warren. As this charming country home 
 grew in beauty under his hands, it is not wonderful that 
 he became more and more attached to it. 
 
 He inherited from his father a love of animals, which 
 he had every opportunity of indulging when a boy at 
 Northrepps. He and his brothers were encouraged to 
 collect birds and other animals for a small museum of 
 their own, and to keep various pets. At twelve years of 
 age, Charles writes in his diary, "I find it a great 
 temptation, and one extremely difficult to overcome, to 
 think of Natural History at times when I ought not : I 
 mean at Church, at night when I am in bed, &c." One 
 permanent liking of his, with which his friends could not 
 always sympathise, was for snakes. This began early. 
 When he is eleven, he mentions going into some lodgings, 
 and records, " Fowell, 1, Christiana, Lizzy, and the snake, 
 are the persons that came." This way of speaking of 
 his animal friends as persons was oue of his amusing 
 habits. One of the earliest stories about his infancy 
 shows him making a confidant of a cat. It refers to his 
 first introduction, at five years of age, to a Quaker's 
 meeting. " Charley was at the meeting on Sunday 
 morning, and did not like it at all. He was afterwards 
 heard telling the cat all about it : ' Puss, do you know 
 they're such naughty people here ; they never go to 
 church, and they did not take off my hat, and they sat 
 and sat such a long time, and at last an old woman stood 
 up, with no ribbons on her bonnet, and said something 
 I don't know what and afterwards we went on sitting 
 a long time, and I was so tired ; and don't you ever go 
 to meeting, Puss ! ' " Soon after his marriage he observed 
 in a letter, " I only want a companionable reptile to make 
 my domestic joys complete ; it is so painful to come 
 home from town and not to find even an adder to receive 
 me." A striking illustration of his tenderness towards 
 animals is given by his friend the Rev. E. H. Loring : 
 " I remember once, as I was riding very fast with him 
 over a common, we passed the gate of a farmyard, in 
 which a sheep-dog was tied up and was howling piteously
 
 [32] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 at his captivity. Charles Buxton instantly pulled up his 
 horse, saying to me, ' Do stop a minute, I must speak to 
 that poor dog.' He dismounted, and, leaning as far ns 
 he could over the gate, he called out, in the kindest tone, 
 a few sentences of sympathy and encouragement to the 
 poor captive, and then got on his horse again, and rode 
 on with me as before." There was a Boys' Refuge in 
 Whitechapel which he was accustomed to visit, and I 
 remember his telling me one day that he had been doing 
 two things to improve the boys ; he had been teaching 
 them that the love of money was the root of all good, and 
 he had given them some snakes for pets. He tried once, 
 unsuccessfully, to rear an infant crocodile, and he was 
 enterprising enough to answer an advertisement offering 
 some live rattlesnakes for sale. He drew back under 
 Mrs. Buxton's persuasion, before making an engagement 
 to purchase these pets ; but the advertisers, who were 
 Americans, stuck to their one chance of disposing of 
 their property. "' One lovely summer's evening," writes 
 Mrs. Buxton, " we were on the lawn with our own child- 
 ren and some others besides, when a fly drove up to the 
 door, out of which got two Yankees, and, bearing a 
 hamper between them, joined us on the lawn. They 
 proceeded coolly to open the hamper, and take out half a 
 dozen rattlesnakes, which were turned loose upon the 
 lawn, shaking the rattles in their tales, to Charles's mixed 
 delight and alarm, and to my unmixed horror. In broad 
 Yankee the.men assured us that the fangs were taken out, 
 and they handled them themselves with perfect uncon- 
 cern. They said they had to go to America the next 
 day, and must get rid of the rattlesnakes before they 
 went, so they would let us have them for nothing. 
 Charles was extremely tempted, and was trying to devise 
 some place in which they could be safely kept, for the 
 men owned that in a month or two the poisonous fangs 
 would grow again. However, I remonstrated so strongly 
 that he gave up the idea, which, indeed, he would not 
 really have carried out, only he had been so fascinated by 
 the possibility of keeping rattlesnakes. The men then said 
 that they could not take the snakes back ; they must kill 
 them, and they retired into a back yard for this purpose.
 
 BIRDS. [33] 
 
 Charles could not bear to have the dead bodies thrown 
 away, and they were again packed in their hamper, and 
 the Americans were sent to his bird-stuffer, with a note, 
 saying that he should like to have two stuffed for him- 
 self, and the man might do what he liked with the 
 others. The hamper was left at the bird-stuffer's house ; 
 he happened to be out, and his wife opened the hamper, 
 and immediately a rattlesnake reared up its head, to 
 her unspeakable horror. She banged down the lid, 
 and fastened it securely. When her husband returned, 
 they were in great trouble and perplexity, thinking they 
 had a hamper full of live rattlesnakes. It proved, how- 
 ever, that only one had revived, and this they managed 
 to kill." 
 
 It cannot be said that Mr. Buxton ever became a 
 scientific naturalist, but in one branch of Natural 
 History, the study of birds and their ways, his know- 
 ledge was much beyond that of the ordinary observer. 
 In his boyhood he obtained a remarkable familarity 
 with British birds, and knew discriminatingly their notes 
 and their habits. It was a never ceasing delight to him 
 to improve and to digest this knowledge, and he wrote 
 many papers about birds, with some design of making a 
 book of them. At one time he pleased himself with 
 devising an ingenious new classification of birds, based 
 upon the adaptation of their organs to their distinctive 
 modes of obtaining food. The last composition he sent 
 to the press was a paper which appeared in Macmillan's 
 Magazine for August, 1871, describing a visit to the 
 haunt of the " Scoulton pies." But he was best known 
 as an ornithologist to the public by his persevering 
 endeavours to domesticate foreign birds cockatoos, 
 parrots, and the like both at Northrepps and at Fox 
 AVarren. He read a paper describing the history of this 
 experiment to a party of the British Association for the 
 Advancement of Science which visited Cromer in 1868, 
 from which it appeared that these brilliant birds lived 
 happily in the woods adjoining the houses, but that it, 
 was almost impossible to preserve them from being shot 
 when they strayed a little away from their homes. The 
 attempt, therefore, was only partially successful. He
 
 [34] CHAELES BUXTON. 
 
 endeavoured similarly to add animation to his garden 
 grounds by nailing boxes to the trees for other birds 
 to breed in, and he was never tired of watching the 
 playful life which he thus brought near him. One scene 
 of it is photographed in a paper which he dictated when 
 he was recovering from an illness, in June, 1867 : " As 
 with the luxurious feeling of convalescence I draw my 
 easy-chair to the window, I watch with much amusement 
 the proceedings of the birds on the lawn below me. 
 First of all, half-a-dozen little nun-pigeons come whirring 
 down from the gables above, two of them settling on the 
 terra-cotta basket hanging on an iron tripod, and con- 
 taining the birds' food, the others on the lawn near, 
 where they remain pecking about. Presently they are 
 all scattered in a moment, as a great white cockatoo 
 swoops down upon the tripod from a neighbouring tree, 
 and is immediately joined by a grey parrot, who sits 
 close by him, and they dip their heads alternately in the 
 hempseed before them. Another moment, and a jackdaw 
 drops down upon the grass, and, cocking his head on 
 one side, examines the possibility of a theft, but he 
 cannot screw his courage to the sticking point till three 
 others have come to help ; then he springs up, and lights 
 for a moment on the side of the basket, but the cockatoo 
 sticks up his yellow crest, and the grey parrot makes a 
 determined dig at his ribs, and he is down again in a 
 twinkling. Another and another try the same game, 
 and at last one or two succeed in carrying off a morsel. 
 They look extra shy on the occasion, but they always 
 have an absurd air of fancying (and much relishing the 
 fancy) that they are robbing somebody whenever they go 
 to feed ; and as I walk in the garden, and see the know- 
 ing looks they cast at each other, as they sit on the 
 gables, I can almost hear them say, 'There's that fool, 
 Buxton, again how shanny he must be, to put out all 
 that hempseed, and never to find out that we get the 
 best half of it ! ' Poor things, they are more than 
 welcome to all they can get ; but I confess it does 
 aggravate me nearly beyond endurance to see twenty or 
 thirty vulgar sparrows increasing my seedman's bill. 
 Now another jackdaw alights on the lawn. He evidently
 
 HUNTING. [35] 
 
 does not belong to the other set, who by this time are 
 assembled round a terra-cotta vase, set below the basket 
 to catch the seed, and where they pick up the morsels 
 that fall from their grand neighbours. I can see that 
 the new Jack is not quite easy in his mind, from the 
 way he straddles his legs, and then sidles up with an 
 affected air of unconcern, but is instantly snubbed and 
 sent away with a flea in his ear by one of the others. In 
 a moment they all scurry away, as a troop of four little 
 girls, with shouts of laughter, come up, one of them 
 riding on, and two leading a Newfoundland dog ; but 
 he stops short, not thinking that dogs were made for 
 carrying, till one child entices him on again with a bit of 
 cake. A large tame cockatoo, who has hitherto been 
 hidden in a tree above, catches sight of this, and 
 instantly skims down, and receives his share from the 
 little girl's hand. But now Tory, the dog, remembers 
 the rabbit that he has been scraping after in the dell 
 close by ever since the election of 1865, during which I 
 bought and christened him ; and off he sets at a 
 gallop, with the children flying after him in vain, for 
 he vanishes utterly from sight in a hole, which he has 
 made into almost a cavern, and so ends this little 
 scene." 
 
 In his love of horses he was a worthy son of his father, 
 and he had a keen appetite for the excitement of the 
 chase. He thought that he had some special timidity to 
 overcome in following the hounds, but he certainly 
 overcame it, and he was known as a bold and eager rider 
 in the counties surrounding the metropolis. The follow- 
 ing entry describes his feeling about hunting : " Dec. 
 11, 1865. Went out with the stag at Cobham, and 
 enjoyed it intensely, especially the part where I took the 
 lead and was almost alone with the hounds, which excited 
 me immensely. We had a good deal of fencing, and 
 Holstein carried me nobly. I am utterly resolved to 
 stick to the hounds like grim death, and take my own 
 line. If I do hunt, let me make the very utmost of it, 
 instead of marring it by giving way to timidity." For 
 many years from his coming to London he hunted 
 chiefly in Hertfordshire, having as his constant associate 
 
 c 2
 
 [36] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 his cousin and the companion of his boyhood, Mr. 
 Kichard Hoare. Latterly, he preferred to hunt with 
 Lord Petre's stag-hounds, and enjoyed the opportunity 
 this gave him of making a warm friendship with one 
 better known otherwise than as a sportsman, Mr. 
 Anthony Trollope. How thoroughly he entered into the 
 real spirit of the chase is best shown by some verses he 
 composed a few days after a bad fall (April 9th, 1867). 
 The poetical merit of this piece is the more remarkable, 
 because Mr. Buxton had never practised himself in 
 writing verse, though he laboured much to acquire a 
 good prose style. It is very curious that this solitary 
 production of his muse should have been composed 
 whilst he was lying in a darkened room, suffering from 
 concussion of the brain. It was the history of the run 
 which ended with his fall. 
 
 THE STAGHOUNDS. 
 1. 
 
 Forrard away ! Forrard away ! 
 
 Cheerly, ye beauties, forrard away ! 
 
 They flash like a gleam o'er the upland brow, 
 
 They flash like a gleam o'er the russet plow, 
 
 O'er the green wheatland, fair to see ; 
 
 Over the pasture, over the lea. 
 
 Forrard away forrard away ! 
 
 Cheerly, ye beauties, forrard away ! 
 
 2. 
 
 How soft lies the valley asleep below, 
 In the golden sunshine, as on we go, 
 Down the long sweep of the hillside bare, 
 Drinking sweet draughts of the vernal air ! 
 The lark is raining his music down, 
 The partridge whirrs up from the grass-tuft brown. 
 Forrard away, &c. 
 
 3. 
 
 A stiff ox fence with its oaken rail 
 l{.-tj>, rap, go the hoofs like a peasant's flail ; 
 A five foot drop see, the Roding brook, 
 Send him at it, don't stop to look ; 
 Dash through the quickset into the lane, 
 Out on the other side, forrard again 
 Forrard away, &c.
 
 HUNTING. [37] 
 
 4. 
 
 Carefully now, at the ditch and bank, 
 Into the copse wood thick and dank ; 
 The violet hangs her timid head, 
 And cowers down in her lowly bed ; 
 The primrose opes wide her golden eyes, 
 And gazes upward in mute surprise. 
 Forrard away, &c. 
 
 5. 
 
 A moment's check, one cast around ; 
 'Tis forrard again, with a furious bound 
 Mellow and sweet their voices sound. 
 Steady, my pet, at the five-barred gate, 
 Lightly over with heart elate ; 
 Up with the elbow, down with the head, 
 Crash through the bullfinch like shot of lead. 
 Forrard away, &c. 
 
 6. 
 
 Look at the hounds, their muzzles high ; 
 A sheet would cover them ; on they fly ; 
 No music now, not a whimpering cry 
 Neck or nothing : we'll do or die. 
 Swinging along at a slashing pace, 
 With souls on fire each risk to face, 
 Forrard away, &c. 
 
 7. 
 
 Thread the hazels ; over the stile 
 'Tis forty-five minutes, each five a mile. 
 Hurrah for the staghounds ! let others sneer 
 At the fatted calf, and the carted deer ; 
 But we know, as we feel our hunter's stride, 
 A man must be a man who with these can ride. 
 Forrard away, &c. 
 
 Besides the naturalist's love of nature, there was in 
 Mr. Buxton a genuine poetical passion for its more beau- 
 tiful and radiant aspects. He had less of the power of 
 sympathising with the gloomy and the terrible in nature ; 
 he could scarcely be happy unless the weather was fine. 
 But a forest glade sparkling in the early sunlight would 
 fill him with that jwzm, of delight overflowing the capacity 
 of enjoyment, which is the sign of poetical susceptibility. 
 It was at Luccombe, in Somersetshire, when he went 
 there as a private pupil, that he first became conscious of
 
 [38] CHARLES UXTON. 
 
 the vague yearnings excited by solitary wanderings 
 amongst glens and hills ; and one of the most vivid 
 pleasures of his after life was caused by revisiting, when 
 he was no longer alone, a particular dell which he had 
 discovered and made a spiritual treasure of his own at 
 seventeen. He was prepared, therefore, by his own ex- 
 periences to appreciate the Excursion of Wordsworth, 
 and all poetry which reflected the natural scenery with 
 which he was familiar. His delight in giving expression 
 to the enjoyment which he derived from the observation 
 of nature may be seen in the following extracts : " Oct. 
 1849. Bad sport ; but I greatly enjoyed the lovely 
 views, in the mild sunny afternoon. We were on the 
 hills, which looked rich in their autumn clothing of dark- 
 red fern and heather, and green oaks in the dells. 
 Below lay the undulating plain, with the villages clus- 
 tered round with trees ; the squire's house nestling in a 
 thick wood, the smoke rising from the farmhouses, the 
 picturesque grey church standing like the venerable ruler 
 of the hamlet, and, beyond, the still blue sea with white 
 ships asleep on its calm surface ; and the soft sound 
 of the lowing of oxen and the cackling of geese came to 
 us from far away, mingled with the low murmuring of the 
 gentle sea. It was a most lovely scene, one full of 
 peace." "Oct. 10, 1849. I wandered this afternoon 
 along the shore. How grand the sea was ! The sky 
 was dark and gloomy, and the sea raving in an angry 
 mood, whitening billows rising as far as the horizon, 
 while the cliffs frowned down upon the scene. The sea 
 is almost the only one of nature's works which has no 
 growth in it, which does nothing. Stupendous, magnifi- 
 cent, mighty as he is, he has swept backwards and for- 
 wards, to and fro, for thousands of years, and with 
 f'/tf/l remit ? None ! With all those terrible energies, 
 with all that mass of force, he has not accomplished one 
 single work, or gone forward in any single thing ; while 
 during each of these years the gentle earth has been 
 clothing herself in her mantle of beauty, and bearing 
 fruit and flowers, for her children's good. Does he com- 
 plain so wofully, and roar as with a troubled mind, be- 
 cause he is aweary of his do-nothing life ? There is
 
 LOVE OF NATURE. [39] 
 
 something almost pathetic in the unchanging, mono- 
 tonous, roar of his sullen waves on an afternoon like this. 
 There is a disconsolate, despairing sound in it, which 
 might almost touch one's heart ; but I think one feels a 
 sort of dislike to him, in spite of the reverence which he 
 inspires." "July, 1852. Up at half past five. Another 
 glorious morning, and sat in the forest, reading Words- 
 worth's Excursion; much enjoying the brilliant sun- 
 shine, the fresh ferns, and the soft shadows, and the 
 serene stillness of nature. No time more delicious, more 
 soothing, more elevating, than the morning hours of a 
 bright day." "March, 1853. A charming half-hour 
 before breakfast, wandering in T. park. Sun and hoar- 
 frost, cushats cooing, rooks, &c. I was struck with the 
 interest of the truth, that nothing so elevates or so softens 
 the character as intimate communication with outward 
 ntiture, with the sweet, gentle, loving, cheerful, truthful 
 spirit that breathes in the woods and fields on a bright 
 spring morning. It points to the oneness of the natural 
 and moral worlds, one God, and the same nature under 
 various forms." "March 1866. What really suits me 
 is reading, writing, society, the country (which I enjoy 
 
 beyond expression), and hunting I see that 
 
 very few persons have such an intensely vivid perception 
 as I have of all that is picturesque and lovely. My rides 
 and walks are a continual feast of discoveries of the 
 beautiful which I see are rarely made by others. This is 
 a wonderful source of pleasure." 
 
 Being thus drawn to them by a poetical temperament, 
 he became a hearty lover of the poets, and treasured in 
 his memory much of the verse of Shakespeare and Milton, 
 of Wordsworth and Tennyson. In a fair degree, all good 
 art found in him a sympathising student and critic. He 
 had the advantage of visiting Italy and Greece when his 
 taste was just ready to receive the stimulus given to it 
 by the remains of antiquity. In 1839 and 1840 he spent 
 some time at Rome and at Athens ; and besides enjoying 
 travel as a boy would, he made the most conscientious use 
 of the opportunities of self-improvement thus afforded 
 him. " I call to mind," says Mr. Richards, " the time 
 when, and the way in which, his taste for architecture
 
 [42] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 once more how happy he was in his lot. His father was 
 worthy of the deep reverence, his mother of the admiring 
 tenderness, which he felt towards them ; and the warm 
 attachment which bound him to his brothers and sisters 
 was strengthened and sustained through life by well- 
 deserved mutual esteem. Charles's childish griefs were 
 caused by partings, or by fears and anxieties for others, 
 which easily moved him to tears. He always gave a 
 ready admiration to his companions and friends, and he 
 had in turn so great a desire to please those whom he 
 loved or esteemed that he was apt to be made unhappy 
 by fancying that he perceived in them symptoms of 
 indifference towards him. This was one of the indications 
 of a certain feminine fibre in his nature, to which his 
 attractiveness was no doubt partly due. His affectionate 
 disposition was guarded by a delicacy which was never 
 impaired, and an innocence which never had anything to 
 conceal. Mr. Richards, who was his constant companion 
 for about four years of his opening youth, first as tutor 
 and then as college friend, observes of him, " A gentler, 
 brighter, more loving spirit one more open to the 
 noblest impulses, or more uniformly actuated by the 
 highest principles I never knew. His was a mind of 
 spotless purity, of the most exquisite refinement, with 
 the loftiest aspirations. Such was his temper that, 
 during the whole of our close intercourse, I do not remem- 
 ber that a harsh word ever passed between us." When 
 he came up from college to London, he lived for some 
 time with his brother, Sir Edward Buxton, making one 
 of his family circle. " He was such a rare brother to 
 me," writes Lady Buxton. " I often think of those 
 happy years he spent with us .... He became a most 
 delightful and important inmate, a fine example of 
 spirited industry combined with the most genial conduct 
 towards the circle around him." She speaks of "his 
 constant pleasure in our boys, who would have worried 
 many young uncles," and of " the tie then established 
 between uncle and nephews, so advantageous afterwards 
 to the fatherless lads." He himself thus speaks of these 
 boys at the same period : " Do I do all I could for 
 Catherine's children ? I must not let indolence creep
 
 HOME LIFE. [43] 
 
 over me, but be actively cheerful and gentle with them. 
 Tommy I love better than my own life. I feel that there 
 is nothing I would not gladly do for him. May I use all 
 my influence powerfully and vigorously to raise and 
 stimulate his powers, to teach him to think." The pain 
 which could be caused him by mortification and affection 
 combined is shown by the following passages from his 
 diary, relating to the election contest described above : 
 " Aug. 8, 1847. The end of a most exciting week, termi- 
 nating in Edward's election for South Essex. Happy as 
 all are at this consummation, my mind is full of anguish 
 and anxiety. I gave my card to a voter and wrote on it 
 a promise to remunerate him for his day's labour, this, 
 I find, may cost Edward his seat." . . . "I trust I 
 shall never forget the agony which I have endured 
 during the last two days. I felt little doubt that I had 
 fallen into a trap, and that this rascally voter meant to 
 betray me to the opposite party. I passed a night of 
 restless misery on Friday, got up at half-past four, 
 saddled my mare, and rode to the man's house in White- 
 chapel, expecting to catch him before his day's work ; but 
 he had not come home since the preceding morning. I 
 left his door in dismay, rode to Stratford, and with a 
 heavy heart canvassed Walthamstow, and had an after- 
 noon of grievous anxiety. I thought no sort of calamity 
 could be so bad as mine. After a night in which I 
 woke up once or twice with an overwhelming sense of 
 misery, we came home. I had prayed intensely, for 
 Christ's sake, that God would avert this calamity from 
 me, and I verily believe that He heard my prayer. G-. 
 B. came in while I was in the act of communicating my 
 fears to Edward, and mentioned, in the course of conver- 
 sation, that our lawyer had thought it safe to institute 
 legal proceedings to quash a vote obtained by the 
 promise of remuneration, for loss of time. This, un- 
 doubtedly, was the very one. So the thing is safe. I 
 still feel rather nervous, though unutterably relieved." 
 During one of his visits to Northrepps, where his mother 
 lived on to a most venerable age, surviving her son 
 Charles by a few months, he pours out in his diary his 
 admiring delight in the family party there gathered
 
 [42] CHARLES BVXTON. 
 
 once more how happy he was in his lot. His father was 
 worthy of the deep reverence, his mother of the admiring 
 tenderness, which he felt towards them ; and the warm 
 attachment which bound him to his brothers and sisters 
 was strengthened and sustained through life by well- 
 deserved mutual esteem. Charles's childish griefs were 
 caused by partings, or by fears and anxieties for others, 
 which easily moved him to tears. He always gave a 
 ready admiration to his companions and friends, and he 
 had in turn so great a desire to please those whom he 
 loved or esteemed that he was apt to be made unhappy 
 by fancying that he perceived in them symptoms of 
 indifference towards him. This was one of the indications 
 of a certain feminine fibre in his nature, to which his 
 attractiveness was no doubt partly due. His affectionate 
 disposition was guarded by a delicacy which was never 
 impaired, and an innocence which never had anything to 
 conceal. Mr. Richards, who was his constant companion 
 for about four years of his opening youth, first as tutor 
 and then as college friend, observes of him, " A gentler, 
 brighter, more loving spirit one more open to the 
 noblest impulses, or more uniformly actuated by the 
 highest principles I never knew. His was a mind of 
 spotless purity, of the most exquisite refinement, with 
 the loftiest aspirations. Such was his temper that, 
 during the whole of our close intercourse, I do not remem- 
 ber that a harsh word ever passed between us." When 
 he came up from college to London, he lived for some 
 time with his brother, Sir Edward Buxton, making one 
 of his family circle. " He was such a rare brother to 
 me," writes Lady Buxton. "I often think of those 
 happy years he spent with us .... He became a most 
 delightful and important inmate, a fine example of 
 spirited industry combined with the most genial conduct 
 towards the circle around him." She speaks of "his 
 constant pleasure in our boys, who would have worried 
 many young uncles," and of " the tie then established 
 between uncle and nephews, so advantageous afterwards 
 to the fatherless lads." He himself thus speaks of these 
 boys at the same period : " Do I do all I could for 
 Catherine's children ? I must not let indolence creep
 
 HOME LIFE. [43] 
 
 over me, but be actively cheerful and gentle with them. 
 Tommy I love better than my own life. I feel that there 
 is nothing I would not gladly do for him. May I use all 
 my influence powerfully and vigorously to raise and 
 stimulate his powers, to teach him to think." The pain 
 which could be caused him by mortification and affection 
 combined is shown by the following passages from his 
 diary, relating to the election contest described above : 
 " Aug. 8, 1847. The end of a most exciting week, termi- 
 nating in Edward's election for South Essex. Happy as 
 all are at this consummation, my mind is full of anguish 
 and anxiety. I gave my card to a voter and wrote on it 
 a promise to remunerate him for his day's labour, this, 
 I find, may cost Edward his seat." . . . "I trust I 
 shall never forget the agony which I have endured 
 during the last two days. I felt little doubt that I had 
 fallen into a trap, and that this rascally voter meant to 
 betray me to the opposite party. I passed a night of 
 restless misery on Friday, got up at half-past four, 
 saddled my mare, and rode to the man's house in White- 
 chapel, expecting to catch him before his day's work ; but 
 he had not come home since the preceding morning. I 
 left his door in dismay, rode to Stratford, and with a 
 heavy heart canvassed Walthamstow, and had an after- 
 noon of grievous anxiety. I thought no sort of calamity 
 could be so bad as mine. After a night in which I 
 woke up once or twice with an overwhelming sense of 
 misery, we came home. I had prayed intensely, for 
 Christ's sake, that God would avert this calamity from 
 me, and I verily believe that He heard my prayer. G. 
 B. came in while I was in the act of communicating my 
 fears to Edward, and mentioned, in the course of conver- 
 sation, that our lawyer had thought it safe to institute 
 legal proceedings to quash a vote obtained by the 
 promise of remuneration for loss of time. This, un- 
 doubtedly, was the very one. So the thing is safe. I 
 still feel rather nervous, though unutterably relieved." 
 During one of his visits to Northrepps, where his mother 
 lived on to a most venerable age, surviving her son 
 Charles by a few months, he pours out in his diary his 
 admiring delight in the family party there gathered
 
 [44] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 about her. "Sept. 1849. I have most highly enjoyed 
 and valued our delightful home. My sweet, gentle, 
 refined, serious mother ; Chenda [his sister] so full of 
 mind and character, with such deep nobility of soul ; 
 every one so charming to me ; and then our easy 
 abundant conversation, the liveliness and yet seriousness 
 that goes all through the family circle, and farther, our 
 shooting, riding, bathing, dinner parties, and amuse- 
 ments of all kinds, make our life here one round of 
 pleasure and privileges. I love the place too, with its 
 rural and picturesque snugness. I have been very very 
 happy here the last ten days. But I pine for more 
 reading and writing. I feel that I waste my days more 
 than I ought. I must be at work." It was not long 
 before he who deserved all family joys so well became 
 himself the head of a happy home. His marriage, in 
 1850, was the pride and supreme blessing of his life. 
 What his wife and children were to him, and what he 
 was to them, cannot be set forth here. But some of the 
 emotions stirred in him by the possession of children 
 may be described in words of his own. " April, 1854. 
 By train to Croydon, delicious day, by the pleasant 
 waterside footpath, and lay on the grass watching the 
 rooks and the wrynecks, and delighting in the green of 
 the trees and rich sunshine, sucking in the sweetness of 
 nature. Watching the rooks, and their pleasure in their 
 young, I marvelled how any man who had ever been a 
 father could be cruel to his fellow-men, by stirring up 
 wars and putting them to death, regardless of the 
 lacerated affections caused thereby. Some children were 
 whooping and playing under the trees, and I observed 
 how much my heart has been opened to children since 
 Bertram was born. I always liked children and was 
 kind to them, but now I never see one, at least in any 
 case which brings B. up before me, without a sort of 
 gentle shock of feeling." " Nov. 1855. Little N. is now 
 four months old, a delicious baby, a sweet, serene, merry 
 temper, always in the sunshine of happiness and love. 
 The more I love a child the more deep is my feeling of 
 the thread they hang by. Why was not the world 
 made perfect ? why death ? why sorrow ? " " Aug.
 
 PHILANTHROPY. [45] 
 
 1858. The H.'s and H. and M., and we, with Betsy Jane 
 and her two pups, Jew-bill and the four children, 
 wandered about Clearmount, and sat out on the lawn 
 reading and playing with the children and the dear 
 young owl. How much sweet poetry my life has in it, 
 and all the sweeter because of the substratum of solid 
 work, parliamentary and literary." 
 
 My own friendship with Charles Buxton began when I 
 was in Whitechapel, he being at the same time much in 
 Spitalfields, trying to do all the good he could in the 
 quarter surrounding the great brewery. It was easy to 
 see that he was not a commonplace philanthropist. He 
 had become aware, partly through his economical studies, 
 of the mischief done by much of what the rich give away, 
 and of the hollowness of many popular good works ; and 
 he had a wholesome dread of encouraging pauperism and 
 dependence. But he did not adopt the comfortable alter- 
 native of simply saving himself all the trouble and 
 expense of philanthropy ; he put himself, on the contrary, 
 to more trouble and expense than if he had contented 
 himself with the ordinary methods of benevolence. He 
 made himself acquainted by personal visits with the con- 
 dition of the very poor in the east of London, and took a 
 part cautiously in certain works which seemed to him to 
 have a promise of directly diminishing misery and crime, 
 such as the building of better dwellings, the assisting of 
 emigration, and the support and superintendence of a 
 Boys' Refuge. But for the most part he endeavoured to 
 act on the principle involved in the maxim that charity 
 begins at home the principle, I mean, of attending first 
 to the duties that lie nearest. The firm of Truman's 
 Brewery have always had a good reputation for the 
 interest they take in the well-being of their numerous 
 servants, and Charles Buxton was in this respect a zealous 
 and effective partner. He gave evening entertainments 
 to the brewery men and their families, at which he or his 
 friends read or lectured. He took especially under his 
 charge a school dependent upon the brewery in Abbey 
 Street, going there frequently to give lessons, and watch- 
 ing for opportunities of extending its usefulness. He 
 attached to this school a Penny Bank and Reading-room,
 
 [46] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 both of which have permanently prospered ; and he tried 
 the experiment, which did not prove a successful one, of 
 opening the Reading-room on Sunday evenings. He 
 made it one of his interests to promote, far and wide, the 
 reading of good books. " I am coming to the conclusion," 
 he wrote, " of making libraries my especial hobby, and to 
 push them in every possible direction, and devote my 
 money especially to them. Would it not be worth while 
 to withdraw from other charities and do this one thing 
 well ? I must correspond with other people, keep their 
 letters, stimulate libraries, urge their being set on foot, 
 talk about them, keep lists of books with prices, etc." 
 It was a common thing with him to give to a school or 
 other institution a well-selected library ; and at Cromer 
 he took the novel step of starting, by a gift of books, a 
 circulating library for the use of the tradespeople and 
 visitors. He committed himself to a considerable yearly 
 expenditure in this cause, by an oifer which he made to 
 the " Pure Literature Society," that to any sum of money 
 raised for a popular library in any place he would add as 
 much again, to be expended in books on the list of that 
 society. When the object appeared to him a wise one, 
 he would contribute largely to general subscriptions ; and 
 it is needless to say that as an owner of property he was 
 more than commonly liberal in matters relating to schools 
 and the Church. I have seen a memorandum of his 
 expenditure in one year, from which it appeared that 
 more than a third of what he had expended had been 
 given away. 
 
 As regards kindnesses to friends, there was something 
 of originality in the deliberate way in which he set him- 
 self to contribute to the happiness of all persons within 
 his reach. That there was method in the thoughtful con- 
 sideration to which so many know themselves to have 
 been debtors, may be inferred from what he himself wrote 
 in the following reflection : " I wonder we don't find a 
 man or two, and several women, whose whole heart and 
 soul and strength should be given, not to philanthropy 
 (that is common enough now, thank God), but to doing 
 kindnesses to the people about him or her, in his or her 
 own sphere. Many persons will do kindnesses that come
 
 SOCIAL INTERCOURSE. [47] 
 
 in their way : but they do not set themselves to doing 
 kindnesses in their own sphere, as they will to doing 
 kindness to the poor." He adds a remark which shows 
 that, with his quick sensibility, he had realised a risk that 
 might attend such a scheme of work : " I wonder not to 
 see it. But I don't wish to see it. I formerly knew one 
 lady who did that ; and she nearly crazed her acquaint- 
 ance." Mr. Buxton, however, had far too much delicacy 
 to bore or embarrass his friends with attempts to make 
 them happy. As he was a rich man, and one whose in- 
 come increased year by year, it was a matter of course 
 that money should enter into a large part of his kind- 
 nesses; but it was sure to be transfigured in the process. 
 He assumed, what he really felt, that it was the natural 
 act of friendship or brotherly kindness to slwre his own 
 pleasures or advantages with others. He could not, in 
 fact, bear the thought of keeping his good things to him- 
 self. One of the illustrations of this feeling was so signi- 
 ficant that it may well stand in the place of many. I 
 have spoken of his exceeding delight in his Surrey home, 
 Fox Warren. The characteristic form which his love for 
 it took was an eager desire that as many persons as 
 possible should enjoy its beauties. Before it was built, 
 lie wrote (June, 185G) " 1 feel a great deal of interest in 
 planning our house, grounds, etc., but I have a constant 
 feeling of hollowness from its being such a selfish pleasure. 
 I must do my best to spread the enjoyment of my house 
 and scenery to as many people as possible." At one end 
 of the drive through the grounds, which commands a 
 lovely view, was posted an invitation to all who pleased 
 to enter. But besides this, Mr. Buxton made a point of 
 lending the house for the occupation of others during the 
 times of his own absence from it. It was actually painful 
 to him to leave it empty " to have it wasted," as he said 
 even for a month. He was accustomed to spend the 
 early autumn in Norfolk, and for that season he would 
 invite some friend to occupy Fox Warren, someone with 
 a family, it might be a London clergyman, not likely .to 
 obtain in any other way so enjoyable a holiday. Then 
 he would carefully arrange everything so as to make the 
 sojourn as pleasant as possible, never forgetting to pro-
 
 [48] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 vide for the amusement of the children. He liked to 
 invite friends to ride with him, and if he could not 
 mount them from his own stables, he would hire horses 
 for them. Whenever he perceived any one to be in 
 danger of suffering from neglect, he was watchful to pay 
 courteous attention. " It is so hard on young men in 
 London," he notes, " to have no intimates to share in 
 their doings ; I must never forget to be kind and hos- 
 pitable to young men." If Mr. Buxton was in the room, 
 no governess, no shy or unattractive person, was suffered 
 to remain in the cold shade. With such instincts, he 
 naturally had a great power of drawing out what was 
 best in the character of those about him, and of inspiring, 
 in young persons especially, a warmly grateful affection. 
 Perhaps there never was a man who got on better with 
 the rather difficult class of young girls. He was strongly 
 convinced that far more pains ought to be taken than is 
 usual with parents and educators, to make children 
 happy; and he was sometimes grieved that, when he 
 testified earnestly to this effect, his appeals did not 
 evoke a warmer response from his hearers. (See " Note " 
 446.) 
 
 One sign of what Charles Buxton was as a friend is 
 thus strikingly noted by his cousin, Mr. W. E. Forster : 
 " Few persons have been so loved, who have been so 
 much esteemed, and still fewer have been so missed ; and 
 this because, as with his father, so with him, helpful 
 sympathy was the key-note of his character. He was one 
 of those, the full measure of whose faculties was hardly 
 available for himself, but was, as it were, a force in reserve, 
 to be used for others, under the pressure of their wants, 
 their sorrows, and their wrongs, and even their intel- 
 lectual needs ; for instance, his conversation was curiously 
 helpful in its suggestiveness : and it is, I suppose, the 
 consciousness of this rare characteristic, more clearly felt 
 now than in his lifetime, which mainly explains why it is 
 that, though the place which a man fills is generally much 
 larger than the gap which he leaves, there are so many 
 who feel that the gap made by Charles Buxton's death 
 is larger than the place which, while living, he seemed 
 to fill."
 
 SQCIAL INTERCOURSE. [49] 
 
 When he was a boy, and beginning to feel the stirrings 
 of ambition, he found fault with himself as being shy and 
 silent in society, and he determined to conquer this ten- 
 dency. He was stimulated in his efforts by the very high 
 value he set upon bright and intelligent conversation. 
 Stoutly repudiating the doctrine of the prophet of silence, 
 Mr. Buxton always professed himself a warm lover of 
 good talk. In one of these " Notes " (212) he pictures 
 to himself what the ideal talker would be. In another 
 (108) he speaks thus : " Pleasant talk is the sweetest of 
 luxuries ; but the power of talking it comes less from 
 nature than from practice." He certainly became himself 
 a ready talker ; and the readiness may have been acquired 
 by practice ; but it could not have been practice that 
 gave him the lively humour, breaking out in delightful 
 surprises of quaint suggestion, with which Ins friends 
 were familiar. There was a humorous tendency in the 
 Buxton nature. That there should have been a Charles 
 Buxton such as we knew in our generation, is partly 
 accounted for by the following description of a Charles 
 Buxton of the preceding generation, written by his 
 brother Sir Fowell : " He was, I think, the most agree- 
 able person I ever knew. A kind of original humour 
 played about his conversation. It was not wit ; it was 
 anything rather than that species of humour which 
 provokes loud laughter, it was not exactly naivete, 
 though that comes nearest to it ; it was an intellectual 
 playfulness which provided for every hour, and extracted 
 from every incident a fund of delicate merriment." The 
 humour of the nephew being of the same pleasant, plajful 
 kind that is indicated in this passage, scarcely showed 
 itself in his speeches or writings, but lent its charm to 
 social intercourse. It commonly took the form of some 
 amusing extravagance, which tickled the fancy, whilst it 
 probably threw out a more or less original conception to 
 excite conversation. Think of it as welling out with a 
 sudden freshness and the air of a " happy thought," and 
 the following "Note " (501) will serve as an example of 
 what I mean : "Would it not be happy for all parties, if 
 idiots and old people when grown imbecile, could hi- 
 comfortably shot? I would have it done with the 
 
 d
 
 [50] CHARLES BUXTON. 
 
 utmost decorum ; perhaps ly the bishop of tlw diocese." 
 Dean Stanley, a most congenial friend, gives a picturesque 
 illustration of his social attractiveness. He compares it 
 with " the effect of the wine glorified under the name of 
 ' sunshine ' in the great American romance of ' Transfor- 
 mation,' with 'its fragrance like the airy sweetness of 
 youthful hopes,' ' the little circle of golden light which 
 glowed around it,' * the ethereal charm symbolising the 
 holy virtues of hospitality and social kindness,' ' gladding 
 the hearts of men and women even in the Iron Age.' 
 This ' sunshine ' was what all his friends found in Charles 
 Buxton's presence and conversation." 
 
 Argumentative discussion was not to his taste, being 
 congenial neither to his gentleness nor to his candour, 
 and he generally declined to fight for his opinions when 
 they were attacked. But he loved to interchange im- 
 pressions on serious subjects with a like-minded friend, 
 in a sincere endeavour to find out truth, and he therefore 
 had a high appreciation of the value and delightfulness of 
 intimate friendship. When he went up from the privacy 
 in which he had been educated into the larger world of 
 Cambridge, its opportunities of intellectual companion- 
 ship were eagerly welcomed by the thoughtful and delicate- 
 minded young student, and he found in the society of Mr. 
 Warwick Brooks, Messrs. E. and J. Kay, Mr. J. P. Norris, 
 and other contemporaries, a stimulus which he greatly 
 prized. The circle of his family relationships, including 
 Buxtons, Gurneys, Hoares, Barclays, Forsters, was a com- 
 prehensive and varied one ; and his marriage to Miss 
 Holland, whose elder brother had been one of his college 
 friends, made him a member of another family circle, 
 within which he formed many cherished friendships. 
 Apart from these ties, his most familiar intercourse was 
 with his neighbours, the Lushingtons, the Stanleys, and 
 the Trevelyans, with all of whom he had many bonds of 
 sympathy. The society which Mr. and Mrs. Buxton 
 gathered about them in Grosvenor Crescent and at Fox 
 Warren embraced the most various and interesting 
 elements, well fused together by a host who had a happy 
 ingenuity in devising modes of intercourse and occupation 
 for his guests. He would take out a party, of old and
 
 ANNUAL EXCURSION. [51] 
 
 young, to cut down trees in the Fox Warren grounds ; 
 and he would make great fun with some elderly 
 philosopher, or dainty lady, who had perhaps never 
 handled a hatchet before, and who was set to work upon 
 an easy sapling. He had an annual custom of arranging 
 an excursion of several days for a riding party about 
 Whitsuntide, on which occasions he selected the members 
 of the party, planned the route, and performed the duties 
 of captain and quartermaster with great efficiency. 
 Another of his schemes was to put as many of his friends 
 as he could collect on board two or three steamers, and, 
 after letting them see London from an unaccustomed 
 point of view, to carry them up the river to an entertain- 
 ment at Richmond. 
 
 Thus his life glided on, rich in activity and enjoyment, 
 happy in diffusing happiness. The first serious check 
 that arrested it was a dangerous illness, resulting from 
 the fall in hunting in which he suffered concussion of the 
 brain. This happened on the 9th April, 1867, and dis- 
 abled him for some months. Having had in this illness 
 the new experience of acute pain, he meditated on the 
 possibility of mitigating the similar sufferings of others ; 
 and, with some hope in the inventiveness of science, he 
 ottered a prize of 2000/. for the discovery of an anaesthetic 
 agent which should satisfy certain conditions. After a 
 while he recovered his former good health, and took to 
 hunting again, riding as boldly as before. In the same 
 month, three years later (April 29, 1870), he had a nar- 
 row escape of being killed by a lunatic. A young man, 
 whom he employed as secretary, had shown symptoms of 
 a strange temper, and had received notice of dismissal. 
 He grew moody and sullen, and one morning, when he 
 was alone with Mr. Buxton in his library, after refusing 
 to execute some order, he suddenly discharged a loaded 
 pistol at him. Mr. Buxton was not hit, and the poor 
 madman's next step was to ask him, " Are you hurt, 
 sir ? " after which he rushed out of the room and away 
 from the house. It was a real satisfaction to Charles 
 Buxton's humane feelings when sufficient evidence was 
 produced to prove that his assailant was not in his right 
 mind.
 
 [52] CHARLES BVXTON. 
 
 In the spring of the following year, without any 
 risible cause, his strength began to fail. The weakness 
 was persistent and grave enough to cause anxiety, and 
 doctors were consulted ; but they discovered no disease, 
 and thought that he only needed rest. And so indeed it 
 seemed, for by resting awhile he gained strength again. 
 But renewed activity soon brought on a relapse, and the 
 failure of vital power was alarming, although his mind 
 continued active and clear and alive to all its old 
 interests. He had learnt to dislike the assertion that 
 trials were expressly sent from God ; " Yet," he said 
 with reference to this illness, " I do believe that trials 
 ought to bring us nearer to God and to Christ." In 
 July it was thought that a visit to the Highlands of 
 Scotland would be restoring to him, and that there was 
 no reason to apprehend any danger from the journey. 
 He started, with Mrs. Buxton and some members of his 
 family, on the 25th July. When they had reached Loch 
 Earn, he seemed so ill that Mrs. Buxton sent for a 
 doctor from Edinburgh, who once more pronounced that 
 there was no disease or immediate danger. But in a 
 day or two death came to him quite suddenly, and he 
 breathed his last at Lochearnhead, on the morning of 
 the 10th August, 1871, in the 49th year of his age. 
 
 He was buried in Hatchford churchyard, near Fox 
 Warren, amidst expressions of sorrow in the public 
 journals and from private friends, which showed how he 
 had been esteemed and loved. The men whom he had 
 been proud to command, the Volunteers of the Tower 
 Hamlets Battalion, desiring to pay him their last tribute 
 of regard, attended a special service in memory of him in 
 Spitalfields church, at which the sermon was preached 
 by his life-long friend, the Dean of Westminster. So 
 Charles Buxton died and was buried ; but, according to 
 a law which he himself once endeavoured to trace in 
 various provinces of creation, it is out of Death that 
 Life grows ; and when we think of his body as laid with 
 love and tears in the ground, we may think also of his 
 truer vesture the life that he led amongst us as 
 returned to the human soil in which it flourished, not to 
 die utterly, but to spring up and bear fruit in other 
 lives, made better and happier by his.
 
 These " Notes of Thought " were left nearly ready for 
 publication, together with a few words of preface written 
 not later than 18G2 : 
 
 " It has been my wont for years to jot down now and 
 then remarks that had been thrown out in talking, or 
 that had risen before my mind in ' the sessions of sweet 
 silent thought.' Perhaps they may touch grave things 
 too lightly, or light things too gravely. Still, I cannot 
 help trusting that some readers may find them a help to 
 meditation." 
 
 The writer's purpose is further described in a few 
 words written in September, 1860 : 
 
 " My idea is to look steadily and thoroughly into the 
 world around, and to write down what I observe in it in 
 
 the briefest words."
 
 NOTES OP THOUGHT. 
 
 \YOULD a science of human nature be possible ? We 
 have a wild forest growth of knowledge about human 
 nature, but never yet, so far as I know, has any attempt 
 been made to form a large and accurate collection of 
 facts illustrating the different characteristics of human 
 nature, and thus by a systematic induction to grasp the 
 laws by which human nature is governed. 
 
 That there are such laws is surely indisputable. They 
 may, like those that govern the weather, be too complex 
 for disentanglement ; but in reality man's nature, like 
 all other nature, must be "subject to government." 
 There is no such thing anywhere as a state of anarchy : 
 and every day's experience is enough to satisfy us that 
 human nature, with all its apparent caprice, is under the 
 sway of certain forces, acting no doubt with infinite 
 differences of intensity upon different individuals, but 
 with a large amount of uniformity upon large masses of 
 men. Even our own short and narrow experience teaches 
 us that there are some rules about human nature, and in 
 direct proportion to our keenness of insight, and the 
 pains we bestow, is the amount of such '* regularity " 
 that we discover. And when we carefully collate a large 
 series of facts as to man's conduct, such a series as no 
 one man could have seen with his own eyes, but which 
 have been gathered together in history, inductions are 
 reached of higher value. For instance, history has made 
 known to us the truth, (which seems to have altogether 
 escaped the eye of statesmen in the middle ages,) that in
 
 2 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 masses of men every violent action of feeling will be 
 followed by a swing the other way ; as in the license 
 that was engendered by the strictness of the seventeenth 
 century. So again, by collating a number of separate 
 facts, the truth has been reached that men are restrained 
 from crime more strongly by the certainty than by the 
 severity of punishment. In the same way again we have 
 learned that cruelty " grows by what it feeds on," the 
 very excitement of witnessing the agony of others, caused 
 by ourselves, becoming by degrees a source of enjoyment. 
 These are but two or three of the hundreds of examples 
 that might be brought forward, of general truths as to 
 human nature becoming known by induction from a large 
 series of observations. 
 
 If this science once took its' place among the sciences, 
 different students would devote themselves to its different 
 branches. Some would register observations on the 
 characteristics of man as seen in the daily walk of those 
 with whom they mingled. Others would note the charac- 
 teristics of man as seen in great masses, during long 
 ranges of time. Each of these would be of value. Each 
 would throw great light upon the other. The minute 
 scientific study of the individual would make the history 
 of mankind easier to understand, while, again, we should 
 get to the bottom of the characters of individuals the 
 more easily for our knowledge of what men are, and do, 
 in masses. 
 
 The main idea of Corinne seems to be the develop- 
 ment of the national character of the Italians, the 
 English, and the French. In this picture the prominent 
 figure is the Italian, and the scenery is carefully finished, 
 and is an excellent description of Italy. If Madame de 
 StaeTs picture be trustworthy, the Italians of Central 
 Italy are endued with a glowing and lively imagination ; 
 are sensitive, in a high degree, to the impressions of the 
 beautiful and sublime : but have little solidity, and little 
 force. In every faculty that is subservient to action they 
 are deficient. They have neither firmness, nor perseverance, 
 nor courage, nor high moral principle ; nor yet that stead-
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 3 
 
 fastness which makes an Englishman stick to his point 
 in spite of all that would stay him. In lofty self respect, 
 in vigour, in sturdiness, they are wanting : but the 
 liveliness of their feelings, their delight in the beautiful, 
 their ready enjoyment of present amusements, make 
 them a winning people, if not worthy of grave respect. 
 In rather gloomy contrast with this bright though not 
 august character, stands her delineation of English 
 society. I think it clear that though she places Lord 
 Edgemond's coterie in an obscure part of the island, she 
 regarded it as a true specimen of average English so- 
 ciety : and, in fact, that dull and vapid gloom which she 
 describes may but too often be found in even excellent, 
 in even cultivated English families. And this dreary 
 silence, this crushing austerity, which clips the pinions 
 of every sally of irregular genius, this methodical dulness, 
 would seem singularly appalling to the vivacious French- 
 woman. Madame de Stae'l, however, does ample justice 
 to the grandeur, however dusky, of the English 
 character. 
 
 The moulding element in the English character, 
 according to her delineation, is its tendency to action. 
 We cannot rest content with amusements like the 
 French, with " les beaux arts " like the Italians, with 
 promenades and serenades like the Spanish. We must 
 be always pressing forward towards some sober and 
 practical end. And in truth we do actually see this, not 
 only in the commercial world, but amongst our noblemen 
 and country gentlemen. They belong to what is else- 
 where by position the most indolent class by education 
 the most enervated and yet in agriculture, in politics, 
 in affairs of every sort and kind, they display the strong 
 necessity that lies upon them of being at work. And 
 how thoroughly Englishmen do things ; to how perfect a 
 pitch are even shooting and hunting carried, to say 
 nothing of mercantile, agricultural, and literary enter- 
 prises. Everything is done strongly. In short a broad 
 distinction between the English and the Italians is that 
 the latter, in conformity with that highly wrought 
 sensitiveness to impressions, which is the concomitant of 
 a lively imagination, are evermore carried away by the 
 
 B 2
 
 4 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 interest present at the time ; whereas the Englishman 
 retains his idea throughout the various shiftings of his 
 circumstances, and his mind always returns and points 
 in the same direction by a sort of magnetic attraction. 
 The same depth and constancy of character appear in his 
 domestic affections, of which Madame de Stael speaks 
 with such admiration. 
 
 Can she have meant the Comte d'Erfeuil for a specimen 
 Frenchman ? His animated, pliable, disposition, his 
 restlessness, his thoughtless vivacity, his self-conceit, his 
 kindness of heart, often defeated by the loquacity of his 
 ever nimble tongue, his want of all serious reflection and 
 of any deep, lasting emotion, his eager politeness, his 
 activity of mind, without strength to correspond : surely 
 this may be a faithful, but is not a flattering, portrait of 
 the common-place Frenchman ! 
 
 3 The expectation that our feelings will be excited, has, 
 in itself, great power to excite them. The mere anticipa- 
 tion of sea sickness gives us nausea: while half the 
 pleasure of eating a haunch of venison conies of our as- 
 sumption that we shall enjoy it. If we think we shall 
 be nervous, we get into a fright. If we think we shall 
 feel shy with any one, shy we are sure to be. And, in the 
 same way, it is the fact that many and many a man* falls 
 in love with a girl because he had been told beforehand 
 she was charming, and 
 
 " His heart is as a prophet to his heart, 
 And tells him he shall love." 
 
 We see the same thing in oratory. One reason why a 
 celebrated preacher or speaker gets such a whip-hand 
 over his hearers, is that their feelings stand ready 
 harnessed, and he has only to buckle on the traces, and 
 away they go with him at a gallop. The same with wit. 
 Everybody was half laughing before Sydney Smith had 
 quite opened his mouth. And so in Wesley's time, the 
 
 * A very pretty example is given by Col. Hutchinson (the distinguished 
 Roundhead) in his memoirs.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 6 
 
 people tumbled into trances, just because they were 
 
 expecting to do so. "When that expectation ceased, the 
 trances vanished. 
 
 4 The reign of Charles II. may well excite our scorn and 
 indignation. Other reigns were more horrible : none 
 was more shameful. And yet I believe that the advent 
 of Charles II. was one of the happiest events in English 
 history. It is plain enough, that after Cromwell's death 
 England was upon the verge of the most fearful anarchy. 
 For ten days, in fact, there was no government whatever. 
 Every man was beginning to thrust forward his own pet 
 theory as to what should be done ; and in a very short 
 time all these opposing views would have come into 
 furious collision. And with the party feelings of the 
 Royalists, Independents, Presbyterians, Catholics, and 
 others, heated red hot ; each party, in fact, mad with 
 rage against the rest ; who can say what awful calamities 
 might not have ensued ? Happy, most happy was it, 
 that at such a moment, a Deus ex m-achind was ready at 
 hand ; and that the whole nation with one voice was 
 ready to hail his coming. 
 
 But the wonder, as Milton pointed out, wag most 
 wonderful, that Englishmen should have made such an 
 outrageous failure of their attempt to re-organize their 
 government, while the United Provinces had achieved 
 such a brilliant success. Many reasons, doubtless, 
 might be noted for the shameful contrast : but the 
 main one was, that the United Provinces were throwing 
 off the abhorred yoke of a stranger. Naturally, the 
 whole people were welded into one in such an uprising. 
 In England, on the contrary, the strife was a civil one. 
 The further it went on, the more the nation became 
 split asunder. 
 
 5 One radical distinction between Christianity and all 
 other religions, is this. All others tell a heap of tales 
 about gods and goddesses, and demand certain cere- 
 monies to be performed. Christianity flies at the throat 
 of sin. She throws her whole force into the endeavour
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 to make man good instead of evil. Christianity is in- 
 tensely practical. She has no trait more striking than 
 her common sense. 
 
 In her corrupt form, however, Christianity takes 
 exactly that main characteristic of Paganism. She too 
 twaddles about gods and goddesses, under the name of 
 saints, and spends all her strength on ceremonial per- 
 formance, in lieu of doing her great duty of making 
 men happy by making them good. 
 
 6 It looks paradoxical, and yet I am of a mind to think 
 it true, that the surest way to become charitable towards 
 those who differ from us, is to be zealous in endeavour- 
 ing to proselytize them. As far as I have seen, no 
 people are so intolerant towards other sects and churches 
 as those who sit at ease in their arm-chairs, and never 
 move a finger to convert them. Whereas, the man who 
 is engaged in the attempt to bring his antagonists over, 
 seems to get into the soundest state of mind with regard 
 to them. He detects more and more the delusions that 
 have led them astray ; he feels more and more interest 
 and affection for the blunderers themselves ; while 
 the other has a general vague detestation of both the 
 creed and the credulous scoundrels who hold it. 
 
 7 There is reason to believe that, instead of the " un- 
 fat homed caves of ocean " being black with outer dark- 
 ness, they are ablaze with golden splendour. The 
 creatures brought up from tens of thousands of feet 
 below the surface, are singularly phosphorescent, and it 
 is probable, nay, almost certain, that every movement of 
 every living being in those abyssmal depths flashes out 
 brilliancy. A more fancy-stirring fact I never heard of. 
 
 8 The microscope is almost as humbling as the tele- 
 scope. The microscope shows that the race of man is as 
 paltry in point of number, as the telescope shows his 
 habitation, the earth, to be in point of size.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 7 
 
 9 Lord Bacon's career is inexplicable, unless you bear 
 Lord Coke's career in mind. Nothing would stimulate 
 a man's worldliness, and mere selfish ambition, so much, 
 as the successes of an abfwrred rival. Hard would it be 
 to sit in our study, and philosophize for posterity, while 
 a fellow we hate is winning the prizes that we might 
 gain, and is filling the world's mouth with his name. 
 Lord Bacon was like a good pointer who is drawn on to 
 put up the grouse by his ill-behaved companion. 
 
 10 Next to the devilish wickedness of burning heretics, 
 the worst crime that has been committed in the name of 
 religion is, in my opinion, the enforcing of celibacy on 
 her priests, monks, and nuns, by the Romish Church. 
 Think what infinite, incalculable misery this shameful 
 restriction must have caused in the last thousand years ! 
 What a huge army of warm loving hearts must have 
 been withheld from all the most endearing ties by which 
 life is cheered ! What a throng of those who would 
 have revelled in the joys of home have been forced 
 to live in weary loneliness ! What a host of those, 
 whose delicate health or advancing age rendered the 
 tenderness of womanly care essential, have lingered and 
 died untended ! Again, what a multitude of consciences 
 have been stained with sin, owing to this most infernal 
 denial of the instincts given by God to all His crea- 
 tures ! 
 
 Note, that all this sin and suffering has been wrought 
 by an exaggerated endeavour after holiness. 
 
 1 i There is no truer consolation than that which nature 
 has provided the great comfort of tears. " Pleurez, 
 pleurez, ma chere, cela vous fera du bien," as the old hag 
 says in Gil Bias. 
 
 12 Nothing but actual experience could make a man 
 believe in himself. Are any of the improbabilities of 
 revelation so improbable as the nature of man ?
 
 8 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 13 The best thoughts are the most trite. The curiosities 
 of philosophy are not really the most worth having, 
 though they make people stare more. The largest and, 
 at the same time, the most profitable part of a thinking 
 man's meditations simply leads him to those conclusions, 
 which the world reached long ago. But then, these old 
 truths are ten times more valuable to a man who has 
 thought them out for himself, than to him who has 
 merely taken them on hearsay. 
 
 14 Proverbs are potted wisdom. 
 
 15 The poor body has had very hard lines. Poets, 
 philosophers and preachers have covered it with ridicule, 
 abuse, and lamentation. Shakespeare calls it a muddy 
 vesture of decay ; Plato described it as a jibbing horse ; 
 Jeremy Taylor treats it almost as if it were the Devil 
 himself. But if the poor thing had wit enough to speak 
 for itself, it would say, Whence comes envy ? Is it not 
 a vice of the mind ? Whence pride ? the mind again. 
 Whence ambition ? the mind again. Whence covetous- 
 ness robbery murder ? If the mind has not all to do 
 with these, at any rate she has the largest part of the 
 guilt. Why, give the poor body a beefsteak and a glass 
 of beer, and it is content. 'Tis the mind that leads it 
 such a dance after the vain glories of the world, and 
 makes it work all kinds of wickedness in the struggle to 
 gain them. Did Robespierre slay his thousands to please 
 his body ? What could his body get by it ? No. He 
 wanted to please the fancies of his villainous mind. 
 
 In truth, however, the more one tries to set apart the 
 spirit and the body, the more profound do we perceive 
 their union to be : the more do we feel that man is one 
 being, the material and the spiritual so blended that we, 
 at least, cannot divide them. 
 
 1 6 First there come up, here and there, in the brown bare 
 hedgerows, a few flowers, starveling and alone. They
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 9 
 
 bud, and they wither, and we pity their forlorn case, and 
 the boldness that led them to face so early the bitter 
 brunt of the winds. But they tell that spring is at hand ; 
 and, in a few weeks, in every lane and every thicket, the 
 flowers will be laughing into life. 
 
 So, too, in the moral world. John Huss was burnt 
 and burnt out, insomuch, that Luther himself was 
 amazed and furious when Eck called him a Hussite. 
 Luther's appeal was the same as the appeal of John 
 Huss ; but time had marched on, and now the response 
 to the call was like that when 
 
 " All the hollow deep 
 Of hell resounded," 
 
 at the voice of the archangel, and 
 
 ' ' At once on every side 
 
 Men heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung 
 Upon the wing ; as when men wont to watch 
 On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread, 
 Wake and bestir themselves ere well awake. 
 So to their general's voice they soon obeyed 
 Innumerable." 
 
 And we see the same thing in dramas of less name. 
 In the middle of the last century, a few lonely voices 
 were raised up against the Slave Trade. At length the 
 true season came, and then we find Wilberforce and 
 Clarkson, and many others, without any communication, 
 all striking out, at the same time, the same thought that 
 the Slave Trade was a trade fit for devils. It was the 
 same with regard to the movement for the reformation of 
 Prison Discipline. All Howard's energy failed in effect- 
 ing permanent reforms ; he was almost single-handed. 
 Thirty years later, multitudes of little streams ran into 
 the same channel, and the torrent grew resistless. In 
 literature, in science, in politics, we find a few stray swal- 
 lows preceding the flight, whose coming they foretell. 
 
 Or is not this metaphor altogether the wrong one ? 
 Would it not be more right to say that we see one 
 flower now and fifty afterwards, because the first has 
 begotten the fifty ? This is the more agreeable way of 
 looking at it, because it encourages us to believe that
 
 10 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 our thoughts, if scattered abroad, may long hence, when 
 we are dead and clean forgotten, work out what we wish 
 done, having sown themselves in other minds, and grown 
 up and borne the fruit of action. 
 
 But no. The real fact is, that the nation's mind 
 gradually ripens to a certain opinion ; some minds 
 yellowing first, (not necessarily, though probably, the 
 foremost minds,) and the commonplace ones later on. 
 Rather one might say, that ideas seem to dawn like the 
 day upon the mind of society ; first " the cedar tops and 
 hills seem burnished gold," and afterwards the valleys 
 themselves are flooded with splendour. 
 
 1 7 Men's natures are neither black nor white, but brown. 
 
 1 8 I believe the best check to anger would be the thought 
 What is my little contretemps beside the anguish that 
 wrings the heart of the world ! Surely, a thoughtful 
 man should have taught himself moral perspective. He 
 ought to see himself, and what touches him, with the 
 mighty scene of life behind. But we fill up our own 
 foreground till we hide the very snow-capped hills. 
 
 19 To read the account of Socrates' death at the end of 
 the *aifiK, and then Byron's glorious lines upon it at the 
 beginning of the Corsair, is like hearing a strain from a 
 bugle, and then the sweet echo across the lake. Plato's 
 description is nearer to a Scriptural one than any other 
 description in the world ; it is so true, so tender, so 
 unconscious of effect, yet so delicately and exquisitely 
 wrought. It reminds one of St. John. 
 
 It should be studied along with Lord Campbell's 
 account of the last hours of Sir Thomas More, to whom 
 Socrates, at least the Socrates of Plato bore a closer 
 resemblance than to any other hero of modern times, in 
 thoughtfulness, in originality, in sweetness, in mildness, 
 in bravery ; in the queemess of his wife's temper ; in 
 delicate playfulness and humour ; and in that both died
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 11 
 
 by the hand of the executioner, because their very 
 wisdom and goodness brought them into conflict with 
 
 tyrants. 
 
 20 The great want in family life that strikes me is this, 
 that there are so few tete-d,-tet?,s. You live on from 
 year's end to year's end, surrounded by those whom you 
 love, and chatting together ; but it is rare to be thrown 
 alone with any one individual, and have really intimate 
 talk with him or her. Yet the difference in value is 
 immense betweeu mere social chat, and that mingling of 
 mind with mind, which is impossible if others are by. 
 But the real fact is, that unless some effort is made for 
 it, or unless circumstances are unusually favourable, the 
 very members of the same family live, one might say, on 
 parallel lines, without ever touching. 
 
 21 There is no phrase in the English tongue with so 
 much good strong truth in it, as the phrase " to take 
 pains." Yes, pain, actual pain, there must be, ere any 
 harvest can be reaped. And no truth can be better 
 worth grappling with, and mastering, than this. If you 
 will not face pain at the outset, you will never reach the 
 reward. Without sacrifice good cannot be won. 
 
 But our usual habit is to stop short the moment we 
 feel discomfort ; whereas it should be engraven upon our 
 heart of hearts, that it is no matter whether we like doing 
 a thing or not the only question should be, " Is it well 
 to do it ? " It vexes me to see how many young men 
 actually deem it reason enough for leaving undone that 
 which they ought to do, because, forsooth, it is "a bore," 
 because it taxes their laziness, or their shyness, or their 
 vanity, or their love of amusement. Surely a manly man 
 would be ashamed to think so much of his own 
 convenience. It seems to me effeminacy to make so 
 much of oneself, and shrink so tenderly from the least 
 touch of annoyance. True courage would make light 
 of such scratches, when duty was to be done. He who 
 won't do a kindness because it may bore him, is playing 
 the part of a coward.
 
 12 NOTES. OF THOUGHT. 
 
 22 Here is a recipe for teaching you what your real value 
 is to other people. Take the best, wisest, and sweetest, 
 of your friends. Consider how infinitely less, even that 
 wisest, best, and sweetest of men is to you, than you are 
 to yourself ! So little, then, are you to others. 
 
 23 Some of the most humane of men and women, some of 
 those who have the most delicate feelings, and who are 
 the most thoughtful for others, are yet among the most 
 irritable. 
 
 24 Do calamities burst and go out like meteors ? Truly 
 it is the strangest thing to see the cheerful happiness of 
 those that have gone through the very furnace of 
 suffering. The widow who has been bereft of her chil- 
 dren, may seem in after years no whit less placid, no 
 whit less serenely gladsome ; nay, more gladsome, than 
 the women whose blessings are still round them. I am 
 amazed to see how wounds heal. Nay, not so. The 
 wounds are still there ; but they leave wondrous scope 
 for happiness. 
 
 25 Most intellectual labour (say of the author, speaker, 
 artist) carries the labourer through three stages of 
 feeling : the first, of exultation while creating ; the 
 second, of anxiety gilded with hope in bringing his 
 creation before the world ; the third, of flat mortifi- 
 
 . cation in looking back on it, and finding that it is very 
 bad, and that the world does not care a bean about it. 
 
 26 A nation does wisely if not well, in starving her men 
 of genius. Fatten them, and they are done for. 
 
 27 Readers abuse writers and say their writing is wretched 
 stuff, stale nonsense, and so on. But what might not 
 writers justly say of their readers ? What poor, dull, 
 indolent, feeble, careless minds do they bring to deal 
 with thoughts whose excellence lies deep !
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 13 
 
 A reader's highest achievement is to succeed in form- 
 inn: a true and clear conception of the author from his 
 works. 
 
 28 The grand distinction between the states of barbarism 
 and civilization seems to be, that in the former state 
 each man stands alone ; in the latter he is linked to 
 others, and others to him. In fact, it is the same differ- 
 ence that there is between sand and a tree. In the 
 perfectly barbarous state, as, e.g., in that of the Aus- 
 tralian savages, or the Patagonians, each man makes his 
 own arrows, kills his own meat, and builds his own 
 wigwam. It is the self-contained, not the social, state. 
 They may be gregarious, but they manage each for him- 
 self alone, like cattle. Precisely as the society makes 
 way towards civilization, does each man become depen- 
 dent upon all the rest, so that, in a high state of civili- 
 zation, hundreds of thousands of persons will have 
 worked to supply the needs of one man for a single day 
 and hundreds may get in return the results of that 
 one man's labour. To supply him with meat, the 
 butcher, the fanner, the labourer, have been employed 
 directly ; and each of them, in order to get his instru- 
 ments, has employed the ironmonger, who employed the 
 miner, the smelter, the railway company, who employed 
 the butcher, the baker, &c., &c., &c., to enable them to 
 do their part of the work. The pottery on which he 
 eats has set hundreds to work in the same way in 
 Staffordshire ; the knife at Sheffield ; the fork in South 
 America, and also on board the ships that brought over 
 the silver, and in London in the jeweller's shop ; his 
 sugar in Cuba, the whole slave trade helping in the 
 process ; his salt has set men to work in Cheshire, his 
 pepper in Java, his table-cloth in Holland, his ivory, 
 handled bread-knife in India, his pocket-handkerchief 
 in the United States, his coat in Australia, his studs in 
 the Ural Mountains, his sovereigns in California, his 
 pence in Cornwall, &c., &c., &c., &c., &c. And each of 
 these direct producers of his comfort, has employed in- 
 directly perhaps ten thousand workmen apiece.
 
 14 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 Nor is it only in material things that the various 
 members of society become dependent, the one upon the 
 other, as civilization advances : but ideas on all subjects 
 become diffused, and thus the minds of the people grow 
 linked together. 
 
 The tendency, then, of civilization, is to weld society 
 into one : to build up its loose bricks into a complete 
 edifice : to combine the various particles of the human 
 race as it were into a single new being. But while 
 the separate individuals become thus built into one 
 another, so that each one is supported on every side, 
 and again is pressed upon on every side, by the rest ; 
 yet so curiously is the plan contrived, that the indi- 
 vidual does not become the more merged into others in 
 character, but, on the contrary, this blending of the 
 members of society into one, goes along with the highest 
 development of individual character. It is, indeed, one 
 of the commonplaces of table talk to bewail the loss of 
 individuality, that comes from the over refinement and 
 over intercourse of society, as if men grew as smooth as 
 sea-pebbles from being rolled about among one another. 
 No doubt, men do acquire a uniform routine of manner ; 
 they come to talk in much the same tone, and about 
 much the same things, and wear the same dress, and 
 so forth. But, in spite of all this outward smoothing 
 down, high civilization rather helps than hinders the 
 growth of real individuality. The lower levels of civili- 
 zation are the deadest levels. The thoroughly savage 
 tribe consists of a mere dull series of ruffians. The 
 most degraded classes in a civilized country are the 
 most uniform in their characteristics. It is when the 
 mind is cultivated and the feelings cherished and 
 brought out, that true individuality is most developed. 
 The more profound and vigorous the man's mind, the 
 more unique is he, although he may have the most 
 routine manners possible. And a high state of civili- 
 zation, such as ours is now, tends to draw out the latent 
 energies of both heart and head, and thus to make 
 each man a fresh creature, unlike any other within, 
 however much assimilated to others in outward de- 
 meanour.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 15 
 
 29 It illustrates the remarkable compensations of this 
 world, that in warding off pains, we rob pleasures of 
 their sweetest honey. We scarce know the exquisite 
 delight that eating, drinking, sleeping, washing, can 
 give, because, at huge outlay, we have fended off hunger, 
 thirst, weariness, and dirt. Tis our very skill in study- 
 ing enjoyment that dulls it. 
 
 30 The diffident are very apt to misinterpret the feelings of 
 others towards them. A vainer person is often easier to 
 get on with, and so takes a more leading place in society. 
 Thus a pretty, silly, self-conceited woman, will very 
 often be far more courted, and seemingly far more liked 
 and admired than women of infinitely higher charms. 
 All the while, the men do not like her a tenth part so 
 well. They hold the other in far greater love and 
 respect ; but so far as chat goes, she bears the bell. 
 
 31 The broad view we get by studying history, or by 
 dwelling on great schemes and far-off results, brings 
 with it one danger. It tends to make us think too 
 slightingly of the individual man. Reading of the woes 
 of millions, dealing with men in masses, how small a 
 thing does it seem to us, whether A. B. is more or less 
 at his ease ! You may see that this tells on those who 
 sway the fate of empires. To a Napoleon, the death of 
 even ten thousand men looks a mere speck beside the 
 boundless stretch of the affairs before him. We actually 
 feel this even with regard to the Almighty. When we 
 look at the stars, the work of His fingers, the sun and 
 the moon which He has ordained, we cannot but exclaim, 
 " What is man that Thou art mindful of him ! " And 
 hardly can the Psalmist persuade us that He who holds the 
 universe in the hollow of His hand, can still show tender 
 care for the least of the beings whom He has made. 
 
 Perhaps the best corrective is to remember the immen- 
 sity of one's own importance ! Judging from ourselves, we 
 can feel how vastly it matters, whether one person is, or 
 is not, wretched.
 
 16 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 It may be noted, however, that this undervaluing of 
 the individual never leads us to bate one hair's breadth 
 of our appreciation of ourselves. We may read all his- 
 tory from end to end, but our own particular vexation 
 or grievance will loom as large as if the world were filled 
 with it. It is only our neighbour who is dwarfed. 
 
 32 What is usually called "the study of character," is 
 altogether another thing from the study of human 
 nature. Those who, as they say, study character, look 
 out eagerly for singularities ; and the more unique the 
 traits are which they find up, the more they are pleased. 
 And, doubtless, this study is, in its own way, highly 
 amusing and interesting. But he who studies human 
 nature, cares comparatively little for mere individual 
 peculiarities. What he wants to master, is the character, 
 not of John Hodge, but of mankind. He seeks to know 
 what the great laws are by which the human race is 
 governed. He watches men, and their doings, not to 
 amuse himself by smiling at their oddities ; but to find 
 out the forces which keep man in his orbit. 
 
 The " student of character," for example, would be 
 charmed to meet, in real life, with the carpenter in Peter 
 Simple, who thought that everything had happened 
 27,575 years before, and would happen again 27,575 
 years off. To the student of human nature, such a 
 humour would be of trifling value. He would feel a 
 thousand times more interest in a character like, for 
 example, that of Robarts in Framley Parsonage, who 
 without being commonplace thinks, and feels, and acts, 
 as other men would be likely to think, and feel, and 
 act : given the circumstances, and a not unusual cast of 
 character. Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Falstaff, are not 
 of priceless value because they were utterly unlike any 
 other men that ever were or ever would be ; but because, 
 with all their intense individuality, they are types of 
 human nature. 
 
 33 Vast is the pain that comes to men from Vanity. Her 
 thirst is unquenchable. Give her an ocean give her
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 17 
 
 wealth, place, beauty, power, fame, victory, her maw 
 but swells the larger, and she screams the more lustily, 
 Give, give ! From Napoleon down to the Lord Lieu- 
 tenant of your county, you see that be a man never so 
 high, he is longing to be higher. I mark it as one of 
 the things that tend to equalize fortunes, that, actually, 
 the more vanity is pampered, the more its thirst rages. 
 The low down scarcely look to be admired, and the 
 craving sleeps. They do, in very fact, suffer less, as a 
 rule, from unsatisfied vanity, than those who stand 
 crowned with a thousand honours ! 
 
 34 No one thing does the experience of life press more 
 home on us, than the immense supply of kindness latent 
 in the hearts of our fellow-creatures. 
 
 With no less force is one convinced of their unkind-" 
 ness their readiness to give pain, their coldness to 
 suffering. 
 
 Whenever you look at human nature in masses, you 
 find every truth met by a counter truth, and both equally 
 true. 
 
 35 The idea matters little, the execution is all in all. In 
 art, in writing, in speaking, in war, in statesmanship, 
 what mainly tells is not the mind's head, but her hand, 
 not her thoughts, but their working out. 
 
 Ay, but the fine handling itself comes from the force 
 of the conception. The chisel strikes true because the 
 mind is on fire. 
 
 36 I wish exceedingly that some poet had set forth to us 
 a hero of transcendent nobleness, so noble, so majestic, 
 that he should make our bosoms swell with an enthusi- 
 asm of admiration and our minds glow with the resolve 
 that we will be such ourselves. It is strange that the 
 Devil in Paradise Lost comes nearest to this idea. 
 
 37 We smile at mothers for thinking that their own 
 ducklings are the princes among ducklings ; but in fact
 
 18 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 they overrate the badness quite as much as the good- 
 ness of their children. Mothers are tortured by the 
 fancy that their boys and girls go beyond other people's 
 in all manner of failings. Oh that my Toby were as 
 sweet, were as loving, were as clever, were as diligent as 
 Mrs. Brown's Toby, is a cry from the mother's heart, not 
 so loud, but quite as deep, as her boastings. 
 
 38 Merry people always think that their merriment must 
 make their house pleasanter to their guests. Very often 
 it is a burden. More tranquil talk would be more 
 pleasing. Ceaseless fun is almost as bad as dulness. It 
 is less easy too to get into gear with gay talk than with 
 grave. Shy men are thrice shy with the lively. And to 
 be forced to make laughter to pattern would damp the 
 spirits of an undertaker himself. 
 
 39 All high truth is poetry. Take the results of Science ; 
 they glow with beauty, cold and hard as are the methods 
 of reaching them. 
 
 40 To show yourself a fool, imitate the originalities of the 
 wise. 
 
 41 He who affronts the opinions of others, shows a very 
 gross ignorance of human nature, if he is amazed at 
 finding that they mainly assail him, not for things he has 
 said, but for things he has not said. The truth is, that 
 being enraged with him, they want others to be equally 
 angry : and they, therefore, put into his mouth more 
 exasperating statements than any that really came from 
 it. It is not that they themselves suppose him to have 
 made such statements : or that he can pacify them by 
 proving that he did not make them. They assert these 
 things of him, in order to draw others into their hue and 
 cry, who would else look on coldly. Of course they are 
 not aware that this goes on inside them, and that they 
 are saying what is false ; but if you watch any religious 
 or political bear-baiting, you will see that what takes
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 19 
 
 place is this, Some are put out by what the man said. 
 To set others off against him, they puff out and twist 
 about what he said, and put still worse things into his 
 mouth. In time, they themselves grow sure that he said 
 them. 
 
 42 Is there a fair balance of happiness among men, so that, 
 upon the whole, with some little ups and downs, we all 
 are much of a muchness in actual happiness ? 
 
 Certainly not. Some men are far, very far, happier 
 than others. Not only is there boundless variety in the 
 sources of happiness open to different persons (which is 
 too obvious to be disputed), but there is also infinite 
 variety in the degrees of happiness itself, enjoyed by 
 different persons. 
 
 In some degree, however, happiness tends to find its 
 owu level ; to run down from those who have gathered 
 it up highest ; and to water the plains of those that lie 
 lowest. Two or three laws of nature act powerfully that 
 way. 
 
 One is the law of human nature, that what is uncommon 
 is uncommonly delightful ; what is familiar tends to 
 grow tasteless. This law helps to cheer the man of few 
 pleasures, for it makes him enjoy them acutely. It helps 
 to dull the man of many pleasures, for it deadens his 
 feeling of them. Thus it tends to bring the two to the 
 same level. 
 
 The law, that the pursuit gives a keener zest than the 
 possession, has a similar tendency. 
 
 The influence of imagination goes a long way to irra- 
 diate one man's lot with hope, and to throw clouds over 
 another man's lot from disappointment. The search for 
 happiness is strikingly like climbing up a mountain. 
 We see a ridge ahead, and never dream that it is not the 
 summit. Once reached, we see that it is a mere step of 
 the ladder. Another ridge rises it looks like the top 
 and disappoints us in the same way. At last we get to 
 the real top ; and a cold cloud sweeps over us. 
 
 Another circumstance which greatly tends to bring 
 down people's happiness towards the same level, is that 
 
 c 2
 
 20 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 remarkable trait of human nature, that a single mis- 
 fortune is enough to prevent us from enjoying any part 
 of our good fortune. We are like Haman, whose good 
 luck was all spoiled to him by seeing one Jew sitting in 
 the king's gate. A man may have all else that heart can 
 wish, and yet the loss or ill-doing of his son, the death 
 of his wife, the rheumatism in his shoulder, or the gout 
 in his toe, a blast to his fame, or some other single cir- 
 cumstance, may wholly ruin his peace of mind. Happi- 
 ness shines out on a man like the sun ; but one little 
 cloud may make all his life grey and gloomy. It is vain 
 to say to Ahab, You are a king, abounding in wealth and 
 power, with your sweet wife Jezebel, and seventy strap- 
 ping sons, no, he takes to his bed, " heavy and dis- 
 pleased," and turns away his face, and will eat no bread, 
 because he can't get the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite ! 
 If one stone is wanting to the arch, down it all tumbles. 
 
 Another thing that goes some way to make different 
 people nearly equally happy, is the boundless variety of 
 the flowers from which happiness may be sucked. If 
 happiness were only to be found in a very narrow number 
 of circumstances, for example, if only in wealth, in rank, 
 or in power over others, then but a paltry few of the 
 human race would have any enjoyment. But, thank 
 God, it is to be found lurking in ten thousand corners. 
 It may be found in the affection of a wife, in the prattle 
 of a child, in social talk, in fresh air and sunshine, in 
 clear streams, green meadows, and beautiful views, and 
 the sound of church bells on a summer's morning. In 
 toil itself, there is sweetness ; and, so too, there is in rest. 
 One may squeeze pleasure from thought and study ; 
 another from horses and dogs ; another discovers it in 
 lovely neckcloths, and well cut trousers and park hacks ; 
 another is made happy by the strife of politics ; or by the 
 earnest pursuit of benevolence : and religion offers solid 
 comforts to those who seek them. When the seeds of 
 happiness are thus wafted hither and thither by every 
 breeze, some are pretty sure to alight on every man's 
 field ; though on one man's they fall in greater number, 
 and spring up in a richer crop. 
 
 These thoughts, if much dwelt upon, might almost
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 21 
 
 lead us to the very soothing doctrine, that we all are 
 "much of a muchness" in point of happiness. But 
 although these and other laws of human life tend in 
 some measure to make it a level, and to throw down its 
 hills and fill up its valleys, yet, assuredly, they are 'very 
 far from accomplishing that end completely. Look 
 round at the poverty, disease, and vice of some, and then 
 turn to the happy homes of others, who have every 
 comfort and elegance around them, with affectionate 
 children, and sweet tempers, and vigorous health, and 
 beautiful scenery, and a due proportion of labour and 
 leisure, and one sees at once the folly of that notion. 
 No ; the happiest men have some reasons to be unhappy, 
 and the unhappiest have some sources of happiness ; but 
 still a wide gulf is fixed between them. 
 
 The worst thing about happiness is that no one has so 
 much appearance, at any rate, of enjoying it as the selfish 
 and self-conceited coxcomb, who passes through life with- 
 out sensibility or thought, and pushes his way, regardless 
 of others and untrammelled by delicacy,-just where he 
 pleases. It is mortifying to observe how well intense 
 self-conceit, which we would gladly see rapped over the 
 knuckles, carries a man in a sort of triumph through 
 life ; while the gentle, modest, and sensitive, get thrust 
 aside and trampled on. 
 
 Even in that case, however, there are compensations. 
 The unselfish is more cherished, his sweetness to others 
 brings sweetness to himself. 
 
 43 People believe that they have a clear insight into the 
 character of their acquaintance, and even that they see 
 through men in five minutes' talk. 
 
 No doubt you catch the outline of a man's make very 
 speedily ; but it is a wonderfully vague outline. How 
 vague it is you would hardly believe, unless you tried to 
 write down what you have found out as to the man's 
 nature. Have you learnt whether he is sweet in temper ; 
 or unkindly, irritable, passionate, nay, even cruel ? We 
 all know what strange lies the face tells, even on this 
 first and foremost point. Have you learnt whether he is
 
 22 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 firm or feeble-willed ? Is he swift or slow in decision ? 
 Is he selfish, or thoughtful and self-denying ? Is he deep 
 and steady in his affections ? Is he full of vanity, and, 
 eager for praise, keenly alive to what men will say and 
 think about him ? Is his modesty put on or real ? Can 
 you even tell whether he is of a merry heart ; or is it only 
 society that has made him sparkle ? Is he actuated by 
 high principles ? Has he lofty aspirations ? Does he 
 love what is noble and true ? Has he any exquisite en- 
 joyment of the beautiful ? Can he relish art, poetry, 
 nature ? Has he any speculation, any powers of thought, 
 any creative genius ? 
 
 If you can't answer these and a hundred such questions, 
 you have not mastered what the man is ; and yet, if you 
 can answer these questions at a day's or a week's notice, 
 simply from what you yourself make out by your own in- 
 sight, why, you are an amazingly clever fellow. Think 
 of the men and women you know. Who could have 
 dreamed, d priori, that Jenkins had all that astonishing 
 acuteness of thought, and power of delineating, which 
 come out in his novel ? Who could have guessed that 
 Brown had it in him to be an impassioned orator ? Who 
 could have suspected Robinson of all that tenderness and 
 magnanimity ? or Jackson of such endurance, or Jones of 
 such energy, or in short any of us of some of our main 
 traits, whether good or evil ? No ; we think we know 
 others because the unknown part of their nature is so 
 absolutely out of our ken, that we do not even think of 
 its being there. But the more I study men, the more I 
 see that we do but skim their surface. 
 
 44 The most highflown, romantic, glowing philanthropist 
 I ever saw, was a lady, who in her own home was the 
 fiercest little vixen unhung ! For all that, her romantic 
 benevolence was real. In fact, her heat in scheming good 
 was the same heat that set her squabbling. 
 
 45 I find that this is the way with savages in all parts of 
 the world. Seem strong, and they are the kindest of
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 23 
 
 friends so kind, sometimes even so polished in their 
 courtesy, that you can scarcely fail to trust them. Seem 
 weak, and at once the wild beast in them comes out. 
 They tarn and rend you. 
 
 46 We are horrorstruck at the almost incredible cruelty 
 with which, in history, the Henry Vlllths, &c., &c., have 
 put to death those who simply stood in their way, and 
 we (most justly) look on them as execrable villains. 
 
 And yet you may perceive that excellent good men are 
 quietly glad when death knocks off the Naboth whose 
 vineyard they want to buy, the neighbour who has 
 affronted them, the M.P. whose seat in Parliament they 
 covet, &c., &c. Nay, they will look forward to the event, 
 sometimes with irritated impatience. 
 
 They have no power to get men of Belial to stone Mr. 
 Smith with stones. But have not they inside them the 
 will that might be ripened by the power ? 
 
 4* Many men are like the rogue elephants in Ceylon 
 individuals who are shut out by their fellows from their 
 society ; kept aloof, and then abhorred for the savage 
 feeling which that exclusion engenders. Yes, and many 
 and many a gentle enough gentleman and gentle enough 
 lady are made sour by this same feeling of being cold- 
 shouldered by the world about them. It is curious that 
 we feel little pity for such grief ; nay, our instant incli- 
 nation is to cold-shoulder them too, merely because other 
 people do : and because we feel irritated by their re- 
 senting it. 
 
 48 The man who is castigated, whether it be with a cat- 
 o'-nine-tails, or a criticism, always persuades himself 
 that his punishment is owing, not to his own fault, but to 
 a personal spite against him individually, on the part of 
 his punisher. This eases his self-love. 
 
 49 It is an unkind kindness to wink at the procrastina
 
 24 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 tion of subordinates. Without the dread of being blown 
 up, every one of us would become a putter- off till to- 
 morrow. But most bitter is the fruit of that sweetest 
 fault : and it is well and happy for those under you, if 
 you drive them, even harshly, to be prompt. 
 
 5 Of vain things, excuses are the vainest. Nobody heeds 
 them. Men have no time to weigh the ins and outs of 
 other men's blunders. They can but judge by results. 
 And your plea for yourself, instead of setting you 
 straight, will only cut sharper the remembrance of your 
 folly. 
 
 How often out shooting will a man call attention to 
 his bad shooting by trying to explain it. How often out 
 hunting do men make one aware that they have been 
 shirking, by their excuses for it. " Qui s'excuse, s'accuse," 
 is one of the truest of proverbs. 
 
 5 1 Every year's more varied and intimate intercourse with 
 my countrymen and countrywomen makes me more 
 deeply sensible of the prodigious amount of goodness of 
 head and heart among them. Take some three or four 
 of the families best known to you, and really make a 
 study of all there is in them, and you will be amazed at 
 the wealth of goodness stored up in them. But to 
 judge them aright, you must get beyond the surface, on 
 which lie most of the distasteful qualities. The iron 
 and the silver lie below. 
 
 52 The world abhors closeness, and all but admires ex- 
 travagance. Yet a slack hand shows weakness : a tight 
 hand strength. 
 
 53 The more one studies women, the more one perceives 
 how athirst their hearts are for affection ; how eagerly 
 they respond to it. They lap up tenderness as a cat laps 
 milk. All the stranger, that it is just a toss up whether 
 a lover's love will enchant a girl, or affront her. There
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 25 
 
 is no rule at all. His devotedness may warm her towards 
 him. It may render him hateful. 
 
 54 How women love each other ! What strong, fervent 
 attachments : what tender interest in each other's trials 
 and joys : what fulness in the utterance of affection ! 
 
 I say this in good faith. Yet on the other hand, is it 
 not the fact that women care for each other but slenderly ? 
 that all their souls are given to the nobler sex ? that 
 they regard each other with an evil eye, rather as rivals 
 than as friends ? 
 
 Each is true. 
 
 55 Fortune deals out success with much fairness. If we 
 do really and truly wish for a thing, as a rule, she gives 
 it ; only she must be sure that we do really and truly wish 
 for it. Experience shows that success is due less to 
 ability than to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself 
 to his work body and soul. "Tis slackness of heart, not 
 weakness of head, that keeps most men down. When 
 Napoleon wrote to Joseph that he enjoyed studying the 
 positions of his armies, " like a school-girl her romance," 
 he let out half his secret. 
 
 56 A man may be borne up under the laughter or rage 
 which his saying or doing has called forth, by his own 
 conviction that he has said or done what is wise ; but 
 how if he be carried off his feet by what all the world is 
 telling him, and grows doubtful whether, after all, he has 
 not been foolish ? That must be a painful state ; nor 
 is it a rare one. Many an author, statesman, artist, is 
 in that evil plight, catching the feeling of the throng and 
 condemning his own work, just because all the world 
 condemns it. 
 
 5 7 Among the calamities of life, shortness is by no means 
 the least. Legs five inches longer would make many 
 lives materially happier. The tall are more envied than 
 they wot of. Yet the short have the best spirits, and the 
 most energy.
 
 26 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 58 Strength of character is not, as a matter of course, 
 indicated by a strength in the character, nor weakness 
 of character by a weakness. Weak men are often brave, 
 often firm, often self-reliant ; while men of force are 
 often cowardly, yielding, with no self-trust. Very strong 
 men are often vain ; very weak men often have a manly 
 indifference to what others may say of them. How 
 many men of very good powers there are who cannot 
 make up their mind, nor stick to it when it is made 
 up ; while mere geese are at the same time geese of 
 decision ! 
 
 59 The art of ruling lies mainly in keeping one's eyes open. 
 The anxiety to please, the dread of displeasing, are so 
 strong, that if men know they are watched, they are 
 almost sure to do their utmost. The laziness of under- 
 lings comes from the shut eyes of their chief. 
 
 60 The world gives his rewards according to a definite 
 and, perhaps, a sound principle. He honours those who 
 give him pleasure. The thing the world wants is, to be 
 pleased ; not to be made wiser, or better, or, in the long 
 run, happier ; but to have, at once, on the spot, a feeling 
 of enjoyment. Let a man but give him this feeling of 
 enjoyment, and he will clothe that man in royal apparel, 
 and bring him on horseback through the street of the 
 city, and proclaim before him, " Thus shall it be done 
 unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour." 
 You grumble, because you have done far nobler work for 
 him, yet he leaves you dressed in frieze, to ride your 
 own donkey at your own sweet will. But you have no 
 right to be cross. You have given him good things, no 
 doubt : but you have not given him the one thing he 
 ivanted. 
 
 6 1 Some self-conceit, or, at least, self-complacency, is 
 evolved in all intellectual labour, just as heat is evolved 
 in all physical labour. Nobody ever thinks anything 
 out, without being, at the time, a little pleased with him*
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 27 
 
 self, however much disgusted he may be with his work 
 and himself afterwards. But it is a part of a writer's 
 skill to hide up this self-admiration. We cannot abide a 
 writer, however able, if he seems to be peeping round at 
 us to see what we think of him. (As Bulwer does.) 
 
 62 A large family party is rather too much like a flight 
 of tomtits ; everlasting twitter, but no conversation ; 
 gregariousness without companionship. 
 
 63 It is a curious trait of human nature that suicide 
 never (or hardly ever) arises from sorrow for the loss of 
 beloved ones, but nearly always from some disappointment 
 or mortification, or poverty. And so, too, nobody dies 
 of grief, many of vexation. Is it that sorrow for the 
 dead is not the heaviest trial ? or is it that such sorrow 
 is of a softening kind ; not one to craze us, like anxiety 
 or disappointment ? 
 
 64 Of the fact that in most countries the ownership of 
 land is deemed honourable, and trade base, there can be 
 no question. How came this feeling ? We cannot 
 suppose that an instinct of that sort is a first principle 
 in human nature. The feeling must be generated by 
 some association of ideas. 
 
 The possession of land presents several outward ad- 
 vantages which would be likely to catch the eye and 
 tickle the imagination of mankind. But has not the 
 following been the main association ? Most countries 
 have been conquered. The conquerors of course seized 
 the land, being the property that could best be laid 
 hands on. They, therefore, became the sole landowners, 
 and to them trade was needless. To the beaten race 
 trade was the only resource, except hand work ; while 
 land was not to be got. Hence the idea of land became 
 tied up with the idea of the conquerors ; and trade with 
 that of the conquered. A strong association of that kind 
 would linger on for ages.
 
 28 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 65 To judge rightly of man, we should look at him 
 not by himself, but as he stands to the world above him. 
 We must see him as he is, the petty denizen of a paltry 
 planet, one which is but as a grain of sand on the sea-shore. 
 But, again, we must look at him as he stands to the 
 world below him. We must see him as he is, far away 
 the loftiest, out of all comparison the noblest, of all the 
 living beings that we ourselves wot of. We may fancy 
 nobler ones ; we have seen none as noble. 
 
 66 I knew a man whose conversation was particularly rich 
 in knowledge and remarks on all kinds of subjects ; yet he 
 was a bore of the first water, just because he deluged each 
 topic in a flood of words. An angel from heaven would 
 bore us, if he expatiated. 
 
 67 If a man has orderly habits, it is astonishing with how 
 little intellect he can get on perfectly well. Think over 
 any dozen people you know who are thoroughly " comfort- 
 able," and have to thank themselves for it ; why, I dare 
 say all their minds together would hardly fill a peck. 
 But their lack of brain has scarcely stood in their way. 
 Steadiness has been enough. 
 
 68 The temptation which nowadays a man must fight 
 against most steadily, if he wants to make much of his 
 life, is that of desultoriness. We are distracted till we 
 are fit for nothing. Concentration alone conquers ; and 
 with money-making, books, philanthropy, newspapers, 
 chit-chat, hunting, shooting, public duties, concentration 
 is not possible. 
 
 69 I defy you to find out from any man's face whether he 
 is or is not quarrelsome. The sweetest-looking creatures 
 are often the hardest to draw with. Men will have the 
 strangest knack of being at loggerheads with those they 
 have to do with, who yet look good, kind, and wise ; ay, 
 and in other ways, are good, kind, and wise.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 29 
 
 70 It is of -no use to be too good-natured in giving up 
 your own pleasure. If you do what you like, you will 
 like what you do : and really it does not make a hap'orth 
 of difference to other people. If your taking your own 
 way arises from a selfish disregard of others, those others 
 will be pained by your disregard of them. But it is not 
 the thwarting of their wishes, it is the appearance of 
 disregard that troubles them : indeed, your clearly seeing 
 what you like, and getting that done, saves them the 
 burden of leading ; and they are thankful to follow. 
 
 71 London is cruelly belied. True that she has much 
 that is dismal ; but she has much that is beautiful and 
 picturesque. For delicate soft loveliness, I know 
 nothing to compare with the view of Westminster Abbey, 
 over the water in St. James's Park, on a sunny evening. 
 How the fairy towers soar out of the veil of mist below 
 them into the pink light ! Then, how striking is the 
 view of the City from Cheapside, as you approach the 
 Mansion House. And the Thames, at certain points, is 
 nothing less than sublime. We should think Pall-Mail 
 very grand anywhere else. Bishopsgate Without has 
 much, and Park Lane very much, picturesqueness. The 
 horridest part of London is that weary desert about 
 Russell Square. It has not even the merit of grotesque 
 poverty. 
 
 72 It is true that he who understands any art is pain- 
 fully alive to many a shortcoming that escapes untaught 
 eyes ; and is vexed by that which gives tJiem enjoyment. 
 On the other hand, he catches sight of a thousand 
 touches of beauty which the world never heeds. Half 
 the delight, too, of looking at a work of art comes from 
 astonishment at the force of mind which has got over all 
 that stood in its way. But no one can feel this 
 thoroughly, unless he knows the ups and downs of the 
 mountain. 
 
 73 Pulpit moralists often make light of mere outward 
 propriety of life. It is, in fact, such an everyday thing
 
 30 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 that we take it for granted as we take asparagus for 
 granted in June. But, after all, no words can say how 
 wonderful a blessing it is for our country that moral 
 conduct comes so easily to a man as it does now in 
 England. History teems with instances of societies rife 
 with bad faith, rascality, cruelty, drunkenness, adultery, 
 assassination. Nay, there are strata in our own society 
 in which decency is the exception, and vice the rule. 
 
 It is true that there is no great credit to the individual 
 in doing as others do, and keeping from gross vices. 
 In fact many gentlemen who are living at ease with 
 their wives and families, would find it almost more 
 painful than pleasant to drink, swear, cheat, lie, thrash 
 their neighbours, and seduce their neighbours' wives. 
 All these things, however, have been as plentiful as 
 blackberries in other societies ; nay, in English society 
 itself in certain other times. That they are rare now is 
 a blessing of unutterable value ; and yet how little store 
 we set by it ! 
 
 74 You would have supposed that no two characters in 
 history would have more forcibly struck Shakspeare's 
 imagination than those of Julius Caesar and Joan of Arc. 
 Caesar, the most majestic hero of the Roman world ; 
 Joan, the most original, nay, the unique heroine of the 
 Middle Ages. Yet what a failure he made of both of 
 them ! Caasar is a ridiculous gasconader ; Joan, a 
 cracked scullion. 
 
 75 Pitt's marvellous Parliamentary successes were of 
 course, in a great degree, owing to his own genius. But 
 it seems clear that they were mainly due to this, that he 
 hit the public feeling, while his antagonists shot 
 beside it. 
 
 76 One beauty of wealth is, that it gives you a deal of 
 potential as well as of actual enjoyment. Your belly, or 
 at least that of your imagination, is nearly as well filled 
 by feeling, " I could have that if I chose," as by having 
 it. All hunger bites a man the sharper from his
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 31 
 
 knowing that food cannot be had. Those who are 
 pinched, are often wrung by the thought, " Ah what I 
 would do, had I but the means ! " The means would cool 
 the craving. 
 
 77 No moral force is so potent as tenderness. None so 
 cleaves a man's way through the world ; none makes 
 him so affluent in love from others ; none gives him 
 such sway with them. But exquisite tenderness of 
 feeling for others is as rare as it is noble. And those 
 who have it, often cannot show it by deed or word. 
 
 78 This is a noticeable thing in birds, that they never 
 play. The young of cats, dogs, foxes, men, &c., delight 
 in a game of play, and will pretend to fight, pretend to 
 run away, and so forth, for half a summer's day. You 
 never see this with birds, whether old or young. They 
 play no pranks ; they jest no jests. They are a fun-less 
 generation. 
 
 79 Never threaten children. Say to the stubborn boy, 
 Do this, or that, without suggesting any punishment in 
 case of his disobedience. Simply order him as a matter 
 of authority, and let him obey you not because you have 
 threatened him with punishment, but because you have 
 ordered him. If he disobeys, punish him, but let him 
 learn to obey you, because you are his rukr, not because 
 you have held up the fear of a penalty before his eyes. 
 It is curious how much more power a man has when he 
 thus concentrates his will upon a boy, than when he 
 virtually gives the boy the choice between obedience and 
 suffering. 
 
 So I am not astonished that men who have mixed little 
 with the world should boast, because, of course, to any 
 man both himself and his doings must look gigantic till 
 he has measured himself by others. But I do marvel to 
 find that so many men, who have knocked about all their 
 lives among their fellows, should yet not have learnt how
 
 32 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 it hurts a man to" sound his own praises. Self-laudation 
 abounds among the unpolished ; but nothing can stamp 
 a man more sharply as ill-bred. 
 
 It is strange that Shakspeare makes Julius Caesar 
 such an outrageous braggadocio. Why, when he had a 
 man of first-rate force to delineate, he chose to make 
 him mouth about himself like " the great Twalinley," I 
 cannot divine. 
 
 8 1 I more and more see this, that we judge men's 
 abilities less from what they say or do, than from what 
 they look. 'Tis the man's face that gives him weight. 
 His doings help, but not more than his brow. 
 
 82 "Women rule, not by having more force, but by 
 throwing it on one point, just as the Indian guides the 
 elephant. What they will, they will with all their will, 
 without doubt or questioning. The man's mind is 
 oftener pulled many ways by many claims: He also 
 takes a broader view, and sees the evils. Ahab and 
 Jezebel, Macbeth and his lady, show well the difference 
 between man's will and woman's. 
 
 83 The complaint has been made a thousand times, how 
 hard it is that men of noble genius, such as Burns, 
 should so often stick fast in the lower circles of life, 
 while rank and wealth gild those whose worth has not 
 earned them. It seems wrong that a loggerheaded 
 noodle shall stand in the high places of the earth, shone 
 upon by a blaze of good luck, while the man of mind is 
 struggling in the dusky underwood below. 
 
 Certainly it would be a very fine thing, if a man who 
 had written a first-rate drama, or a deep treatise, as a 
 matter of course, became a marquis with a beautiful 
 castle and fifty thousand a year ! 
 
 Ah ! but now suppose it be a real, actual fact, that 
 wealth within is better worth having than wealth with- 
 out ; that ideas are a finer property than acres ; that,
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT, 33 
 
 had we clearer eyes, nobility of soul would seem to us a 
 kinder gift from nature than a handle to one's name. 
 Why then, all this claim to worldly reward falls to the 
 ground. The man is already rewarded : he is enriched 
 with thoughts ; why should he be further enriched with 
 ha'pence ? 
 
 Then, again, why should we confound the two dis- 
 tinct worlds the spiritual world and the outward ? why 
 should we think it unfair that we do not reap in the one, 
 when our ploughing has been in the other ? 
 
 It would be more rational to admire the beautiful 
 arrangements of nature, by which an infinite variety of 
 good things are shaken over the world, as it were out of 
 a pepper-box. Some of these good things fall into the 
 lap of one, some into the lap of another. Few catch 
 them all. The man of mind should think it a wonderful 
 piece of good luck that so great a blessing has fallen to 
 him, instead of grumbling that it has not sundry smaller 
 ones in its pouch, like a kangaroo. 
 
 Moreover, the fact is, that, within certain bounds, 
 moral and mental greatness does bring the good things 
 of this life in its train. Its tendency (though all 
 tendencies are sometimes thwarted) is to lead a man into 
 agreeable society ; also to put a certain amount of hard 
 cash into the pocket. Milton got 10 for Paradise 
 Lost. Some are angry that it was not more. But, at 
 any rate, he did get 10 by his genius ; and Macaulay 
 has got still more. Then, again, genius gets a man 
 glory. Now, really, if intellect tends to bestow 
 friends, cash, and drums, things are not so bad after 
 all. 
 
 Where men of mark have missed their due wages (as 
 it has ofttimes happened), the fault has commonly been 
 their own. With self-mastery they would have gone 
 ahead. But if the lack of that held them back, why 
 blame the world ? 
 
 84 Many a man has been led into atheism by the very 
 idea of the goodness of God. Not being able to square 
 that idea with the miseries of life, he has thrown up his
 
 34 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 belief in God altogether.* The truth is, it is easier to 
 disbelieve in God, than to disbelieve in His goodness. 
 
 85 It almost always happens, when a young man marries, 
 that his mother and his sisters, and perhaps one or two 
 others, feel bitterly that the tie with them is torn, and 
 they plague themselves with struggling to keep it as it 
 was before. It is far wiser, and far happier, to face the 
 plain fact, that the youth is gone forth from the nest ; 
 that he must stand, henceforth, in a new relation to those 
 that have brought him up ; and to bow to this fact, 
 instead of vainly longing to hold that fast which will fly 
 away. It is astonishing how much comfort is to be got 
 by making an effort of mind and will to see things as 
 they are, and adjust oneself to them. 
 
 But, though the old relation is done for, you may now 
 set to work to create a new relation, and one probably 
 not less near and dear, out of the fragments of the ruin. 
 You and he can never again be altogether parent and 
 child ; but you may be, more than ever, intimate and 
 loving companions perhaps all the more loving, for 
 the greater distance and greater equality between you. 
 
 86 We blame others, we curse our luck, we fall foul of 
 our circumstances, when things go wrong with us. We 
 cannot believe nobody could believe who did not 
 sedulously look into it how wholly the fault rests with 
 ourselves. If we are vexed, if we are disappointed, if 
 our plans " gang agley," fifty to one this comes because 
 we have ourselves been wanting in forethought, or fore- 
 
 * There is a curious passage in Forsyth's Sir Hudson Lowe, that bears 
 on this remark. ' ' Cypriani came out one day from General Bonaparte's 
 room to Dr. O'Meara, saying, in a tone indicative of great surprise, 
 ' My master is certainly beginning to lose his head ! He begins to 
 believe in God ! You may think ! He said to the servant who was 
 shutting the windows, " Why do you take from us the light that God 
 gives us?" Oh, certainly he loses his head.' Then continuing to 
 speak of himself, Cypriani added, ' I do not believe in God, because, 
 if there were one, he would not have allowed a man who has done so 
 much ham to live so long.' "
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 35 
 
 sight, or perseverance, or pains, or sense, or judgment, 
 or decision, or self-control, or some other practical 
 quality. 
 
 87 Which of us when out of spirits has not envied the 
 beasts of the field and the birds of the air, and wished 
 earnestly that he too were like the sea-gull that wings 
 his way so joyfully over the blue sea ; or even like the 
 sparrow that quarrels on the house-top ! Certainly, eo 
 far as life on earth goes, it seems as if man might well 
 think his lot a dreary one, compared with that of these 
 easy, contented, cheerful creatures. Think of a swallow 
 dashing through the clear air in blithe chase after his 
 prey, and speeding back twenty times an hour to the 
 lovely little black heads in the chimney ; and then of the 
 manufacturer's clerk shut up in a snuffy dark room, 
 wearily working seven hours a day at accounts, and at 
 night trudging back to his lodging. 
 
 And compare our capacity for misery with theirs. 
 They, too, no doubt, can be unhappy ; the want of food, 
 warmth, and companionship brings hard trials to them. 
 They can feel disease and pain. The loss of their young 
 fills them with anguish. But how short-lived are their 
 sorrows ! a week ends the bitterest. 
 
 How narrow, too, the field of their vexations. Our 
 brains are as full of pricking thoughts as herrings of 
 sharp loose bones. Our delights all grow on thorn- 
 bushes. There is no duty, no delight, that is not big 
 with vexations, disappointments, mortifications, regrets, 
 remorses, fears, tribulations. Yes, surely it would be a 
 blessed thing, at least upon this bank and shoal of time, 
 to be a sea-gull. 
 
 And yet, though our finely strung and delicate brains 
 bring forth to us so heavy a crop of tortures, on the 
 other hand the same sensibility gives us a huge host 
 of enjoyments. There is no end of the things that have 
 it in them to touch us with pleasure. More or less of 
 it is to be had from eating, from drinking, from dream- 
 ing, from riding, from walking, from swimming, from 
 employment, from repose, from dancing, from singing, 
 from sunshine, from flowers, from woods and fields, 
 
 D 2
 
 36 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 from beautiful or sublime or picturesque landscapes, 
 from art, from poetry, from eloquence, from warmth, 
 from washing, from talking, from thinking, from reading, 
 from pretty faces, from seeing others happy, from seeing 
 those we dislike annoyed, from dogs, from cats, from 
 horses, from botany, from geology, from natural history, 
 from dinner-parties, from balls, from the theatre, from 
 ridiculing others, from applause, from making money, 
 from spending it, from wife, from children, from one's 
 own fireside, from shooting, from every form of the 
 chase (except coursing, which is execrable), from resist- 
 ing temptation, from giving way to it, from vanity, from 
 pride, from benevolence, from industry, from good 
 stories, from sermons, from sleep, from being courted 
 by noblemen, from politics, from love, from self-will, 
 from the stars and moon, from newspapers, from old 
 port, from doing kindnesses, from devotion, &c., &c., &c, 
 
 I have strung together, in a few lines, these things 
 from which we whether rightly or wrongly do actually 
 get, or may actually get, a certain quantum of enjoy- 
 ment. Seeing what manifold means of it there are, one 
 can hardly complain of man's being starved from pleasure 
 by nature. On the contrary, one sees that men who lead 
 a healthy life are meant to lead also a happy one. And, 
 to say truth, what a number of cheery men one knows ! 
 
 And observe, our penury of enjoyment is to a very 
 great degree our own fault, or, at any rate, the fault 
 of our bringers-up. Unquestionably men might be so 
 trained, as to squeeze infinitely more sweet juice out 
 of life than they do. Our stupid teachers do nothing 
 but pound grammar into our heads when we are young 
 a thing which can only grow up into thistles in 
 nine minds out of ten. But were we really educated, 
 were we trained, as we easily might be, to love the 
 beautiful in all its thousand forms : to take delight in 
 poetry, to take joyful notice of the golden light on the 
 trees and lawns, of the deep blue sky and the picturesque 
 cottage, and the soft smiling landscape ; were we trained 
 to understand the wonders that lie around us in the con- 
 struction of our own bodies, and of the air, and of the 
 plants, and in the processes of nature ; were we trained to
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 37 
 
 the delightful habit of thought ; were we trained to the 
 habit of reading ; were we trained to study and love works 
 of art, whether in painting, sculpture, or building ; were 
 we trained to every kind of manly exercise ; why, how 
 much more cheerfully would our lives glide by ! But 
 your common- place and most dull system of education, 
 which consists of forcing the boy for years and years to 
 learn by rote the dry anatomy of a dead tongue, is there 
 any one of all these sources of happiness which it un- 
 seals for us ? No, not one. 
 
 88 Live with the cleverest men of the day artists, states- 
 men, authors, bishops, judges, generals ; during a whole 
 month put down every striking and original remark you 
 hear ; if you cover a sheet of foolscap, I'll eat my hat. 
 
 89 It is very hard upon a man to have just goodness enough 
 to embitter his badness : but not enough to keep it off. 
 
 90 Thus much may be said for obstinacy, that if a man's 
 determinations be soluble by reason, they may also be 
 soluble by fear, by laziness, by the mere pressure of other 
 men's wills. Whereas, if reason cannot shake them, 
 most likely nothing else wilL 
 
 91 There are machines for saving mental as for saving 
 bodily labour. Precedents e. g. are a clever instrument 
 by which we save the pains of investigating afresh as 
 each case arises. 
 
 92 Were not the mysteries of life too familiar to be 
 wondered at, should we ever cease marvelling at seeing 
 how inexorable nature is in punishing, without fail, the 
 least breach of her laws ? How long and slow her 
 vengeance often is in coming, how often it lights on 
 the family, or nation of the guilty, not on the guilty 
 themselves, how terrible often the vengeance, compared 
 with the offence !
 
 38 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 93 A common blunder of respectable men is to do just as 
 Pilate did take a basin of water and wash their hands 
 of the whole affair, and comfort themselves with the 
 pretence that they have done with it, and that all the 
 responsibility lies with those they leave behind them. 
 They retire or stand aloof, while others do the evil. But 
 he who thus tacitly protests, instead of holding on and 
 making an active opposition, is, in truth, art and part. 
 Kay, he may be the more guilty of the two, because 
 more alive to the wickedness. 
 
 94 As Fielding observes in Tom Jones, true beauty is the 
 greatest advantage a man, no less than a woman, can 
 have. All other advantages, talent, wealth, even rank, 
 fade before a really noble presence. And yet it is no 
 less true to say, that a man ought to be very charming 
 to get over the damage he suffers from being handsome. 
 Beauty in a man (except that of soul in his face) is a 
 terrible thing for setting people against him. Every- 
 body would like to take down their fellow-creature, if he 
 has'large black eyes, a well-cut mouth, regular features, 
 hyacinthine locks (whatever that may mean), and a nose 
 " like the tower of Heshbon that looketh toward 
 Damascus." Ugliness is not half such a drawback as 
 that sort of handsomeness which many a man has, and 
 which gives the idea that he has been smirking at 
 himself in the looking-glass and is still redolent of the 
 self-admiration which his mirror inspired. Somehow 
 women never have that look, or else it does not grate on 
 us, that 
 
 ' ' if young and fair, 
 They have the gift to know it." 
 
 95 What goes by the name of envy, the aversion in 
 which we are apt to hold those who have got the prizes 
 of life which we have missed, is not always such mere 
 malignity as it is generally thought to be. The truth is, 
 that to a great extent it is a tit-for-tat a vengeance for an 
 injury received. We hate A. B., not because he is rich
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 39 
 
 and we poor, not because he is a lord and we snobs, 
 not because he is handsome and we ugly, not because he 
 rides a park hack and we walk on our ten toes, but 
 rather because we believe (perhaps wrongly, but still we 
 believe) that he looks down upon us, for thus standing 
 lower than he does. Now, however unchristian all 
 vengeance may be, 'tis not so base to resent an injury, as 
 to wish a man ill, simply because he is better off than 
 ourselves. 
 
 96 Charles I. and Cromwell were fine illustrations of the 
 different way in which men ride their circumstances 
 the one with such a loose seat in the saddle, that the 
 moment his circumstances grew restive, he tumbled off 
 the other carried forward by them, and at a rattling pace, 
 but choosing the where-to himself. 
 
 97 The reverse side of a proposition is often of more 
 value than the proposition itself. How much nvdos 
 Wordsworth got by simply turning on its back the 
 obvious truth, that the man is father of the boy, and 
 giving us the converse that the boy is father of the 
 man ! It is often said, that men of genius show no sign 
 of it in society. Well then, who knows, but that of 
 those who show no sign of it in society, many may, in 
 fact, be men of genius ? It is sometimes said to be hard 
 that men of intellectual wealth are so often poor. From 
 the other side, these poor men then, at any rate, have the 
 blessing of intellectual wealth ! 
 
 98 This is a question worthy of deep thought whether 
 the misery of large masses of the lower orders, in almost 
 every country, is an inevitable and necessary, and, so to 
 speak, natural evil : or whether it is the handiwork of 
 man, and is caused by the stupidities of his misgovern- 
 ment. For my part, I feel no question that it is not 
 to nature, but to man's thwarting her, that we owe these 
 masses of misery. But for war, taxation, protection, 
 every man might have so easily lived at his ease, that,
 
 40 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 though here and there a family might have been poor, 
 there would have been no morasses of poverty. Depend 
 on it, nature never strikes the first bloiv. 
 
 99 Nothing is more wonderful in Napoleon's wonderful 
 character, than his vulgarity. How could such a man, 
 such a hero, such a demi-god, be, at the same time, 
 such a bagman ? His ends and aims so mean, his mode 
 of dealing with men so coarse, his selfishness so enorm- 
 ous ! Take his invasion of Spain from first to last, with 
 his letters to Joseph, was there ever such baseness, 
 topped up by devilish cruelties ? 
 
 ioo Nothing so much increases one's reverence for others 
 as a great sorrow to oneself. It teaches one the depths 
 of human nature. In happiness we are shallow, and 
 deem others so. 
 
 101 The only source of activity is the struggle to better 
 oneself. Were there then no evil, no worse, the world 
 would be at a standstill. 
 
 1 02 No art is so useful in the management of young 
 children, (nor is any art so much neglected,) as that of 
 avoiding direct collision. The grand blunder which 
 almost all parents and nursemaids commit, is that when 
 the child takes up a whim against doing what he is 
 wanted to do, will not eat his bread-and-butter, will 
 not go out, will not come to lessons, &c., they, so to 
 speak, lay hold of his hind leg, and drag him to his 
 duties ; whereas, a person of tact can almost always 
 distract the child's attention from its own obstinacy, and, 
 in a few moments, lead it gently round to submission* 
 I know that many persons would think it wrong not to 
 break down the child's self-will by main force, to come 
 to battle with it, and show him that he is the weaker 
 vessel ; but my conviction is, that such struggles only 
 tend to make his self-will more robust. If you can
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 41 
 
 skilfully contrive to lay the dispute aside for a few 
 minutes, and hitch his thoughts off the excitement of 
 the contest, ten to one he will then give in quite cheer- 
 fully ; and this is far better for him than tears and 
 punishment. It is just the same with colts. 
 
 103 Expenses are not rectilinear, but circular. Every 
 inch you add to the diameter, adds three to the circum- 
 ference. 
 
 104 In practical affairs it is not deep thought that wins, 
 but the eagle eye. 
 
 105 What a fund of amusement we might get, by making 
 a close study of those signs of character which are hung 
 all over every man and woman, and would tell us so 
 much had we learnt how to read them. Undoubtedly 
 what a man is, can in some degree be traced in his 
 carnage, in his tread, his tone of voice, his manner of 
 speaking, his smile, his frown, his laugh ; in the thick- 
 ness of his neck, in the size of his fingers, in the shape 
 of his brow, nose, mouth, cheeks, ears, and eyes ; in the 
 way his head sits on his shoulders, in the openness of 
 his chest, in the sticking out of his stomach. But this 
 language, though written in clear letters, must be studied 
 to be read. 
 
 1 06 It is rude to tell any one he is like anybody else. Be 
 that other Adonis himself, nobody likes it. Who wants 
 to be a duplicate ? 
 
 107 If you do not mind trouble, base your conduct of life 
 on these three principles : 
 
 1st. Never do to-day what you can put off till to- 
 morrow. 
 
 2nd. Never do yourself what you can get any one else 
 to do for you. 
 
 3rd. Never do thoroughly what you can leave half 
 done.
 
 42 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 1 08 Pleasant talk is the sweetest of luxuries ; but the 
 power of talking it, comes less from nature than from 
 practice. Good talkers have talked themselves into good 
 talking. Few men talk delightfully who have not been 
 trained to it by mingling with the world. 
 
 109 When we speak of "home," we do not mean "my 
 house," casa mia. The word is compounded of our 
 house, furniture, pictures, horses, books, dogs, flowers, 
 tame owls, wife, children, and the very kitten by the 
 hearth. Hence no word tells on the heart like that 
 word " home," for no word wraps up in itself such a host 
 of things, and those so touching. 
 
 no A man may be very silent in society, and it is 
 annoying, and you like him less than if he talked ; but 
 you never feel him to be dull, if you know that he is a 
 man of talent. You feel him to be potentially interest- 
 ing, though he is not so practically. 
 
 in It is by comparing asinine people, that we can best 
 see how much social intercourse does for the mind. 
 Your stupid man who lives out of the world, is wonder- 
 fully stupider than your stupid man who lives in it. 
 The latter may be one entire and perfect idiot : and yet 
 somehow, his mind gets polished up to what almost 
 seems brightness when set beside the rough dulness of 
 the other. We feel this, if after mixing with men in 
 the world, we come across fools who live out of the 
 world ; then are we astounded by the depth and breadth 
 of their unspeakable thickheadedness. 
 
 112 What small matters old griefs seem, even to ourselves ! 
 The feeling that " all's well that ends well " lies so deep 
 in our hearts, that we only smile at past sorrows, when 
 good has come at length. So in a novel or drama, we do 
 not mind any miseries for the hero, if we know that at the
 
 NOTES Of THOUGHT. 43 
 
 end he is to light on his feet, and marry Julia. It ia 
 only a dark conclusion that makes it tragic. And thus, 
 perhaps if we could look on at our own career from a 
 place apart, we should make exceedingly light of all our 
 tumbles and troubles and carking cares, seeing the bright 
 haven towards which we are drifting amid all our 
 storms. "Respite finem" would be very comforting 
 advice ; had we but the skill to look round the corner 
 and see it ! 
 
 113 Of all the marvels of God's workmanship, none is more 
 wondrous than the air. Think of our all being bathed 
 in a substance, BO delicate as to be itself unperceived ; 
 yet so dense as to be the carriage to our senses of 
 messages from the world about us ! It is never in our 
 way ; it does not ask notice : we only know it is there 
 by the good it does us. And this exquisitely soft, pure, 
 yielding, unseen being, like a beautiful and beneficent 
 fairy, brings us blessings from all around. It has the 
 skill to wash our blood clean from all foulness. Its 
 weight keeps us from tumbling to pieces. It is a 
 reservoir where the waters lie stored, till they fall and 
 gladden the earth. It is a great-coat that softens to us 
 the heat of the day, and the cold of the night. It 
 carries sounds to our ears and smells to our nostrils. 
 Its movements fill nature with ceaseless change ; and 
 without their aid in wafting ships over the sea, commerce 
 and civilization would have been scarce possible. It is 
 of all wonders the most wonderful. 
 
 114 It might have been thought that the old law, that 
 women convicted of high treason were to be burnt, 
 must have issued from the sheer fiendishness of those 
 who made it. But in truth it came from their reverence 
 for female modesty. It was a modification, a softening 
 down of the law's rigour, not an aggravation of it. The 
 law was, that traitors were to be hung, disembowelled, 
 and then quartered. Decency forbade that these two 
 last provisions should be carried into effect in the case of
 
 44 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 females ; so, after hanging,* they were ordered to be 
 burnt. 
 
 j j - How strong breed is ! If a man come of say a 
 Puritan stock or a High Church stock, he is more likely 
 than not, to set his face the other way, and give himself 
 all the harder to the other side. And yet, with all that, 
 if you watch him narrowly, you will find the old Puritan 
 or High Church substratum, cropping out in the most 
 unlooked-for places. I have seen this, too, with men 
 sprung from a Quaker line. A man may have flung 
 Quakerism all behind him : and yet the Quaker instinct 
 breaks out, will he, nill he. 
 
 116 One of the ideas with which the statesman's mind 
 ought to be soaked, is the idea of the vast reach of time. 
 Most minds look forward not more than, say ten, or at 
 the utmost twenty years ; and as regards planning for 
 the future, this is wise ; for you cannot foresee how things 
 will stand in the days to come. But no man can judge 
 wisely and well of the political questions before him if he 
 only looks at them in relation to the circumstances of 
 the moment, if he does not ask himself what would come of 
 the law or the institution, should it last for ages. How 
 many of the greatest statesmen have yet failed here that 
 while they sought to make things straight for the time, they 
 never dreamed of asking what must be the far-off fruits in 
 days to come of the seed they were sowing, what would be 
 the true and deep foundations which they ought to be 
 laying, were their edifice to be a " possession for ever " ! 
 Still more perhaps have they shown the want of large 
 sight, in deeming it enough to patch up what is amiss, 
 and tide over difficulties, without thinking to what size 
 the abuse or the difficulty would grow if merely pruned. 
 Napoleon and Peel are signal instances of this lack. 
 Pitt of the reverse. 
 
 * At least Phoebe Harris, the last woman burnt for treason (i. e. for 
 coining), in 1786, was hung first from a beam fixed to the stake ; the 
 faggots were not put round her till she was dead. Was this the way 
 in olden times ? or was the burning an equivalent for all the three 
 cruelties in the case of men ?
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 45 
 
 117 The essential difference between a good and a bad 
 education is this that the former draws on the child to 
 learn, by making it sweet to him the latter drives the 
 child to learn, by making it sour to him if he does not. 
 Yet how utterly has this plain and practical truth been, 
 ignored ! 
 
 118 Many young men whose minds have been fired by 
 reading John Foster's Essay on decision of Character, 
 or Carlyle's panegyrics on Self-reliance, get into a way of 
 imagining that the sine qua non of manliness is to stand 
 alone you are not to ask help from others, but in all 
 things to act by yourself, and for yourself, without letting 
 any one else advise or aid you. They are apt to for- 
 get, that although it may be a fine thing to stand alone, 
 if you can, it is a fond thing to try to stand alone, but 
 topple over. And, in truth, it is very well that in human 
 society we all have to lean on one another for advice 
 and help and sympathy. Independence would lead to 
 isolation. 
 
 There is nothing, in fact, in which the wise man and 
 his contrary are more distinguishable than in this matter, 
 and especially with respect to taking advice. Machiavelli 
 remarks that "No foolish prince ever has wise coun- 
 cellors." This is quite as true of common people. You 
 must be wise to get good counsel and to know how to 
 deal with it. But the general feeling is, that it is rather 
 a paltry thing to take advice at all that the really 
 stalwart man will not seek any man's aid or rest his mind 
 upon the feebler minds around him, but will look to him- 
 self alone as his guide and master. 
 
 And there is a great deal of truth in this idea. It is 
 the fact, that men of first-rate force do not tack themselves 
 behind a tug when they want to make way, but ply their 
 own paddles. Napoleon, Wellington, Cromwell, Nelson, 
 were not men who asked advice ; and when they did ask 
 it, they didn't take it. And it clearly is a sign of weak- 
 ness or laziness, if a man throws upon other shoulders the 
 burden which he ought to bear himself, of deciding what 
 he is to do. He shows that he has not a bold, firm,
 
 46 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 muscular character, when he goes about asking what this 
 person thinks, and that person thinks, and is impelled 
 to action, not by inward force, but by outward influence. 
 
 This kind of advice-seeking may well be laughed at. 
 And it is apt to become a habit a very vile habit too. 
 You can quickly get into the way of looking to others to 
 decide for you, and your mistrust of your own self will 
 grow by practice. 
 
 But, on the other hand, it may be remarked that we 
 are not first-rate men, but second-rate ; and although a 
 man of vast ability might be quite right to think his own 
 opinion better than any one else's, yet, it does not follow 
 that this is so with us. Remember, too, that had Julius 
 Csesar, Nelson, and Napoleon, taken the advice proffered 
 them, they might have escaped the death or ruin that fell 
 upon them. 
 
 Also, in each kind of things that we have to do, it is 
 easy to find some one more experienced than ourselves. 
 Why not avail ourselves of him ? Why go on blunder- 
 ing, when a man stands there ready to show us the way 
 which he has already trodden ? We feel it to be silly in 
 a retired fishmonger to buy his own Murillos, and in a 
 book-worm to buy himself a hack. In medicine we 
 consult a doctor in religion a clergyman in building 
 an architect. Why not apply the same sound principle 
 to the other affairs of life, and not be too proud to follow 
 the advice of those who know more than we do ? We 
 laugh at the Romanist for believing in the Pope's in- 
 fallibility. Is it wiser in John Jenkins to believe John 
 Jenkins infallible ? 
 
 All this seems plausible ; but still we feel that a man 
 ought, above all things, to be a man : and that he is not 
 manly who has not enough mental force to decide for 
 himself, but must hang on the arm of others. He ought 
 to trust to his own intellect just as a man ought to be 
 able to stand and walk forward, without asking an arm 
 to help him on. 
 
 But how to reconcile these truths ? If it be foolish 
 not to get wisdom from those wiser than ourselves and 
 yet weak not to trust to ourselves what is a poor fellow 
 to do?
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 47 
 
 Why, Shakespeare has hit the nail on the very middle 
 of its head. His maxim is precisely that which a truly 
 wise man would follow : 
 
 11 Take all men's censure, but reserve thy judgment." 
 
 (censure meaning opinion). This is the really noble 
 course, combining the beauty of self-respect with the 
 beauty of humility. The right thing is not, as many do, 
 to ask others what they think, and be guided thereby, 
 because tliese persons think so this is a weakness. Nor 
 is it (as still more do) to shut our ears to what better 
 informed persons would readily tell us, and take our own 
 course blindly. No. True wisdom requires you to listen, 
 even eagerly, to what others can urge to elicit their 
 opinions, and weigh them fairly. But then you must 
 strongly work your own mind, and merely use the 
 arguments, of which you have thus got hold, as materials 
 for a judgment which you will construct for yourself. It 
 will never do to be led by others, and do what they 
 think good. A man must do what he thinks good him- 
 self ; but he may fairly, nay, he should, know what 
 others can tell him, and see the case with their eyes, 
 before he makes up his mind what to do. In this way 
 he will use the aid of others, without losing one iota of 
 his own dignity. 
 
 It is a base thing to be the slave of other men's 
 opinions ; but it is a brave thing to be master of then 1 . 
 And no man, in fact, takes up so lofty a position towards 
 others, or shews his trust in himself so clearly, as he who 
 dares to listen closely to the counsel they offer : but ytt 
 brings all they have urged and all that his own mind has 
 suggested, to the bar of his own judgment weighing the 
 one side against the other, and coming, slowly but 
 strongly, to his own decision. 
 
 119 We are richer than we think. And now and then it is 
 not a bad thing to make a catalogue raisonne of the things 
 that are helping to make us happy. It is astonishing 
 how long the list is. The poorest of us has property the 
 value of which is almost boundless ; but there is not one
 
 48 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 of us who might not so till that property as to make it 
 yield tenfold more. Our books, gardens, families, society, 
 friends, talk, music, art, poetry, scenery, might all bring 
 forth to us far greater wealth of enjoyment and improve- 
 ment, if we laid out strong pains to squeeze the very 
 utmost out of them. 
 
 I20 After all, the essence of the difference between des- 
 potism and constitutional government, is the difference 
 between force and reason. In the one case, the governor 
 says to the governed, " Do this," and he doeth it. In 
 the other, he says to the nation (through their repre- 
 sentatives), " There are such and such reasons why so 
 and so ought to be done. Will you consent to do it ? " 
 How incomparably higher and nobler is the state of that 
 nation which is thus called upon to settle its affairs by 
 reflection and reason, than that of one which is obliged 
 to act in a certain way because somebody wills it. True 
 that it may often reason wrong. True that it may do 
 things with a less strong hand. But, at any rate, such 
 a nation is treated not as a beast, but as a man. 
 
 121 Often it really is from political or religious difference 
 that neighbours are un-neighbourly. Often it is but 
 the decent veil thrown over their exclusion by the 
 excluded. But it is a consolation to us to believe that 
 our principles, not our manners, have shut us out. 
 
 122 We talk of a " consuming " grief of a " devouring " 
 sorrow. Is not our language in this, as in other cases, 
 truer than our thoughts ? May it not possibly be the 
 real physical fact, that in such a state of excitement of 
 the brain and nerves, the process of combustion goes 
 forward in our bodies, with abnormal and painful 
 rapidity ? Grief does, in very deed, give the feeling of 
 our being slowly burned away from the heart outwards. 
 And sorrow thins, joy fattens. But then, if so, would 
 not butter, rather than time, in Voltaire's phrase, be 
 " celui qui console ? "
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 49 
 
 123 How can we tell who is, and who is not, wretched? 
 The man whose very soul is being wrung by an agony 
 of disappointment, bitterness, and shame, will talk and 
 laugh with the best of the laughers, and show no sign 
 of the devouring flame within. 
 
 124 After all, what a mere speck of time our keenest 
 sorrows fill ! Even the loss of a child is smoothed over 
 in a year or two. And short as that time is, the mass 
 of it is spent in sleep, work, talk, meals, &c., without 
 any vivid consciousness of calamity. 
 
 1 25 Those who do not think are charmed to catch 'some 
 thinker, in the act of bringing thoughts out as his own, 
 which have already been given to the world by others. 
 They look on it as mere plagiarism, a pluming of the 
 jackdaw with peacock's feathers. But the thinking man 
 knows how often it happens that some thought which 
 has dropped noiselessly into his mind from some book 
 or talk, will work and grow there, and strike root down- 
 ward and bear fruit upward, and, in fact, become a 
 strong living thought of his own. It was a cutting 
 from a plant which belonged to another : but it is 
 become a new plant. It is an offset no longer. 
 
 126 There are no iron rules about human nature. Want 
 of truthfulness might be thought a sure sign of badness : 
 how can a fibber's soul be a good soul ? 
 
 But in real life there are plenty of men, (and some 
 women,) full of kindliness, of talent, of religious prin- 
 ciple, of usefulness, much beloved, much regarded, 
 yet you can never depend on what they say ! 
 
 The fact is, that there is an excitability of nature 
 which makes a man or woman very bright and very 
 genial, but leads them to see things as they would like 
 them to be, leads them to talk at random, leads 
 them to seek so eagerly to please those they are with, 
 as to do BO often by painting black blue ; all of which
 
 50 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 ends in fibs. It is hard for a man to be strictly truthful, 
 unless he be calm. You can never place absolute 
 reliance on any man's words who is full of quicksilver. 
 This applies to the French ; to those charming liars the 
 Irish : but, also, to no end of Englishmen. 
 
 127 A dressed out dandy is a delicious sight. To think 
 that with all the wild craving for admiration which 
 shines through his waistcoats, he should not ask himself 
 the simple question, Is the world really such an 
 ineffable blockhead as to admire me for all this ? It is 
 fine to see him believing himself valued at a high rate 
 on account of his fleece when all rational people are 
 despising him for the want of good mutton inside it. 
 
 128 Negligence in dress (in a man) may be a good sign ; 
 and it may be a bad sign. It often comes of his having 
 nobler interests than his own boots. It often comes of 
 the same want of self-mastery, which, in other cases, 
 ends in the dram-shop. 
 
 129 It is not what a man thinks that shows what he is, 
 but how he came to think so. 
 
 13 An intellectual man is far more cowed by a puppy, 
 than a puppy by him. 
 
 131 For a while, upon some vexation, it seems as if life 
 were for ever to be under a black cloud. Perhaps, ere 
 the week be ended, that cloud lifts of itself. No change 
 has taken place in us, or in our circumstances. The 
 loss or disappointment is not swept away. We stand 
 where we did, and yet, somehow, with no seeming reason 
 for the change, we are standing in sunshine again ; the 
 damp black fog is gone from us. 
 
 132 Vast as the delight is of a rattling run with hounds, 
 there is no pleasure the fruition of which is so far out-
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 51 
 
 done by the retrospect. Even a dashing rider is apt to 
 feel some anxiety (not alarm, but anxiety), as each big 
 fence rises before him ; but in chewing the cud after- 
 wards, how he slashes over them, knowing now what the 
 landing is to be ! 
 
 One distinction is not strongly enough drawn as to 
 hunting. Any man who keeps well with the hounds, 
 may be talked of as a hard rider and so he is ; but 
 there should be some special word for the man who 
 takes a line of his own, and leads instead of following. 
 The difference in the amount of pluck, rapid decision, 
 and self-reliance, is so enormous, that the two men 
 scarcely belong to the same class of mankind. 
 
 It is unlucky that, as a rule, the men who do lead are 
 ruffians ! 
 
 133 How is it that a person may be cleverish, and try hard 
 to talk brightly yes, and be bright and yet lie like 
 lead upon you, by reason of his or her intrinsic insipidity ? 
 while another will scarcely open his or her lips, say 
 nothing but commonplaces, and yet his or her society 
 has a relish in it. Strange is this influence of mind, 
 conveyed without the tongue. 
 
 134 Is it not the case, that gentlemen will put up with a 
 host of inconveniences, out of pity to their subordinates ; 
 whereas ladies will easily make up their minds to rend 
 the very heart-strings of their nurses, and governesses, 
 and cooks, by a dismissal : not for a fault committed, 
 but for the sake of some slight increase of household 
 convenience ? We men are but poor weak souls after all. 
 Women beat us out-and-out in firmness. 
 
 135 A man's face, to be first rate, must have something of 
 the animal, as well as of the angel. A touch of real 
 beast force about the lower part of the face trebles its 
 value. The brow may be intellectual, the eye gentle, 
 the nose delicate, the mouth rich with meaning ; but 
 there is still " some hidden want," unless the jaw bones 
 have in them just a soupc,on of bull-dog. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 136 One should have thought, that however much people 
 might differ from a writer's or speaker's opinions, yet, at 
 least, they would be fair enough to acknowledge and 
 admire the ability with which he had set them forth. This 
 is not so. Men only praise what they agree vrith. The 
 author or orator must, not expect his talents to be 
 applauded, if his views are disliked. 
 
 And yet, in the long run, his abilities come to be as 
 highly thought of, as if they had been loudly trum- 
 peted. 
 
 137 It is grand to act on lofty principles, and sacrifice 
 happiness to what is right. It implies manliness, force 
 of will, self-mastery, a good heart, a thoughtful mind. 
 
 Yes : but what per centage of those who have done 
 this, do not regret it afterwards ? Comparatively, the 
 act of ^elf-sacrifice is a small thing. To bear bravely 
 what comes of it there is the test of mettle. 
 
 138 Scarce any quality does more for comfort than t&mrit;/. 
 Many men, whatever they touch, stick to it like limpets. 
 They have no doubts, no scruples, no questionings, no 
 restlessness, no hankerings. They cannot understand 
 the uneasiness of others. They, and the things they 
 handle, become, as it were, one. 
 
 jyinny, on the other hand, have no grip. They finger 
 the tilings they have to do, and the things they have to 
 popsess and to enjoy ; but they do not grasp them. 
 Th( ir hearts teem with regrets and restlessness, thinking 
 how much they have missed how well some other 
 entourage would have fitted them ; how much there is 
 to dislike and to doubt about, in that which they have. 
 And this miserable weakness is to be found in some who, 
 elsewhere, are strong. 
 
 139 If a man has the skill, like Jacques, to suck melan- 
 choly as a weasel sucks eggs, he can suck it, not out of 
 a song only, but out of everything, however cheering. 
 That bitter honey lies in all things yes, in sunshine
 
 XOTES OF THOUGHT. 53 
 
 itself, in merry voices, in the patter of children's feet, in 
 the boo-oing of foxhounds. Happy those (and happily 
 they are the greater number) who pass through life 
 ignorant that it exists. Happier, perhaps, are those \vho 
 know its taste, but taste it rarely as a relish rather 
 than as food. 
 
 140 Carlyle's view is, that if a man have force, it matters 
 little to what that force is applied. He will shine forth 
 as a poet, or as a statesman, or as a speaker, or as a 
 general, if only the force be there. 
 
 This seems to me false. Surely each man is shaped 
 to one work, which alone will show all his fulness. In 
 other careers, he might, perhaps, by reason of his genius, 
 outstrip his rivals, but he would fall below himself. He 
 would, perhaps, be third or fourth in statesmanship or 
 in war ; but with his pen he would have been first ; or 
 vice versd. 
 
 Even if his abilities would have been equally fit for 
 any and every work (which I deny), still of this there 
 can be no question, that he is sure to have a greater 
 passion for one work than for another. What weakens 
 him in paths that lie out of his bent is this, that he 
 cannot throw heart and soul into his work. He cannot 
 lay out the wealth of his nature upon it (though he may 
 wish to do so), because a secret inner distaste holds him 
 back. After a while he flags in his service. He is 
 cleaving to one master while he would fain obey the 
 other, and he bungles accordingly. He may be wonder- 
 fully able, but he is wanting in zeal : and it is rather 
 zeal than ability that works wonders. 
 
 141 We wonder how in the world the perverts to Popery 
 can contrive to believe, as they profess to do, all the 
 fiddle-faddle legends about saints and so forth, that have 
 come down from the darkest ages. The explanation 
 which is easiest (and partly true) is that their belief in 
 them is a sham. They like to make us stare. It is a 
 fine thing to snap their fingers in our Protestant faces,
 
 54 JfOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 and astonish our weak minds by saying, " There, look 
 what a swallow my faith has ! " 
 
 But in truth we have no right to disbelieve in other 
 people's faith. Inexplicable, impossible, it seems, but 
 that is because we do not see its processes. Their 
 minds are not in the same plane with ours. Theirs are 
 moving along some line of reasoning which we strike at 
 right angles. We are amazed to find sensible men so 
 far out of the way of the regions of reason. But in fact 
 they crawled thither step by step, down from some 
 premiss, to which again they had clambered step by 
 step, out of the plane of good sense. They did not light 
 down on their belief out of heaven. They got to it by 
 reasoning, however twisted. 
 
 142 When any one makes large sacrifices for some public 
 object, the knowing say it comes of the wish to be 
 thought well of by others : the kindly, that it comes of 
 goodness : the wise, that it comes of the two. 
 
 Does it not often come still more from a third motive 
 from the man's wish to be thought well of by himself? 
 A very sweet thing is the praise of one's own heart ; 
 and the craving for it is strong. But that craving 
 works deeper down and less in sight than our craving 
 for the praise of others. The latter craving catches our 
 eye at every turn : but without close watching, we do 
 not perceive how largely the former tells on others, or 
 even how it tells on ourselves. 
 
 143 The worthiest are not the most liked. 'Tis not a 
 man's being admirable, but his being a " good fellow," 
 that gets him on with men. Those whom everybody 
 likes, are, as a rule, second-rate men, but of easy, happy 
 tempers, lively and good-natured. The man of high 
 faculties, moral and mental : the man of profound 
 thought, of noble imagination, of lofty purposes, of com- 
 manding force of character, may be more thought of, 
 but is less cared for. 
 Is not this of a piece with the folly and injustice of
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 5o 
 
 human nature ? Surely men are wrong not to love best 
 him who is best. No. There is no ground for grumb- 
 ling. It is not only natural, it is absolutely just, that 
 we should like others, not according to what they are, 
 but according to what we get from them. If our 
 second-rate friend takes pains to be pleasant to us, greets 
 us warmly, and has some droll gossip to amuse us with, 
 why it is actually just that we should repay him by our 
 likiug, rather than that we should bestow it gratuitously 
 on the man who may be lofty and sublime and pure as 
 Mont Blanc himself, but who is less sedulous to please. 
 The bargaining that goes on between man and man even 
 in their affections seems at first sight shocking. But we 
 must remember that it is only Iwnest to repay what you 
 have received (even in the way of kindness), before you 
 give away to those that have done nothing for you. And 
 if any jolly, warm-hearted chatter-box is more popular 
 in society than the Duke, or Lord John, or Peel, why he 
 has deserved it. It is his due. He has given more to 
 t/wse he is with, though he has less inside him. 
 
 144 We say of a genial, good-natured fellow, who could 
 not pass his Little-go, that " he has nothing in him." I 
 am more and more struck with the falseness of this 
 common phrase. Compare this man who has " nothing 
 in him " with a thoughtful and cultivated man, but of 
 cold, reserved temper. Do not you see that it is a some- 
 thing, ay, and a mighty something, which the good- 
 natured goose has in him ? Is not his kindly, friendly 
 heart worth a deal more ; not to himself, perhaps, but to 
 those he is with, than the taciturn thinker's thoughts ? 
 A sweet heart is as truly a good thing, a piece of wealth, 
 as a strong head. And there may be an originality in 
 sweetness, though the man's brain be a hasty-pudding. 
 
 145 There is an enjoyment to be got out of a work of art, 
 which is, I suspect, the prize only of the thoughtful, 
 viz., the enjoyment that comes from the light it throws 
 on the artist himself. One feels this much in the
 
 56 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 statues of Michael Angelo, most in Shakespeare. It 
 is, in fact, a test of true art. Work that is not alive 
 with the worker, that is not the wwker embodied, is 
 second rate. That is one reason why all imitations in 
 painting, poetry, sculpture, architecture, however able, 
 are hateful. 
 
 146 Bitter, bitter, is the thought of the enormous waste of 
 human suffering caused by the one blunder of rulers, of 
 supposing that severity is the true prop of power. Had 
 man but understood man, had he but seen this plain 
 truth of human nature, that it is by kindness, not by 
 harshness, that men are most easily ruled, what misery 
 the world might have been saved ! But even now, at this 
 day, those who govern seem to be only catching a glimpse 
 of the dawn of that great truth. Some day surely this 
 principle must make its way over the world, that it is 
 humanity and justice, not severity, that engender sub- 
 mission. 
 
 147 A young man is apt to think immensely of the social 
 position of young ladies, and to feel it a terrible sacri- 
 fice usually a sacrifice too terrible to be made, to marry 
 a girl, however charming, whose family is even a shade 
 lower than his own. 
 
 Yet take any dozen matrons of thirty and upwards, 
 and (unless there was something quite remarkable in the 
 match,) you will find that it is only by a struggle of 
 memory that you can recall the maiden names of ten out 
 of the twelve, and that the position of their families 
 makes no shadow of a shade of difference in that of their 
 husbands ! It is just one of those matters in which 
 men's prudence is as extravagant as elsewhere it is 
 lacking. 
 
 148 How the crowd enjoys a storm of declamation ! At 
 the theatre, at the hustings, in Exeter Hall, in church, 
 in chapel, the speaker who will stoop (like the heire of 
 Lynne) " To run, to roar, to rant, to rave," will carry all 
 before him. Now, as in Hamlet's day, let a man tear hig
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 57 
 
 passion to tatters, and split the ears of the groundlings, 
 and they will yell with joy. Most wise was John Selden's 
 advice to the preacher who would fain be popular, to 
 preach " long, loud, and damnation" 
 
 149 There is a sort of men (and a large sort too) who, 
 though sensible and even able, yet inevitably, if they 
 have committed themselves, after deliberation, to one 
 course, begin to regret the other. The merits of the 
 rejected alternative instantly shine out with tenfold 
 brightness. The merits of the chosen one, just before so 
 sparkling, sink into cloud. 
 
 150 Nothing damages a cause so much as to defend it 
 upon untenable grounds ; and theologians are now 
 making that fatal mistake with regard to miracles. 
 They are trying to show that miracles may have been in 
 fact a result, a rare and wonderful one, but still a result, 
 of the action of the laws of nature, not a breach of them : 
 and they are for ever reminding us of the unaccountable 
 variations occurring at immense intervals in the calcu- 
 lations of Babbage's machine. But the plain truth is, 
 that if miracles are not believed in as a pure matter of 
 faith, they cannot be believed in at all. No quasi- 
 scientific attempt to connect them with the everyday 
 system of the world's government can succeed. We can 
 see this more clearly if we do not blind our eyes with the 
 word " law." The radical, essential difference between a 
 miracle and an extraordinary incident is this, that the 
 latter, however unique, still is brought about by the 
 action of certain physical forces, greater at the point of 
 contact than the physical forces opposed to them. 
 Whereas in miracles, a physical effecl is brought about 
 jci//toi/t (he use of any physical force at all. This is the 
 vital difference between the two, which no paraphernalia 
 of argument and illustration can possibly do away with. 
 
 151 Silence is the severest criticism.
 
 58 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 '152 How can men dare, as many have dared, to defend 
 Robespierre's atrocities on the plea that he was compelled 
 to strike right and left to save himself and his govern- 
 ment from their enemies ? 
 
 Take the Moniteurs of that time at random, and put 
 the plea to the test by examining the list of victims. 
 Take, e.g., that of July 7, 1794. Seventy-four persons 
 are there accused as " enemies of the people," of whom 
 sixty-nine were guillotined. They were tried in batches. 
 The last batch is as follows : 
 
 "J. N. L'Allemand, aged 56, ex-procureur of the 
 tyrant at Sarreguemines. 
 
 N. Harion, aged 60, cultivator of the soil. 
 M. A. Bordier, aged 30, tailor. 
 J. Quetier, aged 40, wife of Charbonier, ex-clerk 
 to the aides. 
 
 P. Laligrand, aged 36, ex-commissary of the 
 Committee of Public Safety. 
 
 M. F. Launay, aged 25, wife of Burke, an English 
 doctor. 
 
 F. Bridier, aged 72, widow of Aurai, servant. 
 C. L. Sauvage, aged 26, mate of merchant ship at 
 Toulon." 
 
 How intense a light does this one extract throw on 
 the wild hellish wickedness of those demons, whom men 
 like Louis Blanc hold up to us as angels ! Did Robes- 
 pierre tremble at the poor old widow servant of seventy- 
 two ? or at the young wife of five-and-twenty ? That he 
 was cruel because he was a coward, may be true. But 
 if so, what intense, loathsome cowardice it must have 
 been ! Is it a plea for him, or a more damning con- 
 i'ession ? 
 
 153 To enjoy life more, strive to enjoy it less. 
 
 154 The good in us is also the bad in us. And vice versd. 
 
 155 Alas ! alas ! for the mere trifle that threw us in the 
 way of our misfortune I How ineffably small a change
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 59 
 
 would have saved us ! It cuts us to the heart to think 
 that a friend's call, a word lightly spoken, a chance 
 meeting, gave us the petty shove into the bottomless 
 abyss ! 
 
 In each separate case this is so. And yet there is a 
 want of manly good sense in this lamentation. For are 
 we to expect no calamities ? And if they are to come, 
 the chain that ends with them is sure to have links as 
 feeble as those we are bewailing. Our regret is, prac- 
 tically, a regret not for the smallness of the cause that 
 brought this evil upon us, but for the existence of evil 
 itself. 
 
 Moreover, 'tis as broad as it is long. If our mis- 
 fortunes were tumbled upon our heads by trifles so too 
 were our fortunes. You may trace your present happiness, 
 not less than your unhappiness, along a line of incidents, 
 which, at some points, a fly's weight would have snapped 
 asunder. 
 
 156 No original thinker has a trustworthy judgment. 
 
 157 Those thinkers who have told most on the world, have 
 mixed solitude with society in fair proportions. A man 
 must live by himself to know what to say ; but in the 
 world to know how to say it. Wordsworth is in point. 
 He learned deep wisdom on his mountain sides. But too 
 much mountain side made him (not seldom) prolix and 
 puerile. A man whose talk consists almost wholly of his 
 own talk to himself, naturally grows tedious ; for of course 
 he is always a rapt listener to his own fiddle faddle. 
 Had he to listen to others, he would know the pangs of 
 boredom. Had he to talk to others, he would, perforce, 
 be driven to make his talk bearable. 
 
 Then a man loses humour by being much alone. The 
 electric sparks of wit and humour must pass from one 
 body to another to be seen. There is no fun in nature. 
 She smiles, but never laughs. Hers is only a serene 
 cheerfulness. 
 
 158 A pine wood is like a battalion in square with the
 
 60 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 front ranks kneeling. The outside pines have their onter 
 branches down to the ground, the inner only at top. 
 Hence, so loug as the outside ones stand, they keep the 
 whole wood safe and sound. But once break the outer 
 rank, and the cavalry of the winds rages through. 
 
 159 " To him that hath is given," everywhere and always. 
 
 In manners it is so. The pleasing man, finding that 
 he pleases, and being therefore pleased himself, grows 
 still more pleasing. The painful man, finding that he 
 grates on people, and being thereby stuck up, grows still 
 more painful. 
 
 In health it is so. The healthy man hunts, rides, 
 shoots, swims, and grows healthier. The unhealthy 
 stews in bed-rooms, and grows seedier. 
 
 In wealth it is so. All people and all things " give 
 their sum of more to him that had too much." 'Tis the 
 capitalist to whom gain comes of itself. 
 
 1 60 Many and many and many a man and woman lies 
 under the cruel calamity that being ugly, or unpleasing 
 in manner, they must all their days feel themselves 
 shunned and spurned by their fellows, for whom they 
 could feel such warm tenderness. To them how thrice 
 happy seem those whom nature has endued with grace 
 and charms ! What would they give to be able to win, 
 not admiration, but bare kindness, from their kind ! 
 But it may not be. This heavy, black cloud must rest 
 evermore on their hearts : they can never hope for the 
 endearments of friendship : nay, too often, they cannot 
 even win for themselves those home ties for which they 
 yearn all the more for the coldness of the world. Surely 
 the bright, and beautiful, and joyous might sometimes 
 give a glance of pity on these sufferers. No benevo- 
 lence could be so benevolent as the simple benevolence 
 of trying to please the unpleasing. And how often do 
 they richly merit, and richly repay such kindness ! 
 After all, the nastiest face and the grumpiest manner is, 
 as likely as not, the crust of a true heart and a lofty mind.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 61 
 
 On the other side, there is nothing nobler than this : 
 that he who has found coldness where he might have 
 looked for kindness spurns, neglects, insults, where he 
 might have hoped for esteem and fellowship, instead of 
 being soured, and doing to others what had been done 
 to him, should all the more sedulously strive to bestow 
 on all around the utmost blessings of thoughtful tender- 
 ness. This indeed were noble, And, verily, it would 
 have its reward. 
 
 161 Cruelty evidently exasperates the cruel man still more 
 against his victim, else how could men go on so swiftly 
 from height to height of savage barbarity ? Nor is it 
 difficult to imagine that the cruel man has a secret 
 feeling that his victim is abhorring him, and that justly. 
 Hence, the more he punishes, the more he has to 
 punish. 
 
 That is not all. There is excitement in cruelty, and 
 all excitement craves increase. 
 
 162 The law of love would stretch beyond the reach of 
 the human will, did it require us to feel emotions of 
 affection towards our neighbour. It is not within our 
 range to make ourselves glow with love at the bidding 
 of our conscience or our judgment. All the law of 
 love can ask of us is that we should do what is kind, 
 not that we should feel kindly. And the endeavour to 
 force emotions in the heart, has led, and can only lead, 
 to self-deceit or despair. Happly the indirect, ultimate, 
 effect of acting kindly is to stir up kindness. 
 
 163 However well we do, our shortcomings are blamed, 
 more than our successes praised. This makes us in- 
 dignant ; we think men unjust. But this is of a piece 
 with the whole plan of nature. She has laid it down, 
 (and how wisely !) that where there is evil there is out- 
 cry ; while good is noiseless. The man, whose leg is 
 broken, howls and groans. The whole man does not 
 keep on saying, Oh, how well I am : both my legs are
 
 62 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 r 
 
 unbroken ! The good need not cry aloud. It wants no 
 eye drawn to it. The bad ought to call forth notice ; 
 else, were we easy while things were out of joint, we 
 should let them go on so till they were dead lame and 
 done for. Certain it is that all men, like Cowper's hares, 
 smell and scratch at any hole in the carpet, while the 
 rest of it lies unmarked. This is why history seems 
 such a Newgate Calendar. This is why our own lives 
 seem so darkly chequered. This is why we think man's 
 lot so black with misery. The pleasant-and-good excites 
 little emotion. Its effect on our imaginations is little 
 more than negative. It is a great coat to keep the cold 
 out not a fire with warmth in itself ; whereas evil 
 stings us into trying to kill it. 
 
 164 Now and then one gets a glimpse, an astounding 
 glimpse, (and yet a somewhat pleasant one,) of the un- 
 fathomable abyss of stupidity and ignorance in which 
 many of our neighbours are buried and those not poor 
 people either. I believe that we people of ordinary wits 
 and education really have no conception of the depths of 
 Egyptian darkness in which a considerable body of our 
 countrymen are content to pass their lives ! 
 
 165 I wish somebody would put together the descriptions, 
 given by historians and by travellers, of the modes in 
 which half barbarous societies are organized. It would 
 be highly interesting to trace the distinctions, and still 
 mere the likenesses, in the organization of different 
 nations in far distant lands, in far distant ages, during 
 the corresponding periods of national growth. 
 
 There is one stage through which nearly every one 
 of them would be found 'to have passed, the stage of 
 feudalism, in which society is an agglomeration of clans 
 or tribes, each under chiefs to whom it owed service, 
 and who gave it protection. This stage has long since 
 been left behind by most European nations, lingering 
 latest perhaps in the Scotch Highlands. But at this 
 day we find society organized in precisely this manner in
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 63 
 
 the most diverse portions of the globe. The Zemindars 
 of Oude are simply feudal barons, like Front de Boeuf, 
 or Cedric. Stretch across to West Africa as alien a 
 country as need be and you find there too that the 
 people are broken up into small clans, each with its 
 " Head Man," who rules with despotic power. 
 
 The forces that thus shape society while young are 
 plain enough. Where the nation IB not so far organized 
 as a whole, as that it can protect each of its members by 
 its constituted authority, it is natural that these should 
 run for shelter to any one who, by his greater wealth, 
 strength, or force of character, seems likeliest to aid them. 
 Then this protector of course, as the quid pro quo, 
 exacts reverence and submission, and probably tribute 
 too. And thus in time you have the dignified chief, rich 
 and powerful, with poorer and weaker neighbours, not 
 merely surrounding him as at this day they surround 
 the duke's castle in England, but with a close relation to 
 him as the chief of their clan. Clanship begins, like 
 most human relations, with a bargain. The big man 
 sells protection, the little man sells obedience. 
 
 But nature beautifies all her works. And so this 
 mere bargain quickly becomes buried under the luxu- 
 riant foliage of the gentle and gracious feelings of loyalty 
 on the one side, paternal care on the other. 
 
 And were it not that these feelings of loyalty and 
 esprit de corps strike their roots into the soil, in a brief 
 time the power of each chieftain would increase or 
 decrease, till the one potent lord had swallowed up all 
 the rest. For else, as soon as one chiefs retainers saw 
 that another chief was more powerful, they would go 
 over to him in a body, and each accession of strength 
 would be a motive for others, and thus society would 
 continually be in a state of extensive movement towards 
 the centre, to be followed probably by as extensive 
 disintegration at that one man's death. But, whether 
 this would be a good or an evil in such periods, it is not 
 practically the case. The feelings of allegiance are 
 stronger than those of self-interest. The Macgregors 
 and the Macphersons held their own for ages, unabsorbed 
 by the Gordons and Campbells.
 
 64 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 1 66 Among war's evils is this that it is the saviour of 
 abuses ; for it does not lessen the grasp of those that 
 live by them, but it does lessen the grasp of those that 
 assail them. In war time men's hearts are with the 
 army. Abuses at home seem trumpery ; men do not go 
 at them with their whole might ; and nothing less can 
 slay them. 
 
 jg 7 It would largely add to our happiness if we made it a 
 habit to set our lot beside that of those underfoot, not of 
 those overhead. 
 
 But how can we ? Those above us, because they are 
 fewer, strike us more than the throng below. And 
 again, they catch the eye more by reason of their greater 
 splendour. The marquis stands out from the level ; the 
 fifty shopkeepers are seen dimly. Hence it comes that 
 we hit exactly the wrong nail on the head. We ought to 
 compare our circumstances with those below, our charac- 
 ters with those above us. In reality we compare our 
 circumstances with those that are better ourselves with 
 the worse. But after all, this instinct of discontent is 
 invaluable to mankind. To it we owe half our energy. 
 
 1 68 Those communicative egotists who pour out for ever 
 about themselves, always choose reserved persons as 
 their confidants. For they cannot stand their listeners 
 trying to reciprocate. You can always choke them off 
 by expatiating on your grievances, as they expatiate on 
 theirs. 
 
 Advice leads a hard life of it. Either it is taken and 
 blamed : or taken and forgotten : or not taken at all. 
 
 But no one has the right to lay the blame on his bad 
 adviser. He has himself, and only himself, to be wroth 
 with. Why did not he set his own judgment to work, 
 and weigh the advice ? He had no business to dethrone 
 his own'mind and give its sceptre to another. If he did, 
 what comes of it lies at his own door.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 65 
 
 170 I envy the Turks their serene fatalism. How com- 
 fortable it would be if led out to execution, to be able to 
 eay, " It is written ! " 
 
 Very, no doubt But who could have believed that 
 human nature could possibly so enslave itself to any 
 theory ; much less to a theory so plainly contrary to the 
 real way in which the world is governed. Depend on it, 
 there is an awful history at the bottom of that fatalistic 
 belief. It could only have been the last refuge of 
 comfort for men who, from generation to generation, had 
 been sunk in hopeless sufferings, and who at length 
 framed a theory which saved the vain struggle after 
 relief. 
 
 171 It is only fair that we should love ourselves best. 
 Who has done so much for us ? To whom are we so 
 dear ? Have not I been my own companion, say fifty 
 years, man and boy, come next Michaelmas ! Myself 
 and I have known great happiness together, and great 
 sorrow. We have shared every thought and feeling : we 
 have clung together for richer and poorer, for better for 
 worse. Of what other human being can I say a 
 thousandth part so much ? And then, forsooth, I am 
 told to love others better 1 
 
 172 The question whether it is well for bishops to sit in 
 the House of Lords should be brought to this plain test 
 What are bishops for ? Are they not simply for this 
 to spread religion as widely, and as thickly, as ever it 
 can be spread, among the people ? And would not they 
 be likelier to help this forward, were they at work in their 
 Sees, overlooking their clergy and every good work, than 
 dawdling in the House of Lords and in London society ? 
 The Bishop is to be the driver of his diocese. And how 
 can he make the crack of his whip be heard, when he is 
 two hundred miles away ? Would not any bank, any 
 factory, any farm, go to ruin, if its manager's eye were 
 withdrawn for six months in the year ? And yet there is 
 no bank, no farm, no factory, requiring more ceaseless 
 
 r
 
 66 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 and strenuous overlooking, than the clergy in a Bishop's 
 See. We pay Bishops splendidly. We give them great- 
 ness as well as wealth. And then we are weak enough 
 to let off half their force, instead of turning the whole on 
 to the promotion of piety. 
 
 Do we want Bishops as legislators for the Church ? 
 Nay. They never move a finger to legislate for her. If 
 the Church wants more direct representation in Parlia- 
 ment, increase the members of the universities : they 
 represent the clerisy. But, in truth, every M.P. who also 
 belongs to the Church, is interested in legislating for the 
 Church, and in staying legislation against her. 
 
 173 Many, many, people (especially, I think, women) are 
 exceedingly pleasant in daily life ; but society seems to 
 warm up all their latent silliness, and they frisk about 
 and are as tiresome as those horses who are steady 
 enough when alone, but kick and jump in company. The 
 reverse, however, is to be borne in mind. The silly 
 people of society may be sensible enough at home. 
 
 174 The thoughtful teacher's aim will be to cherish John 
 Smith the bud, into John Smith, the blossom : not to 
 turn John Smith the rose, into John Smith the fir-tree. 
 In other words, he will try to make the most of the 
 child's special nature : not to squeeze it into the 
 shape of some fixed model. But how is that possible 
 with this dead weight of Latin grammar to be borne by 
 all the boys ? Special cultivation of special natures 
 is scarce possible without a greater variety of studies, so 
 that one could be set in the way of studying natural 
 history, another geometry, another history, a fourth 
 language, and so forth. Still much might be done even 
 now, and especially in drawing out the thoughtfulness of 
 thoughtful boys, and the taste of the tasteful. Three 
 boys out of five have in them a considerable natural 
 capacity for thinking, which is left utterly waste. If 
 their teacher would stimulate them to look into the 
 causes of phenomena if he would put them in the way
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 67 
 
 of asking, " Why is this ? " " How comes that ? " an 
 astonishing degree of spirit and vivacity would be given 
 to their minds ; and their enjoyment of life, both at 
 school and afterwards, would be largely enhanced. So 
 might their sense of the beautiful be immensely de- 
 veloped, by their teachers sedulously drawing their eyes 
 to mark the grace of all natural forms, and the loveliness 
 of all natural hues ; and making the study of English 
 poetry a large portion of their work. How far brighter, 
 and how far more telling, would school teaching be, if it 
 aimed at thus drawing out the powers of imagination 
 and reflection, instead of solely seeking to teach applica- 
 tion of mind by the driest of human studies. 
 
 175 It would be well worth a man's while, once for all, 
 resolutely, calmly, deliberately, to set himself face to 
 face with the truth, that in the journey through life, he 
 must, inevitably, have to push through a multitude, not 
 of calamities only, but of aggravations. To some extent, 
 most of us feel this about great ills. We bear them, 
 feeling that " man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly 
 upward." But we regard ourselves as cruelly outraged 
 by the petty vexations that scratch us : and we should 
 cast them aside more easily, if, instead of being taken 
 aback by small unpleasantnesses, as by unlocked for 
 things, we could say to ourselves, "Well, well, this is 
 only what I arn prepared for. My mind is made up to 
 my being rapped over the knuckles at proper intervals, 
 so I'll e'en take it easily." Much petty fretting would 
 be saved, had we grappled with had we mastered 
 the truth, that a thousand vexntions have to be gone 
 through : so their kind matters little. 
 
 There is this radical fault in making dead languages 
 the one grand subject matter of school teaching, that 
 after all in learning them, the boy's mind is never 
 striving to make out truths. It is solely occupied in 
 moving words about ; trying to say, in the words 
 which dead gentlemen of two thousand years ago would 
 
 F 2
 
 68 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 have used, things in themselves often of no moment or 
 interest whatever ! Surely, surely no education is really 
 good, unless it sets boys seeking after truth, and teach- 
 ing them to handle it. 
 
 People say, " Look at the result ! What fine fellows 
 we English are ! " True : but not finer than our other 
 advantages our sturdy breed, our invigorating climate, 
 our plentiful animal food, our manly habits, our wealth, 
 our vast commerce, our freedom, our religion would 
 entitle us to expect. And to say truth, in point of in- 
 telligence, an English gentleman can rarely hold his own 
 with a foreigner of the same rank. That is so, and not 
 pleasant to think of. 
 
 Experience shows that it is the trading, and therefore 
 the wealthy, countries of the world with whom literature 
 most flourishes. And it would a priori have seemed 
 indisputably obvious that the reason must be that, by 
 the accumulation of wealth, a leisure class was created, 
 with time and energy free for the procreation of 
 literature. 
 
 This turns out not to be eo at all. The leisure class 
 is, it is true, essential ; but it is only as readers, not as 
 writers ; as consumers, not as producers. Almost 
 without exception the writers whose writings have told 
 on the world have been poor men, forced to slave for 
 their living. The leisure class has scarcely produced a 
 dozen first-rate authors. 
 
 It is fine to see a man turn about and fight a bold 
 battle with his circumstances whn they are trying to 
 throttle him ; and that, whether 'tis done in little things 
 or in big. We all admire a man who dashes his way up 
 to fame from obscurity, who climbs the heights of great- 
 ness, or of knowledge, out of a low estate, or even one 
 who achieves wealth from poverty. But it is a pretty 
 thing, too, this battling against circumstances, when it 
 is merely the servant girl's endeavour to keep hold to the 
 country in town, by cherishing a few flowers at her 
 window, or a busy man's long-lasting, long-baffled struggle
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 69 
 
 to squeeze study and thought into his life, despite its 
 turmoils. In a thousand trifling matters, how much 
 happiness and how much good each of us loses by folding 
 his hands and saying, " I must be content," where a 
 little pluck would wring the boon out of the hand of 
 fortune ! 
 
 said the Greek. "Experience is the 
 extract of suffering," says Mr. Arthur Helps. And yet 
 we see every day that those who have suffered will go 
 on blundering and blundering as much as if mother 
 Nature had never laid them across her knee and whipped 
 them for the blunders they made before. It is quite 
 wonderful how little sound judgment is given by 
 experience ; how much more it is a gift with which a man 
 must be bora, just as a poet with his poetry. 
 
 But the reason must be that we do not take pains to 
 get out of suffering that extract. The wide difference 
 between the fool that one is, and the sage that one might 
 be, lies in this, that the fool one is, does not set his mind 
 to work on what befalls him, to get the wisdom out of it. 
 Whereas, to become the wise man one might be, one 
 ought to watch each incident, and reflect bend the mind 
 back to note the truth it is ready to teach. 
 
 The difference in the value of the same incident to 
 different men might be exemplified as follows : a gen- 
 tleman out hunting, saw a horse, admired it immensely, 
 bought it on the spot, and found the day after that the 
 horse was dying ; his tongue had somehow been pulled 
 out, and this was why his scoundrel of a master had sold 
 him. 
 
 Now, one man would learn nothing at all from this. 
 Three weeks after he would buy another horse in just the 
 same hurry. 
 
 A second would take good care never to buy a horse 
 again without looking into his mouth to see if his tongue 
 was all right. Re would have learnt a lesson from ex- 
 perience ; but a poor and paltry one. 
 
 A third would rise a little higher, and resolve never to 
 buy a horse again in a hurry from a stranger, for fear of 
 some hidden fault.
 
 70 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 But the fourth would gain the still more valuable in- 
 ference, to act with more slowness and caution, not in 
 buying- horses only, but in all affairs. To him the tongue- 
 less horse has taught a maxim applicable to the whole 
 conduct of life. And he (and he alone of the four) would, 
 by going through the same process in a thousand other 
 cases, gradually build up in his mind that body of 
 principles, applicable to the conduct of life, which goes 
 by the name of practical wisdom. 
 
 One of those unique traits of Christianity which set it 
 far apart from all other religions, is its bold thwarting 
 of the high-churchism of human nature. By that I mean 
 the strong bent in man to make religion an affair of ob- 
 servances, of hierarchies, of buildings, of forms and cere- 
 monies, of days and feasts ; not of the soul itself, and of 
 the life led. All the heathen world over, you find that 
 religion is a thing to be performed, not a thing to be 
 thought, felt, and done. No doubt we see this almost as 
 much in Christendom. But that is the corruption, not 
 the essence, of Christianity. The New Testament lays 
 not the smallest stress on the dignity of the hierarchy, on. 
 the sacredness of buildings, on modes of worship, on the 
 organization of the ecclesiastical commonwealth, on days 
 or ceremonies or forms of any kind. No. It simply bids 
 us believe, and act well by ot/iers. 
 
 181 I wonder clergymen do not more sedulously dwell in 
 their sermons on the unspeakable loveliness of Christ's 
 conduct in His daily life. Surely they confine them- 
 selves too much to the preaching of doctrine and 
 morality, and lay disproportionate stress on the subject 
 of redemption. Surely they would tell more on the 
 popular mind, were they more given to illustrate from 
 His history the ineffable wisdom, tenderness, self-denial, 
 and courage, the exhibition of which, doubtless, was 
 meant to awaken in mankind a more fervent love of 
 goodness.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 71 
 
 182 Give self-control, and you give the essence of all well- 
 doing, in mind, body, and estate. Morality, learning, 
 thought, business, success the master of himself can 
 master these. 
 
 Every one allows this. Every one sees that it is self- 
 control that bestows the blessings of perseverance, 
 punctuality, due observance of all duties, kindness, 
 
 courtesy Why then is it not one of the 
 
 first aims of those who bring up youth, to teach self- 
 control ? 
 
 How can it be taught? Never, at any rate, unless 
 with government there is freedom. If a boy's life be 
 always squared for him, if his dread of punishment alone 
 be appealed to, if his own judgment and conscience be 
 never left free to choose between the evil and the good, 
 how shall he learn self-government ? Depend upon it, 
 neither boys nor nations can grow into the fulness of 
 manhood, of self-reliance and self-mastery, unless they 
 drink deep of freedom. He, whose eye is always on that 
 of a director, can never learn to direct himself. A few 
 mischiefs for the time would be well made up for in after- 
 life, if, in school as well as out, discipline were combined 
 with larger liberty. 
 
 x ^3 Quite amazing are the flat contradictions as to bare 
 facts which respectable eye-witnesses will give. Try, for 
 example, to make out from those who have dwelt in a 
 strange land, what really is the mode of life there, or any 
 other outward matter which the eye can see and the 
 hands handle, and whatever Smith has affirmed, Johnson 
 will be certain to deny. We know nothing not even 
 what we ourselves have looked at. 
 
 184 In order to do right, a man clearly must have three 
 things : 
 
 (1) The wish to do it. This is goodness. 
 
 (2) The knowledge of what he ought to do. 
 This is wisdom. 
 
 (3) The force of will to make himself do it. 
 This is strength.
 
 72 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 No one then can do right unless he is good, wise, and 
 strong ! What wonder we fail ! 
 
 185 Cursed be chatter-boxes. They are the pest of society . 
 Blessed be chatter-boxes. They are the salt of dull 
 lives. 
 
 1 86 Among the things that make a portentous difference be- 
 tween the happiness of one man's lot and that of another's, 
 talkativeness is one of the largest. Very striking is the 
 excess of enjoyment of life in one home over that in an- 
 other, arising simply from this, that in the one, the meals 
 are scenes of chat and laughter, among the father and 
 mother and children ; while, in the other, each repast is 
 merely the solemn funeral of so much food. I believe 
 we English are poorer in this kind of wealth than we 
 need be. Chat can be grown like other things. Dump- 
 ishness thickens under neglect. 
 
 The man most likely to keep his home lively is the man 
 of quiet humour, for that has a knack of bubbling up on 
 all occasions ; whereas wit requires the collision of flint 
 and steel. Humour can strike the driest incident, and 
 make the stream of fun flow down from it. And the 
 quieter it is, the more perennial. 
 
 Humour certainly is an excellent family quality. Be- 
 sides its gaiety, it shows kindliness as we see from its 
 being the twin sister of pathos. 
 
 Humour, moreover, is an infallible sign of sense. A 
 silly man cannot be humorous. JMay, high humour often 
 implies thought and imagination. 
 
 187 Wonderful is the power of epithets. Hear the one 
 word that paints him, and your bad (or good) opinion of 
 a man leaps, as it were, into life. You have liked A. B.' 
 pretty well for years. At last some one calls him a milk- 
 sop. It irradiates him like a flash of lightning. Thence- 
 forth you know him for what he is. 
 
 1 88 The principles on which bishops should be chosen do
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 73 
 
 not seem to me to be well understood. The common 
 feeling appears to be that if a man has shown exalted 
 piety, mildness, gentleness if he has written some pro- 
 found theological works, or preaches very eloquent 
 sermons, he is the fit timber to make a bishop of. 
 
 Now these are very good things, but they are not the 
 essential qualifications for an "over-looker." What is 
 a bishop's work ? He is not to be himself the parish 
 priest, the preacher, or the teacher ; he is not to fight 
 God's battle as a common soldier. His work is to see to 
 it that others are fighting to stir them up to the strongest 
 labour. His business is to get the maximum of good 
 preaching, good living, and charities of all sorts out of 
 the clergy under his charge. 
 
 Clearly then, what you want in him are powers of 
 command, force of will, a clear, strong judgment, promp- 
 titude and rapidity, with a kindly temper and courtesy ; 
 in short, the power not of falling on, but of setting on. 
 He must be such an one that the clergy will ever feel a 
 keen eye and a strong hand over them ; which will be down 
 upon them if they relax. 
 
 Now a mild bishop of strong literary tastes, is the very 
 man who would be least likely to be of this vigorous and 
 invigorating sort. He would be reading the Fathers, or 
 preparing his grand sermon, when he ought by rights to 
 
 be deep in the details of the Rev. 's squabble with 
 
 his parishioners, or the Rev. 's complaints against 
 
 his rector. 
 
 In a word, you want a bishop to be a General, who 
 can lead others a man of business who can handle 
 tangled trifles with decision. 
 
 At the same time he must not be without the nobler 
 moral qualities ; he ought to set his clergy the example 
 of a true Christian life, and show the world that the 
 Generals of the Lord's army breathe the spirit of their 
 King. 
 
 189 Good-natured, easy people are mostly weak-willed. 
 Hence they are often somewhat harsh. For they enjoy 
 being so from its giving them the sweet rare taste of
 
 74 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 wilfulness. They delude themselves for the moment with 
 the idea that they too can be stout on occasion. 
 
 J 9 To get all the work out of subordinates you must praise 
 them ; but your praise to be drastic must be painstaking 
 praise ; not vague approval, but the showing of definite 
 insight into merits. Give your subordinate the idea 
 that his doings are not merely looked over, but looked 
 into, and the good in them admired, and you double his 
 force. 
 
 *9 r I am coming to the conclusion that, if all their circum- 
 stances could be taken into account, we should find that 
 men's modes of life, however stupid they look to us, are 
 upon the whole the most comfortable they could have 
 adopted. To improve upon them they would have had 
 not to mend them here and there, but to get further off, 
 and alter the conditions that gave them their general 
 character. Those distant conditions remaining as they 
 are, those modes of life are the happiest. 
 
 19 2 In extent, sorrow is boundless. It pours from ten 
 million sources, and floods the world. But its depth is 
 small. It drowns few. Every one has many griefs to 
 buffet with. But it is rare to find men, or even women, 
 
 .'.overwhelmed by calamity. We live on nay, as a rule, 
 we are cheerful. 
 
 193 No prudent man will embark on an undertaking till 
 his first enthusiasm about it has gone off. It is painful 
 to find oneself a stranded jelly-fish. 
 
 194 If you dislike anybody, you may justly feel aggrieved 
 if he will give you no reason for disliking him. It is a 
 fair ground for disliking him still more. 
 
 195 The usual escape from the unfathomable mystery 
 of the existence of evil, is by pretending that evil
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 75 
 
 does not exist. It is said that suffering and sin do 
 but bring about a still higher good than could have 
 been without them : so that in fact they are not evil 
 but good. 
 
 But common sense is too strong for this verbiage. 
 We know too well that misery is misery : that death by 
 starvation, cancer, the loss of a child, murder, adultery, 
 are evils : and that, even if things be set right some 
 day, still the wickedness done, and the anguish borne, 
 have been things to deplore, not to rejoice over. In 
 other words, there is evil in the world, however it came 
 there. 
 
 If so, logic exclaims, it must follow, either that God is 
 not all good, or that He is not all mighty. 
 
 But reason replies, that logic argues well so far as she 
 sees : but that above her ken there is a third alternative 
 the alternative that she knows nothing about it. And 
 only in that humbling alternative can the mind rest. 
 
 196 There is a profoundly intimate bond between vanity 
 and love. No small part of the deliciousness of love (to 
 young lovers, if not to old ones) lies in this, that in build- 
 ing castles in the air, the lover can not only imagine 
 himself the hero of a hundred splendid deeds, but can 
 provide himself with a spectator whose admiration is 
 worth winning. He draws romantic scenes, in which he 
 displays prodigies of genius and valour, and always there 
 is Fanny standing by, giving zest to his exploits by her 
 smiles. Has not the beginning of all romance writing 
 been just this, that the story - teller told aloud the 
 glowing tale of glorious exploits, of which in his castle- 
 building he had himself been the hero ? Does not the 
 hearer relish it mainly because he becomes himself 
 incarnate in the hero of the tale, and he finds his own 
 castles in the air reproduced in more brilliant colours 
 than those that he himself could paint with ? And the 
 .heroine is there, more to give piquancy to the hero's self- 
 admiration, more as a spectator of his heroism, than as 
 the absorbing idol of his affections. Which of us in 
 youth did not become Ivanhoe ? he was not an object
 
 7$ NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 outside us for our admiration and interest, he was ourself, 
 clothed in armour, and living six hundred years ago. 
 And the Lady Rowena's value lay mainly (I do not say 
 wholly) in her being such a spirit-stirring admirer of our 
 achievements. The fair rewards the brave, not so much 
 by gratifying his love, as by gratifying his vanity, with 
 applause the flavour of which is exquisite, being the 
 applause of the beautiful. 
 
 197 History ought to make you see the people and the 
 events that are gone, even more truly, and even more 
 vividly, than if you had stood by at the time. This 
 seems, perhaps, extravagant. It is not so. We ought 
 to judge more truly, from afar, than at hand : because 
 our view ought to be a larger one. The beginnings 
 and the endings ought to be clearer. The pros and the 
 cons may have made themselves heard. The men 
 themselves may have been more unfolded by their 
 letters and other documents than by their talk. Yes, 
 history ought to be able to give a truer picture, than any 
 one bystander could draw. And a history that does not 
 do that, or nearly that, is not first rate, however agree- 
 ably told, however elaborately composed. 
 
 198 A proposed reform should not have the whole mass of 
 reasons on its side. When the struggle lies between 
 reason and reason, the stronger reason may win. But 
 when it is a struggle between reason on one side, and 
 sheer stupidity on the other, the stupidity is very apt 
 to hang on like grim death, till reason drops back 
 exhausted. 
 
 199 I see that very many persons hold that the evil in the 
 world comes from an Evil Power (say the Devil) 
 which is warring against the Good Power, and gains the 
 upper hand for a while, though some day to be defeated. 
 And this doctrine is a comfortable one, inasmuch as 
 then we have not to puzzle ourselves with the thought that 
 a Good, Wise, Almighty God is the author of suffering. .
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 77 
 
 But here seems to be a fatal objection. Some of the 
 sharpest evil in the world is clearly a part of a beneficent 
 system: not a breach of the system, as it would be, 
 were it shot from the bow of a devil. 
 
 Pain, for example, is unquestionably a large black 
 branch of the great tree of evil. And yet, clearly, pain 
 is merely an instrument for keeping man from harming 
 that exquisite machine, his body. The dread of pain 
 withholds him from breaking that machine. The pre- 
 sence of pain drives him, when it is broken, to get it 
 mended. Here, then, we see that pain, though a 
 grievous evil, yet has been invented and provided by the 
 Maker, not by the Marrer, of nature. 
 
 So, too, with fear. No greater agony, no evil more 
 unbearable, than the torment of fear. Yet plainly this 
 instinct was set in us for our good, by One who wished 
 us well, and not by one who wished us ill. 
 
 A large part then of the suffering in the world tends 
 to good, and is owing to the wise and kindly laws of 
 our Maker, not to the interference of an Evil Power. 
 
 200 Most persons' religious feelings would be shocked, if 
 they were told that the whole man, body and soul, was 
 developed by a natural process from the original germ, 
 as much as an oak from the acorn. The common belief 
 is that the soul is breathed into man by his Creator as 
 it were from without : that the immortal spirit is, so to 
 speak, taken and put into him. 
 
 By the soul I mean that higher spiritual part of us 
 which reasons and which gives moral law to us, and 
 which looks up to a God, in short, that part of us 
 which distinguishes us from the animal creation. 
 
 But now is it not indisputable, that these moral and 
 intellectual faculties, no less than the physical features 
 of our bodies, come down from father to son ? that (with 
 individual variations of course) each generation take its 
 moral and intellectual features from the generation by 
 which it was begotten ? Influence from without may 
 in time raise or debase the individual ; but, barring that, 
 men are as strongly stamped with a likeness to their
 
 78 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 fathers in spiritual respects as in their bodily character- 
 istics. The Englishman inherits from the Anglo-Saxon 
 race manliness, openness, honesty, truth, and therein 
 may be contrasted with the wily Greek, or Oriental. 
 The Fiji Islander as much resembles the Fiji Islander of 
 thirty years ago in his mind and morals as in his body. 
 Now will any man say that this is merely the effect of 
 education ? No ; it surely is the effect of generation. 
 Education no doubt moulds, but that which is moulded 
 comes from the race. 
 
 Well, but if this be so, it surely follows that the 
 spirit of man is not breathed into him, but is passed on 
 from father to son. Clearly, if all those traits, by which 
 we know the soul of man, pass on from father to son, 
 then we can only conclude that the soul itself is be- 
 gotten, as well as the body. 
 
 It will be said, How can this be ? But what do we 
 know about the cans and cannots ? Nothing is more 
 shallow than to argue that this cannot be, when we are 
 utterly in the dark as to all the conditions and nature of 
 the case. 
 
 201 Here is a thing that strikes one in dealing with men. 
 Several gentlemen are associated to carry through some 
 business ; most of them, though able perhaps, and with 
 their hearts in the work, yet go to it loosely, they 
 attend when they conveniently can they pick up their 
 knowledge as may happen merely glance at the papers, 
 and form their opinions about the matter in a chance 
 sort of way. But some one fellow, perhaps below them 
 in real wisdom and ability, will go at the thing tooth 
 and nail. He never fails to be at the meetings, whether 
 he can or not : he lets nothing slip past him : he studies 
 every paper : he writes down his remarks on each : he 
 thinks the matter over thoroughly, and has his mind 
 already clear when the discussions come on. In fact he 
 masters the business, and so it comes that he is master 
 of the business, not only in the way of knowing it, but 
 also in the way of guiding it. Aye, and he also becomes 
 master of his co-mates. They all by degrees lean upon 
 him, and yield to him, and throw the pack more and
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 79 
 
 more on the willing horse. At last he comes to bear the 
 whole burden. Yes, but then he bears it where he will ; 
 and can feel that he has done his work like a man 
 instead of like a dawdle ; and he gets a good name as a 
 strong handler of business, three things even pleasanter 
 than sell-indulgence. 
 
 202 The most delicate question in morals that people in 
 general have to solve is, how far kindness justifies false- 
 hood ? How far may you veil or colour the truth, in 
 order to spare people's feelings ? 
 
 In the short run, taking the one case by itself, tender- 
 ness seems better than truth. It seems more right to 
 save your friend from pain, than to tell him how things 
 really stand. But, in the long run, I fancy, pure truth- 
 fulness would give the most pleasure and save the most 
 pain. Not of course that you need go about telling 
 uncalled-for truths ; but all you do say should be 
 unswervingly straightforward. What comfort there is 
 in a man or woman in whom you know that there is no 
 guile ; in whose words you can wholly trust, without 
 having to take off an unknown quantity that may have 
 been put on to please you. On the other hand, people, 
 like the Irish, who are so kindly that they will be always 
 garbling the truth into an agreeable shape how they 
 vex your soul ; how you long for a little rough homely 
 truthfulness, instead of such " making things pleasant." 
 
 203 The fact that in all animal (and in all vegetable ?) life 
 there is no such thing as a perfectly straight line that 
 all lines are in curves is one of the most curious and 
 interesting that the microscope has brought out. And 
 now cannot it be applied in architecture ? We know 
 that in the Greek temples every line had a curve how- 
 ever gentle. Would not Gothic architecture also be 
 wonderfully softened and enriched by the application of 
 the same principle ? Would not a window be more 
 graceful if its lintels were, however faintly, bowed out- 
 wards ? if its mullions were round, and had the least
 
 80 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 imaginable swell towards the middle, as all Greek 
 columns have ? Might not even the edges of a tower 
 be brought down in curved lines by buttresses formed 
 of a succession of curved props ? At least, this is worth 
 thinking of. Certainly there is a hard sJiarp look about 
 even the noblest modern buildings. 
 
 204 Novels should be pictures of life. They should not aim 
 at a moral any more than a Claude or a Raphael does. 
 The moral may of its own force breathe upon you from 
 them. You may be the better for looking at them, as 
 you are the better for looking at a lovely view. But 
 the feeling should come of itself. And on the same 
 ground novels are radically wrong which aim at laugh- 
 ing down the foibles and follies of mankind. Even 
 Pickwick would have been more charming, if the satirical 
 vein had been kept out. In fact it is admirable in spite 
 of its satire, not by reason of it. 
 
 2o e People usually make it a point of honour to fire up 
 when a friend of theirs is attacked, and bluster a great 
 deal, as if they had been themselves laughed at ; but 
 they would serve their friend far better by quietly putting 
 forward what may be said for him, and even by making 
 some fair admission as to his failings. By storming that 
 you won't hear a word against your friend, you stop his 
 detractors' mouths for the moment ; but you have not 
 made them like him a bit- better. 
 
 206 Boswell quotes, as ah example of the very "perfection 
 of language," the following sentence from Johnson's 
 Dictionary : " When the radical idea branches out into 
 parallel ramifications, how can a consecutive series be 
 formed of series in their own nature collateral ? " The 
 sentence is a decidedly dark one, till it has been looked at 
 two or three times ; and to speak of a root branching out 
 into parallel ramifications is one of the most awkward 
 images in literature.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 81 
 
 20 7 There is no lack of strong talk, really sound, sensible 
 talk, and clever talk, and witty talk, and humorous talk 
 to be had no lack of it at all. But might there not be 
 more of a gay, reckless, easy-going converse, with good 
 stuff in it as well ? The manner of our talk is all too 
 sober ; it wants more dash, it wants brighter colour. 
 
 208 The problem, why should mankind be so bad, so 
 selfish, so silly, is brought home sharply to one's heart, 
 if one sees a fine, sensible, honourable, warm-hearted 
 man ; a lovely, gentle, intelligent girl ; a sweet, good, 
 wise mother ; joyous, spirited, yet docile children. Then 
 one can't help feeling, the thing was possible ! There 
 is nothing in the nature of the case, then, to prevent 
 men and women from being sweet, wise, and good. If 
 some are so, why not all ? 
 
 209 People abuse Parliament as if the speechifying were 
 all mere windy talk. Bear in mind that the talk talked 
 in Parliament has talked us into being the richest, 
 mightiest, safest, happiest people on the face of the earth. 
 The cant now talked by Carlyle and others against 
 talk, strikes me as fudge. Why talk is the greatest 
 lever in the world. In all business talk gives the 
 impulse and the teaching. 
 
 210 One ought to like a man for subjugating himself 
 wholly to principle ; but some men are so close-reefed, 
 that you cannot help longing to see them shake their 
 sails out, and run before the breeze of worldly motives. 
 
 211 What is the essence of tiresomeness? Some of the 
 cleverest, most animated, and best-hearted people get all 
 almost beyond endurance, when you see much of them. 
 Not that they are bores. It is an altogether different 
 thing. They are not dull ; they are not bores. But 
 they take your head and rattle it about as Punch does 
 the hangman's.
 
 82 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 212 I can imagine divine talk, where an original man 
 should just fling out his thoughts of all kinds with 
 absolute ease and gaiety not seeking to dazzle, yet 
 enjoying the effect he produces ; charming the minds of 
 all round him to fly with him after his fancies, and 
 to think with him his deeper thoughts. But, to make 
 up my ideal, the talker must be a very genial man ; 
 not swallowed up by his own talk, but eager to draw 
 out the minds of those round him, and to hear them 
 chime in. 
 
 213 How in the world can any one, who has lived much 
 with animals, fancy that they are driven only by a blind, 
 inevitable instinct, compelling them to do what they do, 
 without any play of mind or will ? Why, not merely in 
 dogs, but in birds, a constant exercise of judgment may 
 be observed. You can see that they feel doubt that 
 they are not sure what to do ; and that it is by looking 
 at the state of things before them, that they decide how 
 to act. 
 
 214 Is not the fact that such a tale as that of the saving 
 of the animal creation by Noah's Ark, is still believed 
 wholly, and without any effort, by nearly all Christians, 
 is not this fact alone enough to show one the vast 
 swallow of human nature ? Let people but fancy 
 that it is a part of their religion to hold such or such a 
 notion, and whatever the notion is, they can gulp it 
 down. 
 
 215 We puzzle ourselves by looking at matters too much 
 in the abstract, especially religious matters. Thus we 
 are revolted by the idea that the Maker of all things can 
 hate any of His creatures, or condemn them to misery 
 hereafter. Such a notion seems preposterous in this 
 abstract form. 
 
 Now read the following passage. " In the midst of 
 his degradation, the child (Louis XVII.) had some 
 memory of his former feelings and habits. Simon 
 detected him one night kneeling in his bed, with his
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 83 
 
 hands joined, and appearing to say his prayers. The 
 impious wretch .... seized a pitcher of water, icy 
 cold the night was the 14th of January and flung it 
 over him, exclaiming, ' I'll teach you to say your 
 paternosters, and to get up in the night like a trappist!" 
 Nor was that all : he struck him on the face with his 
 iron-heeled shoe .... The child, shivering and sobbing, 
 endeavoured to escape from the soaking mattrass by 
 sitting on the pillow, but Simon dragged him down, and 
 stretched him on the bed swimming with water." 
 
 I want to know, is it possible to believe that a perfectly 
 holy, just, and loving God could look upon Simon with- 
 out abhorrence of his unutterable cruelty ? If we choose 
 to imagine the Most High to be a mere abstraction with- 
 out feeling, then no doubt we may believe that such 
 atrocities do not awaken His wrath, or meet with the 
 penalties they deserve. But, if we believe Him to feel 
 love for man, then it seems to me that we must believe 
 Him to feel hatred of villains. 
 
 Again, take the case of a mean, sneaking, cowardly 
 rascal, who spends his life in cheating. Is it not a tax 
 on our credulity too great to be paid, if you tell us that 
 such an one as that is looked upon with perfect love by 
 the all-holy God ? Do we not feel that it is by reason 
 of all that is godlike within us by reason of our justice, 
 of our mercy, of our truth that we shrink back with 
 loathing from such wretches as Marat or Fouche ? 
 
 I am not touching on what is really meant by hell, or 
 on the eternity of punishment. But this strikes me as 
 clear, that if our Lord and Master has any feeling at all 
 towards men, He could not but drive from His presence 
 such fiends as those I have mentioned. I cannot but 
 regard it as a theory without facts, to say that God surely 
 would not have created any one in order to torment him, 
 and that, accordingly, He cannot but receive all men into 
 happiness hereafter. On the contrary, I see that the 
 more pure and holy our God ig, the more must He abhor 
 those who are base and cruel. 
 
 216 How strangely easy difficult things are !
 
 84 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 217 So strongly does man tell upon man, that even origi- 
 nality is increased by being with the original, and dulness 
 by being with the dull. 
 
 2I g It seems to me that we usually misunderstand the 
 meaning of sacrifices. We think that the nations who 
 make them, do so in the trust that the wrath of their 
 God may be spent upon the victims they offer, instead of 
 being poured out upon themselves. And we strengthen 
 our belief in that interpretation of Christ's death on the 
 cross, by pointing to the almost universal and per- 
 haps instinctive tendency of human nature to offer 
 sacrifices. 
 
 But is it not the fact, that the sacrifices of the heathen 
 in reality are merely a sort of black mail paid to a 
 grasping* and fierce deity ? an offering to him of what 
 the people love best, in hopes of satiating and soothing 
 him ? I believe their feeling is much that which leads a 
 small boy at school to give his apple to the big tyrant of 
 the bed-room. This has not the faintest likeness to our 
 usual idea connected with a sacrifice, viz., that the 
 wrath which should fall on the man, falls on the 
 offering. 
 
 219 Many persons actually think they are committing sin, 
 in doubting the truth of the religious dogmas they have 
 been taught ; they will ask pardon for having had their 
 minds fouled with such wicked questionings. "Whereas, 
 in fact, it is a good thing in itself, and a good sign of a 
 man's mind, that he should ask himself boldly, " Is there 
 not a lie in my right hand ? Are these things, that I 
 have sucked in with my mother's milk, true, or are they 
 false ? " Of course he should ask himself this in a spirit 
 of truth-seeking, not for the pleasure of looking down 
 upon what his betters look up to. 
 
 220 In looking forward to the world to come, we can't 
 help hoping (not that it is anywhere so set down by the 
 Word of God) that we shall there become masters of all
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 85 
 
 knowledge and wisdom. Yet, after all, the great 
 pleasure of knowledge is not in having knowledge, but 
 in getting it. "Would not then a perfect intuition kill, 
 instead of quickening, our delight. 
 
 Why, very likely we shall have to search for truth 
 there, as well as here ; but the search may be more 
 charming, the truths found more wonderful ? 
 
 And further, though nature spurs us on to seek know- 
 ledge, by making the chase itself enjoyable, yet this 
 pleasure is not the end of the pursuit it is only meant 
 to cheer us on. The real good to be got, is that we 
 should raise ourselves in the scale of being by widening, 
 strengthening, elevating our minds. The case is just 
 like that of our bodily appetites. How delicious is a 
 draught of cool water to a hot and dusty wayfarer ! but 
 the delight is merely given, by the way, to set him 
 drinking. Nature's real aim is, not to tickle the palate, 
 but to keep the body going. It is the same as to know- 
 ledge. 
 
 221 It is an every-day thing to hear people say, " What a 
 shame ! " " What a cheat he must be ! " " What a 
 rascal he is ! " &c., &c., because Mr. Smith sets what 
 seems an extravagantly high price on the thing he sells 
 or lets. So natural is it to feel this moral indignation, 
 that it is a hard matter to persuade yourself or any- 
 body else, that Mr. Smith is not to be blamed at all 
 that he is perfectly right to get as much as he can, so 
 long as he gives you full and fair warning of what price 
 he means to ask, and also so long as the thing he vends 
 is really as good as he says it is. Of course, if the 
 thing is worse than he would have it seem, or if he 
 allows you to buy a thing under the idea on your part, 
 from common usage, that it will cost one shilling, and 
 then charges you two, he is a cheat ; he has deceived 
 you, in order to get something out of you, which is the 
 sound definition of cheating. 
 
 Perhaps, too, if he has you in his power, if he knows 
 that you must have the thing he has got, he is not act- 
 ing as he ought when he greatly enhances the price of 
 that thing. It seems to me, that he may fairly enhance
 
 86 . \OTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 it a little, for your need of it makes it actually of more 
 value to you it is worth ten pounds to you now, though, 
 under ordinary circumstances, it would only be worth 
 five pounds. But he ought not to press hardly upon you 
 from your being in necessity. It would be ungenerous ; 
 but it would not be rascality. 
 
 222 I scarcely know any very hard working men, in any 
 line of work, who are lively talkers in general society. 
 Such men are often very delightful in a tete-a-tete, but 
 rarely indeed are they diners-out of the first, or even of 
 the second, water. 
 
 223 There are those who, with no advantages, with no 
 rank, or wealth, or charms, yet somehow slide into all 
 society with an ease quite amazing ; while people of a 
 hundred times their charm, to say nothing else, find a 
 glass pane between them and the world. How comes it ? 
 
 224 I suppose every man who lives in a whirl of work and 
 pleasure is for ever haunted by a dim longing for peace 
 and ease by a running stream, with bees and all that. 
 But what I want to know is, whether the converse is 
 true ? Are the quiet people feverish for excitement ? 
 Do the tench wish they were trout in a mill-stream ? 
 
 225 How provokingly stubborn people are against the 
 clearest arguments ! Yes, and not wholly without reason. 
 For, though you have set forth your side with almost 
 irresistible force, how can your hearer be sure that, if he 
 were as clever an advocate as you, he might not be able 
 to upset all your strong reasonings ? It may be, not his 
 lack of truth, but his lack of skill, that makes your cause 
 seem triumphant. 
 
 226 De Retz remarks, that Envy is a far more universal 
 feeling than is generally imagined. Is there any one 
 who does not at times think bitterly, Why should not I
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 87 
 
 have had So-and-so's charm of manners, or sweetness of 
 temper, or wealth, or rank, or leisure, or industry ? 
 What an unlucky dog I am, while others are flourishing 
 like a green bay tree ! Even David king, poet, prophet, 
 husband of numbers of beautiful wives, father of beautiful 
 boys and girls even he was tormented by this feeling. 
 
 It is a good way of meeting it, to say to oneself, Come, 
 now, what individual is there with whom you would like 
 to make a complete exchange to give him the whole of 
 your nature and circumstances, and take to yourself, 
 instead, the whole of his mind, body, and estate ? If not 
 if there be no one with whom you would like to make 
 a thorough swop like that it is plainly absurd for you to 
 envy another, when, upon the whole, your case seems to 
 you better than his ; when there are such drawbacks to 
 his good luck, that, taking him altogether, you would 
 rather be yourself than he. 
 
 Another good way of meeting that feeling, is to form a 
 habit of laying your circumstances alongside those that 
 are worse ; whereas one's natural tendency is to lay them 
 alongside those that are better. 
 
 227 You sometimes see a man delighted at his own freedom 
 of thought at having broken the bondage of " super- 
 stition," quite unaware that in doing so he is a mere 
 slave to vanity, or perhaps to the opinions of the clique 
 into which he has fallen. He alone is really free who 
 heartily seeks after truth, untrammelled by tradition on 
 the one side, and by the pride of walking alone on the 
 other. 
 
 228 How close the likeness between the weather and the 
 moods of the mind. Now dull and overcast now bril- 
 liant gleams and then, perhaps, a whole day of un- 
 clouded sunshine. 
 
 229 That "life," the vital principle, is merely one form of 
 that physical force with which the world is filled, seems 
 clear from this that else, when a living thing dies, be it 
 animal or vegetable, there must be an actual extinction of
 
 88 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 its life its vital principle must fairly vanish. For we 
 cannot fancy that its life is hanging about in the air, 
 ready to be caught up and put into some other body. If 
 it turns into some other of the unnumbered forms of 
 force, it is accounted for ; but else, in death, there must 
 be an end of it. Now, to suppose that each year there is 
 a new creation of a vast quantity of animal and vegetable 
 life, and that each year there is an extinction of the life 
 which had thus been brought into being, is absurd. 
 Suppose, on the other hand, that, as each creature dies, 
 its " life " turns into heat, light, electricity, or what not ; 
 and that, as each creature is born, a certain quantity of 
 heat, light, electricity, or what not, is resolved into the 
 " life " requisite for that creature ; then you see at once 
 that the equilibrium of the world is maintained. 
 
 230 To take an old diamond out of the casket in which it 
 has lain forgotten, is as good as to find a new diamond. 
 So with truth. To strike men's eyes with an old maxim, 
 is as good as to think out a fresh one nay better ; for 
 the best truths are old. 
 
 231 Meeting again with long-parted friends is not all 
 pleasure. You feel some little embarrassment, hardly 
 knowing where to begin. You and he can't be hitched 
 into gear again without an effort. Such heaps of things 
 done, and happened, yet none seem worth telling just 
 then. 
 
 252 It is much more interesting to a thoughtful man to be 
 thrown into the broad stream of life, in middle age, than 
 to have been familiar with it from the first. It comes 
 before him more strikingly, more freshly, when he has 
 been shut up far away, till he is of an age to mark the 
 strangeness of the scene, and ponder it 
 
 233 It may be as well for an author, artist, orator, or what- 
 not, to assure himself of this : that, be his work as good
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 89 
 
 as need be, yet, if half the world likes it, the other half 
 
 won't. "What hits the fancy of A.B M., must and 
 
 will hurt the fancy of N.O Y. Z. For one half the 
 
 world has a different sort of soul from the other half. 
 
 234 Putters-off till to-morrow have joys of their own that 
 the world dreams not of not merely the delight of putting - 
 off (in itself exquisite), but the radiant glow of self- 
 admiration, when, arrears having gathered beyond all 
 bearing, a rush is made at them, and they are cleared off 
 in no time. 
 
 235 I should like to know from young ladies : Which is 
 best ? to be flirted with and forsaken, or not to be flirted 
 with at all ? I suspect the former ; they do so dearly 
 love being made much of. 
 
 236 We pity people too much. We forget the vis inertia, 
 the power of bearing in human nature. 
 
 We pity people too little : only he who has the wound, 
 knows its agony ; pain can only be felt for, when felt. 
 
 We pity people too much. Life has a thousand 
 interests, always growing, always bursting into leaf and 
 flower, which will soon cover the gap. 
 
 We pity people too little. All bright things now add 
 to the blackness. All delights are now laden with bitter- 
 ness. He is gone who would have shared them. 
 
 237 Seven years ago, I see, I noted down as being 
 
 the happiest man I knew. Two years after, he died of a 
 broken heart ! 
 
 238 What an exceedingly useful and powerful influence on 
 human arrangements the idea has, that people will expect 
 you to do so and so. What a world of expense, labour, 
 and self-sacrifice gentlemen will go through, to satisfy 
 this expectation. Every day you hear somebody say,
 
 90 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 " Oh ! I must do this, I must do so and so, it can't be 
 helped ; it's a great bore, but of course I must. . . people 
 will expect it of me." On this ground alone one man 
 stands for his county, though he hates parliament, and 
 wants the 10,000 ; another gives great banquets to 
 guests who bore him ; another subscribes to charities he 
 does not care for. . . .each acting not from any good he 
 expects to get, nor from the fear of any harm he seeks to 
 avoid, but from a kind of association of ideas. People 
 will expect it, therefore of course it has to be done. 
 
 239 The years of life seem like the hops of a "duck and 
 drake " on a pond the first much the longest. 
 
 240 Far the best part of a man's thoughts are those which 
 are for ever coming and going again and again in his 
 mind, as he looks on the world about him ; but which he 
 never dreams of putting into words, because they are 
 almost too much a part and parcel of himself to be set 
 apart and looked at. The unconscious study of human 
 nature, the unconscious deepening of his knowledge and 
 insight, the unconscious formation of principles and rules 
 of conduct, these are of far more value than any conclu- 
 sions he sets forth in words. 
 
 241 The grandest quality is magnanimity ; yet this is just 
 one of the priceless jewels that may lie hid under a dung- 
 hill of bad manners, cross tempers, oddities, vices, and 
 what not, and no man dreams it is there, till one day out 
 it shines. 
 
 By magnanimity, I mean that largeness of soul which 
 enables a man, even when he is hurt, to see both sides of 
 people's conduct, to own the justness of their motives, or 
 the force of their temptations ; and which also keeps a 
 man from taking for granted, that to have fallen foul of 
 ME, the glorious John Smith, must, of course, be the 
 most heinous crime in the world !
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 91 
 
 242 Not only is there no rose without a thorn, but it is the 
 rose that has thorns. The very thing that wag to 
 have been your delight, that very thing proves your 
 plague. 
 
 243 A great deed, a striking book, a noble speech, sets a 
 man up high before the eyes of all the land ; and he 
 deems his fame made. It is made. But that very hour 
 it begins to be unmade. In a month it is faded : in a 
 year it is gone. If a man would keep himself aloft, his 
 wings must make stroke upon stroke. 
 
 Success soon palls. The joyous time is, when the 
 breeze first strikes your sails, and the waters rustle 
 under your bows. 
 
 244 A man, yes and a woman too, may be highly irritable, 
 and yet be sweet, tender, gentle, loving, sociable, genial, 
 kind, charitable, thoughtful for others, unselfish, 
 generous. This is actually so. 
 
 245 You give less offence by paying no civility at all than 
 by paying it disrespectfully. 
 
 246 How often we see men of ability and ambition, who 
 could strike out a career, chained down ; while mere 
 faineants are in Parliament, or in power, with the 
 openings before them, uncared for, which to those would 
 be heaven itself ! 
 
 247 Tennyson is the bard of dull scenery. A ditch with 
 marigolds, a fen, a bare down, these touched by him 
 glow with beauty. 
 
 248 Novelists have left almost wholly waste one large and 
 interesting field. Why do none of them give us a vivid 
 picture of servant life, as seen from within ? Servants 
 come into novels freely enough, but merely as a chance
 
 92 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 help to the tale. What I want is, that some genial man 
 should go about amongst them, should really lay hold on 
 their thinkings and feelings, and not merely give us an 
 odd character here and there, but let us into the general 
 idea of servant life. Let us feel ourselves to be butlers 
 and ladies' maids for the time, instead of masters and 
 mistresses. 
 
 If well done, this would teach us much worth knowing. 
 We do not stand as we ought towards those who work 
 for us. We have not enough fellow-feeling with them ; 
 and one reason is, that we and they rarely talk together 
 easily. The novelist then would do well to draw up the 
 veil, which we cannot raise for ourselves. 
 
 Be sure that if we saw our behaviour towards them as 
 they see it, we should find plenty to mend therein. 
 There are throngs of petty grievances, of small but 
 vexing discomforts, which masters and mistresses inflict 
 on those under them from sheer want of knowledge, as 
 well as from want of thought. For example, a trifling 
 yet real one, how very few gentlemen take the trouble 
 to avoid ringing the bell from 9 9.30 in the evening, 
 though every one knows that that is servants' supper- 
 time ? One can easily fancy how aggravating it must 
 be, to be called away with the meat yet in one's mouth. 
 But this is merely one out of ten thousand little but 
 pricking hardships. 
 
 In greater matters, how bounden a duty it is upon 
 masters, now and then, to allow their servants, especially 
 young ones, to go home to see their families and friends ! 
 So too, it would be right in a master to urge them to lay 
 by part of their wages, and to take charge of it for them, 
 and give them interest. It would be right to lend them 
 books of an amusing yet useful kind. It would be right 
 to see that all is done to make their rooms comfortable 
 and healthy. To avoid hasty and severe fault-finding is 
 too plain a duty to need dwelling upon. But, above all, 
 is to be resisted the temptation to send them away on 
 trifling grounds. Imagine how one's own soul would 
 burn with indignation, if one were turned off, disgraced 
 and perhaps even to be half starved, for some fault which 
 would have been amply punished by a scolding.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 93 
 
 249 Many things help to make a nation rich. Safe 
 harbours, deep rivers, rich soil, fine climate, wise laws, 
 long peace, and so forth ; but no one thing fills the bag 
 so fast as truthfulness. 
 
 250 The aim of education should be, to make the boy think 
 right, and feel right. 
 
 251 One of the chief arts in governing men, is to humour 
 their sensitiveness. It is beyond belief how jealous 
 people are. Tell A. to do what it is B.'s place to do, 
 and B. will be wrapped in gloom for a week. If you 
 want cheerful, active, good-tempered service, you must 
 be nice, to a degree, in your observance of the boundaries 
 between those under you, and not put one stickleback 
 into another stickleback's water. 
 
 252 Crossness, gloom, anger, bitterness, hatred, are sins. 
 Here then is a strange thing, that sin may be purged 
 away, as well as it can be preached away. Magnesia 
 does more against it than sermons. 
 
 Nay but, on the whole, sinners are as healthy as 
 saints. "Wickedness does not come of physical miscon- 
 struction, for murderers are robust, eupeptic men. 
 
 253 That on a great scale, taking men in millions, good 
 feeding helps both mind and morals, is clear. Man is 
 one being. What sets his body right, in the long run 
 sets his soul right. Beef and beer turn into manliness. 
 There was never a brave, self-reliant, wise people, with 
 pinched bellies. 
 
 This might seem low to some : but I believe that the 
 conception, not of there being a close tie between body 
 and soul, but of the body and soul being one, is a truth 
 which lies deep down. The idea that our bodies are 
 mere shells, in which the soul lives, as a hermit-crab 
 does in a whelk, is not only a mistake, but a radical 
 mistake, the root of a thousand errors. 
 But how about the world to come ?
 
 94 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 The Church gives the reply " I believe .... 
 in the resurrection of the bod//," not, of course, of this 
 very flesh and bones, but of a glorified body. 
 
 254 How many of the things that we dreaded and hated, 
 have turned out to be comforts and pleasures ! Won- 
 derful is our power of assimilation. We can swallow 
 oyster-shells and digest them, as sea-anemones do. 
 
 Really, when anything happens which seems to be a 
 sheer unalloyed mortification, the strong likelihood is, 
 that in after-times we shall look back to it with a smile, 
 rejoicing at the good luck it brought us. There is such 
 a ricochet in our life. Life bounds away off one event, 
 and lights down again on another, which we should 
 never have touched, had we not struck on the first. And 
 thus 
 
 " Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows, 
 Which show like grief itself, but are not so."* 
 
 The converse is likewise true. The breeze we hail 
 with joy may bear us on the rocks. 
 
 255 The nose is not meant to delight us, but to be a 
 watch-dog against stinks. And stinks, in their turn, are 
 light-houses to warn us against bad and unwholesome 
 air. 
 
 Science is resolved to destroy the whole romance of 
 rural life. Not only has it taught us to stall the cattle, 
 and to do away with farmyards to cut down trees and 
 fences, and so forth : but it even slays the old poetical 
 images. Thus we used to hear of a milkmaid's breath 
 being as sweet as roses ; but we are now taught that the 
 only change the air in her lungs can have gone 
 through is that of becoming laden, more or less, with 
 poison ? 
 
 * Richard II.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 95 
 
 257 Weary, doubtless, comes from " to wear." It is the 
 same as worn away. How much more alive with 
 meaning such a word is, than " fatigued." 
 
 258 It is a daily surprise to me, to see how shallow, poor 
 barren-minded, men may still be, after the most prodi- 
 gious amount of education all the education that can 
 be given not by Eton and Oxford alone, but by Parlia- 
 ment, society, travel, reading, pictures, talk. But the 
 truth is, that there is one path to wisdom and only 
 one the path of thought. 
 
 259 What a feeling some men give you, that their moral 
 character is barren sand. They may live cleanly, and 
 never say or do what could displease you ; and yet you 
 feel, by a kind of instinct, that no noble feeling could 
 grow in them. While others make you aware, the first 
 hour you are with them, of a deep and rich soil in their 
 moral being. 
 
 260 Reading spreads facts, like manure, over the surface 
 of the mind ; but it is thought that ploughs them in. 
 
 261 There are abundant evidences, from within and from 
 without, of the truth of Christianity ; but what assures 
 me thereof is this that, if Christianity had its way, the 
 world would be made happy. Were the law of Christ 
 carried out by each of us, in each detail of our lives, this 
 earth would be a heaven. Were His bidding obeyed, 
 there would be an end of vice and crime. There would 
 be an end of selfishness, an end of meanness, an end of 
 lying, an end of drunkenness ; an end of quarrelling, 
 backbiting, envy, falsehood, family strife and wretched- 
 ness ; an end of violence, an end of war ; and the mass 
 of outward misery would disappear, when this mass of 
 wickedness had gone. 
 
 How can I refuse to believe a religion, which, if all 
 men would drink it into their very souls, and do what it
 
 96 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 bids, would drive all sin and most suffering out of the 
 world ? And how shall I refuse to believe this religion 
 alone, seeing that this one, and no other, would do that ? 
 Many persons seem to think that one religion is about 
 as good as another, if believed in sincerely. I take a 
 more practical view. I would test religions by the 
 results. Are they fig-trees or thistles ? Look at their 
 fruits. See what the world would get by a hearty 
 reception of the Gospel of Jupiter, or Juggernaut, or of 
 Mumbo Jumbo, or even of Mahomet himself, and then 
 see what we should gain, in nobleness and in well-being, 
 by a hearty reception of the Gospel of Jesus. 
 
 262 Men will trim their boat; if over-bibled on one side, 
 they will throw all their weight on the other. This 
 was seen on a large scale in the reigns of Cromwell and 
 Charles II., and now-a-days shows itself on a little one 
 in many and many a rectory. 
 
 263 The man of business has a pull over the professional 
 man in this, that while the preacher, the pleader, the 
 author, the statesman, is always pressed upon by the 
 question, what will be thought of me ? the manu- 
 facturer or merchant works at his business without any 
 such irritation to his vanity. The author writes, and 
 asks himself at every word, will this be admired ? the 
 preacher asks that as to his sermon; the statesman as 
 to his speech; the pleader as to his pleading ; but the 
 tradesman does not look for praise. 
 
 264 You hate a vain man ? Nay, rather pity him ; his 
 life is a life of nettle-stings. 
 
 265 Nothing interests me more than to observe the mass 
 of latent wisdom in the mind of a well-taught community. 
 What a multitude of sound opinions on a vast variety of 
 subjects Lie stored up in the national mind, never,
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 97 
 
 perhaps, set forth in words, but exercising a powerful, 
 though unseen, unheard influence. 
 
 For instance, the opinion that offensive war is wicked 
 and hateful, has been slowly formed in the English 
 mind : though certainly three centuries ago no such 
 opinion was to be found there. This opinion is latent; 
 it quietly withholds us from quarrels which (as history 
 shows) we should else be ready to go into. 
 
 The free trade principle, again, has become a part of 
 the texture, as one may say, of the British mind, not 
 talked about now, but sovereign in power. 
 
 266 Depend upon it, nine boys out of ten might be made 
 in a fair degree thoughtful. They only want a man to 
 train them that way, and they would readily learn to 
 mark (and re-mark) what passed before them. They 
 have it in them, but so few teachers know how to draw 
 it out. 
 
 267 Of the wonderful works of God, none is more wonder- 
 ful than the institution of marriage. The quiet way in 
 which it calls forth all that is best in human nature 
 self-denial, judgment, diligence, tenderness, both in the 
 man and in the woman, for each other's sake, and for the 
 sake of their little ones, is most beautiful. In a happy 
 marriage there is an influence always at work, to keep 
 the husband and the wife at their noblest. 
 
 268 How religious doctrine rises in nobleness with the 
 increasing force of the nation's mind, you may see rather 
 strikingly in this case the belief as to the devil. In 
 the dark ages all men looked on him as a grotesque 
 man, malignant and wicked in a transcendental degree, 
 but still a man. Now-a-days we regard the devil as a 
 pervading influence towards evil, as a principle, not a 
 person. 
 
 269 Government may be sluggish, careless, wrong-headed ;
 
 98 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 but rarely is silly. One abuses ministers for what may 
 seem absurd follies, but it turns out that they had fair 
 reasons ; though, upon the whole, what they did was a 
 mistake. Why of course, a minister must be somewhat 
 able, and somewhat versed in business ; he is not likely 
 to behave with childish unreason. 
 
 270 The dulness of our imaginations is our best shield. 
 Every one says, when a great blow falls on him, that he 
 feels as if in a dream. He cannot realize it. His mis- 
 fortune seems to be under a veil, not to be touched or 
 seen clearly. But at times the veil is lifted, and the 
 dreadfulness of the calamity is seen as by a flash. An 
 empty chair, a plaything, some one's laughter, and the 
 scales seem to fall from the mind's eye. 
 
 27 1 We want more convenient names for the two divisions 
 of society, above the working-class. " Aristocracy " and 
 " middle class " are not definite enough. No one knows 
 what is meant by a middle-class man. Some would not 
 apply the term to a rich banker or merchant living in 
 splendour, but only to tradesmen and farmers ; others 
 count the country squires as middle-class men, and 
 confine the word " aristocracy " to the nobility ; others 
 keep the term "middle class "for the whole trading 
 class, but would not include under it the clergy, 
 barristers, or officers of the army and navy. It would 
 be a help to get a clearer definition ; and this might be 
 done by calling those two great divisions, respectively, 
 the " active class," and the " leisure class ; " the former 
 consisting of all who are still working for their bread 
 (though not with their hands), whether in trade or pro- 
 fessions ; the latter denoting those who live on realized 
 incomes. 
 
 Mark the change in the way of speaking of the work- 
 ing class. They are no longer the " poor," " the masses," 
 " the lower classes," but the " working class." This 
 shows the greater respect felt for them.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 99 
 
 272 Workers are the wheels thinkers the steam engine. 
 If society moves forward an inch on any line, that is 
 wholly owing to the thoughts of thinkers. The history 
 of the world shows that men crawl on, one doing as the 
 rest do, for ages and ages, and, at the end of that time, 
 things are as they were at the beginning. This is the 
 way with all savage people, where the power of thinking 
 is not drawn out ; and it is also the case with many 
 civilized societies. When the thinker comes, then a step 
 is taken onwards ; and not only is it the great thinker, 
 such as Bacon, Newton, Burke, Johnson, Coleridge, 
 Wordsworth, who givessociety an impulse ; but infinitely 
 more motion is communicated by the stir of the mass of 
 smaller minds. The thousands of small minds that are 
 at work, driving on in mechanics, agriculture, medicine, 
 <fec., &c., &c., &c., do far more than any one mind can, 
 however mighty. But the thing to note is, that the 
 advance of society in knowledge, morality, religion, and 
 outward comfort and conveniences, wholly depends on the 
 amount of thinking that is thought. The thinkers do the 
 whole pushing, the worker merely does as he has been wont 
 to do till the thinker tells him some better way. All pro- 
 gress is due to thought. 
 
 2 73 And I believe that the power of thinking, latent in the 
 national mind, is almost infinite ; that there are no 
 bounds to the positive increase of mental vigour, and 
 therefore of progress, in a nation. But this is to be 
 done, not so much by making thoughtful men still more 
 thoughtful, as by calling out thoughtfulness in the mass 
 of minds. If a million of men and women were each 
 made but ever so little stronger reasoners and more 
 active inquirers, why what an addition to the sum of 
 intellectual power ! But even the thinker himself might 
 be more stalwart. What a weak flight of thought, after 
 all, he takes, even at his best. But when, by a better 
 training in youth, you have called out some power of 
 thought in nearly all men, and greatly increased it in 
 those who would have displayed it, your country will 
 grow in all wealth, of mind and pocket, beyond the most 
 golden dreams ! 
 
 H **.
 
 100 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 274 His own blunders scratch a man's vanity; but the 
 thing to tear it, is for a near relative to have made a fool 
 of himself. 
 
 275 I think the essence of the difference between the 
 Evangelicals, and Maurice with the Broad Church, con- 
 sists in this that the former have always regarded God 
 as looking upon us with anger on account of our sins, 
 and requiring to be propitiated by the death of Christ ; 
 whereas Maurice strongly enforces the idea that God 
 tenderly loves us, through all, and that, if we turn to 
 Him, we shall find Him waiting to be gracious to us. 
 It follows from the latter view, that Christ's death is not 
 to be taken as an atonement, but is simply an expression 
 of the love of God to us sinners. In fact, Maurice regards 
 the Deity, not as a Judge, whose justice must be satis- 
 fied, but as a Father, who will rejoice at the return of 
 his erring children. 
 
 Further, Maurice's view is, that the penalty of sin lies 
 in the being sinful in being not one with God, but 
 alien from Him, whereas the righteous man's reward lies 
 in being righteous, in being a pure, holy, faithful servant 
 of his Lord, not in being paid with certain pleasures, 
 and escaping certain pains, in return for his good 
 behaviour or his faith. A man is not to be good in 
 order to get something by it ; but the being good the 
 being a child of God this is Heaven ; to hate God 
 that is hell. 
 
 276 I do not know anything more preposterous than the 
 abuse which has in all times been lavished upon the 
 " avarice " of money-lenders, as if they sucked the life- 
 blood of the distressed. Even Lord Bacon speaks with 
 horror of usury ; and to this day the same fallacy stands 
 its ground. I see that even so judicious a writer as 
 Kaye, speaks of the Ryots suffering from the avarice of 
 the Mahajuns or money-lenders ; whereas, it is as plain 
 as daylight, that the man who lends to a man who wants 
 to borrow, is just as much his benefactor as his butcher 
 or baker is. And, if the lender asks too high a price for
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 101 
 
 the article he offers, why does not the borrower go to 
 some one else ? There is competition among usurers as 
 much as among tailors ; and, if the borrower has stipu- 
 lated to pay even fifty per cent, for the accommodation, 
 why is the usurer to make him a present, by not, 
 exacting what is due to himself? No doubt people 
 would like other people to lend them money for nothing ; 
 and it is very provoking that they won't lend it without 
 being paid a fair price for the risk of losing it altogether. 
 
 I am struck by the good sense which prevails in the 
 House of Commons ; and also by their fair and easy 
 temper. They are so ready to let any man speak, who 
 has anything to say ; but they find a man out who 
 talks for talking's sake, and put him gently down if 
 they can. 
 
 But what law governs their listening ? Very often a 
 man may talk good sense with a good manner, and the 
 House will be a Babel of jabber ; while at other times 
 a man may talk mere bosh, and not a word will be said. 
 The only rule by which their caprice seems kept at all 
 in order, is this, that they are always attentive when 
 their curiosity is awakened. If a man is an ass, and 
 is very likely to say something absurd, then they are 
 on the watch for the absurdity and hold their tongues. 
 But, above all, if a man is known to say bold odd things, 
 which will make a laugh, then every one is afraid to 
 chatter, lest he should miss the joke. So again, if a 
 man is known to be wise and original, they will want to 
 hear his wisdom and originality ; but unless they are on 
 the look out for something to interest or amuse them, 
 they do not listen. What makes them enjoy a speech is, 
 that they should be like a sportsman at the edge of a 
 wood, every moment hoping that a hare or rabbit, or 
 even a woodcock, may pop out. 
 
 27 g It sometimes strikes me as the strangest thing in the 
 world to hear this man or that spoken of with absolute 
 contempt, when, after all, what is this being who is thus
 
 102 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 set down at two minutes' notice ? What a boundless 
 ocean of thoughts and images has flowed through his 
 mind since the day he was born what millions of feel- 
 ings have swayed his heart what a vast variety of inci- 
 dents have made up his career what countless good 
 traits there are in his nature what a future lies before 
 him what a sphere of action around him ! Is this 
 infinite, complex, unutterable, inconceivable being to be 
 sneered down, because he is ill-dressed, or has clumsy 
 manners ? 
 
 279 It is curious to reflect, that had England espoused 
 the cause of the Corsicans in the time of Paoli and 
 taken their island under her protection, as they desired, 
 Napoleon would have been an English subject, and 
 might have done as much against France, as he did 
 for her. 
 
 280 It may be impossible to refrain from speaking angrily, 
 but, at least, we could refrain from generalisation. Tell 
 your friend that he has done a mean false, selfish, 
 cowardly thing, and no great harm is done ; but tell 
 your friend that he is a mean, false, selfish, cowardly 
 man, and there is no repair for the wrong. You will 
 always seem to have spoken out, in haste, what you 
 really think of him. 
 
 ?Si A sensible and modest man values praise, not merely 
 as an expression of the good opinion of others, but 
 because it endorses his good opinion of himself. We 
 rather think we are very good and clever fellows ; but 
 there is a horrid inkling of doubt down below. Praise 
 reassures us. 
 
 282 A man's character is not perfect, unless there is a 
 horse-and-dog stratum in it. The strata of philosophy, 
 poetry, and so forth, are not enough. We are cousins 
 to the angels : hut we are also cousins to the animals, 
 and we ought to love those our poor relations.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 103 
 
 283 Happy people are the pleasantest. " A merry heart is 
 a continual feast," to others besides its owner. 
 
 284 People spend vast sums in making their furniture 
 splendid their places splendid their carriages splendid, 
 and so on ; but, if we take any individual and ask our- 
 selves, do we like him the better for his grand furniture 
 and trappings ? we find that we do not. We judge him 
 as a man, after all, not as the owner of silk curtains. 
 
 Certainly we look up to a man the more for his rank 
 or wealth ; but, when it comes to the details of the 
 magnificence of his grounds, or of his equipages, about 
 which he plumes himself so mightily, why they weigh 
 nothing. We do not care one whit the more for him, we 
 rather dislike and despise, than like and honour him, for 
 the pomp he is so proud of. 
 
 285 Large people, especially large young women, suffer 
 frightfully in society. How they envy light little girls, 
 who can whisk about, and be as brisk as bees. 
 
 286 Why is it that stupid people are always so much more 
 anxious to talk to one, than clever people ? 
 
 287 Nothing makes life so entertaining, as the habit of 
 watching and then thinking over all that passes before 
 you. If a man will take the pains to open his eyes and 
 look hard at what is going on around him, as a spectator, 
 not as an actor only, he has an unfailing source of 
 pleasurable study, in all that befals himself or others, in 
 the personages he comes across, and, above all, in the 
 marvellous history of his own mind and feelings. 
 Mackintosh said of Wilberforce, " He is always inter- 
 resting and amusing, because everything interests and 
 amuses him." If the grand march of life goes by, with- 
 out your running out to see it, you lose a vast deal of 
 enjoyment.
 
 104 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 This habit may be formed, though not in a day, and 
 not without stiff work. Be sure that here, as elsewhere, 
 the crop is as the toil is. 
 
 288 The value to a nation in mere pounds, shillings, and 
 pence, of intelligence, is past all reckoning. Sharpened 
 wits and strengthened sense cause fifty million things to 
 be done quickly, cleanly, and well, that else would be 
 done ill, or in a slovenly style, or not at all. On a great 
 scale, knowledge is not merely power, but wealth. Were 
 boys really taught to think strongly, the nation would 
 be the richer, outwardly as well as inwardly. Well to be 
 is well to do. 
 
 But a nation puts even more into its pockets by being 
 good, than by being wise. Infinite millions of money 
 are made by uprightness. Most true is that saying of 
 Christ's, which at first startles one, " Seek ye first the 
 kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added 
 unto you." Hold by the law of God, you will rule the 
 world. Hold by the skirts of the devil, and he drops 
 you in a slough. 
 
 289 Add together the miseries that there have been under 
 the sun since the world was made the torn affections, 
 baffled hopes, anxieties, fears, toils, pangs of remorse, 
 disappointments, mortifications, horrible dreads, excrucia- 
 ting agonies, broken limbs, blinded eyes, hurt and 
 diseased brains, horrors of the stone, of fistula, of cancer 
 , . . what an Atlantic Ocean of anguish ! what an un- 
 fathomable abyss, what a height, what a depth, what a 
 breadth of sorrows ! 
 
 290 It would have been a fine thing for the country, had 
 it been the way to leave a farm in fee to the younger 
 sons of lords and squires instead of a fortune of five 
 thousand or ten thousand pounds. What an admirable 
 body of intelligent and gentlemanly yeomen would have 
 been formed.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 105 
 
 291 Revenge is sweet, not merely because it gratifies your 
 spite, but because it gives you such a sense of power, to 
 have got him under your thumb, who once had you 
 under his. 
 
 292 Carlyle avers, that BO long as a man has great force of 
 mind, it does not matter to what he applies it he will 
 come out first in any line. Now I think experience 
 shows that the man who thinks much can rarely do much. 
 In fact, what instance is there of a deeply thoughtful 
 man who was a great administrator ? Napoleon may 
 have been an exception ; but Napoleon was not a man of 
 a speculative mind, wonderful as his grasp was on the 
 bearings of practical questions. 
 
 The instances the other way are numberless. In truth 
 you can hardly name any great philosopher or poet, 
 except Bacon, who was not a mere child in business. No ; 
 here as elsewhere, there is a natural division of labour. 
 The thinker is not a doer, nor is the doer a thinker. 
 
 To be sure, the fact that so few philosophers have been 
 also distinguished as practical men may be explained by 
 this, that philosophers are very rare after all ; and the 
 chance is small that a man remarkable for thought should 
 happen to be thrown in the way of conducting large 
 affairs. Again by this, that the power of abstract medi- 
 tation is a very frail and delicate growth ; it soon droops 
 in rough weather. It is astonishing how soon a man 
 loses all aptitude for contemplative thought when he is 
 much taken up with business. The power seems cut 
 down to the roots, though it quickly shoots out again, 
 when a calm time returns. But a man who has once 
 taken a forward place in affairs rarely gets clear of dis- 
 tractions from that day forth. 
 
 
 293 On a still, sweet evening, how nature seems as though 
 she had some deep thing to say to us, could we but hear 
 her ! But our ears are muffled, our hearts are dull : we 
 can only feel that there is something beyond what we see 
 in the landscape, beyond what we hear in the mellow 
 susurrus around ; but that something we cannot grasp.
 
 106 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 294 A very curious trait in human nature is the enthusi- 
 astic loyalty of great masses of men towards their leaders 
 in any strife. In war this is less seen now-a-days, be- 
 cause war is become a regular matter of business, and 
 discipline prevents much display of feeling. But in a 
 contested election you may still see it marvellously at 
 work. The people on either side become frantically fond 
 of their candidate, though he may be altogether unworthy 
 of their affection. But each man's excitement acts 
 powerfully on the rest, by way of sympathy, and hence 
 such enthusiasm. 
 
 295 Nothing is more striking than the unconscious wicked- 
 ness of men the atrocious things done by the actors in 
 history, without, as it should seem, either themselves or 
 those who lived at the same time being aware that they 
 were not excellent people. And if others can be so bad, 
 without knowing it, may it not be so with us too ? Who 
 can say but what, some day, our goings on will seem 
 scandalous to our more intelligent and more Christian 
 great grand-children ? 
 
 296 The one great practical truth that ought to be driven 
 over and over again into his own mind by every young 
 man, is, that he should not care a button for his likes 
 and his dislikes : but should do what ought to be done, 
 in spite of any disagreeableness. The lesson of self- 
 denial is far beyond any other in importance. It must 
 be repeated a thousand times over, before it is really 
 learnt by heart : but oh, how well worth the pains ! 
 Happy is he who has learnt not to seek for what is 
 pleasant, not to shrink from what is painful, but to go 
 on doing everything that he knows to be good, and 
 kind, and right, in utter disregard of self. How a man 
 might ennoble and invigorate his life, if he would work 
 this principle into the very grain of his mind, and 
 strenuously act upon it invariably striving not after 
 what would be pleasantest, but what would be best. In 
 fact it is the very essence of all that is good and great 
 in human life ; and not only so, but it is the true road
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 107 
 
 to happiness. This doubtless is what our Saviour means 
 when He says that he that hath left house and brethren 
 for His sake, shall receive an hundredfold even in this 
 life. 
 
 297 The more I read, and the more I think, the more 
 clearly do I see that war is all but the worst evil in the 
 world ; that, except in defence, it practically always 
 turns out to have been the worse alternative. 
 
 298 This principle is making its way in the minds of men, 
 and will in due time be victor : that it is wholly beside 
 the function of Government to choose out any one creed 
 or church for its special love and care ; that Government 
 ought to stand wholly apart from all ecclesiastical dif- 
 lerences, and not, as a Government, become a partisan of 
 any religious body whatever. This principle is, in my 
 opinion, a sound principle, and one which must and will 
 by degrees actuate our national policy. But the principle 
 on which our institutions are partly built, is the principle 
 that the Government of a nation is bound to find that 
 nation in religious truth to choose for it between creeds, 
 and prop up the true one. Now what will come of the 
 war between these two ? 
 
 299 One of the most painful reflections in reading history, 
 is to think what an amount of perfectly needless severity 
 has been expended in the world, from sheer mis judgment 
 on the part of its rulers. For instance, take the case of 
 torture : no doubt it appeared even to the thinking men 
 in the dark ages, that without the rack you could not get 
 evidence enough to convict for crimes. But we know 
 that much better evidence is to be got without it. Take 
 again the sanguinary capital punishments of former 
 times ; we have discovered that they actually prevented 
 the repression of crime ; in other words, that they were 
 not merely useless, but worse than useless. The same 
 with military and naval flogging : our army and navy are 
 in far better discipline, though that hellish punishment
 
 108 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 has comparatively disappeared. The same too as to the 
 rough and almost brutal treatment of boys by their 
 fathers and schoolmasters, which the said fathers, &c., 
 deemed to be entirely necessary in order to keep boys in 
 the right way. In short, in old times all rulers went on 
 the same principle which huntsmen used to go upon, who 
 if a hound did wrong, tied him up and flogged him till 
 he could not stand, whereas we now-a-days understand 
 the principle, that a proportionate penalty is more 
 effective than an excessive one. 
 
 300 Some of the noblest passages in poetry, both sacred 
 and secular, hardly strike us at all, till some grief falls 
 on us ; then their lustre comes out then we feel their 
 depth and beauty ; they shine like wetted cornelians. 
 This is especially true of the Psalms, read in happiness 
 they please us well, but not much more ; but read in 
 deep sorrow, how the voice of God resounds from them ! 
 
 301 One of the ill effects of cruelty is that it makes the 
 bystanders cruel. How hard the English people grew in 
 the time of Henry the Vlllth and bloody Mary. 
 
 302 Moral courage is more worth having than physical ; 
 not only because it is a higher virtue, but because the 
 demand for it is more constant. Physical courage is a 
 virtue which is almost always put away in the lumber 
 room. Few persons now-a-days have any call upon 
 their bravery. Moral courage is wanted day by day. 
 
 There is a moral courage, which arises from insensi- 
 bility ; but the grand moral courage is that which 
 shrinks, yet from the sheer force of principle, stands its 
 ground. 
 
 303 There are female women, and there are male women. 
 
 304 The way the world, the flesh, and the devil beat one's 
 religious principles is just the same as that by which
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 109 
 
 Napoleon conquered Europe. They bring an overwhelm- 
 ing force to bear on one point. Your whole line may 
 be stronger than theirs, but at the point of collision 
 they are superior. 
 
 305 We treat Fortune (it might seem irreverent to say 
 Providence) much as the old women in the village treat 
 the squire. They think their coals and blankets are 
 as much a matter of course as their breakfasts. And 
 we in the same way take our good luck for granted. 
 It seems quite the natural thing that all should run 
 smooth, and we flourish the whip and sing out to mis- 
 chance to let the leaders go, and away we spin, caring 
 nothing for nobody. 
 
 But when things are all athwart ; when our best laid 
 schemes " gang agley ; " when our dearest hopes are 
 baflled ; when the night is drear, and we have to be 
 thankful for a lift in a donkey cart, then we recall those 
 old days of gallant galloping, arid we begin to know 
 good fortune, how rare a thing it is, and how exquisite. 
 It's a pity that we cannot appraise our prosperity while 
 we have it. 
 
 306 I should like to put a little patch of Quakerism 
 into our Church service. Ten minutes' silence in the 
 middle of the prayers and instead of some of them, 
 would be a huge good to the soul. 
 
 307 The chief lesson I learn from history is the folly of 
 fear. What an infinite mass of vain terrors do we find 
 to have died away, nothing remaining of them now but 
 their dead leaves embedded in annals ! How vast an 
 amount of reforms were hindered by the fear that such 
 and such dreadful results would ensue, none of which 
 have ensued ! If there has been any one thing which 
 more than another has created dangers, it has been 
 cowardice, i.e., the dread of dangers which did not really 
 exist.
 
 110 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 308 Glass is one of those things which would have been 
 incredible, if not seen. Would not philosophers have 
 declared it utterly impossible that a substance whose 
 particles were so tight together that nothing could cut it , 
 would let the light slip through everywhere ? 
 
 309 Women care wonderfully little for a man on account 
 of his being brilliant in conversation. What they 
 really appreciate is intimate intercourse of heart and 
 soul. This is one reason of their priest worship. 
 
 310 There is no quality that runs through all the other 
 qualities in a man's character, permeating and invigor- 
 ating the whole, so much as good sense. Where that is 
 wanting, you feel a strange want in every corner of the 
 man's nature. You hardly know what fails, but there is 
 something that mars even the noblest and sweetest traits. 
 Sound strong sense is the best of all natural qualities, as 
 a basis. 
 
 311 High pews certainly tend to allay devotional feeling 
 in the congregation. 
 
 The natural tendency, when a great many people are 
 brought together, is for every emotion to run through 
 them all, and to kindle as it flies from one to another. * 
 How much more, for instance, you are inclined to laugh, 
 when a whole theatre is laughing, than you would be if 
 you were alone. So too appeals of eloquence, how far 
 more heart-stirring are they when hundreds or thousands 
 around you are responding to them, than if only a few 
 individuals were scattered here and there, yards away 
 from each other, and if these others seemed quite languid 
 and indifferent. How readily a crowd is made to boil 
 with excitement, where each individual composing it 
 would be utterly unmoved were he by himself. This 
 catching nature of all emotion is in fact evident in a 
 thousand things. Sadness seen makes you sad too. 
 
 * Tiiere are some good remarks on this subject in Whately's Rhetoric.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. Ill 
 
 With the cheerful we grow gay, and glum with the 
 gloomy. How irritable it makes one to be merely in the 
 room when some one else is out of temper ! 
 
 And the closer people are to each other the more apt 
 are they to share in each other's feelings. How or why 
 these things are we cannot tell. What feeling is we 
 cannot tell. All we can do is to note the phenomenon, 
 and act upon it. 
 
 And thus the high pews, which keep the people of a 
 congregation apart from each other, and lessen in each 
 the consciousness of others being present, and of what 
 those others are feeling, actually do much to hinder 
 those emotions of gratitude of contrition of interest 
 in the truths preached, which it is the direct aim of the 
 church service to call forth. 
 
 312 It has taken the light of some stars more than 20,000 
 years to reach us. The Mosaic chronology would make 
 those stars about 6,000 years old. Well then, the 
 Mosaic chronology is wrong. That is a fact, and it is 
 no use to blink it. 
 
 Are we therefore to disbelieve the Bible ? Certainly 
 not. It only proves decisively what we had reason to 
 think before, that the sole aim of the Bible is religious 
 and moral, and that it cares nothing for facts that lie 
 apart from its grand purpose. 
 
 However, one thing is clear. If the Bible makes mis- 
 takes, as to chronology or history, or any other matters, 
 then the words that we hear cannot be God's wards, and 
 the Bible is God's mind borne to us through a human, and 
 therefore, fallible medium : i.e., Moses, David, Isaiah, St. 
 Paul, did not simply write down sentences dictated to 
 them ; but, their souls being filled with celestial truth, 
 they gave it forth, each in his own way ; and, as to out- 
 ward events, each seems to have told his tale according 
 to what he believed to have been true, and not by heavenly 
 revelation. 
 
 3*3 Nothing is a greater disappointment in this world, 
 than its being so hard to see much of any one whom you
 
 112 NOTJES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 love and admire. It is so mortifying to fall in with 
 charming people, full of thought and feeling, and just 
 what you like and love, and, perhaps, to meet them twice 
 a year, and then in such a way that you can't exchange 
 a word worth having. This used to make me restless 
 and unhappy ; but now I have learnt to wait for the 
 delights of communion of soul with soul, till I meet the 
 best of all ages, and of all lands, in the world to come. 
 
 314 They say, half scornfully, that enthusiasts are men of 
 one idea. True. But they stand apart from the mass 
 in that very thing, that they have one idea ; whereas, the 
 rest have no ideas at all. Common men may have 
 information and intelligence : but no one idea is so 
 rooted in their minds, that it grows and bears fruit. Their 
 thoughts are not acorns, but pebbles. 
 
 315 Luther held the doctrine, that even our best acts of 
 piety and of benevolence are sinful in the sight of God, 
 and actually require His forgiveness : and this is the 
 belief of multitudes. Yet, just see what we are told 
 about Cornelius : " And he said unto him, thy prayers 
 and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God ; " 
 and God sent Peter from Joppa to teach him, as a 
 reward for these endeavours to do right. In fact, if you 
 strip away the mere words, and ask what you really 
 mean by a thing being " sinful," you see the folly of 
 this dogma : for of course, by its being sinful, you mean 
 that God looks upon it with displeasure. Now, can 
 even the feeblest attempt, if sincere, to do what is right, 
 to worship God aright, or to help our fellow-men, be 
 displeasing to our Father in Heaven ? 
 
 316 The pain of losing dear friends, often is not that we 
 feel the loss so much, but that we feel it so little, 
 unless indeed it be the loss of any one who formed part 
 of our daily life, and then the pangs are sharp enough. 
 But if a friend or relative has not been an element in
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 113 
 
 one's every -day existence, how faint the sorrow ! how 
 soon are we again lighthearted ; how soon is all as it 
 used to be, except now and then an almost sweet 
 melancholy in recalling some incident of days gone by ! 
 You feel anxious to cherish your grief to feel it 
 deeply ; but it flies away, and your heart is cold again, 
 ere your friend is laid in the tomb. 
 
 ^17 In sorrow, it seems impossible to imagine happiness. 
 One cannot recall or realize what enjoyment means. A 
 few hours pass, and one cannot realize the meaning of 
 grief. 
 
 318 Religion brings comfort ; time brings comfort ; but 
 the greatest shield against grief is the dulness of one's 
 own soul. We Bee things so dimly. Even the most 
 fearful loss seems hidden from us by a kind of mist. 
 We cannot really lay hold of it and take it in, except at 
 moments. It flies us : it slips out of our grasp ; but at 
 a touch the earth seems to open, and we do see and feel 
 that our loved one is dead dead, and the dreadful 
 meaning of that word, dead, rushes over the soul in a 
 storm of despair, 
 
 319 If you thoughtfully set yourself to look right into the 
 character of one whom you know well, if you make 
 yourself master of his or her nature, not stopping at a 
 mere list of goodnesses and badnesses, but getting down 
 to the inner qualities from which faults and virtues 
 shoot forth together, you always find that there is far 
 more to love, to reverence, to admire, than to dislike and 
 despise. Seen as a whole, every character has a beauty 
 of its own, just as any tree or any animal has a beauty 
 of its own ; and this beauty predominates still, however 
 twisted and decayed some parts of it may be. 
 
 To be sure one's intimate friends are not rascals. 
 
 320 How long is the list of good things which are as truly 
 wealth as lands and houses, and yet cannot be bought
 
 114 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 with money ! For example, a sweet temper, a good heart, 
 sense, health, humour, cheerfulness, taste for the beautiful, 
 love of reading, thoughtfulness, talkativeness, work, wife, 
 children. With these, and many other like possessions, 
 may not the poor man be actually a man of larger property 
 than the lord who lives hard by not metaphorically, but 
 literally, a richer man ? 
 
 321 What a stand-still world it would be, if all men, like 
 most men, were afraid to turn round upon the system in 
 which they have been brought up, and ask, Is there not 
 a lie in my right hand ? It is this audacity that sets the 
 world right again in religion, in politics, in science, in 
 philosophy, in everything. Without it, the world slips 
 on from bad to worse, and from worse to worst, as we see 
 a thousand times over in history. He who would lead 
 his age forward must be a questioner of his age. He 
 must ask all things, Why are you here ? Is it well that 
 you are here ? 
 
 322 The high-church dogma, that no one has a right to 
 preach unless he has had hands laid upon him by a bishop, 
 has something to say for itself, from early church-history, 
 and from reason too, But then what about Chalmers, 
 Mrs. Fry, Robert Hall, John Foster, and a vast multitude 
 more ? Were these persons not called of God to the 
 ministry ? But if they were called, it shows that in the 
 eye of Heaven the Apostolical Succession is mere 
 trumpery. 
 
 323 Money is a kind of manure to one's expenses. The 
 more you lay on, the thicker they crop. It is wonderful 
 how expenses spring up and fill every corner of one's 
 income, let it extend as it may. Why, dukes with 
 100,000 a year, are sometimes more pinched than clerks 
 with 300. In fact the expansive force of your income 
 never equals that of the expenses it calls forth. Every 
 new outlay is as it were a queen-bee, which brings a 
 whole swarm of others along with it. Your receipts have 
 increased, so you set up your carriage. This involves not
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 115 
 
 merely, as you might fancy, the cost and keep of coach- 
 man and horses, but a whole host of smaller bills, which 
 you would never have thought of, but which soon mount 
 up frightfully, for shoeing and medicines, and top boots, 
 curry-combs, and what not ; so that you may be poorer 
 with 800 a year, which has led you to set up your 
 brougham, than you were before with 600 a year. To 
 be sure you get your locomotion. 
 
 224 Instinct in man as in brutes is ineradicable. Even 
 when cut off from its natural ends, it still seems to work 
 away in full force. For instance, what a vehement appe- 
 tite the popes had for family aggrandizement and the 
 accumulation of property, though (except in some cases) 
 they had no children to succeed them. Well and again, 
 how fond almost all men are of sporting, yet the instinct 
 of the chase has in reality lost its uses since man has been 
 able to buy a chop at his butcher's, instead of having to 
 kill a buffalo for it. 
 
 325 Happiness is just like a city beleaguered, as Thebes 
 was, by seven allies, each of whom has sat down before 
 one of its gates. Poverty is encamped on one side : against 
 him we have thrown up the earthworks of wealth, with 
 infinite labour. Ill health, with an army of diseases, is 
 making an everlasting series of attacks on another side : 
 against him we fortify ourselves with exercise, and air, 
 and diet, and drugs. Loneliness comes down upon us 
 from another side, and we fence ourselves against him 
 with friends, and wife, and children, and so on. Well, 
 we think we are well protected against all our foes ; but 
 the day comes when we find that, if but the least of 
 them forces an entry even through a postern, our happi- 
 ness is taken the black flag of sorrow waves from our 
 citadel. 
 
 326 Rudeness and obsequiousness are both ungentlemanly, 
 for this reason, that the first arises from want of respect 
 for others, and the second from want of self-respect. 
 The true gentleman respects both himself and others. 
 
 I 2
 
 116 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 327 The habit of reflection is of great value as leading as 
 to originate new thoughts, but, perhaps, still more, be- 
 cause it gives us such an effective understanding of the 
 old jog-trot truths, that are the Lares and Penates of all 
 our minds. Old truths, which are mere ditch-water to 
 .the non-thinker, become alive with interest to the man 
 who ponders them. They cease to be husk, and become 
 full of kernel. 
 
 328 Enormous quantities of intellectual capital are lying" 
 idle just because no opportunities present themselves 
 for its investment. What noble minds, in both men and 
 women, have I seen rise to their full stature, and fall at 
 last, like those huge Himalayan timber trees, unadmired 
 and unused ! I have known many individuals but 
 more women than men who have been rendered almost 
 wretched by their great abilities, which had no scope for 
 employment. It must be a hard case to be conscious of 
 great capacities, but to feel one's limbs tied down, like 
 Gulliver's, with puny threads, yet strong enough to pre- 
 vent all exertion. It is very well to say, Oh, but such a 
 man need not complain ; he might have made a field for 
 his talent had he chosen. No, no, outward things are 
 very mighty in this world. Had Shakespeare been a 
 coalheaver, forced to work twelve hours a day at his 
 hardest, and to drink two gallons of beer, could even his 
 genius have pushed its way through ? 
 
 329 You must peel the indigestible outside off Carlyle's 
 sentences, as if they were shrimps ; then you find splendid 
 meat within. 
 
 330 I like the word works as applied to an author's writings. 
 Works they are truly, aye, and hard works too. How 
 little does the public dream of the toil of mind and the 
 hopes and fears, that have gone to the making of that 
 book which they order from Mudie's, and skim through, 
 and then say, It's not worth reading !
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 117 
 
 i 
 
 331 I am very glad that I have myself known Roman 
 Catholics, Puseyites, Unitarians, Wesleyans, Quakers, 
 Baptists, and Evangelical Churchmen, who were seve- 
 rally men of real heart in religion, men who loved God 
 and their neighbour, and strove to do His will, and 
 believed His word. 
 
 Now it would be pleasanter, perhaps, to fancy that all 
 who think otherwise than we do on these matters are 
 going along the broad and flowery path to destruction ; 
 but what excuse can we have for this "jubilant expecta- 
 tion that all who differ from us will be damned," (as 
 Southey says), when we have, in the lives and characters 
 of others, ocular demonstration of the truth that UKUI 
 may be chin-deep in error, yet not drown ? 
 
 332 What a vast quantity of power lies hid ! Men are 
 Californias mere deserts, though untold treasures are 
 buried below. What might not each of us do, had he but 
 the will and the sphere ? 
 
 333 " I hold my duty," says Jean Paul Richter, " to lie not 
 in enjoying or acquiring, but in writing, whatever time 
 it may cost, whatever money may be forborne, nay, 
 whatever pleasure for example, that of seeing Switzer- 
 land, which nothing but the sacrifice of time forbids." 
 And again, "A poet, who presumes to give poetic delight, 
 should contemn and willingly forbear all enjoyments, the 
 sacrifice of which affects not his creative powers, that so 
 he may perhaps delight a century and a whole people." 
 In Richter's advanced years, it was happy for him that 
 he could say " When 1 look at what has been made out 
 of me, I must thank God that I paid no heed to external 
 matters, neither to time nor toil, nor profit nor loss : the 
 thing is there, and the instruments that did it I have for- 
 gotten, and none else knows them. In this wise, has the 
 unimportant series of moments been changed into some- 
 thing higher that remains." " I have described so much," 
 says he elsewhere, " and I die without ever having seen 
 Switzerland and the ocean, and so many other sights ; 
 but the ocean of eternity I shall in no case fail to see."
 
 118 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 334 Texts of Scripture are not the foundation stones upon 
 which our beliefs are based, but the battlements which 
 defend them from assailants. 
 
 3; ,e In the 17th century, the religious sects were in the 
 same state as the feudal barons five centuries earlier, who 
 were each at war to the knife with his neighbour. Now 
 the sects are better employed. They may often look at 
 one another with an evil eye ; but they are more engaged 
 in cultivating their own ground, than in plying the 
 battle-axe. 
 
 336 The public is always unjust in this, if the wrong 
 general, or admiral, or other officer, is appointed to an 
 important post, it always flies out at the man so 
 appointed, whereas, clearly, it ought to abuse those that 
 set him there. You cannot fairly expect a man to know 
 his own unfitness, or to sacrifice the chance of fame and 
 the certainty of emolument in the slender hope that, if 
 lie refuses the place, some better man will hold it. The 
 real fault lies with the person who had the want of 
 patriotism or of moral courage to put the waiter on the 
 coach-box. 
 
 337 How strongly enforced by the example of Scripture is 
 the principle of teaching by image and illustration. In 
 the prophecies, for example, how invariably the prophet 
 is told to set forth before the eyes of the people by some 
 sign the truth that is to be urged upon them. The 
 whole system of types in the Jewish dispensation rests 
 upon the same principle. Then again, observe how, in 
 i he New Testament, any one abstract doctrine is made 
 clear to the mind ol man by images. Thus the regene- 
 ration by the Holy Ghost is set before us by the following, 
 ( 1 ) a second birth ; (2) a change from darkness to light ; 
 (3) a stony heart being taken away, and a heart of flesh 
 given ; (4) putting oft the old man, putting on the new ; 
 (5) being blind, and seeing ; (6) washed with water ; (7) 
 buried, risen ; (8) dead, quickened ; ({)) bond, free ; (10) 
 poor, rich ; (11) deaf, hearing ; (12) wilderness, garden j
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 119 
 
 (13) illness, health ; (14) pollution, cleanliness ; (15) 
 parched, watered ; (16) scarlet, white ; (17) ore, pure 
 metal; (18) filthy garments, new ones; (19) barren, 
 fruitful. What a series of familiar images, to shadow 
 but one high truth. 
 
 338 It never answers for a grown-up son to live under his 
 father's wing, especially, of course, if he be married. 
 The eagles understand this ; they always drive off their 
 young ones as soon as they can kill their own mutton. A 
 son who lives under his father's roof is apt to become 
 wonderfully stale and dull, and, as it were, weighed down, 
 even if his father be ever so tender, just as young trees 
 are sure to droop, if they grow under old ones. But 
 fathers never will believe this : they think "parental care 
 and influence " so useful for their sons ; whereas nature 
 intends every man of fi ve-and-twenty to be his own bungler, 
 and so live and learn. 
 
 339 You hear people talk about the hurry and rush there 
 is uow-a-days, and attribute it in a great degree to 
 railways, and to the rapidity of movement introduced by 
 railways. Why now, it seems to me that the more 
 quickly you get through one of the things you have to 
 do, the more leisurely can you do the remainder. Thus, 
 as to locomotion : instead of your wasting three days 
 between London and Edinburgh i.e., a whole week in 
 going there and back, you now do each journey in 
 twelve hours. Well then, you have four days saved for 
 doing your business in London, so that you are in less of 
 a scurry than in the days of slow coaches. 
 
 ,40 Bacon says that a man's nature runs either to herbs or 
 weeds. Yes, and everything that he has does the same. 
 Money, time, talents, study, just bear their own crop and 
 no other. 
 
 341 It is singular that, though the eastern tropics were the 
 cradle of the human race, their climate is less suitable to 
 the human constitution than the climate of those regions
 
 120 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 to which man migrated. A European's children are sure 
 to die in India. An Indian's children live well enough 
 in England. Nor have we fever and plague like them. 
 Nor are we so feeble. One would have expected the 
 human frame to find its maximum of health and vigour 
 where it first came into being. 
 
 342 There is no more important piece of wisdom than that 
 of looking at the good in things rather than at the evil. 
 Nine persons out of ten have the eye of a vulture for 
 carrion : but look without looking (to use a Greek idiom) 
 at what is healthy and alive. I am sure we all lower 
 ourselves by our eagerness to grub up faults in other 
 people's characters, writings, doings, religious opinions, 
 &c. It's a proud thing to pass one's hand down a horse's 
 leg, and find out a splint. But it is really finer to cast a 
 genial and skilful eye over the whole animal, and observe 
 its perfect shape, its well-made shoulder, its broad flanks, 
 and clean fetlocks. That is just what we all want. We 
 all need a more magnanimous, generous appreciation of 
 the whole character, whether of an individual or of 
 a body, instead of snuffing at every blemish, and con- 
 demning virulently because we cannot find perfection. I 
 say again, it is of the essence of Christian wisdom, to 
 look to the good instead of looking to the evil. Of course 
 we are not to say things are fair when they are ugly. 
 Truth above all things. But, in reality, we are constantly 
 talking and feeling lies in our invectives and irritations. 
 The truth, if it spoke, would say, There is such and such 
 a fault ; but there is a greater excellence. And, more 
 often than not, the excellences, which we Avon't look at, 
 are the rule, and the stains, which we stare at, are only 
 upon one petal of the rose. 
 
 In fact, it requires a higher kind of wisdom to sympa- 
 thise and approve, than to carp and criticise. 
 
 343 It is remarkable that Herodotus and Froissart should 
 both be first-rate historians, though each wrote when
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 121 
 
 \vriting was not felt to be an art, and merely meant to 
 tell people what had happened, just as we tell stories in 
 table-talk. 
 
 344 "-Fears of the brave and follies of the wise," how 
 true ! And equally true to say, " Courage of cowards, 
 cleverness of fools." 
 
 345 It seems to me that the existence of evil is not the 
 insoluble problem ; but the extent of evil. It is not, by 
 any means, inconceivable that a perfectly wise, good, and 
 powerful Creator should have admitted so much evil into 
 the world, as would leave man a free will, and the 
 necessity of working his reason and other faculties hard. 
 Clearly, if man had been created absolutely free from all 
 possibility of going wrong, either morally, or in his 
 affairs i.e. if he had been created entirely safe from 
 all sin and from all sorrow then there could have been no 
 such thing as the exercise of choice or of self-control. He 
 would have been a mere animal. The existence of evil may 
 be accounted for, and often has been accounted for, upon 
 this ground. 
 
 But the real puzzle, as I think, is, that evil should have 
 been allowed to get such a sway in the world. The mystery 
 is, why it has been allowed such a crushing force that man 
 cannot escape great sinfulness and great suffering, by any 
 force of his mind, and will, and conscience. There lies the 
 kernel of the difficulty. Look at the 20,000,000 serfs in 
 Russia ; look at the slave trade ; look at the thirty years' 
 war ; look at the barbarized East ; look at the degraded 
 hundreds of millions in China and India. You cannot 
 account for the amount of the evil in the world. 
 
 346 No wonder first-rate genius for the conduct of large 
 affairs (such as the Crimean expedition) is so extremely 
 rare. 
 It implies that the man 
 
 1 has health to stand hard work, 
 
 2 delights in it, 
 
 3 has sound judgment,
 
 122 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 4 has a clear head to see his way among perplexing 
 
 details, 
 
 5 has a good memory, 
 
 6 has thought out the principles that should guide 
 
 him, 
 
 7 makes up his mind strongly, 
 
 8 yet slowly, 
 
 9 is rapid in execution, 
 
 10 has no " to-morrows," 
 
 1 1 has a will of iron, 
 
 1 2 is full of ardour, 
 
 1 3 is bold not cowed by difficulties, 
 
 14 fears no man's face or tongue, 
 
 15 has conciliatory manners and good temper, 
 
 16 has a strong sense of duty, 
 
 17 is just yet pitiful. 
 
 347 To make pleasures pleasant, sho-rten them. 
 
 348 The English language not rich enough ? Just see 
 what a number of shades of meaning you may find ex- 
 pressed each by its own word, e.g., I wonder, I marvel, I 
 am surprised, astonished, amazed, confounded, thunder- 
 struck. 
 
 349 The folly of wickedness is more strikingly set forth by 
 Bacon's life than by that of any other man I know of. 
 What a magnificent career he would have had, if he had 
 been noble ! 
 
 350 Even originality of thought is in some degree a matter 
 of practice. 
 
 15 l The rule in carving holds good as to criticism, never 
 cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon. 
 
 352 The worst of principles is that one never can apply 
 them.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 123 
 
 353 To humble a man, treat him with reverence. 
 
 354 Gratitude is most intense, not for great favours, but 
 for respectful treatment from a superior. 
 
 355 Those who have few pleasures envy those with many, 
 forgetting the drawbacks. One of these is, that from 
 each pleasure you have to deduct the pleasures which it 
 has compelled you to give up. Your pleasure in society 
 is lessened by the thought of the sunshine on the beech 
 trees ; your pleasure in the nightingale's song by the 
 thought of Lady 's rout : and so on. 
 
 356 A life of large and high-wrought interest looks more 
 charming than a dull and plain one. But he who leads 
 that life knows the disappointments, the self-reproaches, 
 the painful doubts, the distressing difficulties which it 
 involves. I believe you would find the man of a high 
 career much gladder to lie down in the quiet grave than 
 his less envied neighbour, who does nothing but farm 
 and hunt. 
 
 Nor again would any one who looked on at such a 
 career easily believe what slight things mar its happiness. 
 It would almost seem that the thorn was in the further 
 for being almost invisible aye, and sticks the longer. 
 
 357 One mistake of managers is, that they do not trust 
 those under them enough. They are too much afraid of 
 not upholding their authority ; they are too much afraid 
 lest those under them should get ahead. 
 
 358 People are afraid to give praise, fearing to stir up 
 vanity. But nothing makes a man think about himself 
 so much as the feeling that he is not treated justly ; that 
 keeps him in everlasting hot water about himself, till self 
 has overshadowed all things else in his mind's eye.
 
 124 XOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 Whose self-love and self-talk is most wearisome ? That 
 of the man with a grievance. 
 
 359 People say you are none the happier for being rich ; 
 that the common labourer (provided he has good wages) 
 is just as merry and content as the squire, and so on. 
 There is truth in this. But it must be remembered that 
 there are not only different quantities of happiness, but 
 different qualities. The happiness which wealth gives 
 (if wisely used) is of a finer kind, even if it be not more 
 intense. The enjoyment derived from pictures, scenery, 
 books, conversation, thought, is a noble enjoyment. The 
 uneducated man may feel jolly : but his jollity is 
 grosser. 
 
 360 How little pains are taken to tend and bring out in 
 children a feeling for the beautiful ! And yet it may be 
 doubted whether any one thing gives an enjoyment so 
 intense, enjoyment so pure, enjoyment so at hand, with- 
 out cost or pains, as a tender sense of beauty. To one 
 man, the shadows on the grass, the splendour of flowers, 
 the far-away hills, the hues of the trees, the blue sky, the 
 sparkling sea, the silent stars, the ripple of streams, the 
 face of man and woman, art, poetry, are an ever-new 
 delight a delight that thrills his soul. To another man 
 all this is naught. He reads no poetry. He looks at no 
 pictures. Sculpture, architecture, give him no taste of 
 delight. The flowers shine for him in vain : the voice of 
 birds, the light on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, the sound 
 of streams, the still splendour of the moon and stars, 
 touch him not. He goes through life shut out from all 
 which, to his next-door neighbour, fills life with glory. 
 
 361 What is the highest quintessence of misery ? 
 
 To have been bitten by a dog which goes mad soon 
 after. 
 
 What is the highest quintessence of delight ? 
 Release from intense iear.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 125 
 
 362 Kirby found 300 kinds of bees in his one parish. 
 How many kinds of suffering are there in one's own little 
 soul ? 
 
 363 In a highly civilised community, difficulty, after all, 
 only means cost. There is no difficulty in anything, 
 provided you have money enough to buy the requisite 
 labour, and are willing to spend it. You can buy not 
 only the means, but the mind to direct them. It is 
 curious, if you analyze half-a-dozen difficulties, how 
 entirely they resolve themselves into this, that you do 
 not choose to lay out the requisite amount of shillings. 
 If you did, the " difficulty " would disappear. 
 
 364 Having tried both, plenty of sleep and little sleep, I 
 am coming round to think that in the long run, most 
 time is gained by sleeping as much as your body wishes. 
 What you save from sleep, you lose in vigour. Nothing 
 makes a man so languid, as breaking off sleep to get up 
 early. And I take it that you keep your health by 
 sleeping largely : and thus again you are able to do 
 more. And, of course, if you gave your health, you live 
 longer, and thus again you clap on at the end the years 
 that you seem to have lost in bed. No doubt, getting 
 up early is a good thing, if it comes of itself, that is, 
 from going to bed early. But be sure it will not do to 
 burn the candle of your sleep at both ends. You must 
 allow Nature her eight or nine hours' sleep, or else she 
 will get it out of you in some more costly way. 
 
 365 . Lord Macaulay is an almost unique instance of a man 
 of transcendent fwce of character, mighty will, mighty 
 energy, giving all that to literature, instead of to 
 practical work. He is not like literary men in kind. 
 His is the Luther, Cromwell, Napoleon cast of character 
 a man to head some great movement, not a man to sit 
 down and write articles. So any one would have 
 thought who knew him. Yet he had the choice between 
 practical or contemplative life, and chose the latter. To 
 be sure Luther also was a great author.
 
 126 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 366 Nothing is of more value in education than this, to 
 make a point of opening the child's eyes to take an 
 interest in the world around him. Teach him, if a 
 country boy, to know the birds, their nests, eggs, and 
 notes, the flowers, the insects ; teach him to understand 
 different soils, and the breeds of cattle ; teach him to 
 know the planets. You can do all this at mere odds and 
 ends of time, and you have opened springs of pure en- 
 joyment in his soul. And even a London boy may be 
 supplied with a continual and agreeable excitement of 
 mind, if you teach him to study thoroughly the architec- 
 ture of the houses and other buildings, in which an 
 infinite variety (chiefly indeed of ugliness) may be 
 found. But most of all, you should open his eyes to 
 the great subject of horses ; once teach him to discern 
 between good and evil in horses, and to look at every 
 horse that goes by, and pass a rapid judgment on it, 
 and you have turned his dull walks into a perpetual feast. 
 
 367 The memory strikes me as perhaps the most astonishing 
 of all the works of God. How such infinite quantities 
 of reminiscence can lie stored up in the brain, ready to 
 start forward at the call for them, is beyond all concep- 
 tion. It is utterly inexplicable if one supposes that, in 
 some way, all these images are piled up there inside 
 one's head, in their several pigeon-holes, all handy for 
 the mind's use. It is no less inexplicable if one takes 
 a different view, and supposes that there are not these 
 cellars full of bottled images ; but that, somehow, certain 
 suggestions excite the brain in just the same way as it 
 had been excited before, and thus the old image, or 
 thought, is created afresh. 
 
 368 And the multitude of reminiscences lying hid in one's 
 mind seems to have no bounds. You may see this by 
 taking any one thing, and running quickly over the 
 memories which that one thing can trail behind it. 
 Take the one word " dog." What a huge quantity of 
 dog reminiscences any man has who has had to do with
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 127 
 
 the canine race ! What a mass of knowledge as to the 
 different kinds of dogs as to the ways and habits of 
 dogs as to anecdotes of dogs as to the conduct and 
 misconduct of his own dogs, is stored up inside him, 
 ready to come out, if anything should happen to touch 
 the spring by which these memories are kept shut. No 
 doubt the amount of them, which he can, at any one 
 moment, lay hold of and draw out, is small. But the 
 amount that lies hid, ready to be drawn out when the 
 occasion comes, is enormous. 
 
 " Who hath among least things 
 An under-sense of greatest." 
 
 Now, is not that idea one wholly new ? one which has 
 sprung from the minds of men in the 18th century, 
 but had never been put into words before ? The idea of 
 discerning the infinite, the high, the sublime in things 
 common and homely. Is not that new, and noble as new ? 
 
 It seems now to be the principle that runs through all 
 art painting, novels, poetry. This is a good sign ; for 
 to be able to see the divine in the e very-day things of 
 life, plainly needs a fresher imagination and a deeper 
 thoughtfulness, than to see it in things rare. 
 
 370 I see one grand step forward that we have to take, 
 and shall take some day. Our fathers burnt those who 
 differed from them in religious opinion. We do not 
 burn them, but we still hate them, and abuse and hold 
 ourselves aloof from those who are heretics from our 
 creed, political and religious. But we ought to shake 
 off not persecution alone, but the spirit that leads to it. 
 We ought to be willing to suffer every one to hold his 
 own view, and like him none the less for its being other 
 than our own ; we ought to allow that it is well for Truth 
 herself, that she should be struggled with and fought 
 against, and have to make her way, instead of having her 
 way made for her. Absolute toleration of all opinions 
 toler.ition not by the law but by our own hearts this is 
 one of the good things still to cjrne.
 
 128 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 371 Surely rank is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, 
 of all outward good things. To be at once looked up 
 to, to be at once courted and admired, wherever a man 
 goes, as a lord or duke is, must sweeten life. I suppose 
 there is no one, however strong his self-respect, who 
 does not feel inclined to treat a man of rank with con- 
 sideration ; and, for my part, I think to receive such 
 treatment would be highly agreeable. 
 
 And yet, after all, a simple gentleman is treated by 
 his inferiors with respect in the same way ; but he 
 becomes unconscious of it. To miss it would be painful ; 
 but to have it gives no sting of pleasure. 
 
 372 I hold that the more the minds of men advance, the 
 more infinite will be the varieties of their religious creed. 
 In fact, in a normal state, no man's belief would be 
 wholly like that of any other man. I do not mean that 
 the main truths would not be held by all, in such a 
 state ; but the combinations of them, the proportions of 
 them, would never be the sama Every man would have 
 large differences from his neighbour. Uniform faith is 
 dead faith. 
 
 373 I have no words to express my scorn for the red- 
 tapeism of those architects, whose only idea of building 
 a picturesque house is to copy the old manor-house 
 models, with great thick mullions, and lead lights, the 
 drawing-room windows not opening down to the ground 
 so as to let you out and in. To live in the country, and 
 yet, when in-doors, to be wholly shut in from it, is, I 
 think, the acme of stupidity ; and it only shows a 
 wretched barrenness of fancy, if the architect pleads that 
 he cannot make his parsonage, or cottage, or hall, 
 picturesque, without these accompaniments. Nonsense ! 
 You could build as interesting and charming a country 
 house as any in England ; and yet the owner and his 
 family should have a perpetual feast of country sights, 
 sounds, and smells. For my part, I think any country 
 house most incomplete, unless you can sit in the
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 129 
 
 drawing-room or in your bed-room and read your book, 
 with the garden and wood breathing round you all the 
 while. 
 
 374 People live in the country and walk about every day, 
 and think they know nature by heart ; but no one knows 
 what the country is, or what nature is, who merely walks 
 about. You must have spent thousands of hours, 
 actually sitting or lying " sub tegmine fagi" or you can 
 know as little of nature as the driver of a 'bus in Baker 
 Street knows of the inside of the houses. 
 
 375 Of all " wisdom for a man's self," there would be none 
 like that of always doing his very utmost to win every 
 one he came across. We all, in a languid way, would 
 like to please ; but the thing would be, to take strenuous 
 pains, to lay oneself out heartily, to make friends all 
 round. There might be some risk of a mere show of 
 friendliness, but upon the whole, it would tend to make 
 one really like others better, as well as to be better liked. 
 And certainly it is surprising how much aid comes at 
 times from the most unlooked-for quarters ; from the 
 very last person, whom we should have thought of 
 courting with a view to favours. More helpful things 
 are done to us by those whom we have thought nothing 
 of, than by our tried friends. 
 
 376 To feel jolly is half the battle. 
 
 "Your merry heart goes all the way, 
 Your sad one tires in a mile a', " 
 
 is true in all work whatever, from writing sermons to 
 riding with hounds. 
 
 377 No life might seem (and in many cases is) more free 
 from care, more luxuriantly delightful, more advanced 
 on all sides into everything that can make man happy, 
 than that of a country gentleman in one of " the 
 ancestral homes of England." 
 
 Here are a few examples
 
 130 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 One " county family " consists of an old man, paralytic, 
 imbecile, who sits in a darkened drawing-room, moaning 
 the live-long day, while no one speaks but in a whisper. 
 
 Another squire has six sons, and no opening or capital 
 for any of them. 
 
 Another has lived to be ninety-two : his son is a bed- 
 ridden old gentleman, who for seventy years has been 
 the slave of his father's caprices, and the object of his 
 suspicious jealousy. 
 
 Another has eight daughters and no son. The 
 property is entailed. 
 
 Another is childless. His vast mansion is dull as the 
 tomb. 
 
 Another has quarrelled with every neighbour near him, 
 and his whole talk is made up of oaths and abuse. 
 
 Another is a minor, fatherless, sisterless, his mother 
 re-married. He drinks. 
 
 Another is separated from his wife (by her fault). His 
 one son lives abroad. 
 
 Another has thirteen children. At his death the 
 ancient family estate must be sold off, and when the 
 mortgages are cleared, will not fetch 25,000. 
 
 Another is at daggers drawn with his eldest son. 
 The second is a favourite. The whole property must go 
 to the one he hates. 
 
 Another is a man of refined taste. The house is a 
 hideous concentration of all ugliness. It stands in the 
 plainest of plains. The old trees were all cut down to 
 pay his father's debts. 
 
 Twenty others, with delightful homes in the loveliest 
 spots, live abroad, for vice, or economy, or mere restless- 
 ness. 
 
 Another has three country seats, and all mouldy. 
 Another can't afford to go to town. He hardly knows 
 any one, and has no society whatever. 
 
 378 At any rate, Christianity has a perfect unity in itself. 
 Its informing principle is the truth that man has gone 
 wrong, and is to be set right. Every doctrine grows out 
 of that.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 131 
 
 379 Sir Isaac Newton was thirty years gathering for his 
 book on Prophecy, and re-wrote it sixteen times with his 
 own hand. It is now clean forgotten ; and Coleridge 
 says it was mere raving. So much for a man getting off 
 his own line ! 
 
 380 The architect would be the happiest of artists, but 
 that no human being ever knows his name. No other 
 artist's work lasts, as his does, for thousands of years; 
 or stands, as his does, in the sight of all the world. 
 His work too is not for beauty alone, but for use as 
 well : whereas sculpture, painting, even poetry, each has 
 no use beyond charming the fancy, a high and noble 
 use I own : but the architect charms the fancy, and, at 
 the same time, his work may be a temple for the worship 
 of God, or a seat for the legislature of an empire, or at 
 lowest, is a home. 
 
 381 It is not the soft, gentle girl who loves children most, 
 or wins them most ; but the girl of spirit. 
 
 382 Nothing sounds better than the doctrine, that a State 
 ought to stop the spread of religious poison. Yet it 
 won't do. Why not ? 
 
 Some say simply because it can't be done. It would 
 be well if you could hire an angel as censor. But no 
 man can be a fit judge, to say, " This is truth, and that 
 is poison." All he can say is, "To me this looks wrong :" 
 while perhaps he is wrong himself. 
 
 That is not why the endeavour is wrong. The true 
 reason is, that God's plan in all things is to have a 
 struggle, a fight, not to get good things done straight off. 
 And it is His will not to have religious truth crowned 
 without a victory, but to let it win its way by its own 
 right hand. No greater blunder can a ruler make, than 
 that of trying to carry his people, instead of leaving them 
 to walk on their own ten toes. 
 
 383 It is curious to see how a self-willed, haughty girl, 
 
 K -2
 
 132 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 who sets her father and mother and all at defiance, and 
 can't be managed by anybody, at once finds her master 
 in a baby. Her sister's child will strike the rock, and 
 set all her affections flowing. 
 
 384 Women go through much in the way of pain at the 
 seeming selfishness of their husbands, which really is not 
 selfishness, but ignorance. Many and many a wife, e. g., 
 will encourage her husband to leave her, (she being 
 perhaps in bad health,) and go about pleasuring, and 
 then will deeply grieve in silence at his liking to be away 
 from her. I think the law of truth stands higher than 
 the law of love. A wife in such circumstances, ought 
 not to make out that she does not mind, when she does 
 mind. She should show her real feeling about the 
 matter, though still ready to give up her wishes. But it 
 is unfair on him, as well as on herself, to leave him 
 unaware that he is vexing her. 
 
 585 Wondrous little can we mend ourselves. We may 
 wish, and strive, and pray earnestly against some fault ; 
 yet we can no more get rid of an ugliness in our 
 character by a struggle of will, than a monkey can get 
 rid of his tail. It is sad to think this but experience 
 is experience. Nature is stubborn, and stubbornest when 
 wrong. It is hateful to be dull, lazy, cold, cross, 
 sensual ; but if you are made so dull, lazy, cold, cross, 
 sensual, you will be to the end of the chapter. No 
 striving will make you bright, busy, warm, sweet, pure. 
 This is the bare fact : would it stood otherwise. Let us 
 hope the fight may be worth fighting, for the fight's 
 sake, though not won. 
 
 386 The Tory hates change ; 
 
 The Whig likes it ; 
 The Eadical loves it. 
 The Tory thinks what is is best ; 
 The Whig thinks it might be yet tetter ; 
 The Radical thinks it worst.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 133 
 
 In short (taking not single men, but masses) 
 Toryism is the view of those on the top ; 
 Whiggism, of those who are getting up ; 
 Radicalism, of those who are down. 
 
 387 Good sense does not imply reasoning, inquiry, or, 
 indeed, any prolonged mental action. What it does 
 imply is a hale mind: and a hale mind sees at once 
 how things stand. Most of us have blurred sight ; it 
 costs us pains to make out what is before us. But a 
 hale mind sees clearly, without " speiring" as the Scotch 
 say. 
 
 The best handler of affairs of our day told me, that 
 he never reasoned out what to do. The path lay plain 
 before him, and he took it. He did not consult the 
 chart and the quadrant, to find his bearings. In him 
 good sense was at its highest. 
 
 ^88 It is utterly amazing to find how much those in lower 
 place think of men of distinguished name. Excellent, 
 self-respecting, well-educated citizens, will tell you years 
 afterwards, as one of their cherished recollections, 
 that some statesman, or even some lord, talked to 
 them in a friendly cordial way, as if they had been his 
 equals ! 
 
 389 During the act of talking, sorrow holds aloof. Pain 
 is lulled while the tongue is going. For the time, the 
 brain and nerves are otherwise at work. 
 
 300 One gleam of distance gives a garden a soul. There 
 is all the difference in the world between a garden close 
 shut in, and one with a peep at far-away hills. So it is with 
 character. You must have an inkling, however slight, 
 of something beyond. 
 
 391 This is the most perfect specimen of cautions 
 gumming -up 1 ever read. It is from Browne's Vulgar
 
 131 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 Errors, in his inquiry into the existence of the Phoenix. 
 He thus draws his whole discourse to a conclusion : 
 
 " Since, therefore, we have so slender grounds to 
 confirm the existence of the Phoenix ; since there is no 
 ocular witness of it ; since, by authors from whom the 
 story is derived, it rather stands rejected ; since they 
 who have seriously discoursed hereof have delivered 
 themselves negatively, diversely, or contrarily ; since 
 many others cannot be drawn into argument, as 
 writing poetically, rhetorically, enigmatically, hiero- 
 glyphically : since Holy Scripture, alleged for it, 
 duly perpended doth not advantage it : and lastly, 
 since so strange a generation, unity, and long life, hath 
 neither experience nor reason to confirm it ; how 
 far to rely on this tradition we refer unto conside- 
 ration." 
 
 292 Nothing in history strikes me as more remarkable 
 than this : that the Church of England should be so 
 perfect and so pure. Think at the outset how unlikely 
 it was that a government, taking upon itself to act as 
 the spiritual shepherd of its people, and to look out a 
 pasture and fold for them, should not have gone wide 
 astray in an undertaking, for which a government is in 
 its nature unfit. Again, what a change, from Popery to 
 this plain worship ! At how many gates between the 
 two might the flock have been turned in, and found only 
 brambles ? Think, lastly, under what rulers this sublime 
 worship was planted, under a ruffian a boy and a 
 woman. Putting ourselves back to 1500, and looking at 
 the rocks and bogs through which the road had to be 
 made, we can but marvel. 
 
 There is no explanation but this : that our Church is 
 so pure, so noble, because it sprang out of the soul of a 
 people, noble themselves, and strongly wrought upon by 
 the Word of God. 
 
 393 " To him that hath is given : " and thus the work of 
 the famous artist (whether writer or painter) is not only 
 praised for the beauty that lies atop, but is scanned and
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 135 
 
 scanned again with eager care, until men find out all the 
 still richer grace that lies below. "Whereas the unknown 
 artist may know what pains he has lavished, and what 
 charms he hid in his work ; but, as no one does more 
 than glance at it lightly, these pains and these charms 
 are without avail. This then is one great use of fame : 
 not that it draws the eyes of men to the artist, but that it 
 draws them to his work. 
 
 394 Force of character is grand ; but I wonder to see the 
 narrow range of mind in men even of rare force. It is 
 good to be strong ; but even nobler than strength is that 
 largeness of nature, which enables a man, while his heart 
 and soul are in his work, to relish also other things, 
 as poetry, art, literature, sporting, scenery, dogs, and 
 flowers. Else the man is but half a man, however able. 
 
 395 Are not lessons a mistake ? Were it not better not to 
 force learning upon children ? Just put them in the way 
 of reading, and give them pleasant books; but leave 
 them to read, play, or wander at their own sweet will. 
 Would not they grow up healthier and happier in body 
 and soul ? Certainly the finest men and women have 
 had very free childhoods. 
 
 39 6 The " fair " sex is plain : and men ugly. How rare 
 is a handsome face ! and a face such as you see in pictures 
 or read of in novels a face to 
 
 " take the prison'd soul, 
 And kp it in Elysium," 
 
 is a thing you never see. This really is strange. On 
 her other works Nature has lavished beauty unspeakable. 
 A shell, a flower, a leaf, a bird, a fish, will be wrought 
 and painted with boundless care and boundless skill. 
 Why should we, her highest work, be hideous ? It 
 surely must be that we do not live as we ought, that we 
 do not give our bodies full play, and so mar them. Or
 
 136 NOTES OF THOUGHT 
 
 is it that we miss our natural meed of beauty by our 
 ungainly dress ? Doubtless a man clothed in Oriental 
 robes, with flowing beard and hair, is far grander than 
 a shaven, tight-dressed cockney. But look at ladies. 
 Their apparel is most lovely all done that man can do 
 to set them off, and yet OI/LUH rd\as what faces ! what 
 shapes ! 
 
 397 It is pleasant to see how truths rise, as it were, out of 
 the sea ; how the doubt thrown out by the thinking man 
 of one age becomes the truism of the age after. For 
 instance, in the Vicar of Wakefield Goldsmith says, 
 " Nor can I avoid even questioning the validity of that 
 right which social combinations have assumed of capitally 
 punishing offences of a slight nature." See how 
 cautiously he puts forward a truth which to us is beyond 
 question. 
 
 398 It seems to be thought, that if a people rise in wealth, 
 and grow fat, they will fall off in mind and soul. But 
 experience shows that society "moveth altogether if it 
 move at all ; " that, as it grows in outward well-being, 
 so does it grow in its spiritual parts in taste, in mind, 
 in all that makes up civilization. Greece, Rome, the 
 Holy Land, the Italian Republics, Spain, France, England, 
 the Low Countries, have all shown that the time of pros- 
 perity is the time of the largest wealth of heart and mind. 
 A fat body does not make a lean soul. 
 
 399 The sweetest of sweet things is to be thrown closely 
 with one nobler than oneself. It is the truest foretaste 
 of heaven. 
 
 400 I well remember two clergymen : one a man of rare 
 thoughtfulness and originality, but not more striking in 
 power than charming in gentleness. Never was any 
 human being fuller of love, tenderness, humility. Never 
 was any human being freer from self-seeking and self- 
 conceit, more likely to wrong himself, less likely to
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 137 
 
 wrong his neighbour. And heaven had given him the 
 only life he was fit for, a life of musing and teaching. 
 For worldly work and bustle no one could be less apt. 
 His frame small and slight, a noble countenance, with 
 a strong forehead, and alive with serene sweet thought- 
 fulness. 
 
 His friend was of another kind. You could see at 
 once in his massive head and frame and his free bearing, 
 that he was born to do work in the world, not to sit, 
 and brood ; and his life was a life of strong joyous 
 labour for the good of others. A loud eager talker, 
 with a want, scarce enough to pain you, of refinement : 
 courageous, self-reliant, manly, but a little overpowering; 
 still so genial, so unselfish, so affectionate, and in 
 conversation so vigorous, that you could not but love 
 him, and be rather amused than vexed by his open 
 pride in himself and his doings. What a contrast 
 between these two ! yet they were of one heart and 
 mind. 
 
 401 Every artist longs to have his work thought well of. 
 But the higher artist seeks first truth and beauty, and 
 hopes for praise as the meed due to them. The lower 
 artist is so thirsty for praise, thinks so much more about 
 himself than about his work, that he turns aside to make 
 a display of his strength or skill. He is not wholly given 
 to bringing forth truth and beauty, but he is hankering 
 to strike the beholder's mind with his originality or 
 
 power. This I take to be the secret of 's aberrations. 
 
 His pictures show wonderful force of painting ; but what 
 spoils them is, that, instead of calmly striving to raise 
 his painting to the highest, he has itched to amaze you 
 by his boldness. 
 
 402 Much of the charm of charming conversation lies in 
 opinions being put as " Don't you think so and so ? " 
 instead of " I think so and so." The one form takes 
 your hand, and places you and the talker on the same 
 seat : in the other, the talker addresses you from the 
 dais.
 
 138 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 403 I marvel at the rigid narrowness of the Scotch soul in 
 all religious matters. What can have straitened the 
 nation so tightly ? You would have thought that if not 
 their strong sense and warm affections, yet surely the 
 glorious presence of the mountain and the torrent would 
 have given them breadth. But no : they are narrow as 
 any Spanish Inquisitor, and very like him. How they 
 would enjoy an auto dafe of those who like a good walk 
 on the " Sawbath ! " 
 
 404 It is a pleasure, as you get on in life, to feel so much 
 more self-trust in your opinions : to know what you know 
 so thoroughly : to feel that you can pass judgment with 
 decision. 
 
 405 What you most repent of is, a lasting sacrifice made 
 under an impulse of good-nature. The good-nature goes ; 
 the sacrifice sticks. 
 
 406 A light, gay way of speaking, how pleasant it is, and 
 how rare ! Most men's talk drives as through clay. 
 
 407 Faces are most puzzling. You see a dozen men of 
 great mark. Well, half-a-dozen of them will have such 
 strong, boldly cut faces, that you say, " How a man's 
 face shows the man ! " The other half-dozen will have 
 faces mean, common-place, as if they had been cut off 
 so many pigs. There really is no rule about the matter 
 at all, except that, more often than not, a man with a 
 strong mind has a strong forehead. 
 
 408 Wit rather chills, " humour warms one's heart. 
 Humorous men are nearly always loveable. 
 
 409 How many men (even gentlemen), in talking to those 
 they wish to please, sweeten their voices as it were with 
 brown sugar. A man's voice, like a man, should be gentle,
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 139 
 
 but still manly. Nothing pleasanter than a thoroughly 
 unaffected yet well-modulated tone. 
 
 410 People are wondrous chary of praising others to their 
 face. Does this come from a selfish unwillingness to own 
 other people's excellence ? 
 
 Partly. But you may see that men will not praise, or 
 will only praise coldly, those whom they heartily admire, 
 and whose favour they long to gain. Now why so ? 
 
 411 It must tell even on a man's enjoyment of life, to have 
 a beautiful face to look at in the glass, instead of an ugly 
 one. To one, every glance at himself is odious to 
 another, a delight. In a life of seventy years this comes 
 to a large mass of either pleasure or pain. 
 
 But no need to preach up the value of beauty to men ! 
 You never see any man pass a mirror without glancing 
 at himself if he have the chance. 
 
 412 You never can convey a real idea of what a man is by 
 detailing his qualities. You could say just the same 
 things of several men, who yet are strongly unlike. A 
 man must have a command of words indeed, to be able 
 to set forth those light mouldings and colours blending 
 into each other, which yet make the man what that man 
 is, as against any other man. 
 
 4I ^ 'Tis amazing to find out what hosts there are of 
 delightful people. 
 
 414 If only for the look of the thing, people should avoid 
 speaking so much ill of others. Why do what is sure to 
 make you disliked ? 
 
 415 It is not so much what the man says that tells, as his 
 way of saying it, and what he is who says it. One 
 man's sermon, or talk, or speech, charms you, while the
 
 140 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 same or a better thing said by another never touches you 
 at all. What you most care for is the force of the 
 speaker. 
 
 416 Nothing can be more unlucky than our present social 
 arrangements, as regards enjoyment of nature. "We get 
 up so late, that we miss all that exquisite, rich, tender 
 beauty of dawn, and the fresh and brilliant charm of the 
 early morning. And then we dine at half past seven, as 
 if on purpose to cut ourselves off from the glories of 
 sunset and " the sweet and solemn eventide." 
 
 417 Uncrushed women have a wonderful spring of cheer- 
 fulness much more than men. But they are sooner 
 broken. 
 
 418 Is any one free from the feeling of shrinking intensely 
 from the beginning of any work that has to be done ? 
 To most men, " c'est le premier pas qui codte" and that 
 cost is frightful. 
 
 4! 9 "When I was young, I bought horses by their looks ; I 
 was careful to see whether a horse had a good shoulder, 
 was well ribbed up, and so forth. Now I am old, what 
 I care to know is how he goes ; and if he can go well, I 
 am sure he is made well. "Tis the same in other matters. 
 As we grow wiser, we ask more and more how the pudding 
 eats, and judge it by that. 
 
 420 Nothing has impressed me so much with the ineffable 
 ingenuity, if I may. say so, displayed in nature, as the 
 " weaving of the delicate air into words," by the various 
 combinations of motion between the tongue, teeth, and 
 lips. What a feeling it gives one of the infinite pains, if 
 one might venture to say so, bestowed in perfecting each 
 creature. And especially of the way in which each being 
 was planned as a whole : each part adapted exquisitely 
 not to its one function only, but for aiding the functions
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 141 
 
 of the other parts. The lips, for instance, are, first of all, 
 merely the edges of the cavity through which the food 
 passes into the frame. But to this is added the 
 marvellous capacity of pushing the air about till it forms 
 separate sounds, and thus the mind of one man is able to 
 dart its thoughts into the minds of others. Let meta- 
 physicians talk what subtleties they please, the good 
 sense of mankind cannot but acquiesce in the truth, that 
 where there has been design, there must have been a 
 Designer : that, where things are combined with the 
 most refined skill to fulfil certain purposes, wisdom and 
 power are the characteristics of Him who so moulded 
 them. 
 
 421 The most wearisome monotony is the monotony of 
 incessant variety. 
 
 422 When did the word "Gothic" come into being? 
 Never did any name tell a more barefaced lie. It is 
 quite certain that the Goths brought no style of archi- 
 tecture with them at all. The Norman style was 
 merely an adaptation of Romanesque, and sprang up ages 
 after the Goths had ceased to exist as Goths at all. 
 And that which is specially called Gothic the system 
 of pointed architecture was not created till every 
 vestige of the Gothic hordes had vanished utterly away. 
 It had no connection or tie with them of any sort or 
 kind. All we of the North can claim is, that we 
 wrought the architecture which came to us from the 
 South into new forms of unspeakable beauty. But we 
 did so by slow degrees : and we never created any 
 architectural style whatever. Roman begat Romanesque, 
 Romanesque Norman, Norman Early English, Early 
 English Decorated, Decorated sank into Perpendicular, 
 Perpendicular into Elizabethan, and this was degraded 
 into base Roman and pretended Greek ! 
 
 423 Coleridge just hits off the movement of a ship over a 
 calm sea, when he says the vessel " slid along."
 
 142 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 424 In man's works, the more he is obliged to consult and, 
 so to speak, humour nature, the more graceful does his 
 work prove. In a ship he has to adapt his work to the 
 winds and to the waves, and hence it comes out beautiful, 
 and the more studiously he fits it to the wave, the more 
 grace it becomes imbued with. 
 
 425 It shows the vigour of the English mind, that not only 
 its indigenous ideas grow so well, but those wafted upon 
 it from other lands flourish here better than there. 
 
 I have seen the first normal school that ever was, in 
 Holland. The original stem is a stick. Its offshoots in 
 England are trees. 
 
 The science of political economy was struck out in 
 France. There it is the creed of a few philosophers. 
 Here it is wrought into the national mind. 
 
 Liebig's theories as to manures and chemical agri- 
 culture have gained small way in Germany. In England 
 they are known and acted on from Fife to Cornwall. 
 
 426 Count up men's calamities, and who would seem 
 happy ? But, in truth, calamity leaves full half your life 
 untouched. 
 
 427 It is no reason for not inviting A. B. that you suppose 
 he can't come. People care more for being asked, than 
 for the visit. 
 
 428 Doing stops thinking. Thinking stops doing. 
 
 429 We are happy, and society is delightful ; solitude 
 enchanting ; work full of spirit ; leisure full of interests ; 
 art, poetry, books, glorious ; talking animated ; our 
 friends charming. We are low, and society is dull ; 
 solitude mournful ; work distressing ; leisure tedious ; 
 art a void : poetry tasteless ; books stupid ; talking a 
 burden ; our friends a nuisance !
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 143 
 
 430 What a capital touch of human nature in the account 
 which Jeremiah gives of the Jews, who had not been 
 carried away captive, coming to him and asking him in 
 the most solemn and earnest manner, to inquire from 
 God what they had better do. Their words are, " Let, 
 we beseech thee, our supplication be accepted before thee, 
 and pray for us unto the Lord thy God, that the Lord 
 thy God may show us the way wherein we may walk, and 
 the thing that we may do. Whether it be good, or 
 whether it be evil, we will obey the voice of the Lord our 
 God, to whom we send thee ; that it may be well with us 
 when we obey the voice of the Lord our God." 
 
 Well, God's reply is, that they are to give up their 
 scheme of going down into Egypt, and are to remain in 
 the land of their fathers. But no sooner do they find 
 out that God's will goes against theirs, than they declare 
 Jeremiah to be an impostor, and do just what they had 
 meant to do before ! 
 
 431 Nature is inexorable. She hears no excuse. Break 
 her law and she is pitiless : down the penalty must 
 come ! In vain for the poor weaver to plead that if he 
 does not work sixteen hours a day he must starve. He 
 overworks himself well, then, he must die ! In vain 
 for a nation to plead that it has sought to quench error 
 from the love of truth. It has broken the law ; it sinks 
 as Spain has sunk. There is something awful, some- 
 thing sublime, in this sacredness of Nature's law : that 
 it cannot be set at nought without ruin. 
 
 432 There is a vast amount of smouldering indignation in 
 people's minds, at not being invited by this, that, and 
 the other friend. While, may be, the friend is in just 
 the same state of irritation. 
 
 433 I like to see how plausible the argument is for the 
 State's putting down religious error. It shows how 
 great a fool the head is, compared to the heart. A good 
 head might reason you into persecution ; but a good
 
 144 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 heart would know better. That is a fine prayer in the 
 Litany wherein we pray that we may be delivered " from 
 all blindness of heart." 
 
 434 How often does a man's tone of voice and manners 
 make you feel that he is secretly proud of being so 
 pleasant : and thus his very courtesy sets you against 
 him. 
 
 435 You would think that, if our lips were made of horn, 
 and stuck out a foot or two from our faces, kissing at 
 any rate would be done for. Not so. No creatures kiss 
 each other so much as birds. 
 
 436 If discretion is the better part of valour, so too is 
 valour the better part of discretion. There is the truest 
 wisdom in true courage. History teaches this lesson 
 with a most emphatic voice, that the bravest do best : 
 that those who love their lives, shall lose them ; while 
 the man who dares perils, overcomes them. 
 
 If this be true, that cowardice is folly, and valour is 
 discretion, then is Toryism wrong, and Liberalism right. 
 For what is the spirit of Toryism ? It is the spirit of 
 trembling at risks, instead of facing them. " Yes," it 
 says, " these abuses are bad. I know that ; but just 
 think what danger there is in driving them away. It 
 is the letting out of water. Reform leads to revolution. 
 Concession stimulates instead of sating greediness. 
 Begin to mend your house, and it will tumble about your 
 ears." And so Toryism, from a weak terror of ills to 
 come, has stood in the way of all change, though often 
 allowing that this or that particular change would be a 
 good thing. 
 
 Whereas Liberalism says, " This is an evil. Then let 
 it be done away. Don't tell me about risks and 
 perils. If this be a wrong thing and a bad thing, away 
 with it from the face of the earth. It will become the 
 spot from which rottenness will spread all round." And 
 thus Liberalism did away with the Slave Trade and with
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 145 
 
 Slavery, and with rotten Boroughs, and with Protection 
 to native industry, and with Croesus bishops, and with 
 pluralists, and with despotic government in our colonies, 
 and with the Test Acts, and a thousand other follies. 
 And yet, in all these cases, the old women of England, 
 who are a most influential " interest " in our national 
 councils, shouted out, " the Church in danger," " the 
 State in danger," " the Constitution in danger." 
 
 Now look round Europe, and see which is really 
 dangerous the fear of danger, or the facing of it. In 
 England, thanks to the Liberals, we have acted largely 
 on the principle of not fearing changes. In Rome, on 
 the other hand, the dread of innovations is still the one 
 polar star of government ; it was the same in France till 
 1790. And the ever-seething discontent of the one, and 
 the fearful hurricanes of the other, are each directly 
 traceable to that extreme terror of reform. Had there 
 been in those two countries a bold and hearty inclina- 
 tion to put away all abuses, and mend whatever wanted 
 mending, there is no reason whatever why they should 
 not now have been as tranquil as England herself. 
 
 The fact is, that the wisdom of courage may be re- 
 ferred to a very grand and universal law of nature to 
 the law that it is by suffering at first that lasting good 
 is to be won. " No cross, no crown " is a maxim that 
 holds good, not merely of Christianity, but throughout 
 God's government. Now bravery encounters the peril 
 and pain on the threshold, for the good that lies beyond. 
 It will plunge 'into the desert in hopes of the promised 
 land. At the outset of every career, whether agricul- 
 tural, or commercial, or military, or literary, or political, 
 whether of men or of nations, there are sloughs of de- 
 spond to be crossed, and Apollyons to be vanquished. 
 And so, the Faint Hearts and the Pliables get beat. 
 But the valiant push forward and win the crown. 
 
 437 It is astounding, it is exasperating, to see the ingeni- 
 ous and elaborate stupidity of rulers, with a wise course- 
 lying so broad before them. Take the case of our Cape 
 Colony. Why, had the Governors but done, what I am 
 
 L
 
 146 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 sure my dog would have been sharp enough to see was 
 the right thing, had they but done their utmost to 
 please and gratify the chiefs, the whole of the tribes would 
 have been their most humble servants. Had the simple 
 plan been adopted of treating the chiefs with great 
 respect, enticing them to the Governor's court, giving 
 them large salaries, making them assessors of the govern- 
 ment in the management of affairs, clothing them in 
 robes of honour, and surrounding them with pomp and 
 splendour, at the expense of the British Government, we 
 should have tied them to us with links of iron and 
 tying them, we should have tied their people. Instead 
 of this, our whole policy has been, and still is, to break 
 the power of the chiefs, and to alienate their people from 
 them and the result has been to alienate both the 
 chiefs and their people from ourselves. 
 
 438 It is painful, as life goes on, to feel oneself hardening, 
 growing colder and more selfish the old glorious en- 
 thusiasm fading. Ay, but though the flower falls, the 
 fruit is there. You imagine less, but you do more. 
 
 "Post equitem sedet aim cum" is not true. Ride 
 fast and far, and at last the dumps tumble off your 
 crupper. 
 
 440 The ways of peace are the ways of pleasantness. Still 
 there is a pleasure in quarrelling. 
 
 441 How is it that one person makes your mind feel barren 
 as a rock, while another, not a bit wiser, always sets it 
 gushing ? 
 
 442 The most surprising thing in England is the lack of 
 social intercourse. It would be incredible, were it not 
 the patent fact, how little of it there is. Hundreds of 
 thousands, not merely persons of poor families, but 
 persons of well-to-do families, never give and never get
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 147 
 
 an invitation, or, at the utmost, but one or two in the 
 year. People live close together people of the same 
 level, and quite fit for companionship and yet do not 
 cross each other's threshold, except for a call, from year's 
 end to year's end. It is a serious evil in England a 
 great loss of enjoyment a great loss of good that 
 social intercourse is so restricted. 
 
 443 ty order is not given till given twice. 
 
 444 A. B. is most enviable with his wealth, rank, lovely 
 wife, children, pictures, parliament, power, work, leisure. 
 Ay, most enviable ! provided he has a turn for being 
 happy. 
 
 445 Blessed be the word " nice ! " it is the copper coin 
 of commendation. Without it, we should have to praise 
 more handsomely. 
 
 446 The first duty towards children is to make them 
 happy. If you have not made them happy, you have 
 wronged them. No other good they may get can make 
 up for that. Their school may teach them all learning, 
 and all righteousness but if the boys are unhappy, it is 
 a bad school. 
 
 447 It is the essential principle of art, that ornamentation 
 should consist in making useful things look ttoir best. 
 In base art, ornaments are stuck on which have nothing 
 to do with the end of the structure as a whole e.g. in 
 architecture, with the end for which the building is built, 
 or in oratory, with the end for which the speech is 
 spoken they are clapped on because they are pretty in 
 themselves. Whereas, in pure art each thing has some 
 work to do, and so is made of the fairest shape and the 
 loveliest colour. 
 
 In the works of God nothing can be more striking 
 than this severe purity of taste. Take a lily : not 
 
 L 2
 
 148 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these f . 
 yet there is not one particle of usehss decoration. So in 
 the works of man. Take the human body, in the Apollo 
 Belvidere : it is all most beautiful ; yet, from top to toe, 
 all that beauty arises from the grace of the essential 
 members of his frame. Take the Madonna della Seggiola : 
 here again, no ornament for ornament's sake. All Mis ; 
 all helps to impress the idea that the picture is meant to 
 give, yet all is alive with beauty. Take again the Par- 
 thenon or York Minster. In each, all the beauty arises 
 from the grace given to the necessary features of the 
 building. 
 
 In fact you may say of every perfect work of art, what 
 
 St. Paul Says Of the Church : " KUT W/ryeiai> tv jwpet ivbs 
 ocaorov p.fpovs Tr\v av^tjffiv TOV trdytaroj TroieiTai." 
 
 448 One girl will be utterly dismayed and distressed by 
 anything like a love affair, even though pleased with 
 the man himself. It tortures her to have the matter 
 alluded to, she shrinks from its being noticed ; she 
 would not for the world take any steps towards helping 
 it on, and would be only too thankful to have it alto- 
 gether at an end : while another girl (just as pure) will 
 be highly delighted at finding any one in love with her, 
 will talk freely about it, will be pleased to find it re- 
 marked, and will give the affair a good many quiet 
 shoves forward with her own white shoulder. 
 
 449 It is puzzling to think where all one's knowledge goes 
 to. You read thousands upon thousands of books, of 
 every sort and kind, and at the end of twenty years they 
 do not rise to the surface in your conversation, or in 
 your capacities, or in your character. You were just as 
 able, and good, and agreeable, at thirty as' at fifty. Is 
 there a stratum of useful knowledge deposited some- 
 where at the bottom of one's mind ? and when will it be 
 available ? In heaven ? Nay, what should we do 
 there with a desultory knowledge of French history and 
 Greek plays !
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 149 
 
 450 Depend upon it, India will never be governed as it 
 ought to be, till you have a Council in each Presidency, 
 with a large infusion of native gentlemen, to deliberate 
 on its affairs and tender advice to the Government, even 
 if you do not give them at first any actual authority.* I 
 would have such a Council, with the power of petitioning 
 the Government, and require the Government to give 
 written replies to such petitions, stating why they were 
 refused, or agreed to. 
 
 45 1 Children, it is said, and said truly, are the only true 
 democrats. They value society, without any thought 
 whether it is the society of the well-born or of the base- 
 born. But boys, on the other hand, are the truest aristo- 
 crats. Nowhere is the feeling of the value of rank so 
 intense as at school. A boy's vanity is so alive, hi 
 sensitiveness so thin-skinned, his good sense so feeble, 
 that he thinks far more than (even) his elders of out- 
 ward distinction. Not that there is much toadyism at 
 school ; but there is very bitter mortification in the 
 minds of the middle-class boys, and great consciousness 
 of rank in the young noblemen. 
 
 452 Here is a man, naturally of the sweetest and most 
 loving temper, and who is on the most charming possible 
 terms of ease and companionship with his daughters. 
 Yet this very man is always at loggerheads with his 
 sons ; he can't understand them ; they irritate him 
 beyond measure ; he and they, though with real love 
 between them, are always at wrangles. Nor is it the 
 sons' fault. 
 
 453 I am surprised to find how many, even cultivated 
 people, will say, that a man ought to live up to his 
 income, so as to encourage trade and give employment : 
 as if money laid by did not do as much that way as 
 money spent. Surely anyone might see that the sums 
 invested in making or keeping up a railway, mine, 
 
 * This has been done since by Sir Charles Wood. (Note by the author.)
 
 150 NOTES OF THOUGHT, 
 
 canal, or what not go into the pockets of tradespeople 
 and labourers, as much as if they had been flung away 
 on champagne or satins ; and with the important dif- 
 ference that they go on producing more and more wealth, 
 and therefore add lastingly to the means of employing 
 labour. Ought not such plain and practical truths as 
 this to stand among the furniture of every educated 
 mind ? I do think no schooling should be deemed 
 complete, without the elements, at least, of political 
 economy. No study gives information of more practical 
 value ; no study does more to confer the power of 
 reflecting. 
 
 454 In putting down rebellion, the one thing needful, the 
 only thing needful, is to be sliarp and sfiwt. Eush on 
 the rebels at once, whatever their numbers. Ten men 
 to-day will do more for you than a hundred next week. 
 At the outset the confederacy of rebels is soft ; they 
 mistrust each other ; they are bewildered ; they do not 
 know how they stand. A few days will have bound 
 them together, and warmed towards them ten thousand 
 hearts. 
 
 The events of 1848 showed vividly the folly of trying 
 to soothe a maddened mob. The gentler you are, the 
 fiercer they are. No : at such a moment there is no 
 such mercy as that of grape-shot at once. Oh, how 
 well for liberty, had Louis Philippe had the nerve to 
 use it ! 
 
 455 Principles for the government of colonies. 
 
 (1) Let them mismanage their own affairs. They 
 will grow a head on their shoulders in due time, if you 
 don't put your own there instead. They must know 
 their own business best. 
 
 (2) Give them no help. Let them fight their own 
 way and pay their own way. Nothing organizes a 
 young society, and gives it muscle, like this. 
 
 (3) Roads are the greatest of all sources of wealth, 
 and of safety. If you do anything, make roads. 
 
 (4) As regards the natives, get the chiefs into your pay, 
 and your work is done.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 151 
 
 456 It is astonishing how soon the whole conscience 
 begins to unravel, if a single stitch drops ; one little sin 
 indulged makes a hole you could put your head 
 through. 
 
 457 What a way down some faults lie in some characters ; 
 so far down, that you may have known the man well 
 for years and years, before the faults catch your eye ; 
 strong faults too. 
 
 458 I once met the man who had forgiven an injury. I 
 hope some day to meet the man who has forgiven an 
 insult. 
 
 459 How often and often and often do ripened hopes 
 prove sour, and fears sweet ! 
 
 460 In one family, every little plan or question is dis- 
 cussed amid bickering and irritation. In another, with- 
 out the least effort, every discussion goes on amid 
 perfect peace. This is just as easy, and infinitely more 
 agreeable : only, in many homes it does not happen to 
 be the family habit. 
 
 46 1 In true humour there is a due proportion between 
 the thing and the grotesque shadow of it. To joke 
 about what is awful, shows thickness of sight. The 
 joker does not see the thing in its true size. 
 
 462 What can be more stupidly absurd than the prejudice 
 which still lingers in the religious world against 
 dancing ? Of all the things young people can do, 
 nothing gives them so much enjoyment and not only 
 innocent, but sweetening and refining enjoyment as a 
 good dance. Yet in England still, and far more in 
 America, it is looked upon by the serious with horror. 
 
 463 Massive character goes with massive frames. To be ;t
 
 152 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 great doer, you may be short indeed that is for you 
 but you should weigh 13 stone. 
 
 To be sure there are William III., Sir C. Napier, 
 the Duke, and Nelson. Never mind. As a rule, the 
 powerful men are burly. 
 
 464 Here is a person living and acting with intense 
 selfishness, and yet wholly unconscious that he or she is 
 not the most generous man or woman in the world. It 
 frightens one to see how bad one may be, and know 
 nothing at all about it. 
 
 465 As life goes on, how deep one's feeling grows, that at 
 any moment an avalanche may rush down that in the 
 midst of one's peaceful happiness, one may be crushed 
 by some unthought-of calamity. 
 
 466 There is all the difference in the world between 
 conversation and discussion. Most clever people have 
 no idea of conversation, (I do not mean of chat] except 
 as a conflict of mind with mind. If you start a thought, 
 they will run it down and kill it. But the delightful 
 kind of talk is where two friends are of one mind, so 
 that, instead of flying at the throat of each other's 
 opinions for the fun of the fight, the one will eagerly 
 lay hold of the other's suggestion, and work it out along 
 with him. This carries them a deal further into the 
 depths of the question that any battling over it can 
 do. In fact, the word conversation just hits off 
 what talk should be, viz., the turning (an idea) over 
 together, whereas, discussion means to shakt the idea, 
 to pieces. 
 
 467 How often and often does a girl's beauty how often 
 and often does a girl's talent bring her nothing but 
 dark disappointment. 
 
 468 The unmarried can't see why a husband and wife find 
 it so good, at any rate now and then, to live wholly
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 153 
 
 by themselves, without even a sister, nay, sometimes 
 without even a child. What secrets have they to talk 
 over ? or, if they have, have they not time to talk them 
 over at night ? &c. Ay, but the real reason is, that 
 every person in a family exercises a kind of gravitating 
 force upon every other. When there are three or four, 
 each person is attracted three or four ways. When there 
 are but two, this attraction draws those two together, 
 without any of its force being lost or overborne. They 
 are all in all to each other, instead of a quarter. 
 
 469 Some of the worst calamities are unseen and unpitied. 
 Can any blow be heavier than that which thousands 
 suffer, who find themselves at school, at college, and 
 through life, objects of dislike to others ? And they 
 may be very good fellows ; but they have something in 
 manner, or look, or mind, that sets people against them ; 
 and what it is they can't divine. 
 
 470 What more wonderful work ever came from the hand 
 of man, than Michael Angelo's Moses ? And yet it has, 
 I think, one essential fault. Surely it would be phy- 
 sically impossible for the lower half of a man's frame 
 to have remained seated, while the upper half was in 
 a state of tremendous energy. The whole must have 
 partaken of such a tempest of indignation, and the man 
 have risen to his fullest height at once. There would 
 not have been time for the face to gather into an awful 
 storm, before the body had shared in it. All the nerves 
 and muscles would have been called into play together. 
 
 47 r Pity the man who has got nearly everything. That 
 " nearly," that " not quite," seems to be excruciating. 
 If Fortune has fairly sat on a man, he takes it for 
 granted that life consists in being sat upon. But to be 
 coddled on Fortune's knee, and then have his ears 
 boxed, that is aggravating. Ahab's heaviness of heart, 
 at not getting Naboth's vineyard, is a sight seen day by
 
 154 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 day. Hig being a king, wealthy, powerful, husband of a 
 spirited and no doubt handsome woman, father of 
 seventy sons all this was nothing there was still that 
 vineyard ! 
 
 472 Shelley's ill-usage at home has been most resented by 
 his admirers. I confess with all my admiration for the 
 poet I am poor old Timothy Shelley against Bysshe. 
 What father could help being crazed by such a strange, 
 passionate, obstinate, conceited young atheist of a son, in 
 whom the want of good sense was not a negative but a 
 positive evil, and of enormous size ? The mere having a 
 poet for a son must have been trial enough to a plain 
 squire, and then to have all this Jacobinism, atheism, 
 and waywardness, thrown into the bargain ! 
 
 473 The man who can judge his rival's work with sym- 
 pathy and delight, is indeed one of nature's noblemen. 
 
 474 The word " base-born," as a term of reproach, used to 
 be very common. Now it has vanished a good sign. 
 
 475 It is interesting to see how different branches of 
 science correspond, though so unlike. Professor Brandis 
 says that the criticism introduced by Niebuhr, examined 
 not only into the genuineness of extant books, but into 
 the genuineness of lost ones, inasmuch as these also had 
 told on the ancient historians, and might have led them 
 astray. Is not this like the astronomer enquiring into 
 the deflection in the course of a planet, caused by some 
 other planet beyond the ken of man ? 
 
 The division among men between the struggling and 
 the safe is like that between the Children of Israel, high 
 and dry on the shore, with their wives and little ones 
 and their cattle ; and those who like the Egyptians are 
 driving heavily, with the water hanging over them,
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 155 
 
 ready to sweep down. How like that is to the scene 
 presented by British society, with its 800,000 paupers. 
 
 477 Is there not something of pain in seeing exquisite 
 beauty, such as that of a soft sweet eventide ? The soul 
 strains vainly to grasp its fulness. 
 
 478 It is in babyhood, not in after-life, that trial bears the 
 largest ratio to tranquillity. Strange that a work of art 
 so finished, so exquisite, as a baby, should just fall short ; 
 and be encumbered with those little miseries which (as it 
 might seem) but one more stroke of the great artist's 
 chisel could have polished away. Strange that a poor 
 innocent lamb should have such anguish, and be ever 
 wailing from its bassinet like Jeremiah from the 
 dungeon, while a big rough man passes his days without 
 a pang. The sorrows of a baby are enough to show that 
 evil is not sent in order to mend us. Is a baby ennobled 
 by his winds and his stomach aches ? 
 
 479 The essential principle of painting is, that the painter 
 should make you actually see and feel the incident, or 
 the landscape, as it really was ; not, however, as you 
 John Smith would have seen it with your dim eyes, nor 
 as you John Smith would have felt it with your dull 
 heart : but as an angel of God would have seen it, 
 looking into the very heart of its beauty and meaning, 
 and as an angel of God would have felt it, with infinite 
 love and delight. That is the ideal, which no painter 
 can ever reach, but to which the man of genius comes 
 nigh. The true painter does not make the scene other 
 than it is : but he looks deep down into its very spirit ; 
 he lays hold of all the beauty and meaning that lie 
 below ; and he has the skill to unveil them to the duller 
 world, by whom, without help, they would have been 
 unseen. He does, then, set before you the real scene ; 
 but it is the real scene, more real, more true to itself, 
 than it would have been, as seen by the couimou-place
 
 156 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 beholder. In fact his landscape has brought out the 
 hidden trait of nature and has called forth her latent 
 force ; his portrait has given you, not the rn&u'&face but 
 the man. 
 
 But now they say it is wrong to give an exquisite 
 finish to every part of a picture, because the picture 
 should set forth what we should really have seen, and the 
 outlying parts of the scene would have been dim. These 
 flowers below would not have been clear to you in 
 looking at the Huguenot Why make them clear, 
 when the aim of the picture is to make you stand by 
 and see the Huguenot parting with the lady of his love 
 her whole heart given to him, his to God and her 
 and to make you feel as, in seeing it, you would have felt ? 
 
 Well, I half think that is true, and that it i* wrong to 
 draw the beholder's mind at all from the main story to 
 outlying bean: 
 
 Yet I half think that is false ; for when you know a 
 picture through and through, its charm is far greater if 
 you are aware that every part is alive with beauty. 
 That consciousness is with you all the while ; whereas, 
 in the other case, you are all the while aware, that 
 although what you see is perfect, the rest is rough. 
 
 480 We are not so kind, not so loving, not so tender, not 
 o docile, not so sprightly, not so zealous in our duty, not 
 so true, not so faithful, not so merry, not so contented, 
 not so fearful of doing wrong, not so ashamed when we 
 hare done it, not so bold, not so generous, as our dog. 
 To be sure there are drawbacks. He has no soul and 
 he sweats through his mouth ; otherwise we could not 
 show our face beside him. 
 
 481 The effect of circumstances on character is well seen 
 in the three professions, the church, the navy, and the 
 army. What capital fellows manly, spirited, genial, 
 most naval captains are : while military men, after 
 dawdling for years in barracks, become, as a general 
 rule, mere animals nice, perhaps, but animals.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 157 
 
 On the whole, I think, the clergy are (as indeed they 
 ought to be, but at one time were not) the best class in 
 the land. What other class combines at the same time 
 so much cultivation, ability, good conduct, diligence, and 
 gentlemanly demeanour ? 
 
 482 A successful career has been full of great blunders. 
 
 483 Every day teaches this lesson to lay plans not 
 vaguely, but with a clear foresight of each part. No 
 more essential element of success than that. But it 
 takes a world of pains. 
 
 484 He is indeed a just man, who, when unkindly treated, 
 does not exaggerate the unkindness, but sees it no bigger 
 than it is. Most of us, when wroth, blow up one 
 remissness on the part of our neighbour into a practice of 
 ill-usage. 
 
 485 Quam parvd sayrienlia regititr rmmdu$. Say rather, 
 quam magnd stultitid. 
 
 486 It is good to remark to your friend how well off he is. 
 It strikes him much more forcibly when reflected from 
 your eye. Nothing makes one so pleased with one's lot 
 as to find it admired. 
 
 487 If you find your son estranged, never showing 1 trust in 
 you, or love for you, never heeding your wishes, or 
 caring to be with you, whose fault is it ? Why i/mir 
 fault ! No one who has seen much of boys, and has laid 
 himself out to win them, but must know what a mighty 
 store of loyal love and gratitude lies hid in the heart of 
 almost every boy in the world towards his elders, if only 
 they set themselves to show him tender kindness, respect, 
 and companionship. The soil is rich enough, but the 
 tillage is toilsome. Even the roughest ragged-school 
 boys are all alive with enthusiasm towards a resolute but
 
 158 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 tender and companionable teacher. Young hearts are 
 ready enough to cling. You only need to throw yourself 
 heartily into their company, without demeaning yourself 
 into servility. 
 
 } You never will find time for anything. If you want 
 time, you must make it. 
 
 489 Men will spend thousands in adorning a church, and 
 never think of planting a few creepers against it, and a 
 few yews near it ; yet there you get the finest decoration 
 for a few shillings. 
 
 490 People say the study of character is so amusing. 
 They mean that it is amusing to note their friends' 
 oddities. But the true study of character really to see 
 into a man and know what he is to trace the formative 
 principles which give him his special " character," this 
 needs not only quick remark, but stiif thinking. 
 
 491 Depend upon it, it is a mistake to begin pounding the 
 Latin grammar into a boy of seven or eight years old. 
 Wait till he is eleven ; then begin reading the most interest- 
 ing parts of Phasdrus, Eutropius, and Caesar : telling him 
 freely what the words mean, and getting on pleasantly 
 with the story, till he has become familiar with all 
 the common words. Then go on to read more carefully, 
 but still not tormenting him ; and by degrees reach the 
 point of unfolding the grammar to him, and you will 
 have him pulling with you, instead of pulling against you ; 
 and the practical result will be far better scholarship. 
 
 492 Bad people are pleasanter than sad people. I can't 
 bear the company of those who (as Jeremiah puts it 
 "wail like the owls, and lament like the dragons." 
 A merry heart (in your companion) is a continual 
 feast.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 159 
 
 493 The one essential thing for architects to study at this 
 day is how to enrich their buildings and, above all, 
 the inside of churches with colour. This cannot be too 
 much dwelt upon. No church ought to be looked upou 
 as complete so long as there is a square yard within of 
 dead wall. Every inch of the interior should be alive : 
 alive with colour, if not with carving. We feel this about 
 our own house. We do not suffer the walls even of a 
 servant's attic to remain bare : we clothe them with 
 colour. Why not the house of God ? 
 
 The best thing would be to have bricks, with the 
 colour burnt into them, as the lining of the walls. But 
 even if that, as yet, is not to be got, except at heavy cost, 
 still you might have the plaster either coloured in fresco 
 with a diaper, or even of a uniform pale blue, or salmon- 
 colour, or pink. Anything in the world were better than 
 the hateful dingy white, or dirty brown, of the uncared- 
 for wall. 
 
 494 Nobody, however able, can gain the very highest 
 success, except in one line. He may rise above others, 
 but he will fall below himself. 
 
 495 If you judge by effects, the Tory is a Revolutionist : 
 the Revolutionist, a Tory. 
 
 Throughout Europe, this has been plain in the last 
 hundred years. The Tory, by stopping reform, has 
 brought things to that pass, that there was no help but in 
 revolution. 
 
 And again, Revolution has so frightened moderate 
 men, that it has thrown all power into the hands of those 
 who hate all change and all freedom. 
 
 Thus it is literally the fact that Toryism is the breeder 
 of Revolution ; and Revolution of Toryism. 
 
 496 Depend upon it, you don't know what a lucky dog you 
 are. You own things which now you think nothing of ; 
 some day you may learn their vast, their astonishing 
 value.
 
 160 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 :497 Juliet was a fool to kill herself. In three months 
 she'd have married again, and been glad to be quit of 
 Romeo. 
 
 498 Widowers' haste to be re-married is a very real and 
 true compliment to the married state. And the truest 
 mourners are soonest married. 
 
 499 Nature does not seek to stir up in us a feeling of enjoy- 
 ment. Her care is to see that we go on all right, that we 
 keep ourselves going without hurt, and so, when we hare 
 laboured towards that end, she rewards us with an 
 emotion of pleasure. Thus she gives us delight in 
 feeding, delight in drinking, delight in air and exercise, 
 delight in successful work, and BO forth. But the delight 
 is not the end ; the end is, that we keep ourselves alive 
 and well. The delight is merely given as a stimulant. 
 When the force of habit has become strong enough to 
 keep us to the work, nature lessens the pleasurable 
 emotion which is now less needed. The exquisite delight 
 tones down to a sober satisfaction. 
 
 500 Our pleasure in music seems anomalous. It is intense ; 
 yet is not like other pleasures, the reward for doing our- 
 selves some good. And it is a pleasure which never 
 wears out. 
 
 501 Would it not be happy for all parties, if idiots, and old 
 people when grown imbecile, could be comfortably shot ? 
 I woul'd have it done with the utmost decorum : perhaps 
 by the Bishop of the Diocese. But what an unspeakable 
 relief? 
 
 502 Cats are just like men : 
 
 Like men they rub against the legs of the dogs'-meat- 
 man. 
 
 Like men they are soft and civil, and don't care two- 
 pence about you.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 161 
 
 Like men they have claws, well-hidden, but ready 
 to tear you. 
 
 Like men they are silly when young, and stupid 
 when old. 
 
 But cats and men differ in this : give a cat a sunny 
 window, and she purrs ; give a man wealth, 
 health, wife, children, rank, sports, amusements, 
 travel, books, pictures, and he will still be 
 mewing for something more. 
 
 503 If its colors were but fast colors, self-conceit would l>e 
 a most comfortable quality. But life is so humbling, 
 mortifying, disappointing to vanity, that a man's great 
 idea of himself gets washed out of him by the time he is 
 forty. He who at that age still thinks much of himself 
 must have been rarely fortunate ; (or else be a rare 
 fool). 
 
 504 What weighs heaviest on a governess is that she 
 must sit and see all kinds of pleasantness going on 
 without sharing. Nothing so saddening as that. To 
 be bare of pleasure is easily borne ; but to be witness, 
 at the same time, of other people's merriment, is torture 
 indeed. 
 
 505 The noblest pleasures are the noblest, but are not the 
 keenest. 
 
 506 Wives, as much as virgins, bewail their want of 
 beauty. A wife thinks, " Were I only beautiful, that my 
 husband might care more for me ! " My good woman, 
 console yourself : the faithful is faithful to the greatest 
 ugliness ; the fickle is fickle to the greatest beauty. 
 Remember that even the husband of the illustrious 
 beauty, Georgiaua, Duchess of Devonshire, never cared 
 for her after the honeymoon ! 
 
 507 Had any man or men made up Christianity, it would 
 have been encumbered, as all man-made religions have
 
 162 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 been, with mere fantasies, mere decorations and append- 
 ages. But Christianity is strikingly like God's other 
 works in this, that it is all severely practical ; every part 
 of it tends/distinctly to the end of making man better. 
 Nothing is stuck on to catch the eye and look handsome. 
 Just so in God's other works. A bird, a fish, a flower, 
 have nothing whatever about them, except what is 
 essential. Their beauty consists in the grace of necessary 
 members. But man delights to make a mere play of 
 fancy round his works ; and so he has done when invent- 
 ing religions. He heaps up stories of gods and their 
 doings, and so forth. 
 
 508 There is a sunny side even to sins. They have their 
 uses. 
 
 509 The present calamity always seems the most ve- 
 nomous. No other could sting so fiercely. 
 
 510 If you have really made out what you mean by the 
 words, " laws of nature," you may set yourself down for 
 a philosopher, and a clever one too. 
 
 511 It is very remarkable indeed that the Bible dwells so 
 little on the world to come ; it fixes the Christian's eye 
 on the life here, to make that good ; it does not want 
 him to brood over things beyond his work. 
 
 512 To have a thousand things is nothing : that thousand 
 and first thing is all in all. 
 
 513 At the present day it is folly to teach a boy to 
 believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. He is 
 almost sure now-a-days to cast off that view, and will 
 be apt to cast off a great deal more along with it. No. 
 Teach the boy the real truth, that the Scriptures were
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 1C:* 
 
 written by men who knew and who pave forth the truth, 
 but who wrote as men, each telling what he knew in his 
 own way. 
 
 514 The quality of all others most wanting is boldness. 
 People are so afraid of taking responsibility, so afraid 
 of some possible contingent risk, so afraid of Mrs. 
 Grundy, so frightened by this, that, and the other 
 shadow, 
 
 " As a lizard by the shade 
 Of a trembling leaf," 
 
 that they lose half of what they might win. 
 
 515 We feel a shade of superiority to those whom we pity ; 
 we look down on them, not up to them. 
 
 And yet people are certainly proud of their mis- 
 fortunes. 
 
 5*6 It is not true, as many say, that it is rare for a man 
 to care much about public compared to his private 
 matters. Many and many a man, if he dwells on 
 politics at all, feels most deeply, most passionately, 
 about public affairs. I am sure I do, and I see that it 
 
 is very common. I hate Mr. , who has insulted 
 
 me. But I hate Bomba or Louis Napoleon with a far 
 more intense depth and height of detestation. 
 
 e, 7 The unspeakable wonderfulness of Shakespeare's 
 5 wisdom, and taste, and skill, makes his folly and vul- 
 garity, and awkwardness, almost as wonderful. How 
 could such a man write such trash ? To say nothing of 
 Titus Andronicus, Pericles, Cymbeline, &c., are then: 
 not dreary deserts in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, and 
 in Love's Labour's Lost, and some others even of his 
 more popular plays ? 
 
 518 If a man is unlucky once, never mind, give him your 
 help. If he is unlucky twice, help him a second time, 
 
 M 2
 
 104 MOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 and you are a good fellow. If he is unlucky a third 
 time, and you help him again, you are a fool. He must 
 come down, and the sooner the better. 
 
 519 Perhaps the most amazing thing in the world is that 
 English ladies should patronize the ballet. Just think 
 what it really is. You hire a prostitute, or a girl who is 
 very apt to become one, and dress her out in very short 
 clothing, and set her dancing on an elevated stage, with 
 a hundred men below, and cause her to pirouette and 
 spring about, and finally she lifts one leg as high as 
 possible into the air, and a man takes her foot and 
 turns her round upon the other one, while forty young 
 girls, dressed in the same way, are dancing round, and a 
 whole theatre applauding ! 
 
 I say that such aa exhibition is obscene, wicked, dis- 
 gusting, and that it is shameful to the ladies of England 
 to allow it to go on. 
 
 5 20 I once was employed to canvass, and found three 
 electors who had thought on politics, and they had 
 thought wrong. No one who has not canvassed could 
 imagine the absolute blank in the ordinary electoral 
 mind as regards political knowledge. There is a kind 
 of conventional opinion on some one or two subjects, 
 springing not from reasoning, but from vague feeling. 
 Beyond, all is cloud. 
 
 521 The happiness you wot of is not a hundredth part of 
 what you really enjoy. 
 
 522 Be sure that what you are, others are ; what you feel, 
 they feel. Human nature is in common. Men are as 
 alike as eggs to eggs. 
 
 Don't fancy that others are what you are, and that 
 because you feel so and so, they will feel the same. 
 Quot homines, tot sententia. No .two men are alike.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 105 
 
 523 Pictures give birth to twin enjoyments for the 
 spectator. The one that of being reminded by them 
 of nature ; the other that of being reminded by nature 
 of them. I am sure Linnell has made lanes in spring 
 more enchanting ; and (despite Ruskin) a storm is tliu 
 grander for reminding us or Ponssin ; and a sunset, for 
 reminding us of Claude. Tis the same with poetry. 
 Tennyson's line, 
 
 " The long unlovely street," 
 has given even Wimpole Street a charm. 
 
 524 It is often said, and at first sight the notion takes 
 one's fancy, that evil was allowed to exist in human 
 nature, in order that, by the struggle between the evil 
 and the good, the highest good might be won ; that 
 virtue might grow more robust by the fight with vice ; 
 that the saint might be crowned with glory, after he had 
 overcome the wicked one within him. 
 
 I say the notion takes one's fancy ; but were the evil 
 in us merely put there in order to draw out the good in 
 us, and enhance its value by resistance, surely then the 
 inclination to evil would have been fairly balanced with 
 the inclination to good : there would actually have 
 gone on in man that campaign, that struggle, of virtue 
 against vice. Is that so ? Assuredly not. Look at 
 the Chinese. Look at the Australian savage. Look at 
 the East Indians. Look at any people under the sun. 
 Is there a battle going on in them against temptation, a 
 striving to be good and to do right ? Not a bit of it. 
 They do evil just as far as it suits them to do evil, and 
 good just as far as it suits them to do good. 
 
 In a speck or two on the surface of the globe, in a 
 millionth part of the human family, there is some sort 
 of struggle to get the better of temptation, and do right. 
 But can we say that Providence had such and such an 
 end in view in allowing evil to exist, when we find that 
 the supposed end is one hardly ever approached, and, we 
 might almost say, never attained ? Can vice have been
 
 1(5(> NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 meant to make virtue grow strong by struggling, when 
 in reality, no such struggle goes on ? 
 
 Ah, but, says one, that comes of the badness of human 
 nature. Man has turned aside the gracious aim of 
 Providence, and does not struggle as he was meant to do. 
 
 Obviously this begs the question. We are asking why 
 man is bad ? It is part of that very badness that he 
 does not strive to be better. 
 
 Again, any theory that explains the existence in us of 
 evil should also explain the existence of evil in our 
 fellow animals : sensuality, bad temper, grossness, envy, 
 jealousy, selfishness, ferocity, &c. Are these unpleasing 
 qualities implanted in a monkey in order that his virtue 
 may grow bright by battling with them ? 
 
 And yet, despite these puzzles, I feel assured that the 
 existence of moral evil is to be referred to that great law 
 of creation, that all results are to be attained by the 
 collision of opposing forces, not by the decisive action 
 of one force. 
 
 525 I delight to see how much originality of heart there 
 is in the world, besides and beyond all the originality of 
 mind. Thus, anybody can do a kindness when it comes 
 in his way. But there are those who strike out kind- 
 nesses : who show boldness, vigour, yes, originality 
 in making discoveries of new ways to give pleasure. 
 Others again, who may never say a word worth hearing, 
 yet are really original, (i.e., they have a strongly marked 
 individual character, making them the reverse of 
 common-place,) in the excellent delicacy and tenderness 
 of their feelings. To me this heart originality has even 
 a finer relish than head originality, though that is one of 
 the best things going. 
 
 526 A character drawn in a novel by a master-hand, 
 say, Jane Eyre, Dora Copperfield, Becky, Pickwick, Mrs. 
 
 Poyser, the Antiquary really adds to the nation's 
 
 wealth. It is as valuable a KT^O a for the British 
 people as any Sir Joshua in the National Gallery.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 167 
 
 527 The tightness of our grip on ihings is out of all pro- 
 portion to the pleasure they give us. How hard we 
 hold on to what never did and never will give us one 
 sparkle of enjoyment. 
 
 528 If the development theory preached in the Vestiges 
 of Creation be the true one, surely the most interesting 
 spectacle in the wide world to mankind should be the 
 statues of pre-Adamite creatures in the garden of the 
 Crystal Palace. Here, then, are our forefathers ! Of 
 such sires are we the sons ! That graceful girl, shining 
 with beauty, radiant with intelligence, is merely a " new 
 edition " of these monstrous lumps of slime ! 
 
 529 Niebuhr's life affords a marked instance of a man 
 being driven up out of his fitting sphere by the very 
 force of his abilities. His splendid talent raised him to 
 be the counsellor of princes. Would they had left him 
 to write books in a garret ! How much better for him- 
 self and the world. 
 
 530 In bringing up children, the thing of things is, to 
 give them freedom. 
 
 531 Unpleasing people please when known. 'Tis those 
 who at first struck you neither way who prove un- 
 pleasant. 
 
 532 To any writer or speaker my advice would be, of all 
 things, do not expressly set yourself to be original If 
 not given by nature, originality won't come by art. 
 Think hard on the matter before, and then say the ban 
 truth about it in the fewest words. 
 
 533 Here is a great squire, who has taken the lead in all 
 parish and county matters since he was twenty. He 
 has a great deal of rude force of character, knows much, 
 and is a loud, constant, and overbearing talker on
 
 168 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 politics, agriculture, and all kinds of rural science, with 
 plenty of bluff jokes, and stories told a thousand times 
 over : lays down the law on all subjects, and passes 
 sentence (invariably death Avithout benefit of clergy) on 
 the statesmen of the day and everybody else ; but his 
 greatest topic is, how shockingly his neighbours have 
 behaved to him, and how famously he has put them 
 down and defeated them. He is very hospitable, laughs 
 loud, eats and drinks heartily, and is very cordial to his 
 guests ; but his temper is hot enough, as you find out in 
 shooting or hunting. The old hall is a huge, square, 
 ill-furnished, dull place, and the flat park still duller. 
 Well, he is worth notice ; his kind is disappearing, and 
 it was not such a bad kind either. 
 
 534 Did Rehoboam prove so wicked because he had been 
 so preached to ? The coincidence certainly is remark- 
 able, that " my son " of the Proverbs should have come 
 out such a scamp. 
 
 535 If you delight to suck in the very soul of their beauty 
 from flowers, trees, or a landscape, mind you look at 
 them wiih the light, not across or against it. Your 
 summer-house, your study, your garden seats, should be 
 so placed, that, as you sit, you see the flowers, &c., 
 shining with the whole force of the sunlight upon them. 
 Then their splendour is quite wonderful. 
 
 In fact, to be perfect, a study should have a bay 
 window looking W.N.W., so that, as you sit writing, you 
 may see through one side the shadows on the grass, and 
 through the other the blaze of the flowers. Surely a 
 man must think more nobly with the spirit of nature 
 brooding round him. 
 
 536 A fig for people who "have a great deal in them." I 
 like people who give a great deal out of them. 
 
 537 A handsome man is a nobler sight than a handsome 
 woman.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 169 
 
 538 You hear So-and-so dispraised for some bad quality, 
 e.g., for being stingy, dogmatic, dull, talkative, or what 
 not : whereupon you think to yourself, with an inward 
 purring, "Ah, well, I'm just the opposite !" Yes ; but 
 that opposite may be just as bad. 
 
 539 In the hot competition of writers, tricks of style are 
 becoming more and more used for catching the public 
 eye. But nothing really tells, except force. Skilful 
 illustration, gaiety, learning, are feathers. Muscle gives 
 the stroke. 
 
 540 It is curious how you may be for weeks in the same 
 house with a person (e.g., a young lady), and, unless the 
 family party be small, never touch mind with mind in 
 even the least degree. If she had been a shrub in the 
 garden, you and she would have had as much communi 
 cation with one another. 
 
 541 What unutterable, illimitable pity it seems that our 
 horror at the corpse of a slaughtered man should not 
 have been made just so much stronger, as to render 
 war impossible ! It looks as if human nature had been 
 within half an inch of escaping that Upas tree of all 
 evils. 
 
 54 2 A touchy person, like a raw place, is sure to get 
 knocked and scratched. Affronts throng to the man 
 who will make much of them. 
 
 543 Maxims are like Delilah's green withs. When passion 
 is aroused, it flings them off in a moment. Yet they 
 have their use. If pondered, they do work into the 
 mind, they do guide it. 
 
 544 There is in human nature a strange inscrutable feeling 
 of ownership over those who love us, and whom we love
 
 170 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 again. Somehow they seem to belong to us to be a 
 part of us. There is a deep truth hidden in the 
 common-place phrase, " My own " darling, " My " dear 
 friend, and "Yours" sincerely. And even so those 
 who love Christ are said to be Christ's, and Christ 
 theirs. 
 
 Yes, and those are pleasantest, who somehow give 
 you the feeling that they like you so heartily, that they 
 are really yours that they and their excellence are 
 given into your hand. 
 
 545 What a throng of things around us, in our daily lives, 
 might be far pleasanter, did we bestir ourselves to make 
 them so ; but we go on from day to day, and nothing 
 draws our eye to their immense capability of improve- 
 ment. It might not be a bad thing now and then, say 
 once a-year, to set the whole family's mind to work to 
 suggest reforms, if only a better arrangement of the 
 furniture ; clearing away shrubs in the garden ; cutting- 
 trees in the wood ; throwing down fences, and opening 
 vistas ; a more convenient disposal of time, &c. 
 
 546 Nothing gives life a finer touch of grace, than the 
 presence in the family circle of a lovely girl of seven- 
 teen. 
 
 547 Stint yourself, as you think good, in other things ; 
 but don't scruple freedom in brightening your home. 
 Gay furniture and a brilliant garden are in sight day by 
 day, and make life blither. 
 
 548 Would it not answer to make an earnest study of 
 some one goodness, instead of grasping at them all ? e.g. 
 Perfect yourself in doing small kindnesses ; or in being 
 truthful ; or in being brave. One goodness made sure 
 of, the rest would swarm after it of themselves. Think 
 how large all your virtues must have grown by this time, 
 if, for the last ten years, you had striven with a single 
 eye to grow unselfish !
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 171 
 
 549 If yon are always being bored, you are a poor wretched 
 creature. 
 
 550 A lovely girl is above all rank. Men, however high, 
 must feel her higher, however low. 
 
 551 Among the mortifications of life is this, that we are 
 such an immense way off from our fellow-creatures, and 
 especially from those whom we should best like to 
 " grapple to our heart with hooks of steel." It is most 
 tantalizing to catch a far away glimpse of a person 
 whom you would like to share your heart and soul with. 
 You never see the people you want most to see ; and 
 when you do see them, you cannot get any conversation 
 worth having. After a couple of years' interval you at 
 last fall in again with the friend you most esteem ; and 
 you talk about the crops and the weather, and cannot 
 get higher ! You see about as much of your friends 
 as you would of a country by coasting along it in a 
 yacht. 
 
 552 Chaplains are sticks. And why ? 
 
 553 The three choicest beauties of scenery are, a blue sea 
 spangled with silver, a snowy summit flushed with 
 crimson, and the shadows of trees upon a shining dewy 
 lawn on a resplendent autumn morning. It may be 
 from association, but were I the Paris to choose, the 
 last should have the apple. 
 
 554 Real life draws out the perceptive, and benumbs the 
 reflective powers. At fifty you are less agog about truth 
 than at twenty-five ; but you know better how a lady 
 or a dinner was dressed, and how a room was furnished 
 
 555 " The intellect," " the reason," is constantly spoken of 
 as a thing apart from the soul ; as if it were a kind of
 
 172 NOTES OF THOUGHT, 
 
 machine belonging to the soul, and which the soul sets 
 going when she wants a conclusion. Nay, many good 
 people utter awful warnings against the intellect the 
 " carnal " intellect ; and would have you keep it under 
 lock and key, as a dangerous instrument. They tell you 
 the reason is of the earth, earthy ; and will be dropped 
 off by the soul, in its flight heavenward. What distinc- 
 tion can be more groundless ? The reason is not one of the 
 soul's fctcuUws, but one of the soul's functions. Reasoning 
 is the working of the soul itself, is one of its many ways 
 of working. Pull yourself up short when reasoning ; and 
 you can't but feel that it is not that your soul your 
 spiritual part has set a faculty to work, but that she is 
 herself working ; that, in short, the reason is one mode 
 of moving the soul herself. 
 
 556 I look on it as a real misfortune to Christendom, that 
 the New Testament should have been called by that 
 incomprehensible name, or by the equally dark name of 
 " The Gospel," instead of its being called what the name 
 fvayyeXia means, " The Glad Tidings," or still better 
 (because more accurate and also of fuller meaning) " The 
 Glad Message," from God to man. Is there in all 
 language a more striking instance of the difference in 
 value between two terms ? The term " New Testa- 
 ment " to us is speechless. The term " Glad Message " 
 would be in itself a rich mine. 
 
 557 All North American girls have harsh voices. Fancy 
 that ! What a cruel trick of Mother Nature's. Of 
 course, then, no one can possibly fall in love with them. 
 Well, then, do they all die old maids ? or do they marry 
 unloved ? And which would be worst ? 
 
 558 People like to see their boys all manliness, spirit, and 
 nerve. People are wrong. There should be a touch of 
 the feminine element in a boy (a touch of it, not a dab 
 of it). No man is a thorough man, unless he be a woman 
 too ; and in boyhood this will look like softness.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 173 
 
 559 Beware of being a parrot. Nine hundred and ninety- 
 nine men in a thousand are parrots Poll parrots. What 
 the world says, they say, without ever grasping its 
 sayings. 
 
 560 You feel indignant against A. B. for his bad temper. Be 
 easy he is well punished. Bad temper is its own scourge. 
 Few things are bitterer than to feel bitter. A man's 
 venom poisons himself more than his victim. 
 
 A bad-tempered man is punished from without as well 
 as from within. He is soon marked, and looked upon as 
 a toad or an adder. Perhaps, too, he is stung with self- 
 reproach, in a manner which no one dreams of. 
 
 561 How wonderful are the changes that make their way 
 over a nation's mind ! The new moods of feeling, the 
 new ways of looking at things ; they come, but you can- 
 not tell whence or how ; you only find them putting 
 their germs out of the ground, like snow-drops in spring, 
 whose roots had lain deep below the frozen earth. 
 
 For example : among the furniture of the national 
 mind you find now what in past ages you found far less 
 or did not find at all : 
 
 The principle of toleration ; 
 
 The principle of Free Trade ; 
 
 The principle that no man has the right to own his 
 brother man as a bondsman ; 
 
 The principle that the punishment must be level to 
 the crime : whence the penalty of death is confined to 
 murder ; 
 
 The principle that reverence is due to all men, as men 
 even to criminals ; 
 
 The principle that property involves duties as well as 
 rights. 
 
 &c., &c., &c. 
 
 Now doubtless the acquisition by the nation of these 
 and like principles, comes of itself from the widening and 
 strengthening of the national mind. But still it is also 
 due to individual teachers. Each one of these princip'es 
 has been won for us by the hard fighting of leaders in
 
 174 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 the van, although the advance of the whole nation must 
 in time have gained them. 
 
 What a noble topic for a history the growth of ideas ! 
 
 562 It is astonishing how many of the plainest teachings 
 of experience never catch our eye till life is half over, 
 lessons that we should have thought must have thrust 
 themselves upon us, whether we sought them or no. 
 But the fact is, nothing comes ; at least nothing good. 
 All has to be fetched. 
 
 563 Many persons vex themselves by suspecting those 
 about them, their servants or subordinates, of not doing 
 as they are bid when out of sight. My experience is, 
 that in nineteen cases out of twenty such fancies are 
 false. Servants idle, but they don't disobey. 
 
 564 We weaken the Bible by looking on it too much as 
 if it were one book, instead of bearing in mind that it 
 is an assemblage of books by different authors. Each 
 one of its doctrines, and each one of its precepts, comes 
 on the mind with treble force, when we remember that 
 this has not merely been said over and over again by one 
 Sage, but has been said with equal emphasis by all the 
 Sages who had known our Saviour, and become imbued 
 with His Spirit. 
 
 This thought adds not only to the force, but to the 
 marvel of its teaching. In fact, this is a strong argument 
 for the divine origin of the Scriptures. That one man 
 should have arisen to the height of St. Paul's spirituality 
 by the force of nature is conceivable. That two such 
 books as the Epistle to the Ephesians and the Gospel of 
 St. John should have been written at the same period, by 
 the natural genius of two men, is conceivable. But that 
 the Psalms, the Prophecy of Isaiah, the Gospels of the 
 four Evangelists, the Epistles of St. Paul, St. Peter, St. 
 John, and St. James, should all have been written by 
 uninspired men, and should all ascend to such heights of
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 175 
 
 spiritual wisdom, and should be imbued with one spirit, 
 and show such a profound harmony between the prayers 
 and prophecies of the Old, and the preaching and teach- 
 ing of the New Testament, this is almost beyond belief. 
 
 565 I knew a man who was remarkable for his kindness of 
 heart. No one would have been less disposed to give pain, 
 and yet he had a knack of saying the very thing it was 
 disagreeable to you to hear. He could light with unerr- 
 ing aim on the sore part of your soul, and seemed quite 
 unaware that the slightest touch there was a sharp 
 annoyance. He would sorrowfully notice to a valetudin- 
 arian how pale he looked to a dandy, how fat he grew. 
 He was sure to be the first to tell a lover that the damsel 
 was engaged to some one else. If he talked to a trades- 
 man, he could not keep off bankruptcies ; if to a farmer, 
 he always had special information on the immense sup- 
 plies of wheat ready for shipment in the Black Sea. 
 Nature had brought him forth exactly as she brings forth 
 fleas. And yet the poor man meant no harm, and fully 
 thought that he was the nicest man in the world to talk 
 with. 
 
 566 It has been often said that Shakspeare meant his Sir 
 John Falstatf to be a caricature representation of Sir 
 John Fastolfe. But clearly Shakspeare would not have 
 been afraid to ridicule Sir J. Fastolfe openly, had he 
 cared to do so, for Fastolfe is mentioned in Henry VI., 
 and acts like a coward. Why, then, if Fastolfe was to 
 be represented, should Shakspeare have changed his name 
 into Falstaff put him into the time of Henry IV. 
 instead of Henry VI. and placed him in a situation of 
 life as wholly different from that of Fastolfe as could 
 possibly be ? Fastolfe was a very great squire in Nor- 
 folk, with ninety-four manors, and three splendid town 
 residences, and his will (which still exists), is remarkable 
 for charity and piety. Who, that lived while the re- 
 collection of him was fresh, could have thought that he 
 was meant for the original of a low-born, druuken 
 humourist, like Fulstaff.
 
 176 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 567 History shows that the wisdom of wisdoms is the 
 wisdom of audacity. 
 
 Ay, but with caution too. Look at Wellington's 
 career. Never was mail more prudent. Never was man 
 more dashing. And never was man more successful. 
 
 The ordinary notion of "Wellington, that he was par 
 excellence a man of discretion, a man of caution, is false. 
 He was a man of discretion. But his most striking 
 quality was his impetuous audacity. Those who do not 
 think so, have not really studied his life. 
 
 568 How comes it that snch a noble, courageous creature 
 as a horse should shy and start at any wheel-barrow by 
 the road side, while a dog, a weak animal, and highly 
 sensitive, and timid too, never dreams of shying ? It 
 strikes me that this instinctive dread of anything strange 
 was implanted in the horse to protect him in the wild 
 state against wolves and other wild beasts. And in spite 
 of thousands of years of civilisation, nature still holds 
 her own in him, and to this day he feels uneasy lest the 
 faggot or the barrow should be going to spring on him. 
 Observe that he is always most terrified by a thing that 
 moves. A child on a bank, a cur lying down, a donkey, 
 &c., awakens his keenest suspicion. In a dog, of course, 
 such an instinct would be wholly out of place. He 
 would have been the pursuer, not the pursued. 
 
 569 Many men of fine ability cannot for the life of them 
 help leaving arrangements at loose ends. The how, the 
 when, the where, are all tossed to chance, to the bound- 
 less bother of others and themselves. 
 
 He advises best who never does what he advises. No 
 one knows so well the annoyance a breach of the rule 
 causes. 
 
 571 You "are well enough, till you see somebody better. 
 Hence the deadness of nations shut off from the world
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT, 177 
 
 (such as the Chinese). Hence the activity of nations 
 that know what other nations are doing. Intercourse is 
 the soul of progress. 
 
 572 Happy the man who is exactly like everybody else 
 who really can do at Rome as the Romans do. 
 
 573 The splendour of a princely mansion makes you assume 
 that the enjoyment will be in proportion. This is why 
 the reality seems tame. 
 
 574 There are wonders right and left ; but of all wonders 
 the most wonderful is, that not merely general human 
 nature, but local defects projecting teeth, a squint, a 
 turned-up nose should be conveyed from father to son ; 
 nay, things such as baldness, which lie hid for thirty 
 years ! How can this be ? 
 
 575 You think So-and-so looks down on you. Fifty to one 
 you are wrong. 
 
 576 It is more painful to the shallow to be with the wise, 
 than to the wise to be with the shallow. 
 
 577 Judging by the result, it is wrong for a young fellow 
 to flirt at all with a young lady, unless he really thinks 
 of marrying her. For how often and often does it come 
 about that his trifling so far catches her heart, that she 
 refuses some one else, who would have made her happy ! 
 Girls' hearts are terribly tender things. 
 
 578 Nothing requires more fineness and polish of intellect, 
 than the ability to see. Plainly not one man in a thou- 
 sand has a real grasp on the landscape, building, flower, 
 or face before him. We " see things without seeing " 
 till after years of thought upon them ; then we come to 
 
 K
 
 178 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 see them as they are. In fact, here as elsewhere, you 
 can't get the crop without ploughing. You must have 
 given your mind and heart to looking, or your looking 
 will have been looked in vain. 
 
 579 The express aim of the architects of English country 
 mansions for the last hundred and fifty years seems to 
 have been, to make them unhomely to render it im- 
 possible for any mortal dweller in them to feel one touch 
 of love for his own home. Whereas, no one thing in the 
 world is so loveable as a rightly built home in the country. 
 The affections gather rich and warm round a picturesque 
 old hall, with gables, dormers, and porches clothed with 
 jessamine and roses. But who in the world could care 
 one blessed fig for a big square box plastered over ? It 
 is hateful, positively hateful. It is enough to make a 
 man curse the ashes of his great grandfather. But I 
 really doubt whether the utterly commonplace, un- 
 interesting imitations of Elizabethan houses, which are 
 now becoming common, with all the stupidities of mul- 
 lions and lead lights, are not almost as bad. They are 
 (with exceptions) the most tume, unreal things in the 
 world. What architects dreadfully want is dash and 
 force. But they can never get that by copying. How- 
 ever, we are moving forward. 
 
 580 It is exasperating to women to see men bowing down 
 and worshipping round a woman whom they know to be 
 a mere block of wood. Women see through and through, 
 each other ; and too often we most admire her whom 
 ihey most scorn. 
 
 581 Elaborate toys do not make children happiest. No, 
 nor men either. Enjoyment is marred, not made, by a 
 vast apparatus of magnificence. 
 
 582 Are children so much better than men and women ? 
 I'm not so sure. At any rate, a good man or a good
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 179 
 
 Woman has a far greater mass of goodness than a child, 
 and of a nobler sort. 
 
 583 How many a great writer, if asked what made him 
 think this and that folly, would reply, if he replied truly, 
 My stomach made me ! Rare helps to wisdom are wel'l- 
 behaved bowels. It is the sound abdomen that makes 
 the sound mind. But the worst of it is that genius 
 seems to evaporate out of a healthy body. What man of 
 genius had not a cranky frame ? Rude health may 
 bestow good sense, but not originality. 
 
 584 The thinker, after all, is the doer. Each great and 
 lasting change in the world's fate has come from 
 thought. 
 
 Napoleon's conquests are as though they had never 
 been. His code will live for ever. 
 
 Marlborough's victories, where are they now? The 
 Spectator has helped to make the British mind and 
 morals what they are and will be. 
 
 Bacon, the Lord High Chancellor Bacon, the states- 
 man, have vanished from the earth. Bacon, the essayist, 
 still lives among us in the flush of youth. 
 
 What touches us now of the age of the Grand Monarque, 
 except its writers ? of the days of Henri Quatre, except 
 Montaigne ? of the days of Elizabeth, but Bacon, 
 Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson ? of John of Gaunt, but 
 his brother-in-law, Chaucer ? 
 
 The great thinker lives on. The great doer and his 
 great doings go " down among the dead men." 
 
 585 Many gentlemen think it ungentlemanly to cheapen a 
 horse, house, place, &c., offered for sale by a gentleman. 
 It seems to me that you may fairly make a lower offer ; 
 but the ungentlemanly thing is, if that is refused, then 
 to raise your bid, because the only thing to justify 
 your first offer was, that you really thought that the fair 
 price. 
 
 K 2
 
 180 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 586 Here is the earth filled with all manner of birds, and 
 beasts, and insects, and fishes, each one fitted to its place 
 with an exquisite felicity. 
 
 There are two theories to explain this perfect fitness. 
 
 I. One, that each species was created expressly for its 
 place, and was moulded accordingly. 
 
 II. The other, that this boundless variety is owing not 
 to specific creations, but to the gradual adaptation of one 
 or more germs of life to every possible variety of 
 circumstance. 
 
 Neither of these theories can claim to be the more 
 religious. Each implies a Maker of all. If anything, it 
 would more wonderfully set forth His wisdom, goodness, 
 and might, that one seed should be fraught with the 
 power of bringing forth boundless variety, than that the 
 boundless variety should have been created bit by bit. 
 
 The development theory takes one's reason most. It is 
 more in keeping with all we see of nature that there should 
 be a steady growth of the whole tree from one seed, than 
 that each part should be added on by a separate fiat of 
 the Creator's will just as we know that a beast's hair, 
 eyes, skin, claws, bones, flesh, were not built up one after 
 the other, but, notwithstanding their unlikeness, sprang 
 all from one germ. 
 
 And the idea of such unity in the variety of creation 
 strikes the imagination as much more sublime than the 
 idea that creation is a great mass of things set down 
 side by side by the Creator, but not sprung from one 
 root. 
 
 But here is a strong difficulty in the way of the theory. 
 
 It the theory No. II. says that each creature has 
 been moulded to what it is by its needs : that, given 
 infinite capacity of change, and infinite time to change 
 in, the result would be infinite variety of life, adapted to 
 the infinite variety of circumstances. 
 
 Now the most important capacity that any species can 
 have is that of keeping itself going. It could not do this 
 unless it could replace the dead by the living. 
 
 Well, but this need would not be felt till the creature 
 was dead. It is upon its death that the want comes of a 
 successor.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 181 
 
 Either, then, the first germ of animal life itself foresaw 
 death, and the necessity of reproduction, and upon this 
 foresight wrought within itself the machinery (machinery 
 unspeakably wonderful) of reproduction : 
 
 Or else He who brought animal life into being He it 
 was who saw the need of meeting death with life He it 
 was who created the requisite machinery. 
 
 The latter view seems to chime best with good sense. 
 But mark this. If you allow that, in so essential a 
 point, organs, powers, and instincts were supplied, not 
 by the force of adaptation, but by a specific pre-arrange- 
 ment by the Maker, then the development theory 
 totters, if it does not fall. If a main feature of the 
 animal race could not have been got at by the force 
 of adaptation, but must have been supplied by the 
 Maker's own hand, then why not the other features as 
 well? 
 
 587 Is any pleasure more intense than that given by 
 brilliant colours ? 
 
 588 It is a strange thing, a new thing of our day, that so 
 many lay persons take to philanthropy, not because their 
 hearts have been touched by some sorrow of their 
 neighbours, and they would fain heal it, but because 
 they think it would be good for themselves to work for 
 others. I do not know whether to look on this as a good 
 thing or a bad thing. On the one hand it certainly 
 seems an artificial kind of benevolence ; on the other, 
 one is glad that gentlemen and ladies should not feel 
 easy to pass easy lives, but should seek work, and that of 
 a kindly sort. 
 
 But of one thing I am clear, that diligence in a man's 
 own business, whatever it be, is more honourable and 
 more useful than diligence in philanthropy. On a large 
 scale, this is plain enough. Society would go to the 
 dogs if nobody cared to drudge and make money, but 
 every one was given up to doing good. Whereas, Society 
 would go on about as well, even though nobody " did 
 good " at all.
 
 182 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 589 People of rank are as great toadies as those below 
 them. That is to say, they as dearly love the titled 
 merely for being titled ; they are as eager to run after 
 them ; they are as ready to sacrifice public interests in 
 order to please them ; they are as apt to turn the cold 
 shoulder to those whose only fault is the want of rank. 
 In short, they share the vulgar weakness for titles ; only 
 in their case the weakness does not catch one's eye. Lord 
 Palmerston's giving bishoprics to three Lords' brothers, 
 and all governments appointing incompetent noblemen 
 rather than strong-headed commoners, these are instances 
 of toadyism rank toadyism, toadyism that in a middle- 
 class man would be ludicrous. 
 
 590 It is curious that we talk about force with perfect 
 familiarity, we use force every moment, and yet it is 
 wholly beyond our power of imagination to form any 
 conception whatever of force itself. Its effects we know 
 well of itself nothing. Take, e.g., the force of gravity. 
 We know that each body pulls other bodies towards it ; 
 but of the string that pulls them we cannot form the 
 shadow of an idea. 
 
 591 There is something startling, something almost hor- 
 rible, to a man of a loving nature, in finding himself 
 treated with cold scorn. 'Tis as though he had got 
 among devils. The pang to himself is not all. 
 
 592 Remember in talking, that the more a matter absorbs 
 you, the more it bores others. 
 
 593 Envy and jealousy what qualities more hateful? 
 Yet they are capital spurs to exertion. 
 
 594 To think rightly, you must think first calmly, then 
 conclusively . It is easy to think by jerks : it is hard to 
 think a matter through. But there is all the difference
 
 tfOTES OF THOUGH f. 183 
 
 in the world between looking upon things, and looking 
 itito them.* 
 
 595 Outward things don't give they draw out You find 
 in them what you bring to them. A cathedral makes 
 only the devotional feel devotional. Scenery refines only 
 the fine-minded. 
 
 59 6 In mining for truth, but especially for truth as to 
 human nature, you come to a stratum of contradictions. 
 And you go very deep if you get below it. 
 
 597 The Evangelicals have their faults, and great ones. 
 But it is plain matter of fact that they set going the 
 philanthropic movement, which abolished slavery and the 
 slave trade mitigated the penal code remodelled our 
 jails spread missionaries over the heathen world and 
 wrought, by education and other means, a vast improve- 
 ment of the working class in England. It is right and 
 good to abuse them : but still they have done such a work 
 as the world never saw before. 
 
 598 An ounce of mother-wit is worth tons of teaching. 
 You spend thousands of hours in reading thousands in 
 thinkiug thousands in clever talk with clever men and 
 then some half-bred farmer, with his native shrewdness, 
 will say ten good things to your one. 
 
 599 In gravel, gorse springs up ; in sand, fern ; in chalk, 
 beeches ; in loam, elms; and so forth. So with opinions. 
 One soil brings forth High Church views ; another, Low 
 Church ; a third. Broad Church. The kind of opinion 
 depends on the kind of soul. 
 
 600 How many words there are for pleasant feeling : glad- 
 ness, happiness, enjoyment, joy, gaiety, fun, merriment, 
 jollity, pleasure, delight, bliss, rapture. 
 
 * See Killing no Murder.
 
 184 FOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 60 1 He is indeed a manager whose underlings do not 
 squabble. All an ordinary man can hope for is, that they 
 may quickly reach the point of not being on speaking 
 terms. Then at least there is quiet. 
 
 602 Don't envy a man with a fine house and broad acres 
 till you know if he can talk. Envy the talker. 
 
 603 How is it that one man's or one woman's insolence can 
 sting so fiercely ? Why, his contempt seems to utter 
 what his whole class would feel. You might scorn Lord 
 Z. and his scorn ; but you shrink from the scorn of all 
 lords. 
 
 604 Longfellow's poetry is delicious : but it won't wash. 
 
 605 In life, as in chess, forethought wins. Whatever 
 hinders forethought spoils your game. If you are not 
 cool, if you rush hotly at a seeming chance, that does for 
 you. If you shrink from the pain of planning widely and 
 deeply, that does for you. If you lose patience, that does 
 for you. If you don't draw out your pieces ably, that 
 does for you. But they all alike ruin you, because all 
 alike are opposed to forethought. 
 
 606 Failure means, that you would not, or could not, pay 
 for success. Success is a matter of sale. It can (most 
 often) be bought by a large outlay of hard forethought 
 of pains of steadiness of the golden wisdom coined 
 from experience. But the figure is too high for most of 
 us. We are too poor, or too slothful, to bring the price. 
 
 607 In how many and many a country house in England 
 have you everything that ingenuity can think of, and 
 wealth can buy, to make it agreeable and the result, 
 dulness deadly duluess !
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 185 
 
 608 Depend on it, large rooms make less for pleasant talk 
 than smaller ones, where, within bounds, you and your 
 friends are huddled together. 
 
 609 Manly good sense is the first of qualities. 
 
 6 10 To a man with a passion for talking, society is dis- 
 appointing because he so rarely gets listeners worth 
 talking with, or who draw him out. To a man with a 
 passion for holding his tongue (a passion which most of 
 ns feel), society is disappointing, because he must talk, 
 nolens volens. 
 
 6n The follies of youth are unforgetable. They go on 
 stinging till you die. Age may bring no great wisdom, 
 but it has this merit it keeps one from great folly. 
 
 612 If you have only time to read one book, besides the 
 Bible, why not read that book which is fullest of wisdom, 
 fullest of wit, fullest of humour, fullest of sweetness, 
 fullest of imagination, fullest of beauty, fullest of fancy, 
 fullest of insight into human nature, of all books in the 
 world ? No man is too busy to read Shakspeare. 
 
 613 If not to the world in general, at least to the enthu- 
 siast about architecture, the most delicate delight is 
 given by those fine touches with which the rich-minded 
 architect flings an air of beauty where it would least be 
 looked for. 
 
 One may feel the same as to the works of God. A 
 full topic of thought is, the exquisite skill with which 
 unlooked-for graces and uses have, as it were, been 
 thrown in to make perfection more perfect. Take, as 
 one example, the force of habit. After the man is, so to 
 speak, made up, with all his powers about him, this 
 further capability is added, that the more he works, the 
 fitter he grows for that work. For, after all, what is
 
 186 &OTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 " the force of habit " ? It is one of those inscrutable 
 forces that lie within us and act upon us ; and by this 
 one we are moulded into fitness for what we have to be 
 and to do. It is one fulfilment of the Maker's promise, 
 that who asks shall have ; for the more you strive at 
 any work, and show that you are doing your best at it, 
 the more power of doing it comes to you seemingly of 
 itself : this force, the force of habit, comes to your aid, 
 and makes you abler and your work easier, although 
 your original impulse may fade away. Thus, you begin 
 pulling : well, Nature has arranged to strengthen your 
 arms and chest. You make watches : she renders your 
 eye and hand more delicate. You drive a coach : she 
 thickens the skin of your face. You study law : she 
 sharpens your cunning. You hammer hot iron : she 
 hardens you against heat. Do what we please, Nature 
 stands by ready to add force to our original force, and in 
 due proportion to the amount we fairly earn by our energy 
 and perseverance. What forethought ! What unspeak- 
 able skill ! 
 
 . But mark the absolute freedom of the will. Nature 
 will help you to form bad habits just as much as good 
 ones. You are master : she is your humble slave, the 
 genie of your lamp. On you lies the whole responsibility 
 of using her service for good instead of for evil. 
 
 614 Take this dozen of clear facts as to the intimacy 
 between the mind and the brain. 
 
 1. The mind plainly gets all her knowledge of outward 
 things, and all her enjoyment of them, through the nerves, 
 and so through the brain. 
 
 2. While the brain is tender in childhood, the mind 
 is feeble, easily overdone, short in its reach, weak in its 
 resistance. 
 
 3. In health the mind is strongest. When we are sick, 
 our minds may be quick, but have no grasp. 
 
 4. In old age, when the brain grows stiff and dry, the 
 mind loses pliability. It must think in the old track. 
 It cannot take in new views, or feel new kinds of 
 fceauty.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 18? 
 
 5. A blow to the brain is a blow to the mind, and 
 disease of the brain ruins the mind. 
 
 6. Such disease may pass from father to son like any 
 other bodily affection. 
 
 7. Mighty minds go with large brains. Short, narrow, 
 sloping foreheads never did any great work in the 
 world. 
 
 8. Intellect varies not only with the size, but with the 
 composition of the brain. Physiologists declare that the 
 phosphorus found in the brains of nations is proportional 
 to their civilization. 
 
 9. In sound sleep, when the brain is at rest, the mind 
 is still. 
 
 10. The more unsound the sleep, the more the mind 
 works. But, the brain being partially torpid, the mind 
 is partially incapable, and can only frame dreams. 
 
 11. Work of the mind actually uses up brain. Hence 
 mental weariness, dizziness, headache, and even imbecility 
 or madness, from over-hard thought. 
 
 12. Drunkenness and dissipation weaken the mind. 
 That wine may fire it for a moment is a proof on the 
 same side. 
 
 These are facts bare facts which one cannot blink, 
 however puzzling or painful. And they show this, that 
 the mind and the brain are not two, but one ; that what- 
 ever our mind does, the brain does it ; that brain-power 
 is mental power. There is, doubtless, a something 
 unseen, unknown, unimaginable, which works in and with 
 the brain, what we call spirit. But our knowledge 
 gives us no reason whatever for believing that this some- 
 thing, this spirit, can do anything or be anything what- 
 ever, apart from the brain. 
 
 We may, if we please, frame a pretty theory, that it is 
 only here that the spirit needs help from the brain ; but 
 that hereafter she may be able to wing her way forward 
 without any such instrument. We may frame such a 
 theory ; but so far as our actual knowledge goes, we find 
 that mental power is brain power, and brain power mental 
 power. All we know shows that, and gives no hint of any 
 possibility of the two being apart. 
 
 But then shall we say that it must be owned that the
 
 188 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 intellectual powers lie in the brain ; but that the in- 
 tellectual powers are not the soul, but merely the soul's 
 limbs, wanted here, not wanted hereafter : that she will 
 shed these capacities as a lobster its shell, and that for 
 intellect we shall have intuition, and that all knowledge 
 will flow in upon us at once, without these cumbersome 
 processes of reasoning conducted by these feeble powers ? 
 Shall we say that the soul is to her faculties what a man 
 is to the engines which he sets in motion ; and that the 
 soul is not our reasoning power, but is known to us as 
 experiencing those religious sentiments and aspirations 
 which lift us heavenward ? 
 
 This sounds well ; but it can't stand. For the plain 
 fact is, that for this supposed distinction between the soul 
 and the intellect we have no reason to allege of any sort 
 or kind. We know nothing whatever of any spiritual 
 thing within us, except of the thinker and feeler. Even 
 in the most profound religious adoration, the " soul " is 
 Btill thinking and feeling, and nothing else. In Milton's 
 Morning Hymn, and Tennyson's St. Agnes, you have the 
 noblest religious fervour ; but it is all made up of thought 
 and feeling. You catch no glimpse of any other being 
 within Adam or St. Agnes than that which thinks and 
 feels on other occasions : only here you see it in its 
 highest mood. We have no consciousness of the soul's 
 existence, except as thinking and feeling. What right 
 have we to say that it can or will drop those functions 
 which, as far as we know, are its sole characteristics ? 
 
 Eemember, too, that devotional emotion is peculiarly 
 affected by the state of the body. To the loftiest of 
 pious aspirations fasting has been found needful. Turtle 
 soup and double stout would be deadly to them. I do 
 not speak jocosely. These are proofs that even in the 
 noblest flights the spirit and the brain work together : 
 nay, again, overstrained devotion has ofter wrought 
 madness ; and vice versa, one kind of brain disease calls 
 out devotional feeling in extravagant extent. 
 
 What follows from these facts is plain. The old 
 notion, that man was made up of two distinct parts, his 
 body and his soul the body despicable, the soul 
 glorious that old notion falls. We are wholly wrong
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 189 
 
 to look on the spirit as "grossly closed in with this 
 muddy vesture," as locked up sadly within a narrow 
 prison-house. No. The facts, the irresistible, the un- 
 deniable facts, demonstrate that man is not a den, 
 wherein two enemies are chained together, but one 
 being : that soul and body are one one and indivisible. 
 
 We had better face this great fact. Tie no good to 
 blink it. Our knowledge of physiology has come to a 
 point where the old idea of man's constitution must be 
 thrown aside. To struggle against the overwhelming 
 force of science, under the notion of shielding religion, 
 is mere folly. 
 
 And in this case, the physical fact seems to chime 
 with the teaching of Christianity. All other religions 
 have taught that after death (as, indeed, it would 
 naturally strike man, seeing the decay of the body) the 
 spirit becomes wholly separated from the carcase, and 
 lives in a spirit world thenceforth, where nothing is 
 tangible, but all is KaBapbv nal <id8s. 
 
 But Christianity, and Christianity alone, teaches the 
 resurrection of the body acknowledges that the body 
 is an essential part of man, by promising that it shall 
 rise again not, indeed, this very body that has been 
 laid in the tomb, but a new^and glorified one. 
 
 615 I venture to say, that the existence of evil is not the 
 unfathomable mystery. The real mystery, the real 
 wonder of wonders, is the extent of evil. 
 
 For, mark this : All movement, of every creature, 
 comes from the desire after something better. 
 
 Whatever you do, you do it to rid yourself or your 
 fellow of some shade of uneasiness, or to gain some 
 glow, however faint, of pleasure. 
 
 You eat, you drink, you walk, you go to bed, you get 
 up, you work, you talk, you do whatever you do, with 
 the view of being more at ease, or less at unease, or of 
 helping another thereto. 
 
 Analyse any of your doings, you will find that the 
 sole motive power that sets the will going is the impulse 
 to better yourself.
 
 190 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 But then, clearly enough, were every separate thing 
 and every one always at the very best, that motive 
 power would vanish. Were there no worse, were all 
 things always as well as possible, there could be no 
 movement towards the better. The world would be at a 
 stand. 
 
 Blot out from the face of the earth the chief evils 
 hunger, thirst, cold, heat, pain, weariness, fear, death, 
 in other words, let the human body be always of itself 
 in perfect ease, not wasting, not drying up, not worn, 
 not decaying, not falling out with the things round it, 
 what stimulus remains for exertion ? Even the delight 
 of the eye and of the ear comes of the change from 
 dulness to beauty. You would have small enjoy- 
 ment, were your eye always feasted with the most 
 luxurious entertainment. The existence of evil 
 i. e. the liability to be worse is essential to the power 
 to be better. 
 
 We may see, then, why, at any rate in one planet, 
 things should be put on this footing, that they are 
 not always at the best, but are always varying from 
 worse to better, and to best, and back again to worse, 
 in order to make movement possible. 
 
 But the utterly unfathomable mystery is, that they 
 can get to such a depth of worse ; that evil becomes so 
 enormous, so paramount. There might have been evil 
 enough to force living beings to work, without plunging 
 them into such abysses of misery. 
 
 616 One of the finest sayings in the language is John 
 Foster's " Live mightily." 
 
 617 Women crave love : men, respect. 
 
 618 Napoleon's career is wonderful, first for its successes 
 secondly, for its blunders blunders which must have 
 ruined any man of less transcendent power. Never 
 surely did any human being err on so magnificent a
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 191 
 
 scale. The expedition to Egypt the war with Spain 
 the war with Russia the " Continental system," were 
 not false steps, they were false strides with seven- 
 leagued boots. But the leading trait in Napoleon's 
 character was the almost supernatural sagacity and 
 energy with which he pursued the stupidest purposes. 
 He seems to have always been actuated by mere im- 
 pulse, and to have asked help from his surpassing 
 judgment, only in carrying out schemes never in fram- 
 ing them. 
 
 619 Nothing so invigorating as the reverie of deep 
 thought ; or so enervating as the reverie of day-dreams. 
 
 620 'Tis the fact, though not a pleasant one, that young 
 men are the happier, and are the better, for their fathers 
 being polite enough to die early. At least, this is so 
 in the squire class. It is a real misfortune to an elder 
 son to have his father alive : not merely because it 
 keeps him poor, but because it keeps him from work, 
 responsibility, independence, power, in a word, from free- 
 dom. It is so, too, very often in the commercial world. 
 The old fogy won't die, and won't retire : and the sons 
 are allowed no mastery whatever in the concern. Fathers 
 should brood upon this : one can hardly expect them 
 to kill themselves, but they can at least beware of 
 throwing their sous into cold shade. 
 
 621 The world may be divided into Austenians and Non- 
 Austenians. The Austenian sect contains everybody 
 who has a true sense of humour. The Non-Austeniaus 
 may possibly have good qualities ; but they have no 
 humour. 
 
 Not but what Miss Austen is often dull, and even 
 slightly vulgar. She was a lady by birth ; she lived 
 among" ladies and gentlemen : she was a lady in heart 
 and soul. I shrewdly suspect there was a deal more 
 vulgarity in the gentle classes fitly years ago than there 
 is now ; and that she wrote with some touch of vul-
 
 192 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 garity, because she mirrored those she lived with. Miss 
 Barney's novels also are somewhat vulgar. 
 
 622 We pray every Sunday, that " the Lords of the Coun- 
 cil " may have wisdom and understanding. The Lords 
 of what Council ? do we mean the Privy Council or the 
 Cabinet ? It shows how loosely we go on repeating words 
 without meaning, that, I dare say, not one man in ten 
 thousand ever asks himself this question. 
 
 623 So long as he must fight his way, the man of genius 
 pushes forward, conquering and to conquer. But how 
 often is he at last overcome by a Capua ! Ease and fame 
 bring sloth and slumber. 
 
 624 It is not that one's faith is chopped down by reason- 
 ing, but it dies down from the shallowness and barren- 
 ness of the soil. The old beliefs, once green and flower- 
 ing, turn into withered sticks, because they can no 
 longer draw sap from the mind they grew in. 
 
 625 A man of humour will find for himself honey in the 
 smallest incidents. It is wonderful what a delicate 
 aroma of fun can be drawn from anything and every- 
 thing, by the touch of a true Yorick. But there is a 
 horribly tiresome shadow, or rather sham, of this. In 
 many families every little matter is exalted into an 
 anecdote, and told with much laughter, when, Heaven 
 knows, there is not the least crumb of real food for fun. 
 You are obliged to be always in a painful state of forced 
 giggle. 
 
 626 Nothing makes a shy man feel more shy, than an 
 overdone cordiality. People's manner should show 
 their kind feeling, but not puzzle you how to make a 
 return. An eulogium by manner is almost as em- 
 barrassing as an eulogium by words.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 193 
 
 627 The Roman numerals manifestly come from the 
 fingers. I, the forefinger ; II, the two first fingers ; 
 III, the three ; and V, the angle made by the thumb 
 and little finger when all are spread ; VI, by adding a 
 finger of the right hand ; VII, by adding two fingers ; 
 VIII, by adding three ; X, by the doubling of V by 
 putting the right hand (reversed) under the left ; L, by 
 stretching the thumb at right angles to the forefinger ; 
 C, by curving them together : But it is curious to ob- 
 serve how the numbers just below five and its multiples 
 are formed. It is done by making V (or the multiple 
 of V) with the right hand, and then with the left hand 
 making the number which must be deducted in order 
 to give the required amount. Thus to make IV, you 
 make V with the right hand, and deduct I with the 
 index of the left hand. To make IX, you do just the 
 same, merely substituting X for V. To make XL, you 
 form L with the right hand, and deduct X with the 
 left. To make XC, you do just the same, merely 
 substituting C for L. 
 
 628 It is startling sometimes to find that one's mind has 
 drifted so far away from its old moorings, that it heartily 
 relishes sentiments which thirty years back had struck 
 it with horror, as almost blasphemous. 
 
 629 Great men grow like grapes, not one here and one 
 there, but in bunches. One of these bunches grew at 
 Athens in the time of Pericles : another at Rome 
 under Augustus : another in Italy under Leo X ; 
 another in France under Louis XIV : another was 
 formed by Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick, Rey- 
 nolds : another by Mackintosh, Brougham, Sydney 
 Smith, Jeffrey, Homer : another by Coleridge, Words- 
 worth, Lamb, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Southey. Is it 
 that men stir one another up to more vigorous exer- 
 tions? or is it that there is a kind of epidemic of 
 genius ? or is it that rulers such as the Medici or 
 Louis XIV really call forth genius by their patronage ? 
 I cannot tell. But it seems that all things come in 
 showers.
 
 194 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 630 You observe and ponder, and observe and ponder, 
 and think you are on the track of a rare truth ; and 
 ninety times in a hundred it turns out to be as old 
 as the hills, and most likely was embodied a thousand 
 years ago, in some racy saw, beside which your laboured 
 exposition looks anile. What's the good of thinking ? 
 All thoughts worth thinking have been thought long 
 ago. 
 
 631 We taste some exquisite felicity, e.g., in study, lovely 
 scenery, brilliant society, or what not ; and we think 
 how happy those to whom this delight is given, not in 
 drops, but dishfuls ; how pleasant our life would be, 
 could we always command such enjoyments. We never 
 do, we never can, realize how much the feeling of plea- 
 sure dies away when the pleasure is oft repeated. In 
 fancying felicities, we fancy them/res^. It is impossible 
 to imagine beforehand, how flavourless they become 
 when stale. 
 
 632 Cold people turn out to be warm people, and warm 
 people turn out to be cold people ; and, in short, all we 
 know is, we cannot know anything as to what anybody 
 really is, till we have lived two years with him and not 
 then. 
 
 633 The truth that in looking on at life, oftenest pushes 
 itself forward is that boldness is prudence. Nay, I 
 would almost rather say rashness than boldness, so well 
 does even reckless courage turn out. Here is a man 
 who has boarded those above him, pulled the noses of 
 those round him, driven everybody to do what they 
 hated, made himself a thousand enemies by his utter 
 resolve to get things put to-rights, though the world 
 was utterly resolved to keep them at wrongs well, and 
 what comes of it ? Why, at fifty, he is in the highest 
 place honoured on all sides ; while the time-servers 
 are nowhere. 
 
 634 Look at A. B., rich in graces, rich in talents, yet his 
 career a failure. And why ? Why just because he
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 195 
 
 wants what Dr. Whewell calls sticktion. He cannot 
 hold fast to any one pursuit. " Unstable as water, thou 
 shalt not excel." 
 
 635 Irritability is for the moment so intense that you 
 might think it beyond control. But, mark this ; that 
 you can stop its utterance, if any one is by of whom 
 you stand in awe. A servant, too, will hold his tongue ; 
 or a soldier, however furious. Given a strong motive, 
 and you can keep anger down. 
 
 636 The four most irritable people I have known (two 
 men and two women) had unusually sweet faces, and 
 were as good as gold. 
 
 637 Irritability is not bad temper. Nor is bad temper 
 irritability. Bad temper carries the heart into it. The 
 bad tempered man really does delight to vex and tor- 
 ture. Irritability flames and is gone. But both ruin 
 happiness. 
 
 638 At least in speeches and books, it is easier to be sen- 
 sible, clever, or even wise, than to be amusing. In fact, 
 humour that is good enough for a book must have no 
 small originality. A man cannot borrow it, or the form 
 of it, from another. He cannot get at it by study or 
 cultivation. It must come of itself, from a racy soil. 
 
 639 If you are a landowner, allow me to ask, Have you 
 built wholesome houses for your labourers ? If not, no 
 matter how kind and good you are, you have shirked 
 your first duty. 
 
 640 Puns are poor wretched creatures ; but, even the puns 
 of an original man will show original thought will dis- 
 play his power of seeing things in a new light of look- 
 ing at things from a fresh point of view. When a young 
 lady said to Sydney Smith, " Oh Mr. Smith, this pea 
 
 o -2.
 
 196 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 will never come to perfection," " Then," said he, taking 
 her hand, " let me bring perfection to the pea." Could 
 the dark sayings of the wise show more originality than 
 such a pun ? 
 
 641 I know nothing in the history of art more curious 
 than this, that, the Early English, of all styles the love- 
 liest, flourished mainly in the reigns of those miserable 
 wretches, John and Henry III. You would have 
 thought that the utter misgovernment and disorganiza- 
 tion of the country under them must have ruined archi- 
 tecture and all arts too. On the other hand, we must 
 bear in mind that those were the days of Magna Charta, 
 and of such men as Pembroke, and Hubert de Burgh, 
 and Stephen Langton. So there must have been rare 
 stuff in the men of that day, whatever the monarchs 
 were. 
 
 642 No recollection has a relish so delightful as that of a 
 gallant jump out hunting. 
 
 643 People will go miles to see a great big view ; yet a 
 deep lane, with broken banks, and a few beech trees, in 
 sunlight, touches me more than a fifty-mile view from a 
 hill top. One admires this last, but more with the head 
 than the heart. 
 
 644 To plant a young tree is to set up a death's head and 
 cross bones in your grounds. You may hear your young 
 trees singing sotto voce as you pass by, " Aha, you'll be 
 dead, you'll be dead, you'll be dead, my fine fellow, 
 before I'm full grown." Young oaks especially, are 
 always crooning that to themselves on a windy evening. 
 
 645 In life, as in chess, one's own pawns block one's way. 
 A man's very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, 
 which should help him to win, more often checkmate 
 him.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 197 
 
 6 4 6 Sharp men of the world would advise all kinds of 
 selfish cunning in order to get on. Practically, the men 
 who get on, are above low cunning, and have not used 
 it. The truth is, that one main help to success is that 
 people should like you, and pull with rather than 
 against you. Not being likeable is a heavy stumbling- 
 block in a man's way. Now, cunning is the very deuce 
 for making you disliked. People soon see it, and think 
 you a snake. 
 
 647 Chalk hills are good to look at and hateful to live on- 
 They are always great round-backed things, with scarce 
 any picturesqueness ; and though commanding wide 
 views, they give you wretched foregrounds ; then they 
 are bare of human life and homes, bare of fences, bare 
 of trees (except on the steep side) ; and the roads are 
 glass in dry weather, and a bog in wet. To be sure, the 
 valleys below are rich in charm ; but then the valleys 
 below are not chalk hills. 
 
 648 It is very odd, that in the " Legends of King Arthur." 
 King Arthur himself plays hardly any part at all. Sir 
 Tristram and Sir Launcelot are the heroes in front, and 
 you only see King Arthur's form in shadowy outline, 
 some way behind. The stories seem to me wonderfully 
 boyish, just such castles in the air as a clever, high- 
 spirited schoolboy might imagine. You cannot open a 
 page but what two knights " hurl together- with all the 
 might of their horses," ond " one smote down the other," 
 and then they lash at each other with their swords like 
 two " wood " lions, or two " boores." I cannot discover 
 any especially noble sentiments or feelings ; and the 
 ladies seem to me to come in and out merely as elegant 
 attendants, but not at all as taking the first place. They 
 are useful to exhilarate the men as spectators of their 
 deeds of valour, and as prizes for the victors, but not 
 much more. Nor is there any mystic imagination in 
 the supernatural parts of the story. There are plenty of 
 sorcerers and so forth ; but nothing can be more hard 
 and mechanical than their influence : it has not the least
 
 198 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 touch of the awful or sublime. They are, in fact, mere 
 Dei ex machind, and just set things wrong, or set things 
 right, as suits the tale. 
 
 649 The one sublime theory, the only sublime theory that 
 mankind ever framed, had the adhesion of all Christen- 
 dom ; had ages on ages for its growth to perfection : 
 had obstacles to overcome, and overcame them ; was 
 worked out to the fullest, and has proved a dead 
 failure ! What could be more glorious than the idea of 
 the Successor of Christ ruling the rulers of the earth, 
 and swaying them all by the law of God ? And what 
 more execrable than the crimes it begot ! 
 
 650 'Tis strange how slowly comes the most practical 
 every-day reforms of the follies of daily life. Ay, 
 slower than those which touch men's real convenience 
 much less. Here (1859) is a bill brought in for equali- 
 zing weights and measures throughout England. Now 
 that was one of the things aimed at by Magna Charta ! 
 
 651 Every year there are more and more hearers for a 
 good writer. Not only in England, but in the United 
 States, the readers go on increasing. No doubt, on the 
 other hand, the writers increase too, and their competi- 
 tion becomes severe ; but still, if a book be of a higher 
 order, it soon walks ahead of its fellows. 
 
 65 2 The world is ruled by the subordinates, not by their 
 chiefs. 
 
 653 Art and authorship must surely be full of delights ; 
 but I suspect that even successful artists and popular 
 authors often pass through times of blank dismay, as 
 they look upon their work, and feel that it is bad, 
 very, very bad, compared to their aims and longings.
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 199 
 
 654 The vilest things on earth are abridgments of history. 
 It is utterly impossible for the wretched boy to under- 
 stand them, or to be interested by them, or remember 
 them. They have no effect whatever, except to make 
 him hate history altogether But there are shortened 
 histories that are capital. Peter Parley's and Charles 
 Dickens' are really well done ; and above all, the Tales 
 of a Grandfather. But there you have all the striking 
 incidents told fully, while the dull regions are skipped. 
 In the vulgar condensations of history, such as Pin- 
 nock's, &c., you have every incident, but in small. 
 
 655 Of course, God might to take but one example 
 have clothed us with a drapery as fit for all uses and as 
 beautiful as that which he has given to the birds and 
 beasts and even to the grass of the field. But He has 
 created us naked, and left us to our own reason and will 
 to find ourselves in clothing. At first sight, this is not 
 so well as if He had done the work for us. How in- 
 comparably better done it would have been. But when 
 we look deeper, we see how far nobler and higher is the 
 state of things ordained by Him, whereby our own free 
 will and our own wits are called into play. 
 
 Would the rulers of the earth but follow God's mode 
 of dealing with his subjects ! What boundless evil has 
 been wrought by their thinking that all that is wanted 
 is the result, the order, security, prosperity : whereas the 
 struggle towards the result the chafing of mind and 
 will in pushing to "it is in reality full half the good. 
 
 656 You have not fulfilled every duty, unless you have 
 fulfilled that of being pleasant. 
 
 657 How sharply cowardice gets punished. Your shy man 
 does and says the awkwardest things. Your timid rider 
 gets the most falls. Nature backs up the brave, and 
 kicks the fearful downstairs.
 
 200 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 658 "An empty sack can't stand upright." And, vice 
 versa, a full sack stands upright of itself. 
 
 659 Hearing any one wisely praised seems to precipitate 
 one's liking for him. It turns one's fluid notion, that he 
 is a right good fellow, into a solid opinion. 
 
 660 Here is a man of splendid abilities : very amusing, 
 very agreeable,yet hated all round. And why ? Why, 
 because he abuses everybody behind their backs. 
 
 66 1 One marvels how one could have been such a wretched 
 idiot as to take this course instead of the other. But 
 the fact is, we do not, and indeed cannot, recall our 
 ignorance at the time of decision. "VVe know now how 
 the land really lay, and we forget how dimly we saw its 
 mere outlines. 
 
 662 Experience might be labelled " Extract of sufferings ;" 
 but the hard thing is, that most of us get the sufferings, 
 but are without the skill to distil from them that 
 priceless essence. 
 
 663 I am amazed by the originality of the Christian 
 religion. What can be more bold, what more novel yet 
 true than its leading doctrine, that man is bad, and the 
 one thing to be done is to make him better. 
 
 664 If you love praise, lead : if you dread blame, follow. 
 
 665 " Keeping " has been observed by Nature with true 
 artistic care. Does not a bat seem as if it were a slice 
 clipped from the twilight by some supernatural scissors ? 
 And look, too, at the white owl, with its shriek and its 
 ghostly flight. What can be more in harmony with the 
 dreary moors and morasses in which they live than the
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 201 
 
 melancholy whistle of the curlew and redshank ? But I 
 am most struck with it in looking at that sight to my 
 mind, tfw most suggestive sight in the whole world the 
 sight of the saurian creatures in the Crystal Palace 
 gardens. What a horror of ugliness ; but how at one 
 with the mud that abomination of desolation in which 
 they disported. 
 
 666 Indulge procrastination, and in time you will come to 
 this, that because a thing ought to be done, therefore you 
 can't do it. 
 
 667 In all affairs the masters rule the men ; but the men 
 rule the masters. 
 
 668 Men may have very strong affections, yet have very 
 little tenderness of heart. Nay, such men may be stern, 
 even cruel. 
 
 669 0, parson, is your sermon a discourse shot off, or a talk 
 talked with the men and women before you ? There lies 
 the difference between bad preaching and good. 
 
 670 Affairs are like horses : if you have a timid hand and 
 doubtful seat, they prance and plunge under you. A 
 weak manager finds a thousand difficulties rise up 
 against him which would never show their faces to the 
 strong-willed. 
 
 671 It is curious to follow out the variety of consequences 
 that flow from any pressure on society, Thus, in a risky 
 state of society, not only are homes turned into castles, 
 but the feeling of kindred is far stronger than in peace- 
 ful times. Kith and kin stick together, because the tie 
 of blood is one sort of defensive armour. Hence clanship. 
 
 672 Weak husbands of wise women are apt to grow very 
 reticent as to their plans, &c. Their feeling is, I would 
 rather go wrong by myself than right with dear Maria.
 
 202 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 673 Here are two great friends, both by nature lazy. But 
 the one, a man of fair ability, has filled no end of im- 
 portant positions ; the other, a man of striking power, is 
 nobody, and has done nothing. Why this difference in 
 their careers ? Just this. The one was a second son, the 
 other an eldest. 
 
 674 It is strange for what ages and ages a nation will go 
 on acting, not only upon a false idea, but upon an idea 
 the falseness of which is so bare. 
 
 Thus, for a thousand years, our forefathers built their 
 houses in low ground, under the notion that, being less 
 in the wind, they would be warmer ; but every -man who 
 is often out after dusk must have remarked a hundred 
 times how deadly cold the air strikes in those low 
 places ; how warm it feels as soon as some rising ground 
 is reached. The wind is far less chill than those clammy 
 damps ; and in the morning, if you look out from any 
 height, you see the fog still lying heavy on those choice 
 sites which our fathers loved, while the hills are in 
 warmth and sunshine. Moreover, the soil is wont to be 
 heavy in the vale, but light on the hill-side, which tells 
 again on the warmth. 
 
 675 The road to success is not to be run upon by seven- 
 leagued boots. Step by step, little by little, bit by bit 
 that is the way to wealth, that is the way to wisdom, 
 that is the way to glory. Pounds are the sons, not of 
 pounds, but of pence. 
 
 676 We are wont to look on imagination as higher than 
 sense. For my part, I think the ability to see things as 
 they are, is better than the ability to see them as they 
 might be. And note this, that barbarians abound in 
 imagination, but want sense. Even the most degraded 
 tribes of Southern India are said to believe in the spirit 
 of the storm, the spirit of the rain, &c. And what a 
 vast and picturesque mythology was made up by the 
 rude nations of Europe, with gnomes, and fairies, and 
 trolls, and what not. And again, how striking the
 
 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 203 
 
 imagery that flows from the tongue of a Ited Indian. 
 But civilization tames these imaginations, and draws out 
 good sense. Is not, then, good sense the higher quality 
 the one to which we rise ? 
 
 677 No maxim would be better worth engraving on one's 
 mind with a pen of adamant, than this never to judge 
 till you have heard both sides. What a host of scrapes 
 and follies (dashed, too, with injustice) would a man 
 avoid, by just holding his tongue till the other side has 
 pleaded. 
 
 And, akin to this, what wisdom it would be (specially 
 for a public man), not to make assertions till he knows 
 not only whether they are true, but whether he can 
 prove them to be so. 
 
 678 Statesmen, writers, artists, &c., are confounded and 
 cast down by their own blunders ; yet in the career of 
 any great man what stupidities what blunders ! and 
 in the long run, these make no difference whatever. 
 Their ability gains the victory, and just as great a 
 victory, whether they have, or have not, been repulsed 
 here and there. 
 
 679 In one family, all goes by two and two. If a member 
 of it has any interest, he or she will confide it to some 
 one other ; but the rest know nothing. In another 
 family, all feel what touches one ; nothing is kept dark 
 from the father and mother, brothers and sisters all 
 share. This family habit is by far the better, it 
 strengthens the tie between the members, and makes the 
 home one home. 
 
 680 Very many persons shrink utterly from talking about 
 what deeply interests them. Even a political question 
 seems too hot to hold, if they care strongly about it. A 
 conversation on the state of Italy, or on the ruin of 
 constitutional government in France, is to me like 
 walking barefoot on shingle.* 
 
 Written in 1852.
 
 204 NOTES OF THOUGHT. 
 
 68 1 I am glad to mark this which I do mark that 
 common careers are happiest. Rare careers look splen- 
 did ; but, seen close by, their happiness is small ; and 
 what they have, comes of their common-place features 
 wife, children, home, shooting, hunting, gardens, and 
 farms. 
 
 682 What a mass of practical knowledge and wisdom 
 every man has got stored up in him, if he has had much 
 to do in the world. He may not know that he has it, he 
 never remarks it, and never puts it into words ; but 
 when he has to pick his way through some tangled and 
 perilous business, at every moment he is under a 
 powerful pressure of the experience gathered in other 
 affairs, and by this he is kept in the right road. The 
 knowledge of men is but one part of this knowledge : 
 and yet how deep it becomes. 
 
 683 Your friend has waxed great and mighty ; he seems 
 cool to you, and you are a little spiteful ; you smile 
 inwardly when he gets some rebuff, you take pleasure in 
 disparaging him, in hearing him disparaged. But down 
 comes calamity and sweeps him to the ground : you 
 find him leaning, as a matter of course, on your 
 sympathy, trusting with undoubting faith in your 
 regard ; you discover that it had never crossed his mind 
 to think of you but as his truest friend. Tis a lesson 
 worth learning. 
 
 684 -flfe people in general have to pump up things to say ; 
 but others (and among them a woman or two), are 
 always welling forth good thoughts, in words as clear as 
 crystal. Their minds never move without a play round 
 them as of phosphorescent light. You can't tell what it 
 is there may be nothing to lay hold of, but their least 
 remark gleams.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ABRIDGMENTS, 654 
 Accidents, 153 
 Acting rightly, 184 
 Action, Independence of, 70 
 Adaptation, 424, 572 
 Advantages, unappreciated, 496 
 Advice, 169, 534, 570 
 Affairs, genius for, 346, 671 
 Affectation, 173 
 Air, the, 113 
 Animals, love of, 282 
 reason in, 213 
 Anticipation, 3, 254 
 Apostolical Succession, 322 
 Appointments, 336 
 Appreciation of good, 342 
 Architecture, 203, 373, 380, 422, 
 
 579, 641, 674 
 Art, 72, 145 
 Artists, 401 
 Audacity, 567 
 Austen, Miss, 621 
 Authors, 25, 177, 330, 653 
 
 B. 
 
 BABYHOOD, 478 
 
 Backbiting, 660 
 
 Bacon, 349 
 
 Ballet, 519 
 
 Bargaining, 221, 585 
 
 Barriers, mental, 540 
 
 Beauty, enjoyment of, 360, 477, 
 
 595 
 
 Beginning, the, 418 
 Belief, forms of, 141, 372, 599, 624, 
 wide reaching, 214 
 
 Birds, 78 
 
 Bishops, 172, 188 
 
 Bitterness, 139 
 
 Blunders, 482, 678 
 
 Boasting, 80 
 
 Boldness, 633 
 
 Bores, 66, 211, 286 
 
 Boys, 487, 558 
 
 Breed, 115 
 
 Brevity, 347 
 
 Business, men of, 201, 263 
 
 CANDOUR, 473 
 
 Carlyle, 329 
 
 Caution, 391 
 
 Celibacy of Clergy, 10 
 
 Chalk Downs, 647 
 
 Chance, leaving to, 569 
 
 Chaplains, 552 
 
 Character, 32, 385, 390, 412, 490 
 
 breadth of, 394 
 
 signs of, 105, 259, 531 
 
 strength of, 58, 658 
 Characters, 43, 319, 400, 481, 52$ 
 Cheerfulness, 376, 492 
 Children, 446, 451, 582 
 
 influence of, 383 
 
 love of, 381 
 Christ, character of, 181 
 Christianity, 5, 180, 261, 378. 507, 
 
 663 
 
 Chroniclers, 343 
 Church and State, 298, 382 
 
 broad, 275 
 
 of England, 392 
 Circumstances, 96, 681 
 Civility, 245, 427 
 Civilization, 28
 
 206 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Climate, 341 
 Coleridge, 423 
 Colonies, 455 
 Colour, 493, 547, 587 
 Communion, 313, 399 
 Comparison, 167 
 Compensations, 29 
 Conceit, 131 
 Conscience, 456 
 Contrasts, 476 
 Corinne, 2 
 Corsica, 279 
 Cottages, 639 
 County families, 377, 533 
 Cowardice, 657 
 Creepers, 489 
 Criticism, 351 
 Cruelty, 46, 161, 301 
 Cunning, 646 
 
 D. 
 
 DANCING, 462 
 Death, 316, 313 
 Declamation, 148 
 Decoration, 447 
 Deference, 402 
 Derivations, 257 
 Design, 420 
 Development, 528 
 Dimculties, 216, 623 
 Diffidence, 30 
 Discontent, 512 
 Dislike, 194 
 Display, 284 
 Doubts. 219 
 Drawbacks, 242, 356 
 Dress, 127, 128 
 
 E. 
 
 EASE v. Excitement, 224 
 Education, 79, 102, 117, 174, 176, 
 250, 266, 366, 395, 491, 530 
 Egotism, 168, 293 
 Electors, 520 
 Embonpoint, 283 
 Emotion, infectious, 311 
 
 End, the, 112 
 
 Enjoyment, 87, 153, 573, 631 
 
 power of, 444, 499 
 
 sources of, 119, 355, 505, 
 581, 681 
 
 Enthusiasm, fading of, 438 
 Envy, 9, 95, 226, 593 
 Evangelicals, 597 
 Evidence, 41, 183 
 Evil, evident, 163 
 
 extent of, 345, 615 
 
 origin of, 195, 524 
 
 personality of, 268 
 
 speaking, 414 
 
 -working good, 199, 255 
 Exaggeration, 484 
 Excluded, the, 47, 121, 469 
 Excuses, 50 
 
 Execution, 35 
 Expectation, falsified, 459 
 Expenditure, 52, 103, 323 
 Experience, 179, 562, 662, 682 
 
 F. 
 
 FACES, 81, 135, 407 
 
 Falstaff, 566 
 
 Fame, 243 
 
 Family Life, 20, 62, 460, 545, 679 
 
 Fatalism, 170 
 
 Fathers and sons, 338, 452, 620 
 
 Fault, finding, 86, 280 
 
 hidden, 457 
 Fear, 307, 361 
 Flirtations, 235, 577 
 Folly, 40, 485, 611 
 Force, 39, 590 
 Forerunners, 16 
 Foresight, 116, 193, 483, 605 
 Formulas, 622 
 Friendship, 205, 683 
 
 G. 
 
 GENIUS, reward of, 26, 83 
 Gifts, to him that hath, 159, 393 
 Girls, 467, 546, 550 
 God, dealings of, 84, 215, 655
 
 INDEX. 
 
 207 
 
 Goodnature, 189, 405 
 Goodness, 51, 89, 208, 548 
 Good sense, 310, 387 
 Good works, 315 
 Governess, a, 504 
 Government, 98, 120 
 Gratitude, 354 
 
 HAPPINESS, 42, 237, 283, 305, 317, 
 
 325, 465, 521, 600 
 Hard riding. 132, 439, 642 
 Heart v. Head, 144, 433 
 Heroes, 36 
 Hindrances, 645 
 History, 197 
 Home, 109 
 Horses, 568 
 
 Hours, arrangement of, 416 
 House of Commons, 277 
 Human Nature, 1, 12, 17, 45, 385, 
 
 441, 522, 632 
 Humanity, 146 
 
 Humour, 186, 408, 461. 625, 638 
 Husbands and Wives, 384, 468, 672 
 
 I. 
 
 IDIOTS, 501 
 
 Ignorance, 164 
 
 Inconsistency, 44 
 
 Indecision, 149 
 
 India, 450 
 
 Inheritance of qualities, 574 
 
 Insight, 104, 369 
 
 Insolence, 603 
 
 Instability, 68, 634 
 
 Interest, want of, 549 
 
 Irritability, 23, 244, 635, 636, 637 
 
 J. 
 
 JOHNSON, 206 
 Judgment, hasty, 677 
 Juliet, 497 
 
 K. 
 
 KINO ARTHUR, 648 
 Kissing, 435 
 Knowledge, 449 
 
 LAND, 64, 290 
 
 Language, English, 348, 445, 556, 
 
 Laziness, 107 
 
 Life, 229, 239 
 
 future, 611 
 
 theories of, 586 
 
 ways of, 191 
 Likeness, 106 
 Live mightily, 616 
 London, 71 
 Longfellow, 604 
 Love affairs, 448 
 
 law of, 162 
 
 sense of ownership in, 544 
 Loyalty to leaders, 294 
 
 Luck, bad, 518 
 
 MACAPIAT, 365 
 Magnanimity, 241, 453 
 Man, 31, 65, 278, 324 
 
 and animals, 480, 502 
 
 beauty of, 94, 396, 5S7 
 Manner, 326, 415 
 Marriage, 267, 498 
 Maxims, 543 
 
 Mediocrity, 67 
 Meeting after absence, 231 
 Memory, 367, 368 
 Men, great, 629 
 - short, 57 
 
 and women, 580, 617 
 Michael Angelo, 470 
 Microscope, 8 
 
 Mind and body, 15. 252, 253, 463, 
 583 
 
 grasp of, 578 
 Miracles, 150 
 Mirth, excess of, 38 
 Mismanagement, 357, 437
 
 208 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Money lenders, 276 
 
 power of, 363 
 Monotony, 421 
 Moral courage, 302 
 
 perspective, 18 
 Morality, modern, 73 
 Mothers, 37 
 Mother wit, 598 
 Music, 500 
 
 N. 
 
 NABOTH'S vineyard, 471 
 
 Napoleon, 99, 618 
 
 Nature, laws of, 92, 431, 510, 613 
 
 study of, 535 
 Newton, 379 
 Niebuhr, 529 
 Novels, 204 
 Numerals, 627 
 
 0. 
 
 OBSERVATION, 287, 554 
 
 Obstinacy, 90, 225 
 
 Oddities, 32 
 
 Opinion of others, 187, 238, 486, 
 
 659 
 Originality, 88, 350, 525, 542 
 
 P. 
 
 PAPACY, 649 
 
 Philanthropy, 588 
 
 Pictures, 479, 623 
 
 Pitt, 75 
 
 Pity, 236, 515 
 
 Planting, 644 
 
 Pleasing, power of, 143, 160, 233, 
 
 375, 413, 656 
 Pluck, 178 
 
 Political economy, 453 
 Praise, 136, 190, 281, 353, 358, 
 
 410, 626, 664 
 Precedents, 91 
 Principles, 352 
 Procrastination, 49, 234, 666 
 
 Progress, 101, 220, 265, 295, 299, 
 335, 397. 425, 561, 571, 628. 
 
 Prosperity, 305 
 
 national, 398 
 
 Proverbs, 14 
 
 Public feeling, 516 
 
 Puns, 640 
 
 R. 
 
 RAILROADS, 339 
 Rank, 147, 371, 388, 589 
 Reaction, 262 
 Readers, 27, 651 
 Reflection, 327 
 Reforms, 198, 321, 650 
 Reign of Terror, 152 
 Repression, 464 
 Reserve, 536 
 Responsibility, 93, 514 
 Restoration, the, 4 
 Results, Judging by, 419 
 Revenge, 391 
 Reveries, 619 
 Rewards of the world, 60 
 
 S. 
 
 SACRIFTCKS, 21, 137, 142, 218, 333 
 
 Scenery, 553, 643 
 
 Science, 256 
 
 Scorn, 591 
 
 Scotch, The, 403 
 
 Scripture images, 337 
 
 Inspiration of, 312, 513, 564 
 
 Texts of, 334 
 Sea, Depths of, 7 
 Self-complacency, 61, 434, 503, 538 
 
 deception, 48, 430, 464 
 
 dependence, 118, 182, 404 
 
 distrust, 56 
 
 love, 22, 171 
 Sense, Good, 609 
 Sensitiveness, 575, 680 
 Sermons, 669 
 Shakspeare, 74, 517, 612 
 Shelley, 472 
 
 Silence, 110, 151 
 
 in church, 306
 
 INDEX. 
 
 '209 
 
 Sins, 508 
 
 Sleep, 364 
 
 Social intercourse, 111, 232, 442 
 
 Society, 157, 165, 223, 671 
 
 Socrates, 49 
 
 Son, Eldest, 673 
 
 Marriage of, 85 
 
 Sorrow, 63, 100, 123, 124, 192, 
 289, 426, 509 
 
 Effect of, 122, 300 
 Sorrows, 24, 362 
 
 Soul, The, 200, 555 
 Soul and body, 253, 614 
 Sowing and Reaping, 340 
 Sphere, Wantof. 328, 332 
 Spirit, Fluctuations of, 228, 429 
 Subordinates, 59, 248, 443, 563, 
 
 601, 652 
 
 Success, 55, 494, 606, 675 
 Superficiality, 559 
 
 T. 
 
 TACT, Want of, 565 
 
 Talk, 108133, 185, 186, 207, 
 
 209, 212, 389, 406, 592, 602, 
 
 608, 610, 684 
 v. Work, 222, 576 
 Tears, 11 
 
 Temper, 69, 440, 560 
 Temptations, 304 
 Tenacity, 138, 527 
 Tenderness, 77 
 Tennyson, 247 
 
 Thought, 125, 129, 156, 240, 258, 
 
 260, 273, 294 
 T- Freedom of. 227 
 
 i. Work, 272, 292, 428, 
 584 
 
 Time, 488 
 
 Toleration, 6, 331, 335, 370 
 
 Toryism r. Liberalism, 386, 436, 
 
 495 
 
 Touchiness, 432, 542 
 Trials, 305 
 
 Truthfulness, 126, 202, 249 
 Truths, 13, 39, 230, 596, 630 
 
 Counter, 34, 97, 154, 344 
 
 V. 
 
 VANITT, 33, 264, 274, 411 
 
 - and Love, 196 
 Vexations, 131, 175 
 Vocation, 140 
 Voices, 409, 557 
 
 W. 
 
 WAR, 166, 297, 541 
 Weak points, 158 
 Wealth, 76, 359 
 
 True, 288, 320 
 Woman, 53, 54, 82, 134 
 Women, 114, 303, 309, 417 
 
 Beauty of, 506 
 
 THE END. 
 
 BRADBCRY, AQNIW, ft CO., PRINTER'S, WHITEFRIAM.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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