^Ms %ooU UXouQS to ^xzdzxxck ®arljet0w Justin THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY Presented by Aaron Flaoks 1925 828 C8A4-^ OAKST.HDSF LIFE AND TO-MORROW The Works of John Oliver Hobbes Crown 8vo, cloth, 6/-. The Dream and the Business. The Serious Wooing. The Flute of Pan. Love and the 5oul Hunters. The Vineyard. The School for Saints. Robert Orange. The Herb Moon. The Gods, Some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham. The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes. Crown 8vo, cloth, 1/- net. Love and the Soul Hunters. Some Emotions and a Moral, and The Sinner's Comedy. 1 vol. A Study in Temptations, and a Bundle of Life. 1 vol. Tales about Temperaments. Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d. net. The Wisdom of the Wise. Crown 8vo, paper, 2s. net: cloth, 3s. 6d. net. The Ambassador. Crown 8vo, paper, i2s. net; cloth, 3s. 6d. net. Imperial India. Paper, Is. ; cloth, 2s. SIXPENNY EDITIONS, in paper covers. Love and the Soul Hunters. 6d. net. A Study in Temptations, and a Bundle of Life. 6d. net. Some Emotions and a Moral, and The Sinner's Comedy. 6d. net. Some Emotions and a Moral. 6d. Robert Orange. 6d. The School for Saints. 6d. The Vineyard. 6d. The Qods, Some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham. 6d. LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN. OF fHE LIFE AND TO-MORROW SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF JOHN OLIVER HOBBES Arranged by ZOE PROCTER "This is only Sorrow For To-Day ; Life begins To-Morrow." LONDON T FISHER UNWIN ADELPHI TERRACE MCMVII (All rights reserved.) PEARL MARY-TERESA Puisqu'ici-bas toute 4me Donne a qnelqu'nn Sa musique, sa flamme, Ou son parfum; Je te donne ^ cette heure, Penche sur toi, La chose la meilleure Que j'aie en moi ! I HAVE to acknowledge, with many thanks, the kind permission given to me by Mr. Morgan Richards, Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, Mr. John Lane, Mr. Werner Laurie, Messrs. Burns and Gates, Mr. Sidney Appleton, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, Mr. W. L. Courtney, Mrs. George Cornwallis West, Sir George Newnes, the Editor of the Daily Mail and the Editor of the Tribune, to make extracts from the books and articles by Mrs. Craigie of which they hold the copyright, and I have also to thank Mr. Curtis Brown for his courtesy in allowing me to use the photo- graph, reproduced as a frontispiece. Z. P. i CONTENTS PAGE I. Love . . , . . . 11 II. Men and Women . . . . 89 III. Feibndship , . . . .63 IV. Marriage ..... 71 V. Youth and Age . . . . .81 VI. Human Nature .... 87 VII. Life ...... 107 VIII. Sentiment ..... 115 IX. Ideals ...... 119 •X. Art and Artists .... 133 XI. The Drama ..... 135 XII. Criticism ..... 169 9 Life and To-Morrow XIII. Country Life XIV. Society XV. Politics . XVI. England XVII. India XVIII. Varia . XIX. Sorrow XX. Death . XXI. Eeligion . Index . 10 LOVE Love is so mysterious — so wonderful ... it is the music of the world. It is a pity that it goes so often out of tune. LOVE He who seeks love must have himself the quality To comprehend its essence. The great thing is to love — not to be loved. Love is for both worlds. Perfect happiness is for the other only. This ache to be amused, this longing to hear music in the air, to see beauty on all sides, to find life one ever-new, yet ever- abiding pleasure, these are the fierce, never gratified desires of those who love only them- selves. But to him who loves others — even one other — the commonest things seem rare, the blackest shadows have a radiance inde- scribable, and the harshest notes are heavenly melodies : disappointments, bitterness and deso- lation have no part in his existence. . . . But these exalted moods are brief — terribly brief, and they show us just enough of our lost divinity to make us ever more wretched as mere mortals and children of Adam. It is 13 Life and To-morrow the day after, the days after, the weeks, months, years after when we can only re- member that once we were happy for half an hour. Human love is not a single and simple impulse, but an emotional force of innumer- able complications : there are a number of causes which go to produce that restless- ness of temperament which demonstrates in brief caprices, in attachments without faith, in affections without endurance. It may be nature working in disguise ; imagination, in some cases, makes the disguise more important and more powerful than the primitive instinct, and it often happens that the pursuit and study of individuals is more pleasing than the concentration enforced by the despotism of a great passion. The young of both sexes often take the still happiness of being loved for love itself. All lovers are instinctive comedians : their words, their actions, whether on the heroic- tragic or the idyllic-pathetic scale are always mere improvisations, preludes, symbols, or, what is called in music, a cadenza in the great con- certo, the passages a piacere, interrupting the solemn air. 14 Love The passion of love has a danger for very sensitive, reserved and concentrated minds unknown to creatures of more volatile, expan- sive, and unreflecting disposition. It may be a fact that love, in every imaginative mind, approaches madness : on the other hand, the least imaginative are often not merely attracted but carried away, without any sort of consent, by some over- mastering human magnetism. To love well is a quality in temperament, just as to preach well, or to conduct a siege well, or to tend the sick well, or, in fact, to do anything well, is a special distinction, a ruling motive in the great pursuit of human felicity — a pursuit which is the inalienable right of all human creatures, whether fixed mistakenly in this world, or wisely in the next. When you once talk of your rights and your wrongs in love, all love is gone or going. True love must rest on a perfect under- standing : at the first lifting of the eyes in wonder there is a jar which by and by must make the whole emotion restless. Love, in some natures, seems to turn the blood of life to tears and fire. 15 Life and To-morrow Life and Love cut the earth from their feet till they stood in that little circle where there is only space for a man and a woman and truth. Do YOU THINK that love is a plaything? a mood for a dull afternoon? Is it nothing to stake your life on another's, to be faithful when they are faithless, strong when they are weak ? Is it so little to love like this ? When love and wisdom fight there is always an open grave between them, and the vanquished is buried, under light leaves, alive. Both are immortal : both are invulnerable : there never is, there never can be, a victory, but one will sometimes grow tired and feign a surrender. To LOVE is to know the sacrifices which eternity exacts from life. Self-doubt has no part in passion. Of the many miseries it may bring, this, perhaps the worst of human woes, can never be in its train. Men in love — and women also — may distrust all things and all creatures, but their own emotion, like the storm, proves the reality of its force by the mischief it wreaks. There is a tone of the voice, an unuttered 16 Love and unutterable tenderness in the accent of true love, which no art can simulate and no dis- cretion disguise. There is a glance which, even under the ice of an assumed indiffer- ence, or through the fiery tempest of quick anger, stdl wears the star of spring-time. There is a touch which is never so swift, so rough, so timid, or so unconsidered but it mani- fests devotion. False affection may capture our vanity but it never deceives our^nst^nc" we may wish to be cared for, and, in the weakness of that strong desire, accept the protestation which our happiness or our self- esteem would believe in, but whoever took ZreinfTu ^^^'^"^^d' «r base' love tor other than it was? ^ Afpectiok either grows or dies-unchange- able sentiments are for feeble natures only. Not all are blind that feel the scourge of love. Eyes washed by grief lose beauty, but dust also. JdZ'^l'^'"'' ™ "^^^ self-indulgent lives and loved many times, in many ways think Th^: r^fi- *^~ee all huLn liecW They leave it gladly-perhaps, because love long ago, left them. But to strong, pure hearts-hearts neither Jaded, nor embittered! 17 Life and To-morrow nor made cheap by constant exchanges — love always seems the most precious of life's gifts — the one gift, too, which we may have on earth and in Heaven, also. Those who be-little it, have first be-fouled it. There is something in beauty — just as there is something in youth — which one fears to disturb, lest a change should alter, or harm, in the faintest degree, the suffi- cient loveliness, the unconscious charm. Is it not for this cause that many dependent natures find classic perfection cold, superb scenery unsympathetic, and the spectacle of careless happiness embittering? Others, of imaginative temperament, prefer that their idols should remain impassive, and, granted the inspiration arising from a fair appear- ance, ask no more, but find their delight in bestowing, from the riches of their own gratitude, adorable attributes and endless worship. That moment of humility which is the first and last in all really great passions. To KNOW a truth in one s soul is by no means the same thing as being able to con- fess it in plain speech : great passions and beliefs live, no doubt, from the moment of 18 Love their first conception in the mind, but the life is a seed-life — they have to grow into vigour secretly, till at last the unutterable and indefinable sentiment deepens into the dominating and acknowledged influence of a life. Love is in its most exquisite phase per- haps when it is stealing force from every thought, gaining mastership, here a little and there a little, from every word and look and action— when it is still to be argued with, still to be doubted, put down and wisely controlled. No ONE can study Hegel and remain un- altered by that discipline, or see his fellow creatures quite as he saw them before. . . The intoxication, the folly of all . . . love, all happiness, all dreaming, lies in the no^-knowing, in the mistaking them, in the spontaneous rushing-forth to them as to the ultimate goal, and the extreme climax of all things. "This," you must say, with the moth, is the final, the undying star of stars." " This," you must say with Orpheus, "is the last note, this is the supreme gift." There is one form of love which springs so directly from the very spring of life that the most egoistic man will feel abashed when it is offered him, and the lightest woman is afraid to recognise it, for it goes deeper than any 19 Life and To-morrow appetite, and it can soar higher than any flight of celestial philosophy. The self-mastered dread the tyranny of a dominant affection, and stubborn men, who yield lightly enough to their fancies and the caprices of chance, suspect, and subdue, and try to ignore their strongest feelings. There are two ways of loving — one is joyous, active, sane, without questionings and without bitterness— the young and beautiful love which makes life charming and is its recompense. The other sardonic, agitated, com- plaining, more full of tears than laughter, makes its victims idle, cowardly, cruel, and capricious. There is one glory of the friend, and another glory of the possible lover. They say that love is the answer to life. That isn't true — while you love, at any rate. Afterwards— perhaps. Afterwards, when it is all over. Do YOU realise what the word love means ? It cannot be said at all. It is either a call or a curse— inexorable, unanswerable either way. One does not fall in love by trying, nor, for that matter, by trying, prevent it. 20 Love Love .... the obliteration of self in passion's intense delight. Calm spectators of mortal folly who have been satisfactorily married for twenty years and more, who have sons to provide for and daughters to establish, cherish a disdain of love-stories and boast that they have no patience with morbidity. Love— which put them into being and keeps the earth in existence— seems to all such a silly malady peculiar to the sentimental in early youth. So they put the First Cause— in one of its many manifestations — in the waste-paper basket, asking each other what will become of Charles, if he cannot find a rich wife, and poor Alice, if she cannot entrap a suitable husband. But there are others who look on life with some hope of understanding it truly, in part, at any rate, and these know, perhaps by experience, perhaps by sympathy, that whereas bodily disturbances may pass away leaving little or no effect upon the general health, all mental tumults are perpetual in their consequences : they never die out entirely, and they live, some- times with appaUing energy, sometimes with gnawing listlessness, to the end of an existence. When two beings love each other their emotions are in such true accord that the 21 Life and To-morrow normal, if unconscious, struggle for supremacy which continues in all mere friendships does not exist. Delays, misunderstandings, and re- proofs between lovers arise from some fault, some deficit, some real cause for doubt in the actual affection of one or the other. But as soon as a devotion is recognised as absolute, all smaller thoughts, all common human fears vanish, and the heart for the first time shows its original simplicity. Love is a state of giving — and unconscious giving. There are women who will give love for love. There are women, who, seeing that they may save a soul by loving it, do love it for that reason. When will great — and other — ladies learn that audacity in love is determined not by a man's deserts but by his desires? Diffidence springs less from humility than indecision. When women love exceedingly, they do not recognise it as a temptation. They think it the supreme blessing of their lives. When they renounce it, they do so for the man's sake — not for their own. This is the history of all women who have loved with any depth. It is, perhaps, the one sure test of their earnestness. 22 Love All women wish to see affection perpetually burning — a straight and brilliant flame ; when it flickers, they suffer what must surely be the sharpest pang in Purgatory. A WOMAN ... is like your shadow: run away from her and she follows you : run after her and she flies from you. That is an old saying. It is true so long as she does not love the man. And when she loves the man — well — then she ceases to be a shadow. She becomes a living thing. Woman will swear much to her beloved, but all such vows are few and feeble in com- parison with those promised fervently to her own heart. The youngest girl will always feel wiser than any lover where matters of the heart are concerned. Is it not for her to explain and atone for the sorrows of existence ? Columbine in tulle and garlands is not well advised to dance on the war-horse's back. For her, the circus-steed schooled to the business : he can feign the broken heart, the death-blow, and, rising gingerly, canter off to his stall in perfect time to the darling valse from San Toy. Columbine, the while, can balance herself on one rare toe, always touching his especially-prepared 23 Life and To-morrow saddle. But a war-horse is less courtly. He will have no pirouetting on his spinal column. Let her be wise in time, therefore, A WOMAN NEVER considers love and passion as an abstract. It is associated always in her imagination with the man or with the men she has loved : with the man or with the men who have loved her. Love is the person and ways of her lover : and the subject — its significance, its philosophy— depends wholly on the quality of her own affection and on her experience of men in the character of wooers. Women love more wildly and intensely than men, because they lead purer lives and are more ignorant of those crude physical laws the half- knowledge of which vitiates so much modern psychology. If men lived, as a rule, as most women live, they too would place love first in their existence. Passion, like the sun-ray which consumes a flower and merely stimulates a weed, burns fiercely in the innocent, although it affords the experienced an occasion only for amused self-introspection. This is why that April unconscious poetry of life, known as first love, is touched with an irresistible charm which will sweetly haunt memories the least accessible to dreams and natures the most stubborn before beauty. 24 Love The precocious intelligence, the occasional note of sarcasm, the passionate desire for happi- ness are symptoms all too plain of that wasting fever of the heart which, in some cases, is the result of meeting sorrow, and in others, of meet- ing love, too early in life. To every pure and innocent young girl, love is a condition of the mind, and not a strain on the senses. The senses, once roused, may be controlled, killed or indulged according to the conscience or the^strength of the individual. But when the senses still sleep, and the spirit only is active, it is indeed difficult to impose a limit on tender interest, or to define wherein excess of charity consists. Many women — till the end of their lives, and no short lives either — keep their affections so sacred from the taint of selfish emotions, and so closely allied with the love of God that it would seem an act of sacrilege to analyse a devotion on which even angels might look with humility and learn a lesson. To pretend, however, that no jealous thought — no angry reproach would, under any provocation, enter into a sentiment of this kind, would deprive it of attributes certainly as much divine as human. Jealousy may be noble — although it is often mean. Anger may be just — although it is frequently cruel. But this is the case with every power of the soul. The maternal qualities of forgiveness and tenderness are inseparable from a woman's 25 Life and To-morrow affection. ... To understand richly is not a matter of wisdom or amiableness : it is the intuition of love, and it comes neither by expe- rience nor merit. The least meritorious and the most foolish will alike display, under the in- fluence of a true attachment, an almost divine knowledge of at least one fellow-creature's soul. But it should never be forgotten that knowledge, as all other vital things, is according to sex ; and while a woman's sympathy will show itself as an atmosphere charged with emotion, a man's sym- pathy is often embarrassed and always uncon- sciously judicial. As he himself is regarded by other men, he judges men and women — dis- trusting any partiality, even while he yields to it, in the case of the latter. No TRAINING— no matter how stupid, ener- vating, false, or hypocritical, can destroy the simplicity of a genuine passion. . . . Greek poets understood the eternal feminine nature to its depths. The weakest of creatures— when she really loves— is proud : she offers no excuses, feels no need of them, and will never call herself deceived. But she must really love. "Take me, 0 stranger, for thine hand-maiden, Or wife, or slave," says Andromeda to her deliverer. If one can imagine him shaking his head, or, after a short idyll, seeking out other captives of a like grati- 26 Love tude, we cannot imagine Andromeda pursuing him with threats. Calypso wove the sails for Odysseus's homeward voyage. The gods had ordered a farewell, but they did not command such magnanimity. A WOMAN HAPPILY in love is at her best. Every outward charm has an added glory, and every potentiality of her soul, heart, conscience, and intellect is aroused. The plainest so influ- enced will appear almost beautiful, the dullest gain a kind of wit, the coldest can be kind. They are transfigured, glorified, inspired beings. But Nature, ironically bountiful to the suffering sex, metes out her rough justice — half in jest — to the splendid one. Men in love labour at once under every disadvantage. Their judg- ment is dethroned : their strength mocks them : their associates complain of their wandering tempers : they get haggard and feel hunted : they pursue their Fairs and are pursued them- selves by all the devils. A hungry madness absorbs their energies : they are capable of any crazy deed. The fit does not last, but while it lasts the dangers are mortal. This is why men are notoriously silent in company on the subject of real love. They fear it, resent it, will join any conspiracy to keep it away from their friends, sons, or associates, and the whole system of modern education makes for the cultivation of vices instead of passions ; if possible, the 27 Life and To-morrow substitution of an exotic brutality, calculating, forced, and over-stimulated, for the natural feelings of mankind. Some, fearing this last, advocate a maudlin style of sentimental morals — altogether repellent to a healthy mind and scarcely convincing to the melancholic. Others, vigorous enough but too impatient of the heart, found their teaching upon science, and bid romantic youth go study the mating of the nobler beasts and birds. A brief, sane, obvious courtship : some gentle roaring or a brightness in the plumage : then the struggle for existence, and the continuation of the species. A woman's mission is to play the fool, and that is why she can only lead a man so long as she does not love him. On the instant she loves, she must be honest or die : she loses all discretion : she quarrels when she should cajole, smiles when she should frown, utters ugly truth when she should tell pretty lies : she cannot flatter, she cannot pretend — in fact, she can do nothing but love — and that beyond sense. Some women have . . . that capacity for passionate attachment which usually humiliates its object because there is nothing in the nature of man to support such prodigal devotion, or in his promises to warrant such consummate trust. 28 Love Why dost thou Love me? If I could give thee reasons . . . I might, by speaking them, perceive their frailty. There is some cure whilst one can pick and argue. The worst I know : that is the worst of all ! If, by discovering some mote or blemish. Which, to my locked, enchanted sight had passed For beauties in the earliest, mad, glad fever, Then might I say it was the erring shadow Of my own fantasy that I had loved, No man at all, no soul, no great ambition. But, 'tis not so. I see the one thou seest. The glance— the kingly strut— the glory to God, All this I see. Yet, there is something more That hath escaped your jealousy, but not My heart. O, there's a winged spirit in him. That, when our eyes may meet, looks o'er the brink Of his humanity. This calls to mine, And, as the sun draws vapour, so I rise To that irresistible force. Never was talk so bitter-sweet of souls But soon the creature fell with bodily hurt Into a deep abyss. Men may still find oblivion in a kiss, but women of fashion are always — or nearly 29 Life and To-morrow always — too self-conscious to forget the arti- ficialities of life in the verities of passion. . . . Only the strong-minded can know the extreme pleasure of self -surrender. Any woman can give up the world for a man — that is easy enough. When it comes to giving him up, for his own sake, it is another matter. If a woman can do that, it should atone for many sins. All affection seems to have been laughed out of the world; when it is not ridiculous, it is thought hysterical. ... It remains and always must remain, the greatest — the only perfect gift — that God has given us. Perhaps it is as well for those . . . who are proud and self-reliant that . . . simple, undignified and affectionate creatures are to be found here and there. They may speak for us on Judgment Day, which will be the longest, darkest, and coldest, this world has seen. Faust called in all hell in order to ruin one simple girl, and she, by her prayers to Heaven, saved his soul ! Love will get the better of the devil every time ; love is the supreme power ; love ... is simply tremendous ; love is the one thing that always wins, and must win ; love has wings to lift one out of every trouble, every disaster. 30 Love Men always say, "I love you— give me your world." And then the woman gives her world — and then — he puts it out of her reach for ever. The world is better lost for love than love for the world. A TACTFUL LOVER is not born but made by long training in the arts of courtship. What a cruel world it would be if women loved men in no better way than so many men love women. It is only a very unselfish man who cares to be loved ; the majority prefer to love — it lays them under fewer obligations. Is THERE A MAN would feign He had loved one — one only all his days? That fool I have not met ! It is VERY EASY to attach too much import- ance to love affairs. In every vow we make there is a secret note of perjury, and we can be absolutely certain of our hopes only — because we live more earnestly in the life we imagine than in the life we lead. We always know that the life we have must change, whereas we believe our hopes will never change. . . 31 Life and To-morrow But the hopes change too. Obstinacy or vanity often force us to pretend that they remain. . . . Is not constancy the main cause of our dismay when we find our soul undergoing some subtle, irresistible, even unwelcome development ? " If man were constant, he were perfect," is a false saying. If man were strictly constant, he would be dead. If all lovers were happy, every couple would be wishing the rest out of the way ! Two happy people always want the whole earth to themselves. On the other hand, three unhappy people can keep the whole of London thoroughly entertained ! Men are weak with the women they love, because they can always depend on the one who loves them. Men . . . AFTER CONSIDERING a woman for months, invariably decide that they loved her at first sight. Treachery kills a woman's love, while jealousy will keep it burning. When men lie to women who love them, they are fools. When a man loves a woman she can be as cross, or stupid, or unkind as she pleases. . . . And when he doesn't love her ... if she were 32 Love an angel from heaven she couldn't keep him for five minutes. Never trust a man's opinion on any subject until he has been in love. Love is the only thing which can make life as clear as noon-day. One true love will bestow a deeper insight into the world than years of gallantry. . . . Where's the harm, though you are sick with love. The state is unfamiliar to your knowledge. How could you guess that when you search the clouds, Or sigh because a melancholy note Drives you to think the passingness of life Is all too swift— that this is love— not wisdom? Love comes to man through his senses— to woman through her imagination. Taking the subject on broad lines— women love men for their virtue ; while men, very often, love women for the absence of it. ... A woman would, no doubt, need a great deal of imagination to love a man for his virtue ! A MAN MAY LOVE Various women for various reasons at all times of his life, but he can only love once, one way. Each experience is totally different, and absolutely new ; only one, how- ever, can be quite satisfactory. . . . This is true 33 c Life and To-morrow o£ women also. And it all comes to this : love is precisely the same kind of emotion as religion. If we would only be as patient with human nature as God is ! Some days we are more devout than others : the saint who appeals to you in one mood may repel you in another : this month we devote ourselves to Our Lady, and another to St. Paul ; some people, too, mistake incense for dogma, and love of music for love of virtue. But the folly and sensuousness of creatures . . . cannot touch the great unalter- able truths. It is an obvious truism that love in all human relations is, in the very nature of things, selfish ; those who love unselfishly only do so by living in a state of constant warfare with their meaner instincts. The natural desire is to absorb every thought and moment of the loved being; to begrudge every interest, and dislike all things and anything which would seem to distract the You from incessant dependence on the Me. This is the undisciplined, raw desire; many conquer it . . . more do not. ... It is only one more para- dox from that nest of paradoxes— the human heart — that only love is strong enough to subdue love. You MAY CUT OFF your hand or pluck out your eye : but love is the very soul of you — you cannot touch it. 34 Love Love that is secret hath remorse for friend. When a woman is the first and chief consid'lra- tion in a man's life, or when a man becomes the first and chief consideration in a woman's life, the end, in each case, will be always cruel and foolish — always an insupportable disappointment to one, or to the other, or to both. No POWERFUL BEING ever yet either stood by the glory or fell by the disasters of a love affair alone, uncomplicated by other issues. It does its work : it must touch, in many ways, the whole character ; but it is, in the essence of things, a cause — not an effect. As A LOVER— an idealist: that is to say . . . calm senses and a passionate heart. Any con- stitution of the kind, whether in a man or a woman, is foredoomed to acute suffering, per- petual misunderstanding, and a good deal of enmity from the greater number of persons who live by the inverse ratio— a stagnant heart and undisciplined senses. Absence, distance, and the hopelessness of it all, had only lifted . . . this romantic passion . . . higher than common things, till, like a spirit set free from the cage of the world, it flew on unwearied pinions through endless sky, and, because unwearied, seeking no rest — no final 35 Life and To-morrow halting-place. On, on for ever : more than content with its gift of perpetual energy — its perpetual release from the sorrow which makes happiness look too tempting, and from the happiness, which, once tasted, gives every sorrow the flavour of a death potion. Some men take the Church; some Poverty for their bride . . . some choose ideal Love in the person of a living woman — just as Dante long ago chose Beatrice. Such a form of mental devotion is far more common than the married mortal passion that seems more general ; but one belongs to the world invisible, the language of silence, the hidden being of a man ; the other is evident, talkative, and, like the saint who prays in the market-place, it has its reward in the fact that it is a public profession — a privilege and a bliss known and observed by all who pass by. But if we had loved each other." Surely the bitterest woe of human destinies is in that cry. It is not a reproach — for who can love at will ? Still, that is the foregone alternative in so many lives ; either the man or the woman has to feel that the one thing which can make all the difference is lacking. Generally, in self-mockery, they drive the eternal bad bargain ; finding the hope too far away, they take the disappointment, which is always so terribly near. 36 Love Romance seems to have died out in England . . . there is no great love poetry read or written now, and the men who imitated Tenny- son, George Meredith, Swinburne and Browning belong already to the old school. Perhaps women have lost much of their mystery, and so they have ceased to be inspiring. People are anxious enough to love, I believe. But to love well is a career in itself ; and the men who have the time lack the nature, and those who might have the nature work for money till they have neither feelings nor thoughts and they become machines. 37 II MEN AND WOMEN Women never question silence, they break it, whereas men are broken by it. MEN AND WOMEN There are certain utterances, certain turns of thought, which are so restricted to one sex or the other, so exclusively feminine or masculine, as the case may be, that their entire comprehension by both sexes is not possible. Intuition, imagination, sympathy may help a great deal; men and women will accept much from each other which they can- not to their reasoning satisfaction account for, and, if the difference serves only to enhance, by its mystery, the melodiousness of the eternal human duet, it also proves that, while the singers may be in harmony, they are never in absolute unison. Women, and men also, judge of their lovers by their bearing with themselves. They never imagine that a man who is stern with one beauty might be in glad bondage to her rival, or that a woman who is winter to one man might possibly be summer with another. The essential in conversation of a teasing 41 Life and To-morrow kind between a man and a woman is that both should know indisputably that they are dancing a dance. When one only o£ any two is sentimental, intercourse is easy, because the more unabashed the companion the less restrained are the acutely fastidious in thought and feeling. This is why poets have loved cooks, and cooks have adored poets. When . . . the man . . . appears at his worst . . . the talent of remembering him, with vehemence, at his best ... is the peculiar talent of the wife-woman — a type differing from every other whether married or single — for many of the married are not wife-women by any means. In justice to men, it should be eternally borne in mind that any deep knowledge of really virtuous women can never be otherwise than restricted : for instance, if a man marries three times, and each time a Penelope, he may thus become well acquainted with three patterns of chastity coupled with uncommon beauty and sense. But whereas mistress-women are much alike and soon mastered, even in the character of wives, wife- women are full of surprises, even in the character of mistresses, and are as hard to understand as the Sphinx. Of the latter variety, we have two famous examples in Heloise and La Valliere. 42 Men and Women To BE SANE one must mix constantly with both sexes. A man who lives almost wholly among men soon becomes more hysterical than any woman, or else more brutal than any beast ; and a woman who spends her days with other women only soon becomes a tyrant or an imbecile, It is mothers and sisters who make half the bad husbands you hear about — for no wife worth the name wants to keep her man short- coated ! But if many women could have their will, they would make their boys and brothers wear christening robes and eat pap till they turned fifty. . . . And it is not love so much as wanting to have their own way with them and to have them like rabbits in a cage. . . . There are enough real children in the world for women to look after without dilly-dallying about with grown men. The secret of managing a man is to let him have his way in little things. He will change his plan of life when he won t change his boot-maker ! When a man gets an idea into his head about a woman, either to her glory or her damnation, whatever she may say or do only gives him one more reason for sticking to it. It is only when he get an equally strong idea 43 Life and To-morrow about some other subject, or some other woman, that he becomes nicely critical. When a man is at most pains to conceal his admiration for a woman, he can be most sure that she appreciates his struggles to her finger-tips. Men are all the same. They always think that something they are going to get is better than what they have got. When a man loses his head it generally takes him some time to find it again. He feels as though he has to recognise it among a lot of other lost heads ; for the moment he is not at all certain which is the right one — his own. Woman, more dexterous, catches it on the rebound. All men are very much what women make them : their wills may be iron, but women do not attack them through their wills. They throw spells over their judgment. Sometimes the spell works for good — more often for evil ; for women as a rule are meaner than men — though men are mean enough, Heaven knows. As A RULE, there can be no better adviser for a man than a woman who has a passionless affection for him : she can under these circum- 44 Men and Women stances almost succeed in being impartial ; she can even see where he may be in fault ; she can bring herself to face his shortcomings — nay, more, she can deal with them. Men will forgive any fault in a person so long as she can make a meal pass pleasantly. They do not want wonderful characters — they like people who are civil at dinner. A SUCCESSFUL LIBERTINE has never a sense of humour. He must be melancholy, intensely grave, or the sex will never ruin themselves on his account. There was never a Samson so strong but he met his Delilah ; it is only by the mercy of God that Delilah has occasionally a conscience. A man's IDEA of women depends on the women friends he has had. Men who look before they leap — leap, never- theless ! The choice of a career and the choice of a wife — the most important steps in a man's life — are accidents always. You may pride yourself on thinking both questions out, but your thinking will be gratuitous — so far as your fate is concerned. I USED TO WONDER why men wanted money. 45 Life and To-morrow I shall never wonder again. It is not because they are vulgar — half the time it is because they wish to buy something beautiful. Beauty and happiness are so costly. Think how humiliating it is to say to yourself, " I love that woman. If she were my wife, I could believe in all the big ideas ; I could lead a life with joy in it, and take the sorrow of death, and believe in the world to come and the goodness of God ; I could work — and I would be faithful. But — but — but — where is the money for the first step — just the first step ? " When the steady, dull ones come to that point, they either marry money or a useful drudge. When the passionate ones come to it, they will not quite sell their souls, but they over-eat and over-drink, and they try to forget what they really want. Just when they think they have forgotten, some one will sing a song, or they will see a picture, or there will be some- thing in an early morning or in the sky at night, or they will meet a woman — just the kind of woman they had buried with their old poetry books — and then the remorse and the self- condemnation and the self-disgust begin all over again, but ten hundred thousand times worse. A man is never happy with the second best, or the third best, or, indeed, with anything less than the ideal he is capable of imagining. So long as he can imagine something better than what he possesses already — so long as he can feel that he has 46 Men and Women missed something he might have had but for ill luck or no chance, he is bound to be miserable. Every young man takes it for granted that his fortunes will be, if they are not, strange, just as every woman believes that love, even if it has not come, must come eventually. Men, in time, can lose their hope ; but women, till they perish, wait for romance. Men are the dreamers of the race. They feel, therefore, disillusions and awakenings with a vindictive or a sombre rage which is to women, materialists always, incomprehensible. This is why women are rarely satirists and never genuine cynics. Led by their emotions, they pamper them, and never, by any caprice, sincerely condemn, blame, or criticise the feelings on which they depend for all their inspiration — if for all their chagrin. A man will spend a lifetime quarrelling with his own heart, whereas a woman can never believe that her heart might be in the wrong. She has courage enough to defy the world, but before her own susceptibilities she is a slave, acquiescent and silent. Men, I believe, to be truly happy must have, at least, one simple heart, which they can always impose upon. This process they call trust and sympathy ! 47 Life and To-morrow A MAN MUST BE faithless to something — either to a woman, or his God, or his firmest belief. The joy of living consists, for a man, in being constantly false to some ever-faithful woman ! If a man wants to forget a woman he should keep his gaze off the sky, and look out for another pair of eyes ! Men ake not so weak as you think. . . , They can always leave anybody or any place without a pang — if they find another person or another place they like better. If they feel pricks and scruples it is merely because they cannot make up their minds that the change will be absolutely to their advantage. If a woman wants to keep a man's esteem for ever, let her refuse to run away with him. That is the one thing for which the thankless ruffians never fail to show gratitude. I AM so SICK of these women who think they are like Guinevere ! I really prefer those . . . who make a clean bolt. It is more breezy, and much more expensive — when you come to think of it ! That's a mistake girls always make. They 48 Men and Women begin the heavenly. It's not a bit o£ use being heavenly with men. . . . You must take em as they are, or leave 'em. Men have no keal confidence in women. Men like women who prattle in an ex- perienced way about hearts, and souls, and that sort of thing! You MAY KNOW a nian for twenty years, and in the twenty-first year he will do something which will make your twenty years' experience count for nought. Then you say, "I should never have expected this from A." Just as if A would have expected it himself. Men astonish themselves far more than they astonish their friends. Every man — even the most cynical — has one enthusiasm; he is earnest about some one thing; the all-round trifler does not exist. If there is a skeleton — there is also an idol in the cupboard! That idol may be ambition, love, revenge, the turf, the table, but it is there. Men do not like their wives to have too clear a perception of the ludicrous— it is a masculine theory that laughter must be on the male side only. A man knows when laughter is a spoil-sport; he can postpone it when 49 D Life and To-morrow necessary. But a woman will laugh — if she know how — at the right moment or the wrong, usually, too, when a man would prefer to see her demure. It is the weak, effeminate creature who wishes to control women. Men of character respect women of character. These fellows who declare that they will be masters in their own house are masters nowhere else. Men divide women into so many types, and when they see a woman they put her down as a representative of one of these. They like to think that if she is type a she will do this, if type b that, if type c the other, and so on. It is very absurd, of course, for no two women are the same any more than one wave is like another. As WOMEN ARE NOT trained and drilled in batches, as men are trained and drilled, they always preserve, without disguise, a certain individuality and strangeness which makes each one a perpetual source of pride and interest to herself. All men may be alike; no two women are the same. They are constantly grieved in their affections ; but that is due rather to their own self-deception than to the unkindness of the loved. They do not accept a man's sayings and actions on their surface 50 Men and Women value : they will not believe that he is, by- nature, a creature of cautious statements and born with a disinclination to burden-bearing. Women are so afraid of loneliness. Exis- tence can so soon become for them dull, barren, grey, and inane. And they drift into . . . hope- less, terrible attachments ; they do not see that they were not made to give love but to accept it. They squander their devotion on a sex which requires devotion in its infancy, or in illness only. A prudent woman will permit herself to be worshipped, protected, provided for; she keeps a close guard over her own affections. Women, in every disappointment, always look for some future change of circumstances favourable to their wishes. No matter how nominal, shallow, and delusive this faith may be, it sustains them through the worst trials. Thus it is that when a woman sacrifices either her repose or the legitimate compensations of life to a great idea, she suffers far less than a man in similar conditions. The devout female sex drive a good bargain always : they manage somehow to obtain all the sentiment they require from both worlds. Men cannot be happy on sentiment alone ; hence, therefore, the dreadful hesitations, self -doubts, and terror which assail so frequently the interior peace 51 Life and To-morrow of all men drawn, by certain qualities of temperament, toward the mortification of their humanity. Laying aside the proud idea of the independence, vigour, and spiritual-mindedness which this practice is held to secure, there is one drawback which, with a view to that class who are really willing to endure many afflictions for the sake of any one definite advantage, ought not to be over-looked. The weak, under such discipline, become sugary : the strong grow hard. Women of indolent and selfish nature are rarely communicative until they have exhausted the joy of silent imagination, and even then they tell very few of their intimate thoughts. Some women are jealous by temperament, but the greater number are jealous only when their trust is insulted or their dignity brought down to the humiliating struggle for a lost empire. The supreme difficulty of a woman's life is to find the man who desires . . . devotion, who has an ideal, who wants a good angel ! The best of men only ask . , . women to be for ever young and for ever pretty ; let . . . their consciences go to the dogs but keep . . . their freshness. Virtue never yet atoned for wrinkles ! 52 Men and Women Women . . . are full of kindness. . . . But they are better loved when they are less kind . . . for man is such a reptile of ingratitude that he can only give love with cheerfulness where it is not wanted. Women fascinate the hearts, but they do not affect the destinies of determined men. The want of sympathy with unfamiliar ideas keeps a woman straight, when mere moral principles will fail. Many women enjoy the ironies of a false position — it gives them a sense of cheating the world and fate. The emotional sex can excite enthusiasm, but they cannot control it. The good ones are satisfied with nothing short of martyrdom, and the bad ones will give you no rest till you become an assassin. Is NOT THE FAIRY TALE of the Sleeping Beauty the story of every girl who is intelligent and well-guarded? She is sent to sleep lest she should think too much and too soon. When the hour of her awakening strikes — as it must at some time — it is hoped that she may be old enough or patient enough or sly enough to bear the sudden sight of realities. If she cannot 53 Life and To-morrow face them, she may turn over and feign a sleep till she dies. If she be horrified, dismayed, broken-hearted, or condemned to a desperate endurance which is accepted, by others, as her destiny, she is enjoined to remember how blessed she was to have had such a long slumber in ignorance. In immature women the spirit develops but the body lags ; hence, painful and mysterious contradictions of mood. You CANNOT ENJOY, in full measure, the privileges of both sexes, nor even the privileges of two types of the same sex. You cannot be, at the same time, Jonathan and Bathsheba, or Pallas Athene and Aphrodite, or Rahab and Sarah. The attempt to mix all these is at the root of all the spoken discontent in thinking women, and all the smouldering woe in women who are unable to think. Ask yourself what manner of woman you are : realise your type, and accept, with its advantages, its irremediable disabilities. A WOMAN WHO HAS not suffered soon becomes very cruel. A PIQUED WOMAN is nearly always a desperate woman; a piqued woman who feels that she has been in two dangers — one of wronging the 54 Men and Women innocent, and the other of wronging herself— will nearly always devote the rest of her life to acts of atonement. In every woman, raillery is either a cutting business directed toward the secret thoughts of other people, or else— that act of supreme treachery — the betrayal of her own. The least trustworthy may be believed when she indulges in this dangerous exercise of the wits — for, while men are known by their friends, women are known by their jests. A woman's instinct is rarely at fault; it is only when she attempts to argue with it that she blunders. Women should work for women and with them, and I do not believe that women can do men's work. But to keep sane . . . they must have men as well as women friends. It is not the merely cold or the merely emotional woman who can influence a man's life, but the woman with self-control, which, in its highest form, is self-abnegation. There are such crowds of true women who want to be divinely kind to somebody ! Women are always on the defensive even 55 Life and To-morrow with the men they love best— most of all, perhaps, with the men they love best. Beauty is not given to one woman in many hundreds, but every woman has at least some measure of individuality, and it is surely better to preserve this and be recognised by it, than to put on stereotyped vulgarities which harden the softest features and form the most repellent frame possible to any face. We all feel the attraction of a poetical appearance, and for- tunately it depends rather on the atmosphere one can suggest than on the accident of a straight nose, or a fresh complexion, or liquid eyes, or a smiling mouth, or a gentle brow. In speaking of poetry and the poetic, moreover, it should be remembered that there are many kinds of poetry : some of it is peculiar for its vigour and downrightness, its ruggedness and simplicity. A lady, for instance, who deter- mined, on entering a ball-room, to call up the best quotations from Keats, would be foredoomed, I think, to disaster. The prettier the woman, the less apt is she to be vain in the estimate of her own powers over men. From easy experience, every beauty soon learns the kind of man to whom she can irresistibly appeal, and she is usually most good-humoured in owning her powerless- 56 Men and Women ness over the particular class of individual who will prefer opposite attractions to her own. Women who possess what Mr, Joe Gargery called a master mind," like to manage men, but they like to manage other women still better : it is a greater triumph from an artistic point of view. No WOMAN HAS ANYTHING to fear except the truth : so long as the truth will bear telling, she can laugh at lies. They may for a time work mischief, but only for a time. A WOMAN ALWAYS handles sarcasm with the point toward her own breast. Women respect a man whom they cannot deceive, but only when he has the generosity to warn them of his discernment. It is fatal to feign a behef in their fooling, to beguile the beguiler, and then, after a period of mutual deception, to analyse, with cynical accuracy, each enchanting falsehood, every distracting gesture. Women have boundless faith in the sober- ing effect of commonplace. It is the remedy they administer to disordered passions. Women like display of feeling— not its depths. 57 Life and To-morrow All the surprising inconceivable things are done by good women. The best of women — and the worst — is never in such spiritual danger as when some man would lead her to understand that he regards her as a saint. The temptation at once to prove and disprove the charge is great : the difficulty of sustaining the reputation— yet greater. For, to be really saint-like, one has to be pugnacious, and pugnacity is not charm- ing. To say the true word in season and out of season is a harsh, ungrateful task. All thanks for the like are usually sobbed over gravestones, old letters, and dusty keepsakes. A loving woman deserves much credit when she can cheerfully abdicate all the heart's desire for tenderness in favour of her coffin-lid. Women . . . seem to exhaust their imagina- tive gifts in seeing their lovers and themselves as they are not, and, in order to make up for this extravagance, they bring a cold, discerning gaze upon all other persons and things which come in their way. This is why they do not excel as creative artists. They are artists in their lives and as mimetic performers, but they are rarely artistic in their work. Such art as Whistler bestowed on etchings is given by many an ordinary woman to the powdering of her 58 Men and Women cheeks. The grace which men laboriously exercise in composing verses is unconsciously squandered by women in the improvisation of small-talk. Business-like in set terms they may not be, but they are incomparably shrewd ; and their shrewdness, to be appreciated, is best seen in the market-place, where they shame all males by their hard bargaining. The visions which men follow seem to women absurd ; their ambitions, apart from merely social distinctions, seem to women desalate; the problems which drive men to cynicism, to drink, to suicide, do not excite as much as wonder in their mothers ; the contradiction between the flesh and spirit does not enter into the feminine mind — she thinks her flesh is her spirit — therein lies her great power over the miserably thoughtful and her fascination for the unwillingly consistent. She throws a glamour over all wonderings and gives the lie to any theory which interferes with her practice, whether good, indirectly good, or utterly evil. I am speaking now of the average woman. There have been no great women philosophers, because their philosophy is in- stinctive. Few women can read Montaigne, fewer still can endure Rabelais, and those who quote Plato misquote him. There are no great women historians— because they hate the past, and affairs of State, unless their men relatives are statesmen, bore them. In politics they are on the side of worldliness ; as diplomatists they 59 Life and To-morrow are over-elaborate ; as the learned they are without a sense of humour. Once i saw a mother, with a child at her breast, pressing through a vast City crowd to see the Lord Mayor's chariot pass by. At last she reached a front place : she held the child up to the mounted police as a sign of triumph. But the child was dead. I have never forgotten that scene ; nor the laugh of vindictive defiance, nor the terrible cry which followed it. I have often thought since that it was a history of most women who want a place in the front rank on the great highway. They may get the place, but the thing they love best has been sacrificed. They stand there with a dead burden in their arms, or a dead art in their souls. To men, the storm and strain of ambition or the necessity of bread- winning is natural. Moreover, when they fight they have free arms, whereas a woman's arms are never empty ; if she has no children, she has her mysterious maternal powers and affec- tions — affections which are so much more subtle and consuming than the affections of men — her wearing sympathies, and nervous organisation, which can bear the most severe occasional strains, but not the constant fret of a daily battle for standing room. Any absorbing intellectual work makes 60 Men and Women men capricious and grudging in their love : they differ . . . essentially from women, who are ever willing, under the stress of a great passion for some one individual, to renounce power and glory in both worlds. The woman without a human love sees no happiness for herself in heaven and no agony to fear in hell. . . . The suffering, incomprehensible sex, who are eternally distracted between their loneliness of body and their loneliness of soul— paying, backwards and forwards, for one with the other, debtor always, either to their dreams or to their compromises— the dreams that cost too much, the compromises that can never be paid for. 61 I Ill FRIENDSHIP There is a love can find its one expression in sympathy and all its happiness in understanding* It always takes three to make a really edifying Platonic history. / FRIENDSHIP What is it that can bear disillusion, dis- appointment, your absence, and, above all, your presence ? . . . Friendship ! Nothing in nature is solitary: go into a desert and you will be the only lonely thing there ! The sky has its clouds and its stars ; each grain o£ sand is surrounded by grains of sand ! There are deep sorrows and killing cares in life, but the encouragement and love of friends were given us to make all diflSculties bearable. To ignore such aid is like a soldier going out to fight the enemy singlehanded, leaving his armour at home, despising his comrades and setting his commander at defiance. When a great friendship is once broken it continues like some solid frame made for a masterpiece from which the beautiful picture has been roughly cut. The habit of confidence, the security tried by many tests, the knowledge gained by close intercourse remain, but the heart of it all is absent ; the charm, the love, and the sympathy are no more there. 65 s Life and To-morrow In trivial matters, friends are always ready- to consult each other. They make what they are doing— or are going to do — a subject of fre- quent conversation. They consider and discuss together every unimportant detail of their lives. But when a serious problem presents itself, men at once grow cautious, and, at the very moment when advice or support is most needed, every one resolves to think for himself. Perfect friendship casteth out fear. Between friends there ought to be no dread of giving offence. . . . But, at the same time, we must not think that our friends are the only people we can treat rudely, and with unkindness. If everybody could understand us, what joy would there be in discovering our souls to those whom we love ? The first exchange of confidences between two minds in sympathy makes a delightful moment, and it is, moreover, a moment which, in various degrees of delightfulness, may be repeated so often as one finds a congenial com- panion. But things can be told for the first time once only. That experience must ever be unique. The second telling renders the news less sacred ; at each repetition it loses its value for us. Piece by piece it ceases to be ours, and finally it is carried away into the great dead sea of gossip. 66 Friendship The intuition which comes to men and women through suffering has always the certain sharp- ness of a surgeon's knife. It may be a reassur- ance to have the inmost thought plucked at by some loving spirit, and yet it is seldom that the touch can be given without inflicting agony. If there is an attractiveness in human beings so lovely that it could call . . . Almighty God Himself from Heaven to dwell among them and to die most cruelly for their sakes, is it to be expected that they will not — and who dare say that they should not — as mortals themselves, discover qualities in each other which draw out the deepest affections ? All men need to have near them, allied in close association with them, either a force to strengthen their weakness, or else a weakness which insists upon some demonstration of their strength. In conceivable circumstances it might be a duty to dissever such a bond ; it might be a duty to die of starvation rather than steal a loaf, and, as death would ultimately quench the craving stomach, so a broken soul, in time, would cease lamenting for its maimed energy. It is only the woman who is herself subtle in friendship who feels any especial jealousy of her husband s women friends — so long as they are friends only and not to be even imagined as 67 Life and To-morrow lovers. . . . Where an attraction between two people is very strong any calm relationship is out of the question. Where there is no sur- render, or any possibility of it, there must be all the same an incessant exhausting struggle between fixed principles and instincts which, although they can be conquered, do not change. There are many women engaged in artistic and other professions, who are thrown, by force of circumstances, almost entirely into the society of men. Sometimes they develope into what is known as " good sorts ' --who has ever written the tragedy of a good sort of either sex? — the self-abnegation, the stifled instincts, the wounded pride, the untold, unimagined agonies of the ''good sort'* by common consent? . . , Such women ought never to think of domesticity . . . they may seem heartless in the tender sense because they cannot find security in depending on one individual (as a rule such cautious beings have had sorrow and learnt the frailty of protesting idealism) ; they stand altogether apart from the average girl or woman, and, with a vocation for comradeship, they make incomparable friends. No WOMAN incapable of very deep feeling could please, even in the most rigid degree, a man worth knowing. It is the ability to feel sanely and thoroughly which attracts confidence, 68 Friendship and it is this temperament, made up of all the subtle qualities of sex, education, and experi- ence, which renders . . . mixed friendships so powerful, so dangerous, and so difficult. So-called Platonics are possible for one of the two, but never for both. In all such relations there is always one, at any rate, whose gaiety walks in sack-cloth, whose admitted devotion is a heart-breaking privilege. While human nature remains human nature, any endeavour to maintain a purely spiritual, or intellectual, attitude between two hearts in syni- pathy means that one, at any rate, of the experi- mentalists, will have a bitter disappointment. Young v/omen should realise that there is always another side to their romantic and spiritual alliances. Man is not a spirit. There is always some one who pays for the rarefied atmosphere of wholly intellectual joys. A Platonic friendship is an unhealthy lie. 69 IV MARRIAGE Marriage is like a good pie spoilt in the baking. E-erything is admirable except the result. MARRIAGE In marriage one does not require an uncon- querable love but an invincible sympathy. Do NOT MARRY a woman whom you can just manage to live with, but the woman without whom you cannot live at all. The Catholic ideal of marriage is magni- ficent, poetical, mystic, sublime ; but it is not domesticity. It is worldly-wise ; but it is not domesticity. It protects men and women from the worst consequences of their passions — a public trial and a second marriage more disas- trous than the first ; but it is not domesticity. It warns women of the uncertainty of love, and it saves men from the obligation of marrying those whom they have disgraced or deceived ; but it is not domesticity. Men who have never really loved anybody do not understand. . . . They look on, as the man who stupefies himself with overwork looks on at the man who drugs himself with opium. 73 Life and To-morrow And . . . men and women who do not know what a horrible, degrading, and loathsome relationship marriage can be, are full of sickening false sentiment about divorce. Trouble comes— not from the deficient heart or ill-matched hearts, but from ill-matched visions. An unmarried man is an untested man — in most cases, a shirker of responsibiHties. It is called, and justly called, madness— when we realise the expenses of modern living— for a briUiant man to marry for love only at the beginning of his career. At the very period, therefore, when a good woman's influence (and it must be an influence that is sympathetic) is as necessary to a man's character as his own legitimate ambition, he is warned by example and precept to avoid the danger of his best sentiments. He will be too romantic— while he is young— to marry a fortune ; too proud— while he is young— to show preference where he may actually feel it, if the girl happens to be an heiress ; too sane to risk the consequences of a precarious establishment. What is the result? The poor young men who rush blindly into matrimony with penniless wives do not do so because they are more courageous than those 74 Marriage who remain single, but because they are less intelligent. They have not looked ahead, and they are quite unable to bear the reproofs, when they come, of their folly. And it must be remembered also that the demands upon a man's purse are great precisely in proportion to his success and reputation. . . . England is of all countries the most forbidding for people with limited means. . . . Love is not a business relation, but housekeeping beyond doubt is the very beginning of all commerce. It must be considered squarely from all standpoints, and, of all disastrous mistakes, the mistake of not pro- viding for the future wives and mothers of Englishmen is the most ghastly social evil. . . . Much is said and written about drunkenness ; much is said or written on one or two other flamboyant topics — but it ought to be apparent that one main cause of our worst domestic crimes is to be found in the fact that our women are mostly dowerless. They must either be given money or they must make it. They must have something to marry on or they must remain single. Men of position and means do not often choose poor brides ; Cinderella is a fairy tale : men of great ability are seldom capitalists from the cradle. A man's moral force depends almost wholly on his wife— or his women friends ; but most of all on his wife. 75 Life and To-morrow A GIRL, as a rule, seems to believe that she can make a man happy merely by loving him. Again and again friends of mine have married in this idea. And the hope seldom answers. Marriage is a discipline of character — nothing else. If women thought less of their own souls and more about men's tempers, marriage would not be what it is. A WOMAN NEED NOT be evil in order to destroy a man's career. Good women can make their homes intolerable — by tempers, or stupidity, or their mere ways. Many people have excellent morals but the most odious ways. Say two charming people, who are nevertheless not charming to each other, happen to marry. Each is put out of tune and each life is absolutely spoilt. Why do women marry? From mistaken ideas of happiness. . . . Most of us get to know it by suffering. Suppose a woman marries for companionship. . . . Who gets his brilliancy? Other people. He is with his wife only when he is too tired or too ill to be with anybody else ! Say she marries for love. Will he understand her ? Never, and the purer and the deeper her love, 76 Marriage the less he will understand her. Say one marries a protector— a man of action. When he is not fighting in some way with his fellow-men, he wants to kill poor harmless birds and animals, or travel about like the Wandering Jew. Men of action only go home to sleep, and as they can sleep anywhere with more or less comfort, it seems great waste to offer them a home at all ! ... But a woman cannot stand alone. It is all very well to say, Love children. To have chil- dren, one must marry. . . . That is the one safe reason for marriage— to have a family and bring them up as Christians. . . . Some mar- riages are childless. . . . But that doesn't affect the intention. The shocking thing is to marry without the intention as so many couples do nowadays ! No wonder they are all nervous and rickety and old before their time ! . . . Still, even with a family one has certain ideals as well as duties. What about romance and poetry? ... It isn't in husbands— unless they happen to write poetry themselves. Even then . . . it all goes into the poetry— they live as other men live when they are not writing. Men, after all, were not born to be companions to women; the men who have charming, thoughtful ways are either effeminate or more fastidious than nine women out of ten. Such men make better friends and lovers than husbands; as husbands, they are moody and uncertain— if not actually invalidish. 77 Life and To-morrow He was not the first bridegroom who felt loath, on the eve of his marriage, to change the delicate, almost ethereal tenderness of betrothed lovers for the close and intimate association of husband and wife. The one relationship has something in it immaterial, exquisite, and un- earthly, a bond invisible and yet as potent as the winds which we cannot see and the melodies we only hear. The other, with its profound appeals to mortality, its demands upon all that is strongest in affection and eternal in courage, its irreparableness, suffering, and constancy, may, indeed, have the grandeur of all human tragedy, and the dignity of a holy state ; but that it can ever be so beautiful as the love which is a silent influence. ... is an incon- ceivable idea. The ordinary marriage is sometimes re- garded as the prefiguration of the mystical union of souls. There are some beings . . . who seem to reach, at the very outset, the ultimate condition of ideal happiness. To them, the thought of any commoner relationship would be — not a fall only — but an impossibility ! Such beings are rare — though not so rare as many would believe. They are seldom understood. It is always unwise to quote them to the mass of men and women. The counsels of perfection . . . are fit only for those who are able to hear such sayings. 78 Marriage Most men have veiled portraits in their hearts. Most men could close their eyes and see the sacred days their lips may never tell of. Many a man has loved a woman well, yet married a name well, also. Makriage is an incomparable relationship, and each marriage has its unique difficulties or advantages. One is sorry for unhappy people who are too weak to complain or to rebel. But if you save them from one tyranny they fall at once under the spell of some other. Often, too, they do not know how wretched they are till the preferred tyranny is in sight ! If marriage is not for heaven, I wonder why all its laws are made there ! On earth, when two people are happy, one is soon taken and the mourner is told not to weep— for they shall surely meet again hereafter. But when two people are wretched and their union is a bondage, they are taught to endure each other patiently in this world— which is brief— because they shall be separated in the next— which is eternal ! You might as well flirt with the Ten Commandments as fall in love with your wife. . . . Never begin love-making with the lady you hope to marry. It will end in disaster. Because the day must come when she will wonder whv 79 ^ Life and To-morrow you have changed. ... A wife should be the one woman in the world with whom you can spend days and weeks of unreproved coldness. Those who have made unhappy marriages walk on stilts, while the happy ones are on a level with the crowd. No one sees them. Mareiage rarely does prove anything. The third person who could explain is always silent. 80 V YOUTH AND AGE Is a wish remaining From thy youth ? This thou art retaining, If 'twas truth. I YOUTH AND AGE Th^^se young people who quote Romeo and Juhet rememhev the Ballroom and the Balcony, but they are by no means prepared to follow their heroic patterns to the tomb. wh^T • • -^^^^^n instinctive philosophy which they cannot formulate; but, when the pams and responsibilities of life surprise them, they show as a rule, a courage which puts ZlTT professional sufferer I mean any person who has great self- knowledge, a consummate gift for its expression m language, and an abnormal talent for feeling discomforts and discovering the ugly. ^ In controlling, or subduing altogether the softer possibilities in a character, there is always the danger lest uncharitableness, hardness of heart, or blind severity of judgment should take their place. Young people with strong natures can seldom find the middle course between extremes, and this one, in curbing a desire for power, will fairly crush his whole vigour, while Life and To-morrow that one, in revolt against the tyranny of love, will become the slave of pessimism. . . . The strife between the flesh and the spirit . . . goes on in all lives, but . . . whatever the issue of it all may be, a man must be a man while he may —losing himself neither in the whirl of passion nor in the enervating worlds of reverie, but accepting the fulness of existence— its pains, vanities, pleasures, cares, sorrows — with a fighter's courage and the fortitude of an immortal soul. Youth is naturally impatient, and is not content to remain blind for even three days like St. Paul, nor can young enthusiasm believe readily that those also serve who only stand and wait. The impulse is to rush into the fray, to kill or be killed, but both or either without loss of time or hindrance. Vanity, too, and ambition, no less than a zeal of serving the Almighty and humanity, may have something to do with the fierceness of this desire, so easy is it to flatter the soul that the glorification of self is all to the glory of God. All youth that is strong and thoughtful has much of . . . the instinct of dissimulation. The world — to a young mind — appears controlled by elderly, suspicious, hateful custodians ever on the alert to capture, or thwart, every high enterprise and every passionate desire. There 84 Youth and Age seems a vast conspiracy against happiness — the withered, dreary wiseacres in opposition to the joy, the daring, the beauty, the reckless vitality of souls still under the spell of spring. A LOVE OF YOUNG PEOPLE is not common in elderly persons. Real sympathy with youth is a rare and touching quality, which depends on one's imagination, but even more on one's experience — and less on one's experience of happiness than on one's experience of difficulties and disappointments, for the people who are kindest to the young are usually those who have had sorrow. They say old people do the thinking. That is nonsense. Young people think and think till they become old and forget what the questions were which troubled them so much. Time answers questions by deadening all our faculties and sensations. I HEAR AND READ much stufp about the joys of childhood and girlhood. Children are often utterly wretched — because they see so much deceit around them, and are told so many lies. Girls have many sorrowful hours, because they too are told lies, and they meet with disappoint- ments, and make mistakes, and look for a happiness which does not seem to exist at all. No old woman is ever so lonely as a young 85 Life and To-morrow girl can be. An old woman may know that there are worse things than loneliness, but a girl thinks nothing can be so hard to bear. A girl wishes to be loved by some one whom she can adore : an old woman is contented if she can send flowers to a grave and deceive herself about the faults of the dead under the stone. . . . It is the young who are broken-hearted — not the middle-aged, not the elderly. 86 VI HUMAN NATURE Watch the sky and you will learn the hearts of men. Observe the changing light, the clouds driven by the wind, the glimpses of pure blue, the sudden blackness, the startling brilliancy, and then — the monotonous grey. HUMAN NATURE There is a story told of a man who begged his wife to tell him his besetting sin, " In order," said he, " that I may conquer it, and so please you in all respects." With much reluctance, and only after many exhortations to be honest, the lady repHed that she feared he was selfish. "I am not perfect," said her husband, "and perhaps I am a sinful creature, but if there is a fault which I thank God I do not possess it is selfishness. Anything but that!" And as he spoke he passed her the apples— they were at luncheon— and set himself to work on the only peach. Many men have ability, few have genius, but fewer still have character. . . . Character is the rarest thing in England. ... By character I mean that remnant of a man's life which is probably stronger than death, and ought to be stronger than worldly considerations. The great gift of self-knowledge— though a 89 Life and To-morrow painful blessing — is still our greatest, and the one to be prayed for above all others ; for the man who knows himself in all his great imper- fections and small virtues suffers more under praise than he ever could under censure — which, at worst, can only remind him of what his too- willing conscience has forgotten. People are . . . utterly dissimilar ; stupidity can affect the degree, but not the pain, of each creatures discomfort; although everybody has a grievance and an opinion, few believe in or care to hear the grievances and opinions of others. By education, systematised or other- wise, men and women soften, perfect, or conceal the qualities which nature gave them ; but they of themselves can add nothing to their natural gifts. The pear-tree cannot be cultivated into an oak, and genius cannot be manufactured from the uninspired. A person who is not an egoist at all is either a nonentity or a hypocrite ; education and disci- pline are given in order that the ego may gain grace, but an utterly destroyed egoism is a body bereft of its soul. If it were not for the egoists we should learn very little about ourselves. If a man cannot love himself, whom he can 90 Human Nature justify as a rule, how can he love the stranger, whom he does not understand in the least ? The first notes in a man's harmonious relations with the universe must be struck in unison with his own soul and his own emotions. Do JUSTICE to your brother, Ruskin has said ; you can do that whether you love him or not ; and you will come to love him. You must build upon justice. Charity, real charity, which means love, is not the beginning but the final reward of good work. It is something to learn how to sympathise with happiness. Our best men and women devote themselves too exclusively to the diagnosis of misery. Ws ALL KNOW that Proper Pride is the broad root from which all love stories in fiction, drama, and poetry fatally grow — either for sad- ness or delight. . . . But what is it ? ... I am prepared to swear that it is a manufactured — as opposed to a natural — calamity. We are not born with this bore attached to our sufficiently oppressed spirits : it is added to us first by our parents, relatives, nurses and other guardians, then by the education we receive, then by the books we read, then by the counsel of our friends— themselves groaning under the burden of the incubus. Reduced to its simplest form, 91 Life and To-morrow Proper Pride and its exercise may be called the restraint of every kind of impulse which makes for the simplification of human affairs — whether on the trivial or the grand scale. One is told so much by amateurs of immora- lity about the dreary humdrum of virtue, that it is refreshing to find a picture — in Ouida's " Friendship " — of the more tedious humdrum of vice. Dulness is a quality in the individual ; if there are dull matrons there is also an infinite crowd of very dull wantons ; there are dull villains as well as dull patterns of propriety ; if sermons can be dull, comedies can be much duller. It is not the sin which makes the sinner attractive, nor the band which makes an occasion lively. . . . When a virtuous woman is tedious, she is not tedious because she is chaste, but because she is unimaginative or mentally stupid, and when an immoral woman is brilliant, she is not brilliant because she is immoral, but because she happens to have brains. St. Teresa was more brilliant than Catherine of Russia ; and Isabella of Castille — more beautiful than Mary Stuart and better loved — was incomparably her superior in statesmanship. But all four are eternally interesting. Men who will watch with painful and inex- haustible solicitvide every fluctuation of the money market, and women who will become 92 Human Nature inspired in their eagerness to follow every shade of change in a lover s temper, are nevertheless dense, unobservant, and always wrong when they have to deal with the character of any near blood relation. No one denies that an individual is least known by the members of his own family: brothers and sisters on the subject of each other's peculiarities are often very amusing, but they are never right. Few parents can manage their own children; fewer still have the gift of gaining their confidence, and the grinding tragedy of family life Hes in the fact that familiarity with a person's mannerisms is accepted indolently as intimacy with that per- son's heart. . . . Human beings change hourly and daily, and it is piteous to find people who, while they admit that the laws of transition and development are the first laws of life, will not take the trouble to remember them in connection with those whom they are taught to regard as their nearest and dearest. A SELF-SUFFICIENT SOUL— if there be, in truth, such a soul— is a diseased soul suffering from vanity and incapable of deep feeling. . . . How do they live their lives? On consideration, it will be found that they are spent in day-dreams, castle-building, in the playing, for their own benefit, of fine parts, in the nourishment of some fixed idea, some grievance, or some form of vanity. There is no heroism, or turpitude, of 93 Life and To-morrow which they are not capable in imagination and unobserved, but the other side of the existence is pure sham. ... To be self-sufficient is to be undeveloped: the higher the intelHgence, the stronger its need of association with other intelligences: the more vigorous the animal, the more oppressive is the melancholy of con- tinuous solitude. The people who perish under loneliness are not the w^eak in mind and body- not the sickly, but the strong and the sane. Their very strength and their very sanity make, failing the legitimate struggle with outside in- fluence, for self-destruction. Of dreamers there are many kinds, but the key to their apparent irresolution is not the fear of realities, but egoism— the shirking of all things or anything which might involve a sacrifice or a responsibility. Other men, not timorous of life, will refuse to beheve that happiness is either so easy or so simple as God has made it. They make trouble the measure of prizes worth holding. But it must be pic- turesque, eventful, agitating trouble. That fastidious, elusive instinct . . . which always makes for suffering . . . may accompany keen susceptibilities, strong emotions, and pro- found affections— yet, lurking always in the depths, it is the torturing under-current which is so much stronger than the surface tide. As per- 94 Human Nature sons possessing this temperament grow older they do not become less fastidious, but they learn to be more stern toward forbidding ideas and more gracious toward forbidding appearances — for few things that we see can be so repulsive as many things that live acceptably in the mind. People who are for ever talking about the soul are secretly gross, and people who are for ever talking about the body — let us call it Walt Whitmanese — are generally unwholesome. We are human beings, and to set up these difficulties in one organism between the flesh and the spirit is as though a horse made his hind legs kick his fore legs by way of showing his desire for a higher life ! Healthy- MINDED lads do not sit brooding over their instincts till they are hatched into Christian virtues and deadly sins : their conscience warns them which to follow and which to shun, but the why, the wherefore, and the psycho- logical meaning of it all does not trouble them in the least. While we exist we can never escape any stage of development ; if our infancy be prema- turely wise, our years of discretion will have an inappropriate childishness. 95 Life and To-morrow No ONE IS BORN a husband and no one is born a pious, homicidal hero! At first he is just man — man with a birthright of seven deadly- sins and one small conscience. There never was a saint, you may rest perfectly sure, but he might have failed twenty times a day, if he had not fought the enemy with fine courage. The weak or the strong ... a truer division of humanity than the ordinary distinctions which classify them as the good and the bad, or the rich and the poor, or the happy and the unhappy. Many of the rich are good and happy, many of the poor are bad and strong ; many of the rich are strong and wretched, many of the poor are weak and happy: the play on these conditions is as various as the combination of notes in the musical scale, but strong or weak one must be. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, and if it is the weak and slow who win, how is it done save by the most painful efforts, the sternest self-discipline, the most dogged courage, and the most touching patience ? It might seem that a man, to whom Folly presented herself with a crown of horrors, was in small danger of committing a foolish act. But Folly — no less than Wisdom — has her Human Nature martyrs, and, while she deceives the weak by flattery, she warns the strong, with a candour even more dangerous than her blandishments, that her discipline is cruel and her reward an ordeal. If you are convinced, you will have the courage of that conviction. If you are not convinced, then you are bound to be timorous and faltering. You CANNOT BE LOYAL to your highest beliefs and please the mob — or any little parcel of it — at the same time. Of course, there is some- thing, in fact, a great deal, to be said for the conventional point of view. But if you cannot with perfect sincerity accept it, do not attempt odious compromises and outward forms of subserviency to laws which you find unjust. It is no disgrace to be mistaken : it is a crime to be a hypocrite. That is the sin against light — the worst of all. If you give in to prejudices — merely for your own individual peace and quietness — is not that taking root, as it were, with the whole trouble? Agitation should be kept up by the personally contented— not the personally dis- contented. A great artist is his own most severe critic ; but we leave the criticism of our lives to outsiders. We accept conditions in 97 G Life and To-morrow tlie cowardly hope that others will put them right. . . . You can neither march with pre- judices nor against them on the unaided starving strength of a personal conviction. Money must have its great part in the fight — whether as a forfeit or a reward or as a vulgar guarantee. Our greatest passions can be traced to our meanest instincts, and the fine names we have invented for successful selfishness mean no more in reality than the base ones which we contemptuously bestow on the selfishness which fails. When a real passion enters a man it drives the soul out, and that man becomes, for a time at all events, the mere gourd or the mere worm which God prepared— the one to be destroyed and the other to be the destroyer. Passionate natures make mistakes fre- quently, come to ruin not seldom, but flippant people have often a great deal of shrewd sense in the conduct of life. Their hatred of peril and pain makes them instinctively far-seeing. Jealousy founded on reason is like every- thing else founded on reason — a matter within the reach of wisdom and justice. But the jealousy which comes from selfishness, and is Human Nature dependent mainly on mere suspicion or appear- ances, is a disease of the mind. It must run its dreadful course, and when it does not culminate in crime, it is cured — if it be ever cured— by time or a tragedy ... it is the com- mon malady of misanthropists and cynics and the disillusioned : they give it many names, yet jealousy, not of the nobler sort, it remains. Just as the imphudent man will sometimes atone for a lifetime of unwisdom by a stroke of overpowering prudence, so the prudent man, after a lifetime of unswerving carefulness, will commit an act of supreme, of thundering im- becility. This is nature s justice— it is truly as wild as revenge. To WEIGH OTHER MINDS by our own is the false scale by which the greater number of us miscalculate all human actions and most human characters. The philosopher may be delivered from the oppression of facts by losing himself in his own ideas, but an ordinary man will think only when he must, and thought to him— so far from being the anodyne for egoism, is self- revelation at its plainest. If the mob insists on certitude, it is because it has no time to argue. The rank and file 99 Life and To-morrow in an army would rather be shot than think why they are fighting. When one human being attains, by over- persuasion or management, the apparent mastery of another, it should always be remembered that the persuaded one has a willingness for some motive, either secret or expressed, to be led. The weakest in- dividual has a lurking strong desire some- where, which, never suspected and never acknowledged, is, perhaps, never asserted except under the encouragement of an outside influence. Temptations are not dangerous unless they appeal to a tendency or a need. The ungovernable chabm of sinners so- named lies, no doubt, in their willingness to speak out. This makes them enticing company, and often a man is blamed for mixing with disreputable associates when it is not their wickedness at all, but their candour which calls to him. But the candour is not, perhaps, about the best things in life, so the instruction gained is partial only and the light thrown does not go far. One may love a sinner, an unfortunate, even the reckless sensualist, but not a hypocrite. . . . Hypocrisy rises from a frozen hell ; it blasts, it cuts our shivering charity, it 100 Human Nature beats and pinches like quick-fingered sleet, it enters with snowy dart into our ice-bound kindness. It is always disastrous to pin one's faith to a mere mortal. Even the best of us are miserably imperfect as rocks of defence ; you see, we are flesh and blood, we are not granite. Stick to the Immortals : they will never disappoint you. And they are always there when you want them. . . . Unfortunately, before we can love the Immortals and under- stand them, we must have some experience of the Mortal. Those who have substituted emotions of the blood for emotions of the soul . . . can never understand the anguish of disappointed trust. A sensitive nature dismayed soon becomes the most brutal, because its brutality is de- liberate, and, by a paradox, intellectual. Many good people speak of longing for Heaven — when the time comes for the realisa- tion of that long - desired change, they will order prayers offered for its delay. They believe in the Heaven or they would not order the prayers, but there is in this, as in most 101 Life and To-morrow hopes which have grown habitual at some expense to their intensity, an inadmissable preference for the craving rather than its appeasement. I CARE LESS AND LESS for what a person thinks or says that he thinks. When I was younger I wasted much speculation on what theologians call the interior life. It is all trop de bruit pour une omelette. There is too much fuss about motives, scruples, doubts, misunderstandings, and so on. Tell me what a man does, and I will tell you what he is. What he did not do, or intended to do, is inconsiderable. However precious ... a sense of humour may be, it is a question whether those who possess it love the best or make the truest friends. Terror of the laugh and a knowledge that the laugh can be justified is often a paralysing misfortune, oftener still a restraint on confidences, but oftenest of all it gives an ironical sting to sympathy. A CONFIDENCE SHOULD NEVER be received either as a surprise, an indiscretion, an apology, or a hostage. It is something understood yet scarcely heard, something miforgettable yet too little our own to be trusted even to the memory ; uttered, it must be as though it 102 Human Nature had never been told ; at each rehearsing it must seem mbre distant and delicate. Instinct in choosing a confidant and the genius for self-revelation are, perhaps, as rare as the most supreme imaginative faculties. There are very few men that can bear authority if they have not been born v^ith the shoulders for it. If you gave a man a nose who had never had one, he would be blowing it all day. The individual is but the symbol of the great mass, and the history of a country is but the story, on the heroic measure, of any one human being. And just as a country on the verge of war will wait, with enthusiasm and closed eyes, for the unexpected turn of affairs, some miraculous intervention, some awakening to a new and differently ordered universe, . . . young girls smile at their own fears, and, try- ing not to think, listen only to the mysterious beautiful promises of passion and youth. Sympathy is the one emotion which seems most perfect as it becomes most animal : in its human aspect it too often lapses into the moralising grandmother. Animals don't ask questions and cannot answer back. A dog can put more soul into a look than a kind friend can talk in an hour. 103 Life and To-morrow One cannot bear one*s neighbour's burdens — you may break your own heart out of sheer pity, but your neighbour will not be a whit less oppressed. . . . This is not denial of the power in sympathy, counsel, affection, or comrade- ship ; the power of such gifts is incalculable, but they cannot be transmitted, they can only be exercised for the neighbour's benefit and encouragement. They cannot lessen the bur- den ; they cannot affect those unuttered and unutterable thoughts which dart through the soul ; those hours of absolute and unreachable solitariness, those moods when no one really counts and nothing really matters. ... It is useless to fume, to fuss, to clasp and unclasp one's hands, to pace the floor, to knit one's brows, to fret, to expostulate. All such natural demonstrations of anxiety ease you, no doubt, but they do not ease the afflicted neighbour. Your own burden, by force of pity, may grow to resemble his, but his will remain unaltered — not to be shared or lessened. To know this, and to comprehend it, is not the beginning of egoism, but the first need of real unselfishness — an admission of one's limitations. If the world and the flesh have their voices for men, so, too, the stars and the sea, great mountains and towering trees, have their haunting call. 104 Human Nature Sameness of thought and aspirations pro- duce the same lines on the human countenance : the same prayers produce the same persistency in the hps : the same faith gives the same steadfastness to the eyes : the same courage, drawn from the same source, gives the same kind of self-possession. Tpie spirit invisible wears the laurel of mental victories, but the body has to bear the exhaustion, the scars, and the soreness. To RESERVED NATURES what is purchased by prayers is dearly bought. When we are at our worst, we may still make amends. A man's heart wills all, hopes all, dares all. When all the worldly maxims are said, when all is done, the love between mother and child is real ; children do not care whether one is looking one's best or one's worst ; whether one is young, old, pretty, or plain. It was a little soul, but the smallest birds may rise — 'hough imperceptibly — to heights past human vision, to the stars. Why are people always kind to each other — too late ? 105 VII LIFE I have watched the sea change from blue — to grey. I have watched the trees change from green — to grey ; I have seen the sky rose-red turn grey — as ashes ; I have seen the scarlet fields fade to the hue of dust ; all things grow grey — life itself. Life is not what we find it, but what we make it. LIFE A BULL-FIGHT GAVE me the one straight reply I have ever received to my questions about Hfe. To begin with, the bull has no chance. We all know that he has to die — no matter how well he may fight, or how many men or how many horses may be killed. Then the bull himself rarely wants to fight. He sees the people ; he hears the shouting ; he wishes only to return to his stall and to his fodder. In conclusion, the braver he is and the less he wishes to injure his tormentors, the more horribly he is tortured and yelled at. I said to myself, as I looked into the sickening arena, " This is the life of man." Sometimes it seems that . . . love is a jest, that life and death are alike jests, that the world itself is the Creators big joke with mankind. Everything is so grotesque, so badly rehearsed. The curtain goes up too soon and comes down too late ; parts are mumbled, or shouted, or gabbled, or left 109 Life and To-morrow unspoken ; cues are disregarded ; heroes are knock-kneed, and heroines have thick ankles ; fools make mirth with such a solemn air, and the wise are solemn so foolishly ; men and women seem not themselves, but their carica- tures ; it is all wildly comical, farcical, un- natural, and inartistic. The only sad part is that one aches from laughing till one cries at the pain. But this, too, is a joke. The two things in life which are really gratuitous are the grace of God and one's pedigree ! The rest depends upon ourselves. One cannot cheat Nature ; her legislation for drones and those who want the joy, without the woe, of living is terrible in its severity. And she is most terrible in her laws on all relations between the sexes. If one could drive every religious prejudice out of the world. Nature, with her cruelty unhallowed, would still remain. Life is a shell full of false appearances. If you crack it hard it breaks, and then there is nothing but an unsavoury mess ! There are many duties and difficulties in life : there is but one obligation — courage. All the phenomena of nature are images 110 Life and symbols of life. We hear this often, but we seldom remember it. And if we will think of each other as stars and realise that each star has its place, we may get to see that the task of giving peace of mind to the dissatisfied and health to the diseased must be accomplished through the education of the individual. This may sound laborious and for- bidding . . . but it is the one way of restor- ing confidence to the neglected, because it is the one way of admitting that each one of us is of equal importance to himself. In public life, whether one joins the Church, the Camp, the Senate, or the Arts, the trials of strength and courage are most severe even to those who, in material circum- stances, at any rate, are favourites of fortune. Neither influence nor riches avail much in the terrific struggles for supremacy, for recognition, for mere fair play itself. What must the con- flict be tiiGh ror tnoSS vN^no, with slight purses and few allies, find themselves pitted against the powerful of the earth? Discouragement, in weak natures, soon turns to envy, and the spectacle of human unkindness has driven many a reflective, dehcate soul to say that the companionship of his fellow-men is un- lovely, not to be admired, and difficult, at times, not to hate. In disgust of the world— where one has been w^ounded, or where one 111 Life and To-morrow has wounded others— (wounded vanity and remorse are alike bitter in their fruits), numbers, with a sort of despairing fatal- ism, retire from the campaign, cut them- selves adrift from their people and their country, and, having failed in life, court death under strange skies in far-off lands. Men are punished— by the law and other- wise — not because they deserve punishment, but because Nature herself makes inexorable war upon her failures. Her legislature is for the robust in mind and body — one or the other at least — and while religions preach benevolence, patience, charity, long-suffering, we know that strength where it meets weak- ness must prevail, and industry, no matter how wrongly directed, where it meets half-hearted- ness, no matter how well-trained, must of necessity conquer. If so-called good people had tho enpro'v. the nerve, the backbone of so- called bad people, the bad would be trampled out of existence. The laws whose "Hie was not of to-day or yesterday" are the tm-written laws. They keep an eternal inflexibility— a different thing from instability. I THOUGHT AT ONE TIME that chance and mischance ruled the world. It was a lazy, 112 Life stupefying idea; it made enthusiasm ridiculous and work pitiful. To sit, getting shrewder and leaner and more grasping, watching for one's chance, as it is called, did not seem worth while. Fate is better. It comes — it is not to be snatched as it passes by. You may be asleep— when you wake up you find it wait- ing there by your side. You may be half- dead — it touches you and you live. And it is not a fate stolen from some other ; it is your very own, for you yourself and for no one else. You MUST SEE life by the light of your own lamp. Nobody can help you much. It is not the past alone which has its ghosts. I CAN SEE the world as it is. . . . When one is ill or sentimental one hates it, because it was not made for the sick, and it was not created as a playground for lovers. One may love— yes, but one must work. . . . There is a time in love — just as there is a period in life— when it seems enough in itself. It is independent of circumstances and persons. But that time soon passes ! As you learn more, you look for more. Pan was a heathen god, who could guide 113 H Life and To-morrow lost travellers and calm all storms by the magic of his flute. ... It is a parable of modern life. We torment ourselves with bore- dom and scruples, whereas all we need is more music, more joy ! We must listen to the Flute of Pan. It is always playing, but we drown it with our wretched babble of philosophies, the noise of machinery, the turmoil of money- making. 114 VIII SENTIMENT Men cannot be happy on sentiment alone. SENTIMENT Nature is not so easy a companion as false sentiment. It is to me quite clear that if the majority of healthy persons were perpetually unhappy, disappointed, or discontented, the whole order of living would have to change. The majority are, on the whole, disposed to think that all ends well that ends pretty well. It may be more fastidious to stand apart and complain : it may show a higher type of mind (I am not so sure about that — there is often a sinister side to much sublime thinking) : it is certainly not normal, and this particular world is emphati- cally for the normal creature. It is true, all the same, that the most corrupt natures have a certain longing to idealise the hideous, and if they cannot understand the best idealism, they will take it in cheap, or grotesque, or false forms. Hence the success of so-called vulgar sentimentality. But although it is vulgar, I see that it is a veil: its intention is to hide the universal misgivings of mankind. 117 Life and To-morrow Sentimentality has all but destroyed the best minds and the best bodies of the race. Modern life is a limp battle between the rheto- ricians, the mob, and the money-changers. My hope is to see a washerwoman and a school- master bolt, with great passion, to the North Pole. This would do more for humanity than any Nihilism, any Socialism, any literature or art conceivable ! A COURSE OF CONDUCT based on sentimentality can never succeed. No amount of sentiment, for instance, will make water shoot out flames or fire turn to ice. Life is equally rational. You must learn natures, and not expect from any what they have not got to give. RusKiN . . . HAS INSISTED on the beauty of many things called common, and the sham refinement of those who shiver at the least pleasing features of human existence. This squeamishness is modern and morbid ; it is not romantic, for, whereas so-called romance is now worn very thin and touches no one very deeply, it was, in a more rugged age, a living, in- spiring influence ; and the squeamishness is not poetical, because poetry was nobler, infinitely more tender, and also more divine, when manners were what we should call rough, and conversation was what we might complain of as coarse. 118 IX IDEALS Man is ever miserly with his illusions : if to gain two he must risk one, he shrinks from the venture. He could not desire the star and find solace in the glow-worm. IDEALS I SEEM TO HAVE SPENT my life watching ideal- ists fight and go under. The ideals remain : their defenders either perish or lose heart, make compromises, and despise themselves. . . . Three- fourths of the world think too little and the other fourth think too much. They all have to suffer, however, and if one is in the least sensi- tive, it is, so far from a recreation, a severe misery to mix with people who dare not be so natural as the poor and obscure, and cannot be so simple as men of genius. There is an old Hindoo proverb : " Find the flower which can bloom in the silence that follows— not that which precedes — the storm." This applies perfectly to a talent or a vocation. If the mood is there, in spite of fatigue, or dis- couragement, or other claims — happiness for that matter — you may depend that it is the ruling motive of your life and not to be van- quished. You must follow the bent or you will suffer — suffer till you die of it. 121 Life and To-morrow If I HAD an ideal like yours, I should either stick to it or drop it altogether. If you consider it impossible, you are a fool to give it a second thought, and if it is possible, you are a coward if you accept anything less I Individual coxtextmext depends on how little you ask and how much you can bear. W^e have days when we know that contentment is not everything. So MAXY MEX are degraded by their sj-m- pathies. They have any amount of aspirations and would Hke to fly, but they have not the courage to fly alone. So they prefer to crawl- in company. The terrible irony of life is the incontest- able fact that we cannot exist without a number of intoxicating illusions. Beware of w^orshippixg false images— that is to say, the image of what is false. That is an idol which many of us mistake for the ideal. It is the ideal higher than Hf e, the ideal created by lying sentiment, which has produced the hypocrite, and what the young call disillusion. . . . Look for the ideal created by wisdom and experience. Oxe is oftex tormexted between the beauty of an ideal and its failure as a working principle 122 Ideals The materialised ideal must always be a disappointment. . . . Nothing in this world was made to realise our expectations or to satisfy us. We resent disillusions because they are humiliating. Those who can be disillusioned have no convictions. Disillusion is the failure of a half- belief. Disillusions all come from within— from the failure of some dear and secret hope. The world makes no promises ; we only dream it does ; and when we wake, we cry ! Every Paradise is always to the outsider a ''Fool's Paradise,"— that is nothing, but when the Peri within the gates begins to feel that all is not well outside, we have the real disillusion. It is something resembling happiness to be alone in the turmoil of the world with one unspoilt illusion. Conversation between a disillusioned devotee and an enthusiastic novice is always difficult : the disillusioned fears to be candid, and the enthusiastic fears nothing : one has not learnt enough, the other has all to learn. 123 Life and To-morrow Beware of the tyranny of a false ideal — an ideal based on an unreal knowledge of human nature. It will sear your will with hot iron and melt your soul like wax over a hot flame. Reality to some dreamers is a pain or a disappointment : to others it is a kind of drunkenness which never grows sober. Where can the disenchanted go ? They have lost their footing in the real world — they have found out the deceptions of the unreal. There is no place for them. If you once begin wandering in the dream- world, you may forswear it, but you can never forget it. Put the thought of might-have-beens, ought- to-have-beens for ever out of your calculations. There are no might-have-beens. There is what has been, what is ; to regret lost possibilities and anticipate probabilities is the vice of dreamers. Realities are not of necessity shocking or crude ; and in the use of the word realism as a term of reproach, or the word reality when we wish to signify something unpleasant, if not squalid, we are, without knowing it, confessing the first article in the creed of Pessimism. What is the matter with reality ? To begin with, is it not the name given by dreamers to 124 Ideals every disappointment? Say, we set our minds on finding a rose-tree in a turnip-field. We do not find it ; we lose our tempers ; we call the turnip-field a reality; and we cry out that life is a deception. But . . . there is nothing the matter with the turnip-field; on the con- trary, it has its own attraction and its own usefulness. The modern is always an unwilling slave to sentiment: if he find himself captivated by a romantic love or a sublime ideal he accepts his state in the shamefaced and hopeless cer- tainty that his common-sense will one day come to the rescue. He cannot believe that what he takes for beauty will always be so fair, or that what seems good for the moment could be inspiring for ever. Satisfaction only makes him restless : he sighs for happiness, and, having found it, sighs lest, after all, it should be only a shadow cast by his own desires. It is much more difficult to crush one's poetry than to crush one s passions. The pas- sions are more or less physical, they depend on many material conditions or accidents ; but poetry, ideals, romance and the like depend on the spirit. Are there many or any of us, nowadays, who feel that there are certain things which we must do, not do, or perish eternally? 125 Life and To-morrow A WEAK MAN submits to destiny, a strong man makes his own. It is what we think of ourselves which determines our fate. If I regard myself as a poor creature, I shall, no doubt, act the part of a poor creature. The greatest leaders have been men of the highest imagination. Shakespeare and Milton expressed what Elizabeth and Crom- well imagined. The great ruthless public has never responded, and can never be made to respond, to ideas which contradict its education. And here we come to the root of the matter. The education of the imaginative faculties and the ideals of romance have been taken absolutely from the national education in every class. Imagination is now confined to the real believers among Roman Catholics, the Jews, and the Orientals. It is not acuteness or unscrupulousness which makes the commonest Jew successful in business : it is his power of imagination — his ability to foresee the develop- ment of an idea, and his instinct for romance in the true sense of the word. To most people the word romance suggests unreality, shams, the unpractical, the illogical, the fantastic, the impossible. To the sincere Roman Catholic, the Jew, and the Oriental it means the essence of everything that is worth time, or money, or 126 Ideals thought : imagination is rightly treated as one of the highest intellectual faculties, and it is cultivated by the Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Oriental systems of education to the highest possible pitch. It is abused — everything human is abused — but of all our powers, it is certainly the one which distinguishes us as human beings from the brutes. Romance will add a magical delight to the pleasures of existence, but for the burden of the day one needs a sobriety of thought which would ring singularly flat in a love-lyric, which is certainly opposed to those emotions which produce what is commonly regarded as interesting behaviour. As A PIECE OF ARCHITECTURE will assimilate, by weathering, to the visible quality of rock and cliff surrounding it, and so become a natural feature of the landscape, a mans constant reading will transmute and colour his ideals although it may not govern his actions. For this reason the charge of hypo- crisy, or a want of humour, is inconsider- ately made against those who are, by confession, great lovers of noble poetry, and, by their deeds, disreputable or mean. But, to continue the comparison, however much a piece of archi- tecture may grow, by the effect of climate, to resemble externally what it is not, it will 127 Life and To-morrow be found, on close examination, a faithful tribute to its first vulgar or beautiful design. The design remains ; and a man's inherited nature remains — a thing apart from his soul, which, suffering all the shudderings and quiver- ings of flight, is often bound immovably to some disabled intelligence. There is nothing modern nor uncommon in this especial disposition (which shrinks from anything which will materialise the subtleties of the mind). One may describe it as ascetic, anaemic, sentimental, hysterical, neurotic ; but the men and women who possess this fragile organism show, as a rule, powers of endur- ance and a strength of will by no means characteristic of the average sanguine and sensual creature who eats, drinks, fights, loves, and does his best in a world which he calls vile, yet would not renounce for all the ecstasies of Paradise. Renan, who was himself a native of Brittany, has said that all the Celtic races have in their hearts an eternal source of folly and that this very malady is their charm. Love is with them a sentiment rather than a passion. It is a spiritual rapture — a mental thrill which wears away and kills the bodily life. It bears no resemblance to the fire and fury of the south. The southern lover slays his rival, slays the 128 Ideals object of his passion. The Breton's sentiment slays only him who feels it. No other race can show so many deaths from love : suicide, indeed, is rare — they perish from a lingering decline. One sees this constantly among the Breton con- scripts. Unable to find either pleasure or f orget- fulness in vulgar and bought amours — they sink under some indefinable grief. The home-sick- ness is but an appearance : the truth is that love with them is inseparably associated with their native village, its steeple, the evening Angelus, the familiar fields and lanes. Their imagination is filled with a desire alike beyond all common needs and ordinary satisfactions. Idealism in all its degrees — the pursuit of some moral or intellectual end — often wrong, always disinterested — is the first characteristic of the Celt. Never was a race so unfit for the indus- trial arts or commerce. A noble occupation is in their eyes that by which one gains nothing — for instance, that of a priest, a soldier, or a sailor, that of a true aristocrat who cultivates his land according to the tradition of his ances- tors, that of a magistrate, that of a scholar who devotes himself to the acquisition of learning for its own sake. Sometimes the soul speaks first, sometimes the senses first influence a life, but the turn, soon or late, must inevitably come for each, and the man or woman, sick of materialism, 129 I Life and To-morrow who begins to suspect that the unseen world and its beauty is an inheritance more lasting and more to be desired than all the vindictive joys of the prison-house, has no such bitterness as the idealist who finds himself brought into thrilling touch with the physical loveliness, the actual enchantment, the undeniable delight of certain things in life. The questions, " What have I missed? What have I lost? What birthright have I renounced?" are bound to make themselves heard. They beat upon the heart like hail upon the sand — and fall buried in the scars they cause. Things of the flesh may and do become dead sea fruit ; but things of the spirit often become stale and meaningless also. What is more weary than a tired mind ? What joys and labours are more exhausting than those of the intellect, and the intellect only ? Does an idle week in summer ever beget more lassitude or such disgust of life as a month — alone with books — in a library ? Dissatisfaction and satiety, melancholy and fatigue show as plainly in the pages of a Kempis as they do in Schopenhauer, as they do in Lucretius, as they do in St. Bernard, as they do in Montaigne, in Marcus Aurelius, in Dante, in St. Teresa. They are, indeed, the ever-recurrent cries in human feeling, the ever-recurrent phases in human thought. Uninterrupted contentment was never yet found in any calling or state ; the saints were haggard with combats ; sleep, the most 130 Ideals reposeful state we know, has its fearful sorrows, hideous terrors, pursuing uncertainties. . . . These reflections, common enough at all times . . . are, as all common things, overwhelming at the first moment of their complete realisation. Work ! . . . oh, to escape for one enchanted moment into that undiscovered country whose sapphire rivers flow through gardens of oleander and idleness, and where the willows sigh in the scent-laden winds ; where the acacia spreads her delicate lace against an azure sky ; where light is the betrothal of the moon's silver and the sun s gold. There to lie on the flower-sweet grass and watch the deathless nymphs dance a perpetual youth, to countless time, in robes of ever-varying hue, to music of ever-changing harmony, to the murmur of insects and the song of the nightingale ; to drive white oxen down the long avenues of ilex, or wander through vineyards where the air would be sleepy like wine and the fragrance heavy with oblivion. O undiscovered country ! Why is it so easily imagined? Why would it be so impossible to live there — and be happy? The idealist driven into squalid actualities deserves a martyr s crown. In one single mis- fortune he suffers all the calamities of the human race, and in one personal horror he sees the death, emptiness, and corruption of all human endeavours. 131 Life and To-morrow It is a question whether that mental suffer- ing known as a disillusion is so ordinary as it is frequently held to be. Vulgar, selfish minds are still the rule rather than the exception in the human race, and neither vulgar souls nor selfish souls can ever know what it is to be disappointed in a sublime belief. For to imagine excellence and to love it — whether it may be real, as it often is, or merely supposed, as it can be sometimes — is not given to low understandings. So MANY OF us , . . have noble ideals, and then, because we cannot see them realised immediately, we accept, in a moment of petulance, the lesser thing. There is a king's daughter for each one of us; let us wed her or none other. And so with every aim and hope in life. We should do nothing — we should say nothing — we should content our- selves with nothing which seems to fall below the highest we can think of. Then, if we should find the disappointment, or should we be deceived, we can at least say — We took thee, best and dearest, for the best thou shouldst have been. But to be fooled, knowing well that we had chosen to be fooled — chosen the false in mere impatience with our quest of the true— that is what really degrades us— really causes despair. 132 X ART AND ARTISTS These literary and artistic people are very dangerous. You never find two alike, and the only certain thing about them is that ultimately they will do something to make everybody uncomfortable. There are no triumphs for any artist. We suffer and we work — some- times we are able to please. But we suffer and work because we must ; whereas we please by the merest accident. \ ART AND ARTISTS Ah, not fob me— to learn the truth by dreaming, To hear the cries of earth in melody. To know 'tis night but when the stars are gleaming, — Ah, not for me. Music of form and colour's mystery, The joy of fashioning in fairest seeming Life's dullest clay and Winter's barest tree ; To count the years as moments— only deeming That truly Time which makes thy Art to thee The one thing needful and the all-redeeming,— Ah, not for me ! Art ... is, after all, humanity purged from meanness. Great art springs from great convictions. Work begun with a note of interrogation in the mind and finished with the sense that little is true, less worth while or worth doing at all, is essentially weak. There can be no vigour in things so conceived or produced. 135 . Life and To-morrow There is probably one, and but one, supremely good way of doing anything. The countless ways after that may not be wholly despicable, yet they must, nevertheless, fall short of excellence. They will fail at the very point where perfection, being present, is most striking, and, being absent, is most longed for. Portraiture — whether in epic, or in drama, or in prose, or in verse, or on canvas— is a way of seeing. In order to describe life, one must show, not merely a knowledge of men and the spirit of criticism, but a strong sense of justice. A sense of justice is, perhaps, the most important of all, because our whole attitude toward ourselves, each other, and the world depends wholly on this instinct for what is fair. And not for what is fair according to our own ideal scale of things as they ought to be, but for what is fair, seeing that things are as they are, admitting freely, for instance, that fire burns, that pain hurts, that happiness is worth striving for. It comes to this, that while we may all possess sincerity, and we must all possess human nature, it is for the artist to be so much the master of his nerves, his heart, his soul, and his mind, that he can translate his impressions exactly, without over-statement, confusion, or 13G Art and Artists false sentiment. Every work of art is the outcome of its creator s personality. A PEASANT once consulted a nerve specialist about his son. " They tell me," said he, " that my son has Art. What is an artist?" An artist," said the physician, ''is a person who thinks more than there is to think, feels more than there is to feel, and sees more than there is to see." The peasant clapped his hands. " We were afraid," said he, ''that he was only a bad boy ; I see the poor little soul is really quite mad. If we put him in a cage, under a curtain, people will pay us to look at him." " If you keep him in a cage," said the doctor, " his great gifts will perish. You must give him over to the wisdom of Divine Providence." " Oh no," said the peasant, firmly, " because in that case he will leave his happy home and go to Paris ! " The artist brings himself to his task, and, as he sees, thinks, feels, and fancies, he must paint. The full mind must, of necessity, compose full pictures. . . . Perhaps most of us know the story of Albrecht DUrer going to a fair and seeing a blue monkey. He hurried home and immediately introduced the animal into a sketch he was preparing of "The Holy Family." This seems to me eminently characteristic of all creative minds. Every blue monkey we meet must go into the vision. 137 Life and To-morrow The best possible training for artists is the reading of the highest kind of literature, and the best training for writers of every class is the study of the so-called decorative arts. In educating the artistic temperament, it must be given strength and then it must be given liberty. Not license — not more liberty than we give to a banker, a member of Parlia- ment, a judge, or a millionaire, but as much. We are too ready to provide a cage for our fine intellects. Artists and poets are like stars — they belong to no land. A strictly national painter or a strictly national poet is bound to be parochial — a kind of village pump. And you may write inscriptions all over him, and build monuments above him, but he remains a pump by a local spring. No MAN ever seemed an Immortal to the majority around him. Genius is seldom ingra- tiating, and it can never be familiar. Poetry — and most of all amateur poetry — stands for pain. Every line of it spells woe. Either the writer — or those living with the writer — could tell a tale. What rubbish is talked about the artistic temperament — especially by the idle and unpro- 138 Art and Artists ductive, who loaf about, mistaking their limp backbone for heavenly-mindedness. The artistic temperament is only faithful for the purposes of local colour— to experience fidelity, in fact. Then the next step is to gain some insight into infidelity. Unless a genius is extremely religious she is foredoomed to impropriety ! . . . They are all different— with a sameness. I have known thirty, and they were all pure-minded, and had, at least, three husbands and an episode ! It may be impossible for delicate and impres- sionable natures — and all artists are delicate and impressionable— to feel satisfied with life as they see it. A lively scene and joyful company are embittering to a mourning or distressed soul, whereas a bleak coast and rough hills, by offering no contrast, make sadness more bearable. On the other hand, one is often assailed, in a beautiful scene with charming companions, by the thought that such things cannot last. . . . Such moods we have all experienced in more or less degree. But this is a matter of egoism. No one will deny the equality of each man's importance to himself, but there is no real equality in fates, and we must not confuse our personal moods with the general condition of mankind at large. 139 Life and To-morrow Aetists, as a class, are seldom happy. They have intense sensitiveness, and, in comparison with the individuals with whom they may be obliged to spend their days, they must always seem to be morbid, fantastic, unreasonable. . . . On the other hand, of course, we must own that not every one that is hard to live with is of necessity an artist. . . . He may not be an artist merely because he is unhappy at home, or because he is easily woimded by doubt, or because he is constitutionally more delicate than his relatives. Certain things are common to all mankind, and the tendency, in various degrees, to down-heartedness. love-sickness, bad temper, and admiration for the moon does not involve, a priori, the creative impulse. Eapid changes of MOOD, disordered views, and an irregular life are characteristic of every artist whose work is a self-conscious form of autobiograx3liy. A vision so constituted that it is perpetually directed inward, egoistically, and never outward, symi^athetically, tempts its possessor to produce — at every sacrifice — a certain amount of variety in his own soul. Everything depends then on the quality of the soul. The saints were always i^rofoundly happy. Let me tell you why. The state of the saint is one of dependence. His convictions, there- 140 Art and Artists fore, are enduring and unclouded. He accepts his trials as privileges ; he loses all sense of his own identity ; his humanity is merged in God ; his ecstasies lift him up to Heaven and bring him down to a transfigured earth. He has been bought with a ransom, and he is the co-heir with Christ. He is found worthy of suffering. But with artists all is different. The saint is in search of holiness. The artist thinks chiefly of beauty. Holiness is a state of mind— it is something permanent. Beauty, however, mocks one half the time— it may be a deception. Anyhow, one cannot define it, or keep it, or even satisfactorily catch it. Our inspired moments, therefore, alternate with a miserable knowledge of our individual wretched- ness. We learn that we are no stronger than our individuality. That is the barrier between us and our visions. The saint has God before his eyes, and he carries Him in his heart. The artist sees only himself and bears only the weight of his own incompetence. All men are sensible to physical charms, but it may be wondered whether artists, more than any other class of human beings, do not fall utterly and slavishly under the spell of an appearance which inspires them. Beauty is to all artists as vital as the air they breathe, and more necessary, for, lacking the sight of it in one form or another, they lose all will to live. 141 Life and To-morrow The soul's beauty and moral beauty and beauty of intellect may interest them, but bodily beauty and the beauties of nature, or of man s handi- craft, are the visible gods of their idolatry. The artist may be capricious, and he is rarely constant except to a type, but while the frenzy of devotion is upon him, there is no lover so absorbed in his illusion or so desperate in his selfishness. And the cause of this lies in the fact that, while the fairest of women is to ordinary men no more than the fairest of women, she is, as well, to an artist, the essence of his art ; and, while the natural beauties of the world are to an ordinary man no more than the natural beauties of the world, delight- ful in their way and proper place, they are, to the artist, the things on which his happi- ness and his very existence depend. If no true artist could ever be moved to take the so-called practical view of life (which means the mercenary view) either in his marriage, or in his loves, or in his work, it is because the practical view would be to such an one so far from advantageous that it would mean actual destruction. Men of artistic genius can- not marry for position or for money or for con- venience ; they cannot love as they ought or even as they might be expected by reasonable persons to love ; they cannot work with an eye on the market-place. And again, what may seem desirable and beautiful to others may not 142 Art and Artists seem either to an artist; and what an artist may find overwhelming in its loveliness may easily leave normal beings cold— if not depressed. A FALSE SUCCESS made by the good humour of outside influences, is always peaceful ; a real success made by the quahties of the thing in itself is always a declaration of war. The man whom one praises with one's tongue in one's cheek is negligible ; at any moment one can cease praising, and he must collapse. The man who continues whether he be praised or blamed is a mark for violent and unreasoning animosity; not because he is hateful as an in- dividual, but because he represents that some- thing immortal and defiant which men fear in themselves and call their own souls. It is for artists to remind humanity of the unconquer- able and to assert the eternity of ideas. Stone the idealist— no flint can reach his thoughts. Bury the dreamer — his dreams will colour the sky above his grave. Slay the cunning player —his melodies have mixed themselves with the air, and the winds which cannot be slain will sing out his music for ever from the tree- tops. Banish the prophet— his prophecies, nevertheless, will come to pass where he uttered them. Imprison the philosopher— his philosophy will wander freely in the market- place. It is natural that brute force and brute 143 Life and To-morrow anger should be roused to do their worst — at least, against the disobedient, inaccessible, and unseen energies of the world ; what is it but the larger spectacle of the strife, in each indi- vidual, between the flesh and the spirit ? Men have passionate bodies ; women have passionate souls ; artists have passionate souls and bodies. No wonder they are misunderstood — or can it be that they are understood too well ? No MAN IS THE BETTER for living in a state of perpetual war against accepted ideas. He may be a saint or a prophet, a philosopher or an artist — and the truth that is in him must be uttered whether it be understood or despised ; but just so far as he encounters stupidity or injustice, in that degree the finest possibilities of his character and his work must suffer. No man ever did a work in spite of persecution that he might not have done ten times better if he had been encouraged. The soul which becomes feeble under sympathy is not a soul but a shadow cast by some stronger personality. Withdraw the persecution and the shadow is no more. HAVE MY DKEAMS and the stars." This is the strength of the creative mind ; it has faith in faith — in the undemonstrable, the intangible, the unattainable ; and when the visible proves a deception, the artist and the idealist are 144 Art and Artists but the more confirmed in their passion for thev o?^' Tu"" ^"'^ unrealities because anTsc:i?eT' ~ d^«%-ed The world rewards the beautiful only inasmuch as it flatters the senses, and the sub lime remams-so far as the general taste is concerned-altogether without response thrHr/™ i« the hardest in the world for a woman-in fact, any artistic ^bour-hard, ceaseless, unsatisfying labour steUr;:: ^^-^reward-th - srrengtH tor more work. The man op letters is not a man of letters If he accepts life and the circumstance of hfe Lst n t oTh" prime and to clutch-or die in failing to clutch- thmgs not as they are buf i.- • '^f"^'^^— would have them imagination of^r'^r ™ ""^'^ distinguished writers earn the influence of ^cto^'Hu^ T^''^' Carlyle, Disraeh, Byron, and SuslSn ""notTo mention many others. In the case of 'ThoLas K Life and To-morrow Hardy, one finds other spirits at work. His English style is purer than Mr. Meredith's, and, while it owes much of its weight to that philosophic school of which, perhaps, George Eliot was the most popular exponent, he writes, at his best, rather as a poet than a Spencerian psychologist. . . . What effect have these two men of genius produced on the younger authors of their generation? George Meredith has, undoubtedly, the greater num- ber of so-called imitators. Men who do not read him at all are accused of imitating him. This may be due to the fact that both Meredith and his supposed copyists have an admiration for Victor Hugo. Mr. Hardy, on the other hand, being an observer of life rather than a student of books, has a smaller following, and, indeed, unless a writer ventures to intro- duce a rustic into his story, he need never fear any accusation of catching the "Hardy trick." When I think that Almighty God was willing to come down from Heaven, and sit anywhere, in order to tell a lot of vulgar people the most perfect little stories in all creation— I refer to the Parables— I own that I cannot tolerate the gifted beings who can only bring themselves to address a little circle who are not, by the by, especially anxious to be addressed. 146 Art and Artists Whenever I read a book I ask myself the question, "How ought one to write of human beings? In an idealistic way or in a natural way ? " All men are engaged either on this side or that ... and I believe I have the world with me here that the idealist is •? r ^^P^^^" ^hy- Before one can Idealise life one must have triumphed over it. The Idea ist is the master of his material, whereas the naturalist must ever be its slave. Goethe and Victor Hugo have tried every- thing, but Shakespeare has said everything Humamty, in his plays, is set before us per- fectly and more delightfully than Nature. He eliminates the lie from the fact, whereas Nature IS always obliged to give the lie as well. T.ll ™e/i™nth century, that spleeny Luther had not yet jaundiced all the poetry of the world My comfort is that Shakespeare telt the malady approaching and broke the magic staff, and drowned the book of inspira! tion m time. Prospero's abjuration in The J.»(there is a tragedy for you!)-is but a sad farewell to his enthusiasm _ to that wisdom which Socrates possessed till the end and called a dream, which we would fain possess and call Romance. In our days enthu- siasm IS regarded as the virtue of dupes, and distinguished modern writers at home and 147 Life and To-morrow abroad have every literary gift except that essential one. You may call it by another name, if you like— piety. ... It is impossible for an impious— and therefore selfish- mind to possess that genial humour which is inseparable from a sound judgment, or to understand Irony, which, as you will admit, makes the strength of tragedy, the gaiety of comedy, the pathos of life, and the whole business of metaphysics. Shakespeahe never dhaws one-sided figures, or tells a story with its back to the light. We have the whole situation, and all the souls. In Homer the characters may all be said to speak as men and poets ; it is so in the Chanson de Roland ; it is so in Shakespeare : in the Northern classics they speak as men only. The Sagamen have a cruelty, a harshness which deprives even their greatest work of that pro- perty which we imperfectly describe as " inspir- ing." It leaves us cold and frightened. It is as the great sea— restless, mighty, barren, and unkind ; and, owning its magnificence, we turn toward the warmth and sympathy, the beauty and homehness, the infinite variety of the land, for we ourselves are of its dust— it is our com- mon mother. And we find this earthly element in the Southern and Western schools alone. . . • In Homer the natural and the supernatural are as much one and the same as in the Epic 148 Art and Artists of Dante or the Book of Tobias. When the supernatural becomes in any poet's mind a decoration, not an essential, he ceases to be in the true sense a poet. He may be a careful craftsman, but he will remain at best the chief machine among his own mechanical inventions. He must inevitably fall with the rest of those idols which St. Paul has called ''nothing in the world." Now, there is an element other than natural in the Sagas, but it cannot be called supernatural, still less romantic. It is bar- barism, barbarism of an impious, ugly kind. We find the same peculiarity, educated and mewed up, in the prose dramas of Ibsen. Many well-written foreign and English novels of the present day ... so far from being either wise or useful, add industriously to the unhappiness of young girls and women. I say girls and women because men are not led away by misrepresentations of domestic life and social facts ; they have, to begin with, every opportunity afforded them of learning the truth, and, just as they are more direct in all their actions than women, they are clearer in their thoughts — when they have them. But the average man is not thoughtful ; ... he feels, and that is enough for him. It is seldom enough for the average modern woman. She broods over her emotions, cherishes them, enjoys them, and, far too often, stimulates 149 Life and To-morrow them artificially by feeding them on unwhole- some literature. Much so-called goody-goody literature is quite poisonous, and many respect- able tales are shocking because of their imbecility. A book may be unwholesome on account of its sickliness, and this is the pecuKar fault of many works which are regarded, by parents, as safe. They are not safe ; their flimsy pictures of love and marriage enervate the mind, and, where it should be prepared to encounter bravely the adversities of life and its disappointments, it is soon made unfit for everything except falsehoods, discontent, and chagrin. Singers often have songs transposed from one key to another, and the unmusical suppose that this radical change does not concern the composer, or affect— beyond the pitch— a song. But pitch may be called the soul of any work of art— whether designed for the orchestra, the singer, the stage, the library, or the picture gallery. The pitch, in fact, is the first question which has to be decided before an imaginative or rhetorical work can be carried out : it is to the whole what the ground plan is to the architect. No great painter, with the possible excep- tions of Rubens, Teniers, Watteau, and Boucher, was ever especially cheerful as we understand 150 Art and Artists the term. No poet of the first rank was ever what is commonly known as bright. Between a morbid pessimism, however, and levity there is certainly a mean, and that is the mean illustrated in the works of Botticelli and Dante. How could any person who felt, who saw, who heard, who reflected, maintain a smiling, un- clouded countenance ? It is not possible. Hope and Beauty are always possible, fortunately, and the two elements are everywhere present in the works of a true genius — no matter how perse- cuted, misunderstood, or unhappy. They become tragic, as Shakespeare became tragic, as . . . Botticelli became tragic, and as Dante, from the commencement, was invariably. But it is a sign of debility in any reader or observer if they mistake any tragic development for what we are so fond of calling at the present time too depressing for words. Those who clamour for a cheerful art do not know what the word Art means. The great thing is to be just, and, so long as the work is kept just and the critic is healthy, sad endings and a right apprecia- tion of the inexorable justice in animate and inanimate nature can cast no gloom. Dante, by the versatility of his genius, anticipated the Renaissance as we understand it. . . . He was altogether in advance of his own time, and the real influence of his mind was not felt until it encountered the spirits of men so 151 Life and To-morrow little resembling each other as Boccaccio, Michael Angelo, Savonarola, and Botticelli. It was not that he had to offer either a religion of joy or a religion of suffering, but a religion of the heart. He had lived and loved, and hoped and despaired, and failed, apparently, in some undertaking — succeeded magnificently in others. He was human before all things, and those who may have found his scholarship repulsive heard an irresistible appeal in his emotions. Botticelli has been called modern and pessimistic — why, I cannot imagine. Joyous- ness, in the reckless, heedless, and unthinking sense, was never yet found in the Italian genius at any period. I believe I am right in saying that the joy of living — where it may be said to exist — and the amazing rubbish written on that theme to-day are modern affectations. A creature of reflective mind could neither reflect nor create on joyousness alone. A bland, smiling Madonna could be executed by an irreligious person only — a person, indeed, of no reverence. When Botticelli, therefore, gave his Madonnas an air, in some cases, of extraordinary suffering, he was not pessimistic, but entirely right. He did not forget the sword in the heart. She began to strike out chords which he had never heard before. Then they broke, like waves within waves, into melodies and counter- 152 \ Art and Artists melodies. And, as he listened, he thought of meadows where lovely flowers grew, and of sun- shiny orchards ; gardens where young girls were laughing, chatting, dancing, pelting each other with primrose balls in the moonlight; knights in armour rushed past him on white horses, and he met Death, who was grave, with folded wings ; and he met Youth, who was cross-gartered, tall, and comely, who sucked an orange while he read his lesson-book; and he met Love, whose feet were white and spotless, though the road was black with mire, and whose face was like the dawn, although the evening was come. The wind— how it moaned ! And the rain never ceased ! Mist, darkness, and yet a choir chanting in the distance ; the odour of incense and the sweet breath of pure air and spring ; the little laugh of water when it strikes a pebbly shore ; the trill of a brook running through fields to the sea; the sound of many wings in the air, and then . . . singing: — " Fear no more the heat o' the sun, Nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages. Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust." The artist's life is — unending labour, supreme desolation, infinite love. 153 1 XI THE DRAMA If the gods have no sense of humour they must weep a great deal. THE DRAMA The theatre in England is a sport-not an art. In France it is an art, but . . . it embraces more than one profession. Patrons of the drama may be divided roughly, into two classes : those-the majority —who want sensational incidents as effectively planned as may be; and those who look to the stage for the rapid exposition of human charac- ter. . In France ... no crude realism in the dialogue is ever tolerable from a Hterary pomt of view, and the balanced phrases of Maurice Donnay, H. Lavedan, Hervieu, Her- mant and others no more reproduce the inane slang and feeble, illiterate vocabulary of modern drawing-rooms than the divine verse of Shake- speare gives us the everyday conversation of the aristocracy of his time. An artist aims at the spirit of things. He deals in symbols and dia- grams. He 18 not a shorthand reporter • he does not hang about the law-courts in quest of the right word " and " the real thing." No author should make all his characters speak in 157 Life and To-morrow precisely the same manner— the literary manner ; —but, just as every portrait painted by any artist of distinction has a certain family resem- blance in the matter of treatment, expression and the like, so each character in the play of a genuine dramatist has the peculiar mould of its creator's workshop. . . . Until it is realised that language, no less than music, is a way of hear- ing, and the presentment of character a way of seeing, England will have no drama which it can olfer in comparison with a similar branch of art on the Continent. . . . Among the many dan- gers which threaten all sincerity in modern English work is c . . the identification of an artist with his productions. It makes the most steadfast a little timorous of ofPering his know- ledge to the public ; and in place of science we have special pleading, instead of life as a whole we are treated with apologies for its accidents. A sort of rickety sentimentalism broods over the growth of every imaginative work, and, whether the theme be, as a poet has said, " the recovery of a straggling husband," or the pursuit of an inconstant lover, we wait in vain for one moment of real passion, or, in default of it, one note of ironical sympathy. When ^schylus and Sophocles and Euri- pides wrote for the stage, they chose plots which had outlived criticism, which had been received for generations. Shakespeare, Jonson, Corneille, 158 The Drama Racine, Goethe, and Victor Hugo did not attempt to invent fresh stories and make them reason- able. The thing is not to be done in the time at the dramatist's command. ... It is impossible to make a moving history absolutely clear in (say) four scenes of (say) thirty minutes dura- tion. A bald statement of facts is not dramatic : it leaves no opportunity for emotional dialogue, and emotional dialogue is, before all things, what people wish to hear. There was never at any former time in England such a craving for beauty in all its manifestations as there is at present. Beau- tiful language is seldom heard, and few authors now have the power of writing it; but beauty must be somewhere in our plays ; and, in order to cover the poverty of the dialogue, our greatest artists are asked to design the scenery, and the actors are clothed in raiment more dazzling than the most extravagant monarchs have, at their gaudiest, presumed to wear. . . . The fact that Shakespeare's plays were given without scenic advantages but reminds me that his verse fills the imagination with such glowing images of all that is lovely and desirable that the en- vironment in which it is spoken is of little consequence. Dialogue . . . should be a symbol of real conversation. . . . The passions are better ex- 159 Life and To-morrow pressed in poetry : the sentiments in prose. . . . The difference between Meredith's touch and Sheridan's is the difference between Watteau and Hogarth. This is our dialogue at its best. At its worst, it is a mixture of false sentiment and tawdry rhetoric. And yet we have the happiest tongue in the world. Greek cannot be more simple, Latin is not more stately, no Frenchmen have been wittier than our epigram- matists, Italy cannot show more musical love- songs. But our young critics cry for the ''convincing" phrases of the law-court witness and the "inevitable" conclusions of the philo- sophical detective. There are at present in England three authors who write dialogue with the poet's feeling for rhythm. Many write brightly, some with pathos, some with wit, some with erudi- tion ; but an ear has been unhappily denied to a very large number. We have sentences beyond the capacity of the human jaw ; we have phrases huddled together. We have long tirades with- out a speck of colour, an image, or one har- monious chord from beginning to end. Speech should be musical, and dialogue should have as much beauty as blank verse, with more variety in the beat. Shakespeare's clowns speak ex- quisitely modulated prose. In this accomplish- ment the French and Germans stand unrivalled. The most realistic scenes are composed with as 160 The Drama much care for the varied balance, the proper emphasis, and the euphonious word, as those of a more lyric nature. The three modern English authors to whom reference has been made are not backward in their command of this most difficult art. But, three against the British nation— all scribbling ! Once I found a speech in prose— prose so subtly balanced, harmonious and interesting that it seemed, on paper, a song. But no actor or actress, though they spoke with the voice of angels, could make it, on the stage, even tolerable. It was too long in one bar, and too short in another ; it dragged, it jumped, it vexed the ear and stilled the brain ; common rant would have been more vivacious ; a column recited from the dictionary could not have been so duU.^ Yet the speech is nevertheless fine stuff; it is nevertheless interesting in sub- stance : it has imagination : it has charm. What, then, was lacking? Emotion in the tone, and, on the part of the writer, considera- tion for the speaking voice. Stage dialogue may have or may not have many qualities, but it must be emotional. It rests primarily on feeling. Wit, philosophy, moral truths, poetic language— all these count as nothing unless there is feeling of an obvious, ordinary kind. Great passions and the " enormous " are, on the other hand, beyond spectacular repre- 161 L Life and To-morrow sentation. Love is probably the sole great passion which an audience of average men and women can endure for more than one act and to a tragic issue. Large exhibitions of ambition, jealousy, avarice, revenge, pride, fear, and the like, please but few minds. The more emotions conveyed, or hinted at, the better, no doubt, yet not one of them, with the soUtary exception already named, should be raised un- duly to the depression of the others. The theatre is a place of relaxation. When the majority of pleasure-seekers find a piece tedious, it is a failure beyond question as a play. When the majority find a piece agreeable to their taste, it must have fulfilled, at all events, one vital condition of its existence as a piece. It is at least an entertainment. The vulgar, much- abused melodrama has this unfailing character- istic—it will hold, in the face of every aesthetic objection, your cheerful attention. In a comedy, life must be presented in a deliberately artificial way— that is to say, presented under strictly artificial conditions. No one, for instance, in looking at a portrait is asked to mistake it for a wax model or a real personage. In admiring a twelve-inch landscape we do not blame the artist because we are unable to scamper, in reality, over his fields or pluck the lilacs in his garden. We go to him neither for a decep- tion nor an imitation— but for an idea, an illus- tration, or a statement. Play-writing and 162 The Drama novel-writing may be compared in more senses than one with the art of landscape painting. To see the sun set once is not enough, to see once the tide come in is not enough, to have risen once, in the country, to watch the dawn of day is not enough. One must be so intimate with Nature that one could not— even if one tried— present her, or any aspect of her, con- ventionally. One knows nothing unless one knows her infinite variety. Describe humbly what you see, and you cannot go wrong; de- scribe what others have been taught to see, and you can never, by any possibility, be right. The instinct of a close student of life is always to reject the plausible. It is by this ready accept- ance of the plausible that human beings are so often, and unnecessarily, disillusioned. No two creatures are precisely or even within any real degree of approximation, the same : each soul has its own individuality. There may be schools of people just as there are schools of thought, but Types— the typical stage diplomatist, the typical young girl, the typical widow, the typical stage foreigner, the Type, in fact, of any sort- are not to be found in Almighty God's creation or man's society. They are nothing in the world, and there is no speculation in their eyes. Many Anglo-Saxon writers find their content and, it may be, their compensation for existence, in attacking the indehcate subjects of Gallic 163 Life and To-morrow plays and novels. It cannot be insisted on too often that no subject is in itself indelicate. The treatment is all ; and, just as it is possible to pollute the simplest theme by gross language, a vicious point of view, or a cowardly shirking of the great sorrow underlying all things, so it is equally possible to illuminate a theme, in its attributes displeasing, by a clear, straight vision and a conviction of the dignity of mankmd. Laughter there may be, for where there is no laughter it may be said there is no vitality. A TRUE BOOK and a true play cannot be otherwise than moral. It is the false picture —no matter how pretty— which makes for immorality. A WELL-KNOWN MODERN French critic has . . . said that the difference between the drama of England and the drama of other nations lies in the fact that the Anglo-Saxon public wish to hear whether Edwin marries Angelina,, while Europeans elsewhere wish to know the moral effects of the marrying, or the not marrying, on the souls of the symbolic pair. ... A little group, in many centuries, have succeeded m hitting artistic perfection, but a man who has the courage to take even a wisp of psychological truth into the small parlour of a London theatrical manager is a man who is by no 164 The Drama means unconscious that he is writing rather to satisfy his own sense than to impress those who cast respectful glances toward the agents of trick-wrestlers and prodigious children. It is wrong to maintain, however, that the English mind is not given to introspection or the analysis of moral crises. It analyses without method and without impartiality, but it is shrewd enough to be fully sentient of its own misery or its own satisfaction. So FAR OUR STRICTLY NATIONAL theatrical art is found in Gaiety comedy and Drury Lane melodrama — these things are racy, thoroughly English, and representative. There is nothing in the least resembling them elsewhere. . . . But when we turn to the drama proper we find writers and players alike bound down by the fantastic notions of what will or what will not carry across the footlights. I maintain that sincerity will carry anywhere. . . . There are two ways of being simple : one can be true to life or true to art. Sometimes it is possible to be true to both, and then we get the triumph of an actor or of an author, but such triumphs occur but seldom in the course of a whole century. . . . But ... the good, workable, straightforward plays about people as they are, or, if we are inclined to romance, people as they would wish to be if all things were equal . . . these can, at least, be true to life. Let us give 165 Life and To-morrow Art a rest for a little. I think Art can take care of herself. I have always thought so. She never came to any one for the asking, and in all her ways she is as capricious as Fortune. In . . . attention to life and the observation of humanity, as opposed to the study of defunct canons of stage craft, and obsolete sham heroics, I see all the hope for the British drama. Vulgarity has a positive imperishable charm; it is sham nobihty that is revolting. And sham nobility is the disease of our heroes and heroines in serious drama or fiction. They cry, they faint, they moan, they justify them- selves at length ; they are artfully driven by their author into dilemmas w^hich a funny*' character would gf^t out of without a single tirade or an attitude— far less a " curtain." But the need of nobility is in their wires ; they must, by some means, be " noble " ; they must excite pity and terror for their fate— a fate, which, given to the secondary lovers, w^ould provoke exhilarating amusement. . . . x^n action cannot be dignified, or be made to seem so, unless its acknowledged responsibilities are great— great for good or great for woe. All the tall talk from classic sources w^ill count for nothing — except transparent and fatuous hypocrisy— if the thought, underlying the deed, be squalid or petty. NoAV ... NO ONE CAN ACT the jcune premier lOG The Drama because the jeune premier no longer exists in society. . . . An actor is mimetic — he cannot imitate unless he has some model. A play- wright cannot please his audience by drawing a type which has ceased to exist. The race of romantic lovers is dead. . . . In . . . Octave Feuillet's ''Romance of a Poor Young Man" . . . ''Better death than dishonour!" exclaims the hero, leaping from a high tower in order to avoid compromising a lady who by accident had been locked with him in an isolated room of a lonely ruin. Nowadays the two would have played bridge, smoked, and waited till dawn, or the arrival of a search party : the lady might have been a little compromised, but the young gentleman, in any event, would not have cared in the least. . . . The jeune premier . . . was exalted, he was fond of rhetoric, and he lived, as it were, rhetorically : he tossed his hair about, he enjoyed a good gesture, and he would only abandon one noble attitude by assuming another ; but he had a warm, generous heart, and he could send his kind soul into worlds elsewhere at a moment's notice. He loved with all his might, and the sterner the parent, the harder the fate, the crueller his adversities, the more he loved, and the more beautifully he expressed his emotions in a voice which grew stronger and more melodious as his cares became more squalid and depressing. An attic enchanted him ; debts aroused him to enthusiasm ; duns 167 Life and To-morrow inspired his best utterances ; shabby raiment made his countenance the more striking. He was a splendid creature : they have taken him away, and they have given us nothing in exchange. There is nothing to be said against rhetoric on principle. We have all met born rhetoricians, just as there are born sentimentalists, but the best rhetoric ever written loses its point unless it is plentifully punctuated by pauses. Often a speech which is not in itself outrageous is made to seem so because the actor hurries through it as though he were speaking faster than he thought, and then we get . . . the comic note. Each utterance should seem to be the result of some experience ; it should be con- nected with some earlier line of a scene in the play, or it should itself be leading up to some further development ; the whole essence, in fact, of composition turns upon this. ... I am fully alive to the difficulties of the playwright. If he decides to be serious, he is expected to be more serious than life itself. He has to conceal his humour, that decent gaiety which underlies existence always. And I maintain that if you do not give that decent gaiety in the dialogue or the demeanour of the players, you will get a scornful gaiety in the audience. The common sense of humanity — perhaps I should say, the common wisdom of the pit — will assert itself. 168 XII CRITICISM Up, up, . . , Thou hast a flight to fly past barbed CRITICISM The critic must have, above all things, ex- perience and insight, and a thorough familiarity with the technique of the actual art under consideration. The " I-like-it," or " I-don't- like-it" method of approaching other men's work may provide readers with amusing occasional articles, but they are not criticism. We all know that Sainte-Beuve, in France, and Matthew Arnold, in England — to mention two critics with whom other critics have differed, but whose rare gifts have never been questioned — would not write of any work unless they could give the best which they themselves possessed to the task. There is no reason in the world why the critic should always be right. There is equally no reason why he should always be wrong, but that he should be careful and highly-trained are qualifications he may not lack. As IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to imagine sound govern- ment without some system of rewards and punishments, so is it hard to believe that the 171 Life and To-morrow arts would flourish if there were no critics to make tradition and no scholars to defend it when made. It is true that all the criticism of the ages has failed to call forth another Odyssey or a second Agamemnon^ but it is also true that the creative and imitative faculties have failed in precisely the like regard. To write divinely — either of hell or Olympus, of enchantresses or wives, of love or of death, of life or of sorrow, we must be able to say with Phemius, the minstrel : " I am self taught, but God has put into my heart all kinds of songs." Criticism, however, takes rank with jurispru- dence. It has a science and philosophy wholly independent of the song in the heart," the passing fit of sickness, or the temporary mood of enthusiasm in its professor. There is a saying that the best prophet is the best guesser. This engaging rule does not apply to critics. A critic must be, before all things, a reader of books and hearts. " Personality " — which is an easier thing to acquire than erudition — ^may lend and has lent — in certain instances — a grace to appreciations " and an excuse to ignorance, for there is among the English-speaking races a gloomy tradition that mere scholarship is born of the dead languages, and begins life, as it were, a mummy. The great Dr. Bentley ventured to write of scholarly matters in such racy, familiar, inelegant and readable phrases, that, while he delights the first Grecian of our 172 Criticism own time, there were once many who found — there are many now who would find — his " ways of speech" both "mean and low." Learning, according to the Anglo-Saxon, ought to be dull. One has heard of the accomplished essayist who classified Homer, Milton, and Voltaire among the Epicureans because they wrote epics. She was reproached by an obscure Fellow of Balliol for whom the publishers had no sort of use. The superior and more illus- trious person whom he had ventured to correct surveyed him with contempt, saying : " I thank God that I have some imagination ! " And she went home to resume her monumental work — Paul de Kock: an Appraisement. No CRITIC LACKING ... a sense of humour is to be trusted. 173 XIII COUNTRY LIFE To watch the world from such a corner ... one would swear it was all virtue. COUNTRY LIFE Imaginative minds, or minds warped by the perpetual striving in the meanest ways against the meanest difficulties, regard many tempta- tions aa a decided privilege— a distinction. Money gambled away on the Stock Exchange and the merry women of great cities, or the credit given to well-known people, and the opportunities squandered on those who appear to have already more than they can regard, fill the provincial heart, too often crushed,' slighted and misunderstood, with a rage which is not always impotent. There is no loving-kindness even in the best of provincial Christians for ill-behaved members of the aristocracy; there is rather a fierce consuming wrath and a desire for swift ven- geance. Revolution and the democratic spirit m England come, not as they do elsewhere in Europe, from the common people, but from the solid wage-paying and wage-inheriting of the nation. In that part of the world no lady was ever 177 M Life and To-morrow expected to be quite prepared, so far as her own raiment was in question, to receive sudden callers. Rooms were supposed to be swept and garnished— that was the infallible sign of good management-but a housewife who was always found spick and span in her best gown, and did not have to keep visitors waitmg while she dressed in order to receive them, would have created a bad impression. In the first place, she would have the air of one who looked to find the whole neighbourhood on her door- step-an arrogant assumption ; secondly it would point to extravagance, vanity and wiltul pride. Nevertheless, after one had waited twenty minutes or so for the mistress of the house, it was right to pretend by one's air that she had been detained for every possible reason except that of dressing for the occasion. One had to look as though she had break- fasted at eight that morning in black silk trimmed with bugles. Such is the actual hypocrisy of social etiquette when it is analysed. Oh those long days in the country— days of anxiety without distraction, of patient waiting for letters-no matter from whom-which never come, days of trivial necessary tasks impossible to shirk, yet so wearisome in their accomplish- ment dlys when life can promise neither love, nor youth, nor joy, nor even death-when the 178 Country Life world seems a mighty grind-mill where slaves eternally toil without rest and without hire. Tattle over an obscure tea-table has all the essential vitality, if not the mighty events, of some secret murmuring among the powerful. In the one case a humble career, in the other a whole nation, may be in the balance, but in both instances the world— the discerning, un- sparing, remorseless world— manifests its spirit. It is, moreover, the one prophet who works, it would seem, with ingenious energy, to make adverse predictions come to pass. Dwellings closely packed together destroy, or disturb, the finer visions of the grandeur, sternness, and depth of life. At Oatesby, the solitude and the waves exercised their power over the spirit, diverting it from trivial speculations to awe and wonder. There, where the unseen could move freely and the invisible manifest itself on the perpetual rocks, the towering trees, the still green fields, and the vast acres of the sea, one could hear the dream- ing prophet proclaim the burden of the Lord ; and the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the mill-stones and the light of the candle mattered not. But the kingdom of all the worlds— the worlds and habitations not made with hands— 179 Life and To-morrow rose up as the real theatre of man's destiny and the fit measure of his achievements. It is that sense of the eternity of consequences— and that sense only— which can satisfy the human heart. Time is too short, this planet is too small, and this mortal body is too weak for the surging thoughts, the unintelligible desires of the soul. Nothing less than infinity can hallow emotions : their passingness— which seems the rule in the fever and turmoil of city life— is not their abatement but their degradation. Change they must, but perish utterly they may not. 180 XIV SOCIETY Of course, entertainment for entertainment's sake is the most expensive form of death, and perhaps . . . vulgar ! i SOCIETY It is one thing to cherish your ideals in soKtude ; it is quite another thing to keep even one of them in the turmoil and twaddle of society. Don't you ever feel there is something lacking in these big parties ? Do you never get tired of these smart friends — friends who would tear your soul to ribbons if it would make a lunch more lively? Do you always like these brutal jokes — this hateful scramble to go one better and be, at any cost, amused? Why waste one's time hearing ten times a day, in ten different drawing-rooms, the same jargon, the same empty, feverish talk, the same phrases — repeated till they lose all significance — the same judgments, with nothing spon- taneous, nothing natural, nothing genuine to relieve the artificiality. . . . Nothing less than a shock to their supposed refinement can make some people live at all. They are like smooth, 183 Life and To-morrow panting animals at a cattle show— almost dead from excess of well-being ! Society itself does not practise any of the virtues which it demands from the individual. It ridicules the highest motives, and degrades the most heroic achievements. It is fed with emotions and spectacles : it cries, laughs, and condemns without knowledge and without enthusiasm. There are certain things of love, of nobility, of temperament, of pride, in certain lives which the world at large would rather calumniate than comprehend. To FLIRT WITH SPIRIT, One must be either too young to think or too wise to trust oneself to think. The genius of hospitality consists not so much in making people meet, but in helping them to part — on good terms. Etiquette — that cardboard goddess of peace. People go into society to meet the people whom they wish to meet ; if they don't meet them, they call it hollow ! Society is run by women for women ; that 184 Society 18 Why, once there, they fall easy victims to every danger. . . . The Stage is Paradise in comparison— because actresses really work for their living, and work always gives a redeeming touch even to the weakest characters. Art, too, IS democratic in the sense that religion is democratic-whereas fashionable society must be plutocratic or it ceases to be fashionable. The people who make me nervous are in- the-way people. ... By in-the-way people, I mean people who are quite intelligent-even sharp, but on a mean scale. They have never become the best thing they can be. They are middle-class-not by birth, but in their intellect. Is any one more tiresome than a middle-class duchess ? . . . Her family goes back to the Picts and bcots; her mind is not yet born. As for her soul ... it is not awake because it is not mentioned in the Almanach de Gotha ! I wish we had a Burke about souls. How marvellous it would be ! Vulgarity, like beauty, is distributed by the gods without prejudice; it has nothing to do with one's birth. Besides, what is vulgarity but the unrestrained exhibition of too common human failings? When we call persons vulgar we mean that they are commonplace in an artless and energetic way. 185 Life and To-morrow People who are only in each other's company for amusement and happiness never really like each other so much as those who work together. Beyond doubt, the tendency in EngKsh society is toward parochiaKsm, or rather provincialism, in the point of view. Englishwomen are known to be difficult travellers and suspicious of new faces ; they confuse the notion conveyed by the phrase " tres grande dame " with the beneficent condescension of a lady bountiful toward obscure, illiterate, and servile dependents ; they often mistake the formal precedence given by titles or official rank for some actual superiority in tissue; independence of spirit bewilders, repels, terrifies them, and they are annoyed at any demonstration of what is called personality in idea, ideals, or conduct; each will permit herself or her satellites a good deal of acute eccentricity in dress and manner, but it is always the eccentricity of the amateur— it is rarely spontaneous, original, or convincing.^ In fact, Enghshwomen can seldom become citizen- esses of the world— the legitimate heiresses of a vast Empire— without losing altogether the note, which should be dominant, of their own Mother Country. If they are found charming in cosmopolitan society, they usually seem unsympathetic in England, out of tune with Londoners, ill at ease, misunderstood, distrusted 186 Society in country houses. The great success, either in diplomatic, or military, or political, or aristo- cratic circles abroad, is seldom popular at home. He or she has gained a larger vision, a flexibility in thought, an impatience under arbitrary local pettinesses in every disguise. The return of the native means too often the return of the utterly estranged. 187 POLITICS Your chances in the House will be clean lost if it once gets rumoured that your opinions have a touch of other-worldliness. They want serious politicians. POLITICS As FOR POLITICS . . . both political parties disgust me. When I see two legions of vulgar fanatics fighting, I find it a war between those who want to keep everything for themselves and those who try to rob others of what they have got. The arguments they fling at each other are empty declarations, and all the benefits which they describe on platforms they forget in the jealousies and schemes of mere party interest. Political reputations are made by saying what you think, and they are kept by saying what you don't think! There is NOTmNo more fatal to a political career than brilliant impromptus and spirited orations. A statesman's words, like butcher's meat, should be well weighed. To BE RISING is in many respects more agree- able than to have risen. In one case it is all looking forward, in the other it is all looking 191 Life and To-morrow back— and looking back is not the joyfuUest work in the world. Lot's wife was an allegory. A MAN WITH A CAREER can have no time to waste upon his wife or his friends— he has to devote himself wholly to his enemies. The men who struggle for the public good die— either in battle or from over- work— while the sharks, adventurers, and drones share in the results of victory without having to pay for it, whether in blood or by labour. Those in this country who try to improve matters are cal' ^d faddists and " cranks," or they are accused of working for self-interest. A martyrdom nowadays would be called an advertisement. 192 XVI ENGLAND English people are at their best when surprised into agreeableness. N ENGLAND Other countries— especially those of Europe — may be compared, but England, with its ideas and customs, is the one place which will never be cosmopolitan. Catholicism — Protes- tantism itself — takes peculiar, distinctive characteristics in this country. The English can never deal with systems or ideas. They can only attack individuals — you depend in a crisis on the passions of men ; never on their reason. Whereas if you over- hauled their reason, worked it, and trained it, the passions, at the critical moment, would be roused with better effect, and would be properly organised. Organised passions are what you need for a strong pubhc movement. Whirling emotions in contrary currents are utterly futile. It is strange . . . that EngHshmen and Turks take no interest at all in the souls of women. We all admire physical beauty, but moral beauty exercises the lasting fascination, and as a study it is the more engrossing. Now 195 Life and To-morrow Frenchmen are instinctively drawn toward psychology ; so are Germans to a certain degree, so are Russians, Italians, and Ameri- cans. Yes, would you believe it, these practical, hard-headed Americans are greatly attracted always by the feminine soul and mind? They like to know what women think, how they feel ; they are inspired by their ideas ; but in England, if you speak of a woman's soul to a man, he supposes you must be either mad or affected. The multiplication of unnecessary words —each representing a bit of money — is a national calamity. It has affected the House of Commons, the Law Courts, the transactions of all business, pubhc or private, the composi- tion of every class of book, the newspapers, and, finally, the mind of the race. ... In art every line should be alive, and in speech, whether domestic, commercial, or rhetorical, every remark should convey a direct notion- otherwise it may be called dead. But . . . people think their indolent, valueless, uncon- sidered thoughts aloud ; no child is ever taught how to control his mental processes ; no man is ever asked to put his ideas into concise form. We have reached the stage when senti- mentality and philosophism have taken up the 196 England room of poets and philosophers. The new generation in our educated classes seem to feel that nothing, save money, is worth their while. On the other hand, in the labour classes, there is an aggressive desire on the part of each unit to assert his or her individuality. Now it has always seemed to me that the gospel of Individuality is a doctrine of failure, whether in politics or art or in any other sphere. That Mazzini said this when he was urging a revo- lution, with himself as its presiding spirit, does * not detract from its profound truth as a dictum ! A strong personality, following on the beaten track, may, perhaps, go a step or two farther than his guides, whereas, if he seeks to cut out a path of his own, he will find himself wandering in a painful circle outside the common starting-point. The consequences of any action are no longer regarded as eternal or even irremediable ; they may be serious — they cannot be ever- lasting ; they may be hard — they cannot be beyond some alleviation. The new view of existence is not exactly cynical because cynicism is based on some system, at least, of thought or philosophy ; but it is flippant. I THINK IT WOULD be a pity if we became, as a nation, flippant. It does not suit us, because it is only an outward flippancy. It is not in the 197 Life and To-morrow race to take things, which we have been taught to regard as sacred, lightly, but the evident rebeUion against utterly false conventions . . . is a sign of great health and vigour in the present generation. Many of the observant in Europe have noticed that the desire for immortality is dying out. A number of men no longer wish to live for ever— but they do wish to live as pleasantly as possible while they live. . . . But, just as people never worked as they work now, they were never before so eager as they are at the present day to have luxuries and pleasures and enjoyments of every kind— and they are des- perate, often without knowing it, because, also without knowing it, they have this feeling . . . that if they do not get some prize here, and immediately, to show for their pains, they may never get anything at all. There are signs in the land that the great science of human souls— which was always the first consideration in the Catholic religion and in all other mastering religions— is being restored to its right position at the head of all the sciences. It is a monstrous thing to compre- hend the stomach of a dead fish, and misjudge, through ignorance, your brother s soul. I DO NOT SAY THAT there is not enough 198 England self-analysis and self-introspection. The least sympathetic persons will think willingly and incessantly of themselves. . . . Self-study is to psychology what the practice of scales is to the musician— a means of gaining clearness. But just as one may play scales to perfection, yet stumble ignominiously through a fugue by Bach, so the individual may know, beyond praise, himself and his needs, and yet go utterly wrong in his estimate of a fellow creature. We live at a time when most men and women have progressive, analytical minds. Humanity and the world do not explain them- selves naturally or easily. . . . There is an in- satiable curiosity about the why and the wherefore. When we hear that this is so, we next wonder whether it need be so, especially when the rule seems to press unfairly upon us, or upon those we love. In other words, there is an immense impatience of the unnecessary. We all wish to reduce the pain, confusion, disap- pointments, and tyrannies of life to the lowest possible minimum. And so, daily, practical experience offers more instruction upon formid- able enigmas than any meditation or science can ever give. That is why we often say that an energetic life is the happiest. There is no time to think. I prefer to say that there is no time to exaggerate our thoughts and emotions. 199 XVII INDIA Kali . . . remains . . . eternally mysterious, eternally baffling- menace to the ignorant, a reality to the despairing. INDIA At half-past four in the morning, while the stars made the city lights seem little more than candle flames, and the bright moon made the harbour signals mere spots of glowing red, I saw Bombay, a dark, low mass against the sky, for the first time. ... The spirit and pride of Empire must fill the heart of the least ambitious Englishman when he sets foot on Indian soil and beholds the life, the colour, the imposing buildings, the strangeness, the fascination of the city of Bombay. . . . During those brilliant moments when one unforget- table impression succeeded another as weird and unforgettable— (the light in the East makes every scene a permanent silhouette in one's mind)— I saw, for me, a whole new continent revealed— new in feeling, action, motive, form, philosophy, thought, achievement. The eternal energy of the world was^ mani- festing itself in ways, for objects, on principles and under conditions magnificently unfamiliar to the European. Yet this was the point for 203 Life and To-morrow wonder and exaltation : it had all been or- ganised, it is now governed and subdued by Englishmen, who, having inherited England's prejudices and traditions, have received the great advantage of an English education and suffered the disadvantage of English insularity. Imperialism in the ordinary London man seems, and is, vanity ; to foreigners, who have never visited India or the Colonies, it is the last feather straggling on a moulting peacock. But let the satirist come to Bombay — even for an hour — he need not go further ; he will admit freely, and no more doubt the vigour of the Anglo-Saxon or his stability to hold a vast possession. The first impression of Bombay may be compared with the first impression of New York — power and enterprise are in the air; but whereas New York has already an appear- ance of too much luxury, too much ease, and of being, as it were, the haunt of mere pleasure lovers, Bombay, built as Venice was built, on small islands, seems still in her first youth — a rising city, immature, not over-rich ; a city where all men go forth early to their labours, and dream at night of ambitions hardly to be fulfilled, of wishes which must wait, at best, for many a year before they may be gratified ; a city of patient hearts, watchful eyes, hopes long deferred. 204 India There is a force in the plains of India as cruel and as forbidding, as deep and as hungry as the sea; there is, one feels, a world of worlds engulfed in the barren soil ; it has a fearful vitality— the ruined city of Fatehpur- Sikri is dead, imperial ancient Rome is dead, Versailles is dead, but the plains breathe as the ocean breathes ; they hold a terror which strikes, captivates, appals the imagination. You look away in weariness — the eternal sameness and aridity hold no plea for your love, but your eyes will have caught the dull dye of the sand ; the blue dome over Florence, the tenderness of the sky in Touraine, the autumn sunsets off the Hampshire coast will seem unreal and fading impressions after the monochrome of India. Many descriptions have been written of the Palace . . . built by Shah Jehan at Delhi . . . but in giving the rich details one loses the delicacy of the whole effect. A precious stone is not beautiful because it is large, or costly, or extraordinary, but because of its colour, or its position in some decorative scheme. ... It is not the splendour of the Diwan-i-Am and the Diwan-i-Khas, but their exquisite symmetry which enchant the eye ; it is the design of the inlay, not the rarity of the materials employed, which seems to cast upon the walls some far-off reflection 205 Life and To-morrow from the City not made with hands." Never- theless, the atmosphere of the Palace, and its appeal to the heart, is that of the earth and the fulness thereof. After two and a half centuries of tragic, mysterious history, it stands, true to its inscription . . . If on earth be an Eden of bliss, It is this, it is this, it is this," — a supreme pleasure house — the one perfect temple in existence for pride and the flesh. If one could imagine the Joy of Life wandering restless, homeless, and forgotten through the world, she would halt at last at Shah Jehan's Eden of Bliss and make it her abiding-place. It is perfect, because of all architects— the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Egyptian, the Jew, the Pagan, the Christian — the Mohammedan alone could believe in the permanency and everlasting dominion of the senses. To him there was no mockery in earthly passions ; to him there was no need of Epicurean philo- sophy to dissuade his mind from pondering too bitterly on the evanescence of every delight. He did not say, with the old heretic Omar : — " And if the wine you drink, the lip you press, End in the nothing all things end in — Yes ; Then fancy while thou art, thou art but what Thou shalt be — Nothing, Thou shalt not be less." He did not have before him, as the reward 206 India for a life of self-abnegation, the indefinable Nirvana, which, according to some, is a country of celestial happiness, to others a state of absolute annihilation, where man is delivered for ever from life, its evils, and its fugitive gladness. To him the absorption of his own soul hereafter in the universal spirit offered no recompense for religious austerities and meditations here ; for him the bliss of Moksha was neither credible nor alluring ; to him there was no blessedness in mourning, no in- heritance for the meek and lowly, no vanity in youth, no folly in love, no snare in bodily beauty, no deception in riches, no adder in the cup, no hidden woe in festivals. And so he was able to create with exultation and security a palace to the greater glory of man. In the gayest capitals of Christendom there is a lurking self-contempt, and a certain de- fiance about the mansions, whether new or old, of the rich. They are built, let us say, to last long enough. Royal abodes are grave and chilling ; the new hotels, restaurants, theatres, and music-halls have a forced bright- ness ; one feels that they were all conceived in melancholy, as a financial speculation for the use of a fatigued, feverish, and unbelieving race. Comparisons between the Himalayas and the Alps are commonly, and I think wrongly^ 207 Life and To-morrow made. The vast, vague, and sentimental terms applied to mountain scenery are in the vocabu- lary of every tourist, and cover pages of every guide-book ; unless one has something to offer which is peculiarly illuminating or profound on this tortured subject, silence is best. Mountain regions, moreover, demand the most faithful study. Let me confess that I have not the audacity to attempt a descrip- tion of the sunlight on Kinchinjunga and Mount Everest, merely because I once rose at four in the morning and saw that glory. As well spend an hour at daybreak with a pilgrimage outside St. Peter's at Rome and write an exposition of Renaissance archi- tecture. One receives a stupendous and stupefying impression of forces unrealised, heights unreachable, depths incalculable, worlds elsewhere, cities without sites, towering, it may be, between the earth we know a little and the sky we question in vain. We may send our souls there, but we must leave our lan- guage, our daily similes and metaphors, our secret idols, our weights and measures, behind. 208 XVIIl VARIA There is nothing so fascinating as sincerity. It is so uncommon ! O VARIA People are so fond of quoting God when the Law is inconvenient ! And when God is inconvenient, they quote the Law. It is almost as easy to do wrong for a good motive, as to do right for a bad one. There are always so many reasons why we should follow our own wishes. A FOOL CAN GIVE more reasons for his folly than a saint can urge for his wisdom. We have five senses, but only one conscience. That explains everything. The game is unequal. Some kinds of knowledge you cannot study — you find them when you are looking for some- thing else. Conscious refinement may not be pleasing, but it is an incomparably better thing than grossness, whether conscious or unconscious. 211 Life and To-morrow People get to like a soul, but a satisfactory hat makes an impression at first sight. When an unpleasant truth has once been admitted, it often becomes not only the easiest, but the most enticing topic of conversation. Do NOT GET your nose in an artificial manure- heap and think you are studying nature. Interesting things are never true . . . and the truth is only convincing when it is told by an experienced liar. No STAGE is so DEGRADING as the pulpit if you are driven to exhibit yourself there. People in general cling to their opinions not because they are true, but because they are their own. If we always observed our friend's wishes at the sacrifice of our own, we might often find ourselves committed to much that would be unwise, and more that might even be immoral ! All forced virtue is degrading in its effect. There is an invertebrate pseudo-philosophic jargon come into fasliion which is the most immoral thing I know. The old naive senti- 212 Varia mentality was silly, and overdone, but it was at least graceful, and it was almost decisive. This other is utterly hollow. It makes the whole of life seem unreal. And yet it makes for the same result as plainer talk. Tout finit toujours de meme . . . par la fin. Poets, reformers, and philosophers — even religions — change nothing. They merely give humanity new reasons for doing the old things, or old advice in fresh language. A TRUTH IS NOT to be set aside by any other truth whatever. When enthusiasm grows languid, the up- right conscience will snatch at any occasion for the display of numb generosity. Those who despise artificial privileges do not attract those who make artificial privileges worth while. Discretion generally means having a good memory for the lies you have told. Only very dangerous people tell the truth about themselves : the wise try to tell it about other people ; the discreet avoid it altogether. Most true things are in bad taste. 213 Life and To-morrow There is no virtue so sublime that it cannot be used with advantage even in a comedy- situation. Few things are so full of mockery as virtue, and if those who cannot maintain it have to endure a certain open contempt, those who remain steadfast often break their hearts in secret. If St. Ignatius had not been wounded at Pampeluna, should we have heard so much about the Jesuits? If only the beautiful and contented and young were allowed to sit in judgment, what different verdicts we should get on social sinners ! Philosophy is an amusement to those who feel nothing, and death to those who feel too much. Humour is the refuge of the disappointed wise. Of the music-lovers one meets, half of them are merely animals hypnotised by a noise; a third abhor it, but have not the courage to say so. The Arts are but drugs for the disappointed imagination. When I meet some one who can 211 Varia be natural without becoming a revelation of human brutality or imbecility, I ask nothing from the Arts. Mind, in the long run, always feeds upon heart. When the emotions awake, they set about their business of destroying the body ; they bite and rend. What is duty? It generally means that which your acquaintances — for no reason and without warrant — expect of you. Duty ... in the heroic age meant the in- terests of religion and country. State and family; now it is often taken to mean the claims of the individual soul. To PLAY TO THE GALLERY is considered an abject performance. Yet the gallery do not feel ashamed of themselves. Hints belong to the unconsidered patience of fools. There is nothing more fascinating to a child than an old doll with a new head. The doll, in course of time, swells the dust-heap, but the sentiment is everlasting. 215 Life and To-morrow Among the many voices in a man's heart, there is always one that remains incorruptibly honest. No MAN WANTS what he almost wants. We take our joys as though they were trifles, and act as though melancholy were the only serious thing in life. No MAN KNOWS his language till he has lived it. Some thoughts . . . are as impalpable as sounds, and, just as music ceases to be divine when it is poured out of some mechanical con- trivance, so the mysteries of the human soul become mere bodily conditions — more or less humiliating — when demonstrated, catalogued, and legalised. All things have a resurrection except the emotions. They are born ; they die ; they never return. A happiness or a despair once gone is a phantom for ever. Death in grotesque circumstances is none the less death, and the martyr to a fool's cause is still a martyr ... it is the heart that makes the occasion. 216 Varia Happiness consists in being able to formulate wishes with the serene knowledge that a better wisdom directs their fulfilment. The veritable world, even on its bare merits, is not so bad. It is full of beauty, and interest, and enjoyment. It is a lie to call it so many vile names. One's good sense revolts. The distinction between inhumanity and the supernatural lies in the breath— the inspiration of mortal deeds, not in the doers. There is the idea fallen from heaven, the idea risen from hell, and the idea rooted in Limbo— that sphere of unproved trespassers and unestablished saints. Any one of these three ideas will make the man or woman possessing it, remarkable ; it will be the divine element in the noblest success, the terrible word in the least pitiable tragedy, or the germ of romance in the most ignominious failure. There is a time when the possible Immortal in us will be no longer denied, no longer slighted, no longer called a stomach — to be calmed with roots and extracts, nourished on meats and milk. Passions and enthusiasms leave one; they depend on our happiness, our health, a host of accidental, non-essential things, whereas you 217 Life and To-morrow can remember your duty at every turn — on your death-bed, or at your gladdest moment. Your death might be just such a moment, so the alternative is not so sharp as it ought to be. The terrorless but uncommunicating joy of life which while men live they pursue, desiring it with the one human craving which survives every misfortune, every thwarted hope, all en- slavement of the heart's small freedom— the thirst for happiness. Men heap together the mistakes of their lives and create a monster which they call Destiny. Some take a mournful joy in con- templating the ugliness of the idol. These are called Stoics. Others build it a temple like Solomon's, and worship the temple. These are called Epicureans. Some are the prisoners of God and some are the prisoners of men. . . . Let us work — not judging. The condition of New York and Chicago now is precisely the condition of old Venice, old Florence, and old Athens. These great cities were brought to perfection in times of peace by the wealth of their own merchants. . . . The actual temperament of the American people 218 Varia is not a day older than the sixteenth or seventeenth century. . . . Their very faces and features belong to another period. They suggest the Old Masters. Perhaps the most remarkable social pheno- menon of the New World is the position of women. While few take an interest in political affairs, while they seldom, if ever, show the least interest in the business or professional interests of their male relatives, they show an extraordinary activity in their club life, in organisations of every sort and description — philanthropic, social, and educational — which alfect, of course, the whole country. The com- bination of nationalities has produced a woman who has something in common with all races, and still remains something which we can only define as American. Her greatest characteristic is ^her independence of men's society. . . . One cause, I think, of the American woman's inde- pendence arises from the fact that boys and girls are educated, to a great extent, together. . . . The girl who has no brothers grows up inured to the peculiarities of the human boy which are so apt to remain the peculiarities of the grown man. On this account a charge is sometimes brought against her of a certain coldness and want of sentimentality. . . . But it is too soon yet for Americans to be sentimental. . . . Senti- mentality belongs to the late eighteenth and 219 Life and To-morrow early nineteenth centuries, and is a little ahead of them still. The Spanish, of all European people, have changed very little in the course of the centuries. They are the least theatrical, least self-conscious race in the world : to see the peculiar natural- ness which we call childlike, we must study Spanish men and Spanish women. Their move- ments are quiet; their faces are, for the most part, transparent — their character, either gentle or undisciplined, shines through ; in speech, they are simple ; in feeling, they are not subtle, but, on the contrary, very definite ; their eyes are not given to flashing — they are usually steady and profound ; they are neither very merry nor very sad, but they are graciously serious. In their loves the women have much in common with Irish women. They are as faithful, and they are less discerning — that is to say, they give a blind love and they are not witty in detecting the ironies — many of them hard — in all affection. 220 XIX SORROW " What do you think of while you sit alone ? " "I think of summers that are past and stars That fall ! There is nothing left to say. My heart — which holds my words — is broken. SORROW O WEEP, MY HEART, for Summer days are fled, The earth is cold, and roses that were red, Birds that once sang, and little things that flew Are dead. The pallid day is moist with chilling dew, There is no noon, because the wind that blew The clouds across the sun, is stern, poor heart, Like you. The knowledge which depends upon suffer- ing, and, in a way, springs from it, is good, yet it must always be incomplete. Happiness has its light also, and in order to get the right explanation of any soul, or to understand the meaning of any situation, one must have had at least a few glad hours, felt the ecstasy of thoughtless joy, drifted a little while with the rushing, unhindered tide. Most op the world's sorrow is caused by the blindness of the unimaginative. They 223 Life and To-morrow happen to be in the majority, and the rest have to spend their lives wincmg. It is often held that it is better to have trouble in one's youth than in one's middle- age ; the fresh heart, it is thought, is stronger to bear grief. But this is not the case. Afresh heart is also an immature one ; it is tender, impressionable, amseasoned, altogether too deli- cate for hard blows. No sorrow is so bitter, because it is so httle expected, or so unmiti- gated, because it is so little understood, as the sorrow in a young mind. The world at once seems squalid, Providence unjust, and when the sense of suffering injustice begins to domi- nate a soul at its first flight the wings grow heavy, the way looks dark with unknown terrors, and the ultimate goal is considered as some probable mockery, cruel and desolate. SOREOW WILL EITHER destroy or quicken what may be called the animal charm m a human countenance. Money makes a difference; it is in one way or another at the root of most sorrows. One cannot move without it. Philosophers, as a race, have been men of private means The over-anxious have no time to moralise. One . WAY of meeting sorrow is to get 224 Sorrow most awfully interested in it, and take a sort of poetic view of it. One can do it. Indeed, that is why self-flagellants of all sorts get a pretty good time. Shut out feeling — both for yourself and for others, and look at what is going on in your own heart and body — just as if it did not matter a jot to you or to anybody else. No DOUBT SOME of the most beautiful, the most enduring, the purely disenfranchised objective of the world has been done by slaves : they had so much to forget that they hurled themselves — mind, heart, and body into their task as men leap from a burning ship into the sea. A man's unhappiness may be good for his work . . . but it is not good for him. Pleasures are so much more difficult to remember than woes, and^ while hours of happiness are dearer in their passage than in their recollection, hardship and suffering are resented more fiercely when they are over- come and outlived than at the time when the very necessity for their endurance produces a certain stupor. When the heart has a certain measure of distress, it is agitated and in revolt, but when it is full of woe and can contain no more, it is 225 p Life and To-morrow still, and its stillness passes for resignation to destiny. Why does nothing seem incongruous or humiliating to the happy? To happy people — bent on pleasure or interesting business — omnibuses, cabs, and trains are accepted gaily. But misery renders the mind sensitive and critical ; it fears to be made grotesque, and the first pang of discontent is also the first yearning for pomp — which is a disguise — or, failing that, invisibility. The feeling v^hich is worse than . . . anger or the desire for vengeance . . . because it is more enduring and more subtle, because w^hen it has once entered into a heart it leaves its poison there for ever — the deep despair which is the counterfeit of resignation. The people who suffer most are always those who have a sense of justice. When the moment comes for the rack there is no sudden awakening as from a bad dream. The torture has to be endured, and no miraculous release turns the agony into peace. Is NIGHT LESS NIGHT because it pales gloriously before the sun? Is day less day because it darkens into evening ? Is joy a false thing 226 Sorrow because it passes? Does not sorrow pass also ? I CANNOT FORGET that every supreme blessing must be bought with long sadness, both before and after. If no one is completely happy, no one is completely unhappy. On the other side of the limit fixed to all suffering and all joy, there is a sort of stupor. To BE HAPPY in a light, easy way — without any trouble ... is impossible. True happiness has something terrific — all but agonising — always. It is a birthright. Do not hang back from it. Get rid of the fear of suffering. It is a state of death — not life ! Let heart-sickness pass beyond a certain bitter point and the heart loses its life for ever. Hope is the heroic form of despair. Such must have been the feeling of the great Law- giver, who, if you remember, sang as he started for the Promised Land, and died in silence when it was at last shown to him. Moods change, and the most dolorous are often remembered with smiles. Yet they 227 Life and To-morrow never fail to contribute to the heart's great hidden store of misery and disappointment. Despair— that tearless, white despair which falls on the shoulders Hke a mantle of stone— for ever cold, never more to be thrown aside. It faUs so Hghtly at first, almost like snow . . . or does it stun, and for that reason seem nothing till consciousness returns? It is not until everything has gone wrong that we see how easily it might all have been right. And always ourselves to blame, never any one else— only ourselves. It is always terrible to see human beings martyred by the pain which they themselves have invented for their own torment. If tragic experiences come, they must not be deliberately sought : cold-blooded curiosity, premeditated imprudence, stimulated feehng, teach nothing but bitterness, and give nothmg except artificiality. ... One unexpected, untold sorrow is a surer discipline than any immber of elaborate, acknowledged, and paraded griefs. When uncontrollable grief takes posses- sion of a strong soul, it comes almost as a child that must be indulged and compassionately treated. 228 Sorrow Pain and despair and heartache . . . cast you down for awhile, but afterwards — they help you to understand. It is hard to be just when you are miserable. It is so hard not to hate the happy when you feel heartbroken. Extreme grief hath no fear, nor limit, nor shame . . . Its violence, impalpable as the wind, Scatters our inmost nature till we seem Bare empty trees with neither wood nor leaves — But only bark that's brittle, and soon dust ! There's much for men to do, yet, when all's done. All's said, all's planned, all's thought, there still is much That men have to forget. And this is hardest Of all his labour underneath the sun. Death can occur more than once in one life. The passing away of every strong emotion means a burial and a grave, a change and a resurrection. The tearful, dusty, fiery, airy process must be endured seventy times seven and more, and more again — from everlasting to everlasting. And the cause is nothing, the motives are nothing, the great, great affliction 229 Life and To-morrow and the child's little woe pass alike through the Process— for the Process belongs to the eternal law, whereas the rest is of the heart's capacity. One has to be very strong in order to support the realisation of a long deferred, almost abandoned hope. Affliction seems to intensify a personality, adding to it a distinct- ness, a power altogether commanding and irresistible, but even in our purest happiness we lose something of ourselves, and become, momentarily at least, less our own masters, and more pliant to the reproof of chance, the sport of destiny. There is but one way of resisting the woe of life— the infinite must oppose the infinite. Infinite sorrow must be met by infinite love. ... We have the sorrow, and the infinite love is God's. . . . Still the very book in which the vanity of all things is most insisted on has lived itself nearly three thousand years. Solomon has given the He to his own despair of being remembered. ... I believe he wanted to conquer the world, which is strong, and his own weakness, which was even stronger, as an adversary. We must know the measure of a man's desires before we can sound the depths of his regrets. 230 Sorrow I AM SURE that sorrow is never in God's ordinance the whole law of life. There are thoughts which are companions having a language, and there are other thoughts which rest in a painful sleep upon our souls till the dumb weight of them brings us to dust. Grief, despair, the desire of beauty, the sorrow of partings, the thirst of ambition, the attach- ment to friends are not small, contemptible weaknesses. Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas is the cry — when we hear it in the market-place — not of wisdom but of weariness. It is uttered in the qualms of satiety and disappointment : it does not come from the great spirit of renuncia- tion. A strong man has living blood in his veins and he shows his character not by despis- ing — still less in denying — his emotions, but in exalting them. And that is no light achieve- ment. The labour of it is not until the evening only, but for the watches of the night and the early morning and the noon-day, and for all the Seasons and for all the year and for all the Fasts and for all the Feasts. It is always easy to say of another's misfor- tune, "What does it matter to me?" or, "There must be these sentimental — these emotional — crises. They form the character. It is all for the best — God is good!" All these things are true in the substance; all these things occur 231 Life and To-morrow invariably to the wise spectator of human fates. But more than wisdom— more than the formal utterances of piety is sometimes required of us, and, while a sleepless night for your neighbour's woe may not assist him materially in his trouble, we know that the Divine Economy per- mits nothing to be wasted. Every unselfish thought sends a lasting fragrance into the whole moral atmosphere of the soul. To THOSE WHO are unhappy, to-morrow is a word without significance. AN EPILOGUE {Spoken by a Daughter of Eve, zvho is loeeping, and an Angel, tvho looks out of fashion.) THE ANGEL. This is only Sorrow For To-Day. Life begins To-morrow! A DAUGHTER OF EVE. So they say. THE ANGEL. Life with love and laughter Gay and free — Yet no heartache after. 232 Sorrow A DAUGHTER OF EVE. Can it be? THE ANGEL. Life with work that reaches To the sky; Life that never teaches How to die. Life that is eternal, Ever young, Ever bright and vernal Just begun I A DAUGHTER OF EVE. Will To-morrow ever dawn? Shall we wake that golden morn But to see All the treasures gained by tears, All the faith that's won by fears- Vanity ? THE ANGEL. Doubter, look behind thee In the past, All the dreams that pleased thee Did one last ? Is a wish remaining From thy youth ? This thou art retaining If 't was truth. Mortal passions sicken, 233 Life and To-morrow Fade away — Love alone can quicken Earthly clay. Faith, and all endeavour That is pure, Hope and Love, for ever These endure. All things else are folly To the wise, — Quit thy melancholy And thy sighs ! Suffering can never be suppressed by statute. It is a law of nature, but, as all other laws of nature, since it must be obeyed, let us at least submit as sons of God and co-heirs with Christ— not as beasts of burden and as those who believe that all labour is in vain. 234 XX DEATH Rest to their spirits ! Satan hath tried them sore. God shall adjudge them now : man never more ! The night is gone and morning is come unto me ! DEATH Whatever one says of life must be insincere, because life itself is insincere. But death is sincere. People die of long, cruel, weary, sorrowful, or empty days ; never of a bright one, and never unaccountably. Nothing is more reasonable than death. Is IT so EASY even to acquiesce in the great bereavements caused naturally, against our will, by death ? Does one ever, in the hidden depths of the mind, mistake the cinders of a consumed anguish for the stars of peace ? If, after many years, the dead we have broken our hearts for could return to us— what should we say to them ? What should we offer ? Words which are only sounds, the arid stain of tears once shed, a teeming love drilled into a barren misery, arms which have clasped thin air too long to know how to embrace a friend. 237 Life and To-morrow " Go back," one would say, " go back ! I have forgotten how to be glad. I cannot welcome ye ; I have nothing to say to ye." And perhaps they would leave us, and, as they disappeared again from our blind sight, we should feel again in our inanimate lives the old ache and agony, the torturing pulse of human grief. Death itself, when at last we reach it, is probably not lonely — for solitude is only oppressive during our waking hours. Death never gathered pain from face more tranquil. No fearfulness is here. This filthy world Has ta'en its cruellest tax. 238 XXI RELIGION I am thinking of the things that money cannot buy ... the ideals that men and women have died for, for which they have been burnt — tortured, martyred. Are they nothing in the world ? We have to look upon this world as the merest pilgrimage, but we can help each other. I have hope because I have faith. % I RELIGION A DIALOGUE Between Luttrel, a Socialist, and Father Stonyhurst, a Jesuit, Luttrel. My dear Stonyhurst, is there any chance of your becoming a Mormon prophet? Stonyhurst. God forbid ! ^ Luttrel. Then you will understand how likely I am to accept Roman Catholicism. Stonyhurst. No man's experience can teach another, but I have seldom met a reformer who did not have a personal grievance, or a grudge, against one, at least, of the Commandments. He wants, as a rule, something that he has not got. Luttrel. That is a universal feeling— it fills your churches too. Religion is mainly for the discontented, and governments encourage it because, on the whole, it keeps the poor resigned, and the rich terrified! How many revolutions have been held in check by the parable of Lazarus and Dives ? Give parables to the mild, and gin to the strong. There's constitutional legislature in a nutshell. Life and To-morrow Stonyhurst. You are in good spirits, and a little joke at the expense of humanity doesn't come amiss. The heart, to be serious, always is dissatisfied. I will allow that. But when the average sensual man begins to use his reason, it is usually to justify his bad actions, or his worst desires. One may reason ^ ad- mirably and reach monstrous conclusions. There was very little the matter, I take it, with Nero's logic. Scoundrels and maniacs are never fools. LUTTREL. I'll be generous, and own that saints are never fools either! There is a great deal to be said for every point of view. But the moral faculty is a faculty of feeling— a susceptibility of pleasure or pain. We are free to act, perhaps; we are not always free to desire. The strongest motive wins the day always. The strongest motive with you is to renounce. You give up your will, your nature, all your secondary interest. The main interest is obviously religion. I take everything the gods send in my way. I want to enjoy exis- tence to the full. I have watched these men who quarrel with life— their years of shattered nerves, the dread of insanity, wretched, sinking energy, sleepless nights, despair ! Stonyhurst. You would go through as much and more for a political struggle, or some love LuTTREL. But why keep in a pond when the 242 Religion whole ocean is free to you ? — although I daresay it is a question of temperament. But say you are ambitious or hungry. You can decide whether you will gratify that wish for power, or that appetite. You cannot command the desire as a craving, or the hunger as a sensa- tion, or destroy either by refusing to indulge them. They are there — they are part of you, yourself. Stonyhukst. And why not ? But you have admitted that the decision rests with you whether you will work for the ambition, or appease the hunger. There's your will. As for ruling motives or ruling passions — if you sit brooding on your thumb for a sufficient number of hours, you will soon get to find that your thumb governs your existence. You will be- come, as it were, a thumb and nothing else ! LuTTREL. Granted. The same argument ap- plies to the will-power. Meditate on that and it will, undoubtedly, control one to a miraculous point. And thus we come again to the strongest motive. Stonyhurst. But it isn't the argument ever — it is the still, small voice. A poor old French cure I knew used to have one answer for all questions — " II faut ecouter le coeur ! " LuTTREL. That is precisely what I am doing. Stonyhurst. Then there is hope for you. I feared you were trusting entirely to Pure Reason ! The heart has its own punishments 243 Life and To-morrow for its own errors, and its own light for its own darkness. A man is judged according to what he hath, and not according to what he hath not. LuTTREL. In Heaven, possibly, but certainly not in this world. Here he is judged according to what other people have in the way of intelligence or knowledge. There is never the slightest trouble or thought taken to reahse why anybody does anything, thinks anything, or feels anything. A man is to be hanged next month for some crime. Has he been judged according to what he hath, or what we have done for him, or what we did for his parents ? No, we seem to start with the assumption that he had every natural and moral inclination fostered in righteousness. It is quicker to hang him than to think about him ! Stonyhurst. Your heart is in the right place ! I leave you to your own heart and Almighty God ! Religion is the one thing which can give either meaning or dignity to life. The two things which affect a career most profoundly are religion, or the lack of it, and marriage, or not marrying ; for these things only penetrate to the soul and make what may be called its perpetual atmosphere. The Catholic Faith, which ignores no single possibility in human feeling and no possible flight in human 214 Religion idealism, produces in those who hold it truly a freshness of heart very hard to be understood by the dispassionate critic who weighs character by the newest laws of his favourite degenerate, but never by the primeval tests of God. All ouk finest ideas of romantic chivalry are Roman Catholic. The Church . . . has taught us that Marriage is a Sacrament. She has ever laboured to inspire men with a reverence for women. Do we not call Holy Church herself, our Mother ? Is not the Blessed Virgin our gracious advocate, vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra ? No true Catholic husband or wife could ever fear the " influence " of Catholicism. The fears would be for the influences of all the putrid philosophy outside it. The immortal spirit can find no permanent content in pleasures that must pass, no per- manent despair in griefs that are also transient although their flight be slower. Joy is a swallow : woe, an eagle, but both have wings. The soul that is hid with God may watch these birds and wanderers whirling, drifting, darting around the ever-fixed Rock of Christ's Church- away from which there is indeed no salvation either in time or in eternity. The sense of nearness to God and of His actual existence as the supreme King of earth, and heaven, and hell, was the crown of the 245 Life and To-morrow early martyrs and the sword of early Puri- tanism. As that knowledge grew less vivid, and scepticism-making a profession of reverence- called this chivalric trust prof ane-hedgmg the King's Divinity about with mysteries, with insurmountable barriers of dogma and Church etiquette, so the crown was stolen and the sword became a white feather. The fear ot approaching a Throne too closely and the desire to keep it inaccessible was and is ever the characteristic of those who would usurp its power-never of the faithful who would serve and protect it. As AN ORGANISATION, the Catholic Church is at once the most democratic and the most aristocratic in the world. Nonconformity in England has been so much impressed by the Old Testament that it might almost be called the Jewish rehgion without the Synagogue; the materiahsm without the profundity; the love of the present without the vision of the future ;^ the Commandments without Rabbiiiism. This is the problem ... put before them : How to live with reference to a world conceived m the terms of the Christian creed ; because there are as many worlds as there are creeds, and each man endeavours to fit the world into the particular creed or philosophy to which he 246 Religion subscribes. . . . All faith is as much an instinct and also a blindness (as the world sees) as human love. Some wish it endorsed by the authority of an infallible Church. Others wish it sustained by the authority of an infallible Bible. ... I see the intellectual strut of the Protestant who will exercise his own judgment, who wants to reduce his religious obligations to a private understanding between himself and his God — Who is usually what he takes to be his own higher self. The strut is foolish ; the rest arises often from mere want of education ; or, in the educated, it is mere pride of intellect, known as the sin of Lucifer ; or it is a real incapacity to submit one's mind to any sort of moral force from without. (Physical force has never yet changed a tendency or an opinion.) This, then, I believe to be the incurable quality in a born Protestant — whether pious or impious by temperament : he insists on the liberty to think and feel and act as he pleases, without regard to the pre- judices of any other human being. You will say this quality is common enough to all vigorous natures ; that it belongs to original sin. True, but whereas the Catholic is willing — frequently anxious — to conquer rebelliousness, the Protestant is proud of it, cultivates it, and calls it — so far from a fault — a manly virtue. The Church of Rome appeals with astonishing strength to two utterly opposite multitudes : 247 Life and To-morrow 1. The imaginative, the tender, the romantic, the visionary, and the poor ; in other words, to all those to whom the world offers little or nothing. They may not be orderly, but they are often devout. 2. The lovers of law, of security, of symmetry, of monarchical institu- tions, of great architecture in every manifesta- tion, of formalism, of ceremonial. These may not be devout, but they are always orderly. To all such she must ever appeal. But to those who, better than all created things, love their individual liberty (which means, I grant, uni- versal anarchy), the Church of Rome is utterly detestable. Rebels and vagabonds, however, grow old — if they are not executed, if they do not die of their excesses either in spiritual enthusiasm or in so-called crime. After middle- age they become conservative, and at last tyrannical, as the experienced madmen in an asylum — they help to keep the fresher lunatics in order. But there are rebels who are rebels in thought only ; for them spiritiial adventures and mental revolutions are enough. They ask only for liberty in thinking. Hence, the many Protestants who are not iconoclasts ; the philo- sophers who could never become theologians ; the professors, the politicians, the preachers, who seeing good in all things, will not condemn more than a part, and then with reluctance, of anything. These are the people who have worked hardest for civilisation. The dangers 218 Religion of amiability are evident : lack of conviction, lukewarmness, a drifting spirit. Somebody must be in earnest ; somebody must be willing to risk a mistake or a false step ... I have risked, and made, any amount of mistakes. I have tried experiments which experience has long since proved hopeless. I have endeavoured to live my life as though no one had ever lived before me. When I tell you that all I have learnt so far confirms absolutely traditional prudence, you will say, " The Church again ! She is always right ! " But cannot one speak of tradition without thinking of Rome? The Church herself is not intolerant, but she is often interpreted by narrow persons. It is only the Church of Rome, which, as a governing body, has been able to encourage the great ideas of any one person without loss to its own power, or without disaster to the person encouraged. ... In the policy of Rome, the first consideration is for the eternal welfare of the Church ; the whole point of view is fixed on what is to come, and the great ideas, whether in the individual, or in the council as a body, all arise from a common religious belief. . . . You will find nowhere out of Rome poetry and the spirit of democracy and a reverence for authority all linked together in one irrefragable chain. 249 Life and To-morrow The Protestants insist on the virtues — you must assume them if you have them not; the Catholics lay more stress on the Sacraments. Now the virtues are, after all, the product of philosophy. Jewish ethics, under the old dispensation, were barbarous when we com- pare them with the precepts taught by the Pagan moralists, who had, nevertheless, no hope, and were without God in the world ! The philosophic mind is not told by the Hebrew prophets. Passionate invective; cries for ven- geance ; lamentations and mourning and woe ; threats of appalling punishment; promises of earthly recompense and the urging forward to worldly aims, crowns and dignities— humanity, in fact, as opposed to spirituality, is the great strain running all through the godli- ness taught before the birth of Christ. One might be perfectly virtuous in every human relation and yet possess an irrehgious soul. On the other hand, one might be absolutely con- vinced of God's revelation of Himself and yet sin against every canon of right conduct. The devil, for instance, must have a sure knowledge of God : his fault was treachery, not disbelief. This thought has always made me feel that the deepest of crimes is to sin against light; it has also helped me to imderstand why . . . the CathoHc Church is so much more severe toward pride of intellect than against the natural weakness of the heart. I think it con- 250 Religion ceivable that God would forgive even Satan, if he would but repent and love Him. Humanly speaking, so long as we feel that we are really- loved we can forgive much. The faults of those who love us are more acceptable than the vir- tues of those who treat us with neglect. I fully comprehend, therefore, why it should be a more vital necessity in the Christian life to attend Mass than to keep a stoic's temper. Faith in God does not in itself alter the funda- mental characteristics of a man's disposition. It seems to me unjust, therefore, to call any person a hypocrite because, while in creed a Christian, he is in the struggle for life, greedy, untruthful, malicious, or worse. Strive for the calm temper, by all means, if you have not received it — as many have received it just as some are blessed with good health, or fine possessions, or a serene mind — but never suppose that natural graces of character, or acquired stoicism or Platonism, or any other " ism " with- out acts of devotion to God will avail you at the judgment ! If there were not another world, I would tear myself into shreds for the very first dis- appointment I met with in this. I could not bear it — the humiliation, I mean. Nor the thought of death either. I would leap, of my own free will, into the depths of misery, I would say, " Not at your time, O Nemesis, but 251 Life and To-morrow at my time. You shall not call me at your pleasure : you shall not hunt about for me, entice me into traps baited with happiness, find me, put me to slow torture, pour me out at your ^ will. No ; I come myself. Tear ! curse ! burn ! wound ! but I first shall have bruised my own flesh, cursed my own life, seared my own heart, spread out my own soul, like a torn rag, on your pitch-fork." This is the proud side of the philosophy of self -mortification, the human. Pagan side. Pride says, "I will not eat the wafers made with honey and be sick afterwards, and perhaps be beaten into the bargain." Pride says, ''I will teach my mouth to loathe honey, and I will myself be a beater, beating myself. What better brute?" The mere strength of a man will declare that much — if he can love anything well enough to feel the loss of it. Some, of course, care nothing for things and persons, but are concerned only with conditions. They will crawd from roof to roof, and from root to root— foi^getting the peach if they can find a turnip, or foregoing the turnip if they may lap up the rinsings of a sour beer-cask. But these are worms and not men. For us — who love once as we live but once — there is under our feet the soliditas Cathedrce Petri. From this we see the other world — indeed, the greater part of the time we may be said to move in it. We may spend whole hours in the Very Presence of the Living God. He is 252 Religion there in perpetuity : He is to be found. He will come Himself, in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, to the heart of the least of His worshippers. It is there and then that pride, a weak force at best, becomes devotion — the mightiest of all forces. The Lord Incarnate, Who laid the foundations of the earth and shut up the sea with doors. Who commands the morning and has caused the day-spring to know his place, Who alone spreadeth out the Heavens, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death — He, the Creator of the world and its Redeemer, is Himself a Sacrifice. To know this is to know all that we need to know. But if the rest is not easy, we always feel that we are not shadows with the gift of suffering, nor chained Titans, nor petty deities, but nothing less than the sons of God and Joint-heirs with Christ. Oh, the splendour, the liberty of this magnificent certitude ! Why do we ever forget it? Why do we sit in the ashes, counting the temporal things we have lost or may lose, when we have inherited as our birth-right all the eternal fastnesses of Heaven ? The cloistered life— in its perpetual pro- test against all that is mean and feverish — might indeed be called monotonous, but it is the monotony of the cry before the Throne— itself imchanging — " Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, 253 Life and To-morrow Dominus Deus omnipotens, qui erat, et qui est et qui venturus est." The Divixity of Christ is the object of eternal contemplations, and at every age- not of the world only, hut of the individual— His Humanity, under our fresh knowledge, demands a different study, and a fuUer under- standing. Because in so:*ie of us those forces which make up spiritual greatness have become de- graded into sins, nothing could be falser idealism than to assume that true perfection is composed of negatives— that the best saint is the one with the fewest feelings. Jesus Christ draws all humanity to Him, not because while on earth He felt less, but because He felt more than all the rest of mankind. And the purer the heart, the greater its capacity for sorrow and joy— the sweeter seem earthly blessings, the more humiliating seems earthly pain. It was not easy for the Divine Redeemer of the world to give a complete and irrevocable acquiescence in God's mysterious decrees. Can one read of the Agony at Gethsemane, and doubt that even the° smallest act of self -mortification in the least of us has been sanctified by that ineffable victory over the desire to escape death —whether of the will or in the flesh ? 254 Religion Some natures attain the condition of reli- gious faith only after many and harassing years of moral experiments : others, on the other hand, are born with so clear a sense of the Divine Omnipresence that they doubt more readily the evidences of sight, than their instinc- tive knowledge of the invisible God. It does not invariably follow that beings endowed with this spiritual perception are outwardly holier, or inwardly more pure than those less favoured. The men who have seen, in rare moments of inspiration, the vision of the Eternal, have not had fewer temptations, nor have they sinned less deeply— less wilfully— than their blinder brothers. Man is known to God by his aspirations— not by his lapses. Few prayers would be answered— and fewer good intentions placed to our credit — if the Judge of all hearts demanded that same un- swerving constancy of mind from us which we so urgently insist on from our fellow-creatures. To be wilfully honest with another human being for even half an hour is enough to estab- lish some claim, at all events, to an immortal soul. And it is enough to explain the Divine desire to save the same. A famous priest once wrote, that the majority of sinners were so excessively unpleasant that one wondered how 255 Life and To-morrow the Almighty could feel love for them. The answer seems plain. With Him we are always in earnest, and earnestness is irresistibly endear- ing. Do WE NOT all live always in a triple atmo- sphere : the atmosphere of God, the atmosphere of Nature, and the atmosphere of humanity? Some natures may feel any one of these three influences in a predominant degree, and so we get what are called differences in temperament. One man breathes in humanity first, and God last. A second will put Nature last. A third will put Nature first. A fourth will aspire to God before all things, and all creatures. But the three atmospheres are ever with us, and make, in reality, one atmosphere. You may toil through many volumes of Metaphysics, and you will learn no higher truth than that. As IN Nature the sun that quickens the harvest must, if unrelieved by other influences, also destroy it, so does a fine quality become, in the human being, the source of disasters as well as triumphs. . . . What bewilderment and dismay, what self-doubt and doubt of all thmgs assail even the wisest of mortals when they find that the lawful is not always expedient, that a measure, blameless in itself, is not invari- ably the measure set down by command. Among the countless problems presented to the mind, 25(5 Religion there is none more difficult than to distinguish clearly between the will of Providence and the accidents, to be surmounted, of daily life — to know when one should submit to circumstances and when one should rise in rebellion against them. Reduced to its very simplest forms, the philosophy of St. Ignatius was this : That man was made to serve God and save his own soul ; that in order to do this, the soul must first free itself from all inordinate affections ; and, after it has freed itself from them, it must seek to learn the will of God, and so find its own salvation. He was no advocate of debility as the first step to Godliness ; and he never taught that one could best follow one's vocation by inducing an artificial languor — indeed, he anticipated many of the theories which we like to call new with regard to diet and its influence on conduct. But, while he was the last to forget the obvious effect of one's food on one's health, and the more subtle influence of one's health on one's mind, he did not over-estimate either, as we do in these days of superficial materialism. He did not think, for instance, that all our faults are due to entrees, that all our virtues depend on the beef and beer we abstain from or consume, that all our sorrows can be mode- rated by the waters of Harrogate, or that all our gaiety is caused and all our emotions are 257 R Life and To-morrow intensified by expensive wines and long dinners at noisy restaurants. He knew human nature too well to confound the digestion with the conscience; so, after making a few plain rules for sane and vigorous living, he concentrated his genius, not on the treatment of the body and its organs, but on the exercise of the soul and its chief powers-the understanding and the will. ... The Saint saw deeply the difficulties of mankind, and instead ot divid- ing the race into the happy and the unhappy, the rich and the poor, the dreamers and the scoffers, the drones and the toilers, he saw two vast classes only-the strong and the weak: his whole wonderful system of mental training, education, and disciphne, was directed toward making the strong more forbearing, and the weak less hopeless. He insists, however, on the duty of cheerfulness; he regards a sombre air or moroseness as a source of scandal to others; he begs us to sanctify all our labour, whether manual or intellectual, superb or humble, by consecrating it to the greater glory of God. As for riches, he says at the conclusion of his beautiful prayer: "Give me, O God, Thy love and Thy grace; with these I am rich enough." Ah if one could but be sure of the ultimate triumph ' . . . What of the souls who fought, vet apparently failed-dying, unknown, un- ^ 258 Religion acknowledged, all their labours unrewarded; who turned aside from the broad way, yet, tor some reason, were not to be found upon the narrow one? The saints who have no day ! Has any one sung their histories, preached their martyrdoms? . . . Most of us in our ap- prentice days feel mighty enough to bear the burden of success, but how many have the strength to fail? ... Yet why not forget the crowmng victory or the final humiliation, whichever it may be : the task is the thing-the task— a faithful answer to one's calling. God will understand. He doesn't ask any one to be alone. He wasn't even crucified- alone. He didn't enter into Paradise-alone. It is all very hard . . . but from the lowest Peonl T «^^rhead. Peoples hearts are touched by the spectacle of sin or the spectacle of suffering. Our Lord could not sin, therefore He reached our sym- pathies by His Death and Sorrows. Of course. It this life here were all, and this world were the only^one, and we were animals with less beauty than many of the inanimate things in nature, and as much intelligence at best as the bees and birds and ants-then the Pagan way might be quite admirable. But this Isn't the case 259 Life and To-morrow EVEBYTHING THAT IS GOOD in Paganism is in Christianity, if you understand it. It is useful to hear eternity mentioned-for there is nothing one so easily forgets. And 1 envy anybody who can speak of God as tibough He were as really alive as the Prince of Wales ! In these days men put on a false tone and look canting hypocrites whenever they refer to the Almighty. When I hear a sermon I feel an inclination always to say, " My dear fellow, can't you put vour case better?" I want good stuff about Divine and human nature-not this vagueness and platitude. Why don't they tell one some- thing about the optimism of God, even before the spectacle of men's weakness ? But, instead, we are told to moan about this vale of tears: we are promised chastisements, disappomtments, woes, persecution. A philosophy of suffermg makes men strong, but a philosophy of despair is bound to make a generation of pleasure- seekers. Men forget what they read ; some do not read at all. They do not, however, forget what thev are told by a vigorous speaker who means what he says. It has been proved ever smce the first beginnings of poUtics that no tyranny could stand for long against the warnmg 260 Religion prophet or the preaching friar or the resolute Nonconformist. Of course, he must be in dead earnest. Newspapers, pamphlets, speeches in Parliament, and reassurances to constituents are as nothing compared with the actual in- fluence of the persistent Sunday sermons of a great preacher. Gladstone had the preacher's quality— religious earnestness. Hence his fascination. It fascinated even the irreligious, because anything mysterious appeals to the wonder. The Devil can give us nothing. It is we who are always making presents to the Devil. Success depends— not on the Devil at all, but on our natural talents. Look at the dancing elephant— has he made any sacrifice to the spirits of evil ? Not a bit of it. He was born with a light foot— for his kind. And as for work ! See how worldly people toil and scheme in order to gain their treasure. When dis- appointments happen they become the jest of serving-maids and lookers-on — food for the crowd! They perish from humiliation. If one wants independence— one must keep on the side of the angels! That is mere prudence— quite apart from every other thought. Is THERE ANY earthly reason why a man should hold the views of his father? We should examine our beliefs from time to time. We can 261 Life and To-morrow see whether we really do beUeve what we think we believe -or what we wish to believe. The fatal symptom is to be afraid of questions. . . . All the same, we can never get rid of the senti- ments which are born with us. A creed is not a matter of logic— it is almost wholly a feeling. No argument can uproot a deep feeling, or produce one. No YOUNG MAN can be happy unless he starts with illusions. To have illusions about a poli- tical career is no longer possible to the observant; it is still possible to keep a few illusions about religion, because that is itself a matter of illusions and the evidence of things not seen— hence its strength. What we see we often learn to despise. KeHgion, therefore, can only be beaten by an illusion as powerful. And where can that come from? And when will men be as much disappointed in God as they are in each other? Religion comes into every act and thought of life— or it is not religion. What is the good of all this religion unless people take it sensibly and apply it to life? One rattles off the Commandments as though they were not scientific truths. Men attach an undue importance to this or 262 Religion that point in received notions of etiquette. We happen to be placed in an age of the world which is conspicuous for the decency of its manners. That is to say, so long as one behaves what is called "decently," or "with common prudence," one need not trouble much about higher considerations. But we are by nature what we are. ... I do not wish to reach that stage of self-suppression when one becomes self -less. Till we have done something, we have done nothing. . . . Almighty God has given us two whole worlds but only one Faith— millions of fellow-mortals and only Ten Commandments. Our opportunities and liberties are thus enormous. They were meant to be used. The world has no imagination, but it is not heartless. Give it good facts for its sentiment, and it will not try to wound your soul. As a rule, however, a man will say, " I cannot believe in the Resurrection, therefore I shall break as many of the Commandments as thwart my personal leanings." That is the attitude of mind which infuriates the kind and the unkind alike, because it is insincere. ... A belief in the Resurrection will not keep a man from drunkenness, or dishonesty, or lying, or any other vice, nor will it keep him from gout, or consumption, or death. A doubt of the Resurrection is, therefore, no excuse for being human. Let a man stand by his humanity 263 Life and To-morrow without pretending that he would be an angel if he could but accept the Gospels 1 A MAX NEED NOT BE a prophet in order to foresee the effect of certain measures on his own character. Indeed, if self-knowledge be not regarded as a sentinel to the judgment, its laborio^us acquisition would be worth the travail of no honest will. Gained, it remains like an mterdict upon all undertakings, projects, ambitions, settmg forth clearly all that one may, or may not, attempt in common life, and, above all. 'in heroism — heroism understood truly, not the false ideals of idle, untaxed sentiment. In all that a max can bring into the world, or take from it, there is vanity and death; but many things are vain merely because they are not eternal, and many things perish because where life is, change must be. Immutable, per- manent possessions are the gifts of God to men. But the gifts of men to God will always be imperfect— whether they offer the sacrifice of their wills or their imagined earthly happiness. Self-discipline seems a sealed mystery to most people except the Catholics and the Buddhists. Protestants never speak of it, never think of it. Their education is all for self- concealment. 261 Religion So LONG AS ONE can exercise outward self- mastery, one is accused of frigid egoism and bleakness of character. The temptations which are overcome, the interior contests and struggles count for nothing, and are unimaginable to those who follow every caprice and yield to every persuasion. Few have the generosity to acknowledge that, although high standards of conduct make for peace in the ultimate resource, the long discipline between the begin- ning and the end is forbidding, forlorn, and so severe that one is usually too weary to care much for the very thing one has striven for, and perhaps gained. The truth is that one is encouraged almost entirely by the far worse condition and disappointments of those who disregard the standards: for, if the souls who struggle against temptations are unhappy, those who succumb to them are incomparably more so. Men will own willingly the dangers, escapes, reverses, and fatigues that they have met or suffered in the body. Such tales inspire the heart with courage, and a hero is found great in proportion to the desperation of his earthly circumstances. But when we come to the adventures of the spiritual world, the case is changed. Either from pride or cowardice, it has become the fashion to make light of those mental combats and perils by which, 265 Life and To-morrow after all, human action is determined and must ultimately be judged. Men, who after many secret disasters have attained to the apparent serenity of middle age, will often leave it to be inferred that they have never been otherwise than sure of their own opinions, con- fident in their own good sense, and unswerving in their duty toward God, their neighbours and themselves. They ask what is the meaning of temptation (beyond the common indiscretions of the table), and they feel certain that the soul must be already in a bad way when Satan has the hardihood to address it. As for them, they know nothing about demons, and, while they have had, with the rest of mankind, their ups and downs— these necessary shifts, by a special Providence, were never permitted to disturb their reason's equilibrium. Now if these accounts were true, it might well be said that the Gospel had been preached in vain. But they are not true, and, in the same way that we doubt the sportsman's tale of game too big for the compass of an ordinary vision, we doubt these cheerful pretenders to a moral infallibiHty beyond our hidden— but no less real— experience of life. To err, we admit, is human, but to confess the error belongs to the saint alone. But whether we confess it or whether we deny it we all know that unless man has an infinite capacity for being foolish, self-renunciation is not a victory and faith is no virtue. 2G6 Religion Pascal has written that there are thousands who sin without regret, who sin with gladness, who feel no warning and no interior desire not to sin. They doubted, hated, loved, acted, felt, and thought just as they pleased. Perhaps they were not happy, but if they received the punish- ment of wrong-doing, the wrong at least was committed out of fetters and joyously. It is not until men find themselves assailed by a strong wish that they perceive how very still and very small, all but inaudible, the still, small voice can be. A motnent comes when one ceases to think — one wills, and if one is able and the will is sufficiently determined, the purpose is carried into effect. Temptations to steal, to lie, to deceive, to gamble, to excess in drink and the like cannot approach a certain order of mind. But the craving for knowledge and a fuller life — either in a spiritual or the human way — is implanted ineradicably in every soul, and while it may rest inert and seem nullified in a kind of apathy, the craving is there — to be aroused surely enough at some dangerous hour. The fokce of a temptation may be said to lie in its correspondence with some unconscious or some admitted desire. . . . He who has even once subdued the flesh in favour of the spirit can never again return in joy to carnal things. 267 Life and To-morrow No CALLING CAN be obeyed without suffering, but as in the old legend each man's cross was found exquisitely fitted to his own back, so a vocation is found to be just when, on the whole, one has fewer misgivings that way than in any other. By the exercise of self-discipline one may do much that is not repulsive only but suicidal — a man may so treat his spirit that it becomes a sort of petrified vapour. When, however, he has dosed, reduced, tortured, and killed every vital instinct in his nature till he is an empty shape and nothing more, he must not flatter himself that he has accomplished a great work. Life is not for the dead, but for the living, and in crucifying our flesh we have to be quite certain that we are playing no ghost's farce, inflicting airy penalties on some handfuls of harsh dust. Ascetics do not make themselves wretched. ... A man may choose to abstain from many lawful things as a satisfaction for sins— not necessarily all his own. . . . Again : what is needed in the service of God? Weak knees, weak backs, and sickly minds ? No ; the ascetic must learn endurance, fortitude, and self- command. He has to bring his body not to destruction, but into subjection. He must not lose his health but perfect it. It is better to be damned, in the world's 2G8 Religion opinion, trying to do the will of God, than saved — doing nothing ! Asceticism is a faithful quality. It is won by slow and painful stages, with bitter distress and mortifying tears, but once really gained, the losing is even harder than the struggle for its acquisition. Men's designs are never so indefinite and confused as when they meet with no out- ward resistance. A close attack has proved the salvation of most human wills and roused the energy of many drooping convictions. It is seldom good that one should enter into any vocation very easily, sweetly, and without strife. The best apprenticeships, whether eccle- siastical or religious, or civil or mihtary, or political or artistic, are never the most calm. Whether we study the lives of the saints or the lives of those distinguished in any walk of human endeavour where perfection, in some degree or other, has been at least the goal, we always find that the first years of the pursuit have been one bitter history of temptations, doubts, despondencies, struggles, and agonising inconsistencies of volition. To natures cold originally, or extinguished by a false asceticism, many seeming acts of sacrifice are but the subtle indulgence of that curious selfishness which is not the more spiritual because it is 269 Life and To-morrow independent of others, or the less repulsive because it is most contented in its isolation from every responsibility. A renunciation means the deliberate putting away of something keenly loved, anxiously desired, or actually possessed: it does not mean a well-weighed acceptance of the lesser, rather than the greater, trials of life. Submission to the severities of God whatever they may be, obedience to authority, a com- panionless existence— these are the conditions ... of the meagre joy permitted to those who, full of intellect, feeling, and kindness, undertake the rigorous discipline of a solitary journey. The world seldom takes account of the unhappy sensitiveness in devout souls: it thinks them insensible, not only because they know how to keep silent, but how to sacrifice their secret woes. And what, after all, are the gratified expectations of any career in comparison with its hidden despairs? Self-kbstraint long practised will, in time, leave little to restrain. The art of dying daily is slowly mastered ; but, once learnt, it becomes an instinct— an unconscious will deciding all our difficulties, solving our griefs. It is not hard to be good when you have love and sympathy and encouragement, but to be good when not one soul cares whether you live or die, when your kindest thoughts, your 270 Religion least selfish acts, your dearest sacrifices are treated alike with insult, cruelty, and contempt —to be good then, that is the great achieve- ment. Stand alone, be indifferent to smiles and frowns, keep your eyes steadily fixed on one unattainable ideal and condemn in yourself all that falls short of it, do that and I will call you happy ! Religion is the one thing which can keep men and women constant to their ideals, and therefore constant in their human affections. The justice of God is severe ... but He can never make mistakes. The hardest cruelties in this life are the mistakes which we commit in judging others— perhaps in judging ourselves. . SURELY never such need to show humiliation as when we are in the presence of a fallen idol. It is not the god, which was no god, that suffers, but its former worshipper, who sees what appeared divinity, corruption, and what looked strength, rottenness. And, in at least some slight degree, this terrible con- templation must be made by all mortals who place their entire faith in mere flesh and blood: who love the creature, which has beauty that we may desire it, more than the Creator Whom no man hath at any time seen. One who wrote of human affections with a tenderness and 271 Life and To-morrow understanding past comparison -who knew its infinite power and no less infinite weakness- one who has taught that by loving man we best know how to love his Maker, has also warned us—" Keep yourselves from idols." It is God alone Whom we may never fear to love too well-it is God alone Who never fails His friends-Who can never disappomt us in His Goodness! 272 INDEX s INDEX Absence, distance . A bull-fight gave me the one straight reply A confidence should never be received .... A course of conduct A false success Affection either grows or dies. A fool can give more reasons. A girl, as a rule, seems to believe .... Ah, if one could but be sure Ah, not for me . . . All affection seems to have been All forced virtue . All lovers are instinctive comedians .... All men are sensible All men are very much . All men need to have near them All the phenomena of nature . PAGE The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 35 The Dream and the Busi- ness . . . .109 Love and the Soul Hunters 102 Love and the Soul Hunters 118 The Dream and the Busi- ness . . . .143 The School for Saints . 17 The Wisdom of the Wise . 211 Robert Orange . . .76 The Herb Moon . . .258 Dedication to A Study in Temptations . . . 135 A Bundle of Life . . 30 The Herb Moon . . 212 The Vineyard ... 14 The Dream and the Busi- ness . . . .141 Some Emotions and a Moral 44 Robert Orange . . .67 The Science of Life . .110 Life and To-morrow All the surprising . All things have a resurrection All our finest ideas. All women wish to see . All youth that is strong . A love of young people . A man may love various women . . . c A man must be faithless A man need not be a prophet A man's idea .... A man's moral force A man with a career Among the many voices An unmarried man Any absorbing intellectual work Any woman can give up the world A peasant once consulted A person who is not an egoist A piqued woman . A Platonic friendship . Are there many, or any of us Art is, after all . . • Artists and poets . Artists, as a class . As a lover— an idealist . As an organisation As a piece of architecture As a rule, there can be no better adviser Asceticism is a faithful quality Eobert Orange . The Herb Moon The School for Saints The School for Saints Eobert Orange . The Vineyard PAGE . 68 . 216 . 245 . 23 . 84 . 85 33 48 264 A Bundle of Life The Sinner's Comedy Eobert Orange . The Dream and the Busi- ness The Herb Moon . The Wisdom of the "Wise Love and the Soul Hunters 216 The Dream and the Busi- ness .... The Dream and the Busi- ness .... Some Emotions and a Moral .... The Artist's Life The Dream and the Busi- ness .... The Dream and the Busi- ness .... Love and the Soul Hunters Eobert Orange . Epic and Eomance." The Fortnightly Bevieiu Eobert Orange . The Artist's Life The Flute of Pan The Dream and the Busi- ness .... The Vineyard Some Emotions and a Moral .... Eobert Orange . 276 45 75 192 74 60 30 37 90 54 69 125 135 138 140 35 246 127 44 269 Index Ascetics do not make them- selves wretched . A self-sufficient soul A sensitive nature dismayed . As for politics As in nature .... As it is impossible to imagine sound government A successful libertine . As women are not trained A tactful lover At half-past four in the morning A true book and a true play . A truth is not to be set aside. A weak man submits A well-known modern French critic A woman alv/ays handles sarcasm .... A woman happily in love A woman is like your shadow A woman need not be evil . A woman never considers love A woman's instinct A woman's mission is to play the fool .... A woman who has not suffered The School for Saints . 268 Letters from a Silent Study 93 The Dream and the Busi- ness . . . . 101 The Dream and the Busi- ness . . . . 191 ine Dcnooi tor bamts 256 "Epic and Eomance." The Fortnightly Beview 171 The Flute of Pan 45 The Grand Magazine 50 The Serious Wooing . 31 ±LLiperiai xnaia . , , 203 Letters from a Silent Study 164 Kobert Orange . . 213 Eobert Orange , 126 Letters from a Silent Study 164 A Study in Temptations . 57 The Serious Wooing . 27 -Liiuuuiu v/range . , The Dream and the Busi- ness .... 76 The Dream and the Busi- ness «... 24 A Study in Temptations . 55 A Bundle of Life 28 The Dream and the Busi- ness «... 54 Beauty is not given . . Imperial India ... 56 Because in some of us . . The School for Saints . 254 Beware of the tyranny . . The School for Saints . 124 Beware of worshipping false images , . . . Tales about Temperaments 122 277 Life and To-morrow PAGE Beyond doubt, the tendency in English society . . Imperial India . . 186 Botticelli has been called modern .... The Artist's Life . . 152 But if we had loved each other The Vineyard ... 36 Calm spectators of mortal folly Columbine in tulle Comparisons between the Himalayas and the Alps . Conscious refinement may not be pleasing Conversation between a dis- illusioned devotee Eobert Orange . . .21 The Serious Wooing . . 23 Imperial India . . . 207 The School for Saints . 211 A Bundle of Life . . 123 Dante, by the versatility of his genius .... Death can occur more than once Death in grotesque circum- stances .... Death itself, when at last we reach it . . • • Death never gathered pain . Despair — that tearless, white Dialogue should be a symbol Discretion generally means . Disillusions all come from within . . . . Do justice to your brother . Do not get your nose . Do not marry a woman Don't you ever feel Do we not all live . Do you realise The Artist's Life . . 151 Robert Orange . . .229 A Study in Temptations . 216 The School for Saints . 238 Osbern and Ursyne . . 238 The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 228 The Academy . . .159 The Wisdom of the Wise . 213 The Ambassador . . 123 The Science of Life . . 91 A Study in Temptations . 212 The Vineyard . . .73 The Ambassador . . 183 The School for Saints . 256 The Serious Wooing . . 20 278 Index PAGE Do you think that love is a plaything ? . XX JJVXllKXlKj \JL XJilO • • 16 Duty in the heroic age . The Dream and the Busi- ness 215 Dwellings closely packed to- gether .... Eobert Orange . 179 English people are at their best Imperial India . 193 Etiquette . . . . The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 184 Every man — even the most cynical .... The Ambassador 49 Every Paradise is always The Artist's Life 123 Everything that is good The Dream and the Busi- ness . . . . 260 Every young man takes it The Dream and the Busi- for granted ness . . . . 47 Extreme grief hath no fear . Osbern and Ursyne . 229 Faust called in all hell . The Ambassador 30 Few prayers would be answered .... The Herb Moon 255 Few things are so full of mockery .... The Flute of Pan 214 vjuu vvij.1 unuex s uanu. • Robert Orange . Goethe and Victor Hugo " Bysshe : A Dialogue." Literature . 147 Great art springs from great convictions The Artist's Life 135 Happiness consists Eobert Orange . 217 TX lil 'Till 1 1 Healthy-mmded lads do not sit A Study in Temptations . 95 He could not desire Eobert Orange . 119 He was not the first bride- groom .... Eobert Orange . 78 He who seeks love Osbern and Ursyne . 13 Hints belong to the Eobert Orange . 215 279 Life and Hope is the heroic form However precious a sense of humour may be . Human love is not a single . Humour is the refuge . I AM so sick of these women . I am sure that sorrow . I am thinking of the things . I cannot forget I can see the world I care less and less I do not say .... If, after many years If all lovers .... If a man cannot love If a man wants to forget If a woman wants to keep . If everybody could under- stand us . If I had an ideal . If it were not for the egoists . If marriage is not for Heaven If no one is completely happy If St. Ignatius had not been wounded . . . , If the gods have no sense of humour .... If the mob insists . If there is an attractiveness . If there were not another world If the world and the flesh If tragic experiences come . If we always observed . If women thought less . L o-morrow PAGE The School for Saints. . 227 Love and the Soul Hunters 102 The Vineyard . . .14 The Vineyard . . .214 The Serious Wooing . . 48 Eobert Orange . . . 231 The Ambassador . . 239 Eobert Orange . . .227 Eobert Orange . . .113 Love and the Soul Hunters 102 Letters from a Silent Study 198 The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 237 The Wisdom of the Wise , 32 The Flute of Pan . . 90 The Wisdom of the Wise . 48 The Herb Moon. . . 48 Eobert Orange . . .66 The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 122 The Herb Moon. . . 90 The School for Saints. . 79 The Vineyard . . .227 The Flute of Pan . . 214 The Sinner's Comedy . 155 The Dream and the Busi- ness 99 Eobert Orange . . .67 The School for Saints . 251 The Vineyard . . .104 The Artist's Life . . 228 The Herb Moon . . .212 The Wisdom of the Wise . 76 Index If you are convinced If you give in to prejudices . If you once begin wandering. I have my dreams and the stars I have watched the sea . I hear and read much stuff . Imaginative minds, or minds warped .... In all such relations In all that a man can bring In controlhng Individual contentment. In educating . In every woman . In Homer the characters In immature women In marriage one does not In order to describe life. In public life . Instinct in choosing Interesting things . In that part of the world In the sixteenth century In trivial matters . Is a wish remaining I seem to have spent my life Is it so easy . Is night less night . Is not the fairy tale The Serious Wooing . The Serious Wooing . The Dream and the Busi ness. The Dream and the Busi- ness A Eepentance . The Flute of Pan The Vineyard . . The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . . Eobert Orange . . Kobert Orange . . The Dream and the Busi- ness . The Artist's Life . . The School for Saints . " Epic and Eomance." Tlie Fortnightly Beview . The Dream and the Busi- ness . Eobert Orange . . The Artist's Life . Eobert Orange . . The Artist's Life , A Bundle of Life . The Vineyard " Bysshe : A Dialogue." Literature , The School for Saints Epilogue to A Bundle of Life . . . . The Dream and the Busi- ness Eobert Orange . Eobert Orange . The Dream and the Busi- ness. .... 281 PAGE 97 97 124 144 107 85 177 69 264 83 122 138 55 148 54 73 136 111 103 212 177 147 81 121 237 226 53 Life and To-morrow Is there a man . . . Is there any earthly reason . It always takes three . It comes to this I think it would be I thought at one time . It is all very hard . It is almost as easy It is always disastrous . It is always easy . It is always terrible It is an obvious truism . It is a question It is better to be damned It is called .... It is God alone It is hard to be just It is mothers and sisters It is much more difficult It is not hard to be good It is not the merely cold It is not the past alone . It is not until everything It is often held It is one thing It is only a very unselfish man It is only the Church of Eome It is only the woman . It is something resembling happiness . . . . It is something to learn. PAGE Osbern and Ursyne . . 31 The Dream and the Busi- ness 261 Kobert Orange . . .63 The Artist's Life . . 36 Letters from a Silent Study 197 The Dream and the Busi- ness 112 Eobert Orange . . .259 A Study in Temptations . 211 A Bundle of Life . . 101 The School for Saints. . 231 The Dream and the Busi- ness 228 A Study in Temptations . 34 The School for Saints. . 132 Eobert Orange . . . 268 " Love and Fortune." The Daily Mail . . .74 A Eepentance . . . 272 The Dream and the Busi- ness 229 The Herb Moon . . . 43 Eobert Orange . . . 125 A Bundle of Life . . 270 The Dream and the Busi- ness 55 The Vineyard . . .113 Some Emotions and a Moral . . . .228 Love and the Soul Hunters 224 The School for Saints. . 183 The Sinner's Comedy. . 31 The School for Samts . 249 The Dream and the Busi- ness 67 Eobert Orange Eobert Orange 282 123 91 Index PAGE It is strange that Englishmen Love and the Soul Hunters 195 It is the weak, effeminate creature .... Bobert Orange . 50 It is to me quite clear . The Flute of Pan 117 It is useful to hear. The School for Saints. 260 It is very easy to attach The Vineyard 81 It may be a fact Eobert Orange . 15 It may be impossible . The Science of Life 139 It might seem The School for Saints. 96 I used to wonder . The Vineyard 45 It was a little soul. The School for Saints. 105 Jealousy founded on reason . The Flute of Pan 98 J ust as the imprudent man . The Dream and the Busi- ness. . . . . 99 Kali remains. . Imperial India . 201 Let heart-sickness pass. Eobert Orange . 227 Life and love .... The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham 16 Life is a shell. Tales about Temperaments 110 Life is not .... The School for Saints. 107 Love comes to man The Sinner's Comedy. 33 Love in some natures . The School for Saints 15 Love is a state The Herb Moon. 22 Love is so mysterious . A Bundle of Life 11 Love that is secret. Osbern and Ursyne . 35 Love, the obliteration . Osbern and Ursyne 21 Man is ever miserly The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham 119 Man is known to God . The Dream and the Busi- ness 255 Many Anglo-Saxon writers . " Modern French Plays," The Anglo-Saxon Beview 163 Many descriptions have been written .... Imperial India . 205 Many good people . The Vineyard 101 Life and To-morrow PAGE Many men have ability . Robert Orange . 89 Many of the observant . The Science of Life . 198 Many well-written . . Letters from a Silent Study 149 Many women enjoy The Vineyard DO Marriage is a discipline . The Wisdom of the Wise . Yd Marriage is an incomparable . The Dream and the busi- ness 79 Marriage is like a good pie . The Ambassador. Marriage rarely does prove Some Emotions and a anything .... Moral .... 80 Men, after considering a woman .... The Wisdom of the Wise . 32 Men always say The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord W^ickenham . 31 Men are all the same . The Herb Moon . 44 Men are not so weak The Herb Moon . 48 Men are punished . Love and the Soul Hunters 112 Men are the dreamers . The Dream and the Busi- ness. .... 4-7 Men are weak. The Wisdom of the Wise . 32 Men attach an undue import- ance The School for Saints. 262 Men cannot be happy . Robert Orange . . . 115 Men divide women. Some Emotions and a Moral .... 50 Men do not like their wives . A Study in Temptations . 49 Men forget what they read . The Dream and the Busi- ness 260 Men have no real confidence . The Dream and the Busi- ness 49 Men heap together. The Sinner's Comedy. 218 Men, I beneve, to be truly happy The Ambassador 47 Men like women . The Dream and the Busi- ness 49 Men may still find. A Bundle of Life. 29 Men's designs are never Robert Orange . 269 Men who have never really The Dream and the Busi- loved . ness 73 284 Index Men who look before they leap Men who will watch Men will forgive any fault Men will own willingly . Mind in the long run Money makes a difference Moods change Most men have veiled por- traits Most of the world's sorrow . Most true things . My dear Stonyhurst Nature is not so easy . Never trust a man's opinions. Never was talk so bitter- sweet No calling can be obeyed without suffering. No critic lacking . No doubt some of the most beautiful .... No great painter . No man ever seemed No man is the better . No man knows his language . No man wants Nonconformity in England . No one can study Hegel No one is born a husband No powerful being. No stage is so degrading PAGE The Dream and the Busi- ness 45 Letters from a Silent Study 92 Love and the Soul Hunters 45 The School for Saints. . 265 The Dream and the Busi- ness 215 The Vineyard . . .224 The Flute of Pan . . 227 The School for Saints. . 79 The Serious Wooing . . 223 The Serious Wooing . . 213 The Serious Wooing . . 241 The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 117 A Bundle of Life . . 33 Osbern and Ursyne . . 29 Eobert Orange . . . 268 " Epic and Eomance." The Fortnightly Beview . 173 The Vineyard . . .225 The Artist's Life . . 150 The Artist's Life . . 138 The Dream and the Busi- ness 144 The Sinner's Comedy . 216 The Dream and the Busi- ness 216 The Dream and the Busi- ness 246 The School for Saints . 19 A Study in Temptations . 96 Robert Orange . . .35 Tales about Temperaments 212 285 Life and To-morrow Not all are blind . Nothing in Nature is solitary No training, no matter . Now, no one can act . . No woman has anything to fear No woman incapable No yomig man can be happy. PAGE Osbern and Ursyne . . 17 The Herb Moon . . .65 The Serious Wooing . . 26 Letters from a Silent Study 166 A Bundle of Life . . 57 "Ideal Friendships." The Daily Mail . . .68 The Dream and the Busi- ness .... 262 Of course, entertamment Of di-eamers there are many kinds Of the music-lovers Oh, those long days Once I foimd a speech . Once I saw a mother . One camiot bear one's neigh- bour's burdens . One cannot cheat Natm'e One does not fall in love One has to be very strong . One is often tormented . One is told so much One may love a sinner . One true love . One way of meeting sorrow Only very dangerous people Other countries Our greatest passions . The Ambassador 181 The Serious Wooing . . 94 The Dream and the Busi- ness. . . . • 214 The Herb Moon . . .178 Preface to The Ambassador 161 " Love and Fortune." The Daily Mail . . .60 Letters from a Silent Study 104 Letters from a Silent Study 110 The Dream and the Busi- ness 2^ Robert Orange . . . 230 The Dream and the Busi- ness. .... 122 Letters from a Silent Study 92 The Gods, some Moi-tals, and Lord Wickenham . 100 The Artist's Life . . o3 The Dream and the Busi- ness 224 , Some Emotions and a Moral . . . .213 The Dream and the Busi- ness. .... 195 . Love and the Soul Hunters 98 286 Index PAGE O, weep, my heart . . The Herb Moon . . . 223 Pain and despair . Pan was a heathen god . Pascal has written . Passionate natures. Passions and enthusiasms Patrons of the drama . People are so fond . People are utterly dissimilar . People die of long, cruel, weary People get to like a soul. People go into society . People in general cling . People who are for ever talking People who are only People who have lived . Perfect friendship . Perhaps it is as well Perhaps the most remarkable Philosophy is an amusement. Pleasures are so much . Poetry — and most of all. Poets, reformers . Political reputations Portraiture, whether in epic . Put the thought of might- have-beens .... The Sinner's Comedy. . 229 The Flute of Pan . . 113 Eobert Orange . . .267 Love and the Soul Hunters 98 Love and the Soul Hunters 217 " Modern French Plays." The Anglo-Saxon Bev lew 157 Some Emotions and a Moral . . . .211 The Dream and the Busi- ness 90 The Serious Wooing . . 237 Love and the Soul Hunters 212 The Flute of Pan . . 184 Robert Orange . . .212 The Dream and the Busi- ness 95 The Dream and the Busi- ness. .... 186 The School for Saints. . 17 A Study in Temptations . 66 A Bundle of Life . . 30 American Impressions . 219 The Herb Moon . . .214 The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 225 The Herb Moon. . . 138 The Dream and the Busi- ness 213 The Wisdom of the Wise . 191 The Artist's Life . .136 Love and the Soul Hunters 124 Rapid changes of mood . . The School for Saints. . 140 287 Life and To-morrow PAGE The Science of Life . . 124 The Vineyard . . .124 The Science of Life . . 257 The Dream and the Busi- ness .... 262 The Dream and the Busi- ness . . . -244 Eeahties are not of necessity. Eeahty to some dreamers Eeduced to its very simplest. Eehgion comes into every act Eeligionisthe one thing which can give .... Eeligion is the one thing which can keep .... Eenan, who was himself Eest to their spirits Eomance seems to have died out Eomance will add , Euskin has insisted Sameness of thought Self-discipline seems Self-doubt has no part . Self-restraint long practised . Sentimentality has all but de- stroyed .... Shakespeare never draws She began to strike out chords Singers often have songs So-called Platonics. Society is run by women Society itself does not practise So far our strictly national . So long as one can . So many of us So many men are degraded . Some are the prisoners . Some kinds of knowledge The School for Saints. . 271 The School for Saints. . 128 Osbern and Ursyne . . 235 The Vineyard . . .37 Eobert Orange . . . 127 The Science of Life . . 118 The Dream and the Busi- ness 105 Eobert Orange . . .264 Eobert Orange . . .16 The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 270 The Serious Wooing . . 118 The Serious Wooing . . 148 The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 152 Letters from a Silent Study 150 Eobert Orange . . .69 The Dream and the Busi- ness 184 Eobert Orange . . .184 Letters from a Silent Study 165 The Flute of Pan . . 265 The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 132 The School for Saints. . 122 The Serious Wooing . , 218 A Study in Temptations . 211 288 Index PAGB Some men take the Church . The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham 36 Some natures attain The School for Saints 255 Some thoughts are as impalp- able Robert Orange . 216 Sometimes it seems A Study in Temptations . 109 Sometimes the soul speaks first . . Robert Orange . 128 Some women are jealous Robert Orange . 52 Some women have The Dream and the Busi- ness . . . . 28 Sorrow will either destroy The Dream and the Busi- ness . . . . 224 Stick to the Immortals . The Sinner's Comedy 101 The Dream and the Busi- pressed ness . . . . 234 Sympathy is the one emotion Some Emotions and a Moral 103 Take the two most dis- tinguished .... The Academy 145 Tattle over an obscure tea- table The Vineyard 179 That fastidious elusive in- The Dream and the Busi- stinct ness , . . . 94 That moment of humility Robert Orange . 18 That's a mistake . The Sinner's Comedy. 48 The artist brings himself The Artist's Life 137 The artistic profession . The Sinner's Comedy. 145 The artistic temperament A Study in Temptations . 139 The artist's life is unending labour The Artist's Life 153 The Arts are but drugs . The Dream and the Busi- ness 214 The best of women The Herb Moon . 58 The best possible training . The Artist's Life. 138 The Catholic ideal . The Dream and the Busi- ness 73 The Church herself The Dream and the Busi- ness 249 289 X Life and To-morrow The cloistered lif e . The condition of New York . The consequences of any action The critic must have The Devil can give us nothing The distinction between. The Divinity of Christ . The emotional sex . The EngHsh can never deal . The essential in conversation. The feeling which is worse . The first exchange. The first impression The force of a great tempta- tion The genius of hospitality The greatest leaders The great gift of self-know- the PAGE The School for Saints . 253 " American Impressions " . 218 Letters from a Silent Study Epic and Eomance." Tlie Fortnightly Beview The School for Sauits. The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . Eobert Orange . The School for Samts Eobert Orange . The Flute of Pan The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord "Wickenham . The School for Samts. Imperial India . The School for Saints. The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord "Wickenham . The School for Sauits. The great ruthless public The great thing is to love The ideaUst driven The immortal spirit The individual is but symbol .... The intuition which comes . The joy of hving . The justice of God . The knowledge which depends The laws whose life The man of letters. The materialised ideal . 197 171 261 217 254 53 195 41 226 66 204 267 184 126 A Study m Temptations . 89 Letters from a Silent Study 126 The Ambassador Eobert Orange . The School for Saints. The Vineyard Eobert Orange . The Wisdom of the Wise . Eobert Orange . Eobert Orange . The Dream and the Busi- ness .... A Bundle of Life The Dream and the Busi- ness 13 131 245 103 67 48 271 223 112 145 123 290 Index The maternal qualities . The men who struggle . The modern is always . The multiplication of unneces- sary words .... The night is gone . The ordinary marriage . The passion of love The people who make me nervous .... The people who suffer . The philosopher may be de- livered .... The precocious intelligence . The prettier the woman The Protestants insist . The race is not to the swift . There are at present There are certain things There are certain utterances . There are many duties . There are many women. There are no triumphs . There are signs in the land . There are such crowds . There are thoughts There are two ways There are very few men There are women who will . There is a force There is a love can find . There is an invertebrate There is an old Hindoo pro- verb PAGE The Dream and the Busi- ness 25 The School for Samts. A rJundle oi Jjiie 1 or: Letters from a Silent Study 1 OA Osbern and Ursyne . no K The bchooi for bamts r70 Eobert Orange . 1 K 10 The Dream and the Busi- ness .... 185 The Dream and the Busi- ness .... 2rZo The Vineyard yy The School for Saints. . ^0 ine xiiuue ot Iran OD Ine Dcnool lOr foamts. A Study in Temptations . yb Modern French Plays." Tlie A-Tiglo-Sdxou jRevicw lou Robert Orange . Robert Orange . At Robert Orange . liU *' Ideal rrienasnips. I ne Daily Mail Robert Orange . 133 Letters from a Silent Study 198 The Dream and the Busi- ness . . . . 00 ine bcnool tor bamts not Love and the Soul Hunters on A Study in Temptations . 106 Osbern and Ursyne . 22 Imperial India . 205 uo The Serious Wooing . 212 Robert Orange . 121 Life and There is a story told There is a time . . There is a tone of the voice . There is but one way . There is no loving kmdness . There is nothing left There is nothing modern There is nothing more fasci- nating There is nothing more fatal . There is nothing so fascinating There is nothing to be said . There is no virtue so sublime There is one form . There is one glory . There is probably one . There is something in beauty There's much for men to do . There was never a Samson . There was never at any time. The saints were always . The secret of managing a man The self-mastered dread These literary and artistic people . . . . The sense of nearness . These young people The Spanish . . . • The spirit invisible wears The supreme difficulty . The terrible irony of life The terrorless . . • To-morrow PAGE Preface to A Study in Temp- tations . . . .89 The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 217 The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 16 Robert Orange . . .230 The Vineyard . . .177 Osbern and Ursyne . . 221 Robert Orange . . . 128 Some Emotions and a Moral . . . . 215 . Robert Orange . . . 191 A Bundle of Life . . 209 Letters from a Silent Study 168 A Study in Temptations . 214 The Vineyard . . .19 A Bundle of Life . . 20 " Epic and Romance." The Fortnightly Bevieiv . 136 Robert Orange . . .18 Osbern and Ursyne . . 229 Some Emotions and a Moral .... 45 " Plot and Dialogue." The Academy . . . 159 Robert Orange . . .140 The Sinner's Comedy. . 43 The Vineyard . . .20 Some Emotions and a Moral . . . .133 The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 245 The Herb Moon. . . 83 Letters from a Silent Study 220 Robert Orange . . .105 A Bundle of Life . . 52 The School for Saints . 122 Robert Orange . . . 218 292 Index PAGC The theatre in England . Eobert Orange . 157 The two things in life . Kobert Orange . 110 The two things which ati'ecit Kobert Orange . 244 The ungovernable charm Letters from a Silent Study 100 The veritable world Kobert Orange . 217 The want of sympathy . The Flute of Pan 53 The weak or the strong . The Flute of Pan 96 The world has no imagina- The Dream and the Busi- 263 tion ness . . . . The world is better lost. Eobert Orange . 81 The world rewards the beauti- ful Robert Orange . 145 The youngest girl . The Dream and the Busi- 23 ness . . . . The young have an instinctive The Science of Life . 83 The young of both sexes The Vineyard 14 They say old people The Dream and the Busi- 85 ness . . . . They say that love The Flute of Pan 20 This ache to be amused. A Bundle of Life 13 This is only sorrow Epilogue to A Bundle of 232 Life Those in this country . The Dream and the Busi- ness . . . . 192 Those who can be disillusioned Robert Orange . 123 Those who despise. The Flute of Pan 213 Those who have made . The Ambassador 80 Those who have substituted . The School for Saints 101 To be happy .... The Serious Wooing . 227 To be rising .... Some Emotions and a Moral . . . . 191 To be sane .... The Flute of Pan 43 To flirt with spirit . . . The Ambassador 184 To know a truth . The Vineyard . 18 To love is to know . The School for Saints. 16 To play to the gallery . The Dream and the Busi- 215 ness To reserved natures The Dream and the Busi- ness. . . . . 105 Life and To-morrow To those who are unhappy . To watch the world To weigh other minds . Treachery kills a woman's love Trouble comes True love must rest Up, up, Thou hast a flight . Vulgarity has a positive Vulgarity, like beauty . Watch the sky We all know that Proper Pride We have reached the stage . We have surely never such need We have to look upon this world We live at a time . We resent disillusions . We take our joys . What a cruel world . . What do you think of . Whatever one says of life What is duty? What is it that can bear What is the good of all this . What is the matter What rubbish is talked . When uEschylus and Sopho- cles When a great friendship When all the worldly maxims When a man gets an idea When a man is at most pains PAGE Eobert Orange . . .232 The Herb Moon . . .175 The School for Saints. . 99 The Vineyard. ... 32 The Serious Wooing . . 74 Eobert Orange . . .15 Osbern and Ursyne . . 169 Letters from a Silent Study 166 Love and the Soul Hunters 185 Robert Orange . . .87 Letters from a Silent Study 91 The School for Saints . 196 A Studj in Temptations . 271 Robert Orange . . .239 The Artist's Life . . 199 The Dream and the Busi- ness .... 123 The Herb Moon. . . 216 The Flute of Pan . . 31 Osbern and Ursyne . . 221 The Dream and the Busi- ness . . . .237 Robert Orange . . . 215 The Wisdom of the Wise . 65 The Dream and the Busi- ness .... 262 The Science of Life . . 124 The Vineyard . . .139 " Plot and Dialogue." The Academy, . . .158 Love and the Soul Hunters 65 The Ambassador . . 105 The Sinner's Comedy. . 43 A Study in Temptations . 44 Index When a man loves a woman . When a man loses his head . When an unpleasant truth . When a real passion When a woman is the first . When enthusiasm grows Ian- g^^ Whenever I read a book When I hear a sermon . When I think that Ahnighty God When love and wisdom fight When one human being at- tains When one only When the emotions awake . When the heart has a certain When the man appears . When the moment comes When two beings love . When uncontrollable grief . When we are at our worst . When will great and other ladies When women love . When you once talk Where can the disenchanted go? Where's the harm . While human nature The Wisdom of the Wise . Some Emotions and a Moral .... The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . Tales about Temperaments The School for Saints. The Serious Wooing . " Bysshe : A Dialogue." Literature Bobert Orange . Bysshe : A Dialogue." Literature The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . PAGE 82 44 212 98 35 213 146 260 146 16 The Vineyard . The Flute of Pan The Dream and the Busi- ness . . . • The Dream and the Busi- ness The Flute of Pan The Dream and the Busi- ness .... Love and the Soul Hunters The Vineyard . A Eepentance . The School for Saints The Dream and the Busi- ness .... Eobert Orange . . . The Vineyard Osbern and Ursyne . Ideal Friendships." The Daily Mail 295 100 42 215 225 42 226 21 228 105 22 22 15 124 83 69 Life and While we exist Why are people Why does nothing seem Why dost thou love me ? Why do women marry ? Why waste one's time . Woman will swear much Women and men also . Women are always on the defensive . Women are full of kindness . Women are so afraid . Women fascinate the hearts . Women have boundless faith. Women, in every disappoint- ment Women like display Women love more wildly Women never question Women of indolent Women respect a man . Women seem to exhaust Women should work for women Women who possess Work I Oh, to escape . 1 o-morrow PAGE A Bundle of Life 96 The Ambassador 105 The Dream and the Busi- 226 Osbern and Ursyne . 29 The Flute of Pan 76 The Dream and the Busi- 183 The Serious Wooing . 23 The Dream and the Busi- 41 The Flute of Pan 55 Osbern and Ursyne . 53 Love and the Soul Hunters 51 Eobert Orange . 53 The Sinner's Comedy. 57 Eobert Orange , 51 The Dream and the Busi- ness .... 57 The Vineyard 24 The Grand Magazine 39 The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 52 The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham 57 The Grand Magazine 58 The Dream and the Busi- ness .... 55 A Study in Temptations , 57 The Gods, some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham . 131 You cannot be loyal . . The Serious Wooing . . 97 You cannot enjoy . . . The Dream and the Busi- ness . . . .54 You may cut off your hand . Some Emotions and a Moral . . . .34 296 Index PAGE You may know a man . . Some Emotions and a Moral .... 49 You might as well flirt . . Eobert Orange . . . 79 You must see life . . .The Dream and the Busi- ness .... 113 Young women should realise. " Ideal Friendships." The DmhjMail ... 69 Your chances in the House . The School for Saints . 189 Youth is naturally impatient. A Study in Temptations . 84 297 VHrWnt BROTHERS, LIMITBS^, WOKINGt AND LONDON, A SELECTION FROM THE GREEN CLOTH LIBRARY. In uniform Green Cloth, Large Crown Svo. 6s. each. By Beach and Bogland. By Jane Barlow, Author of " Irish Idylls," etc. Through Sorrow's Gates : A Tale of the Wintry Heath. By Halliwell Sutcliffe. 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