{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_27795/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_27795","id":"gutenberg_27795","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27795","summary":null,"tags":["Bashfulness","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Parenthood & Family Relations","Category: Philosophy & Ethics"],"text":"Produced by Meredith Bach and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was\nproduced from images generously made available by The\nInternet Archive/American Libraries.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note:\n\n  Greek words in this text have been transliterated into English and are\n  found within { } brackets.]\n\n\n\n\n          Apologia Diffidentis\n\n\n\n\n          _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_\n\n          Sirenica\n\n\n\n\n          Apologia Diffidentis\n\n                  By\n           W. Compton Leith\n\n         London: John Lane, The\n         Bodley Head. New York:\n         John Lane Company\n               MCMXVII\n\n\n\n\n           _Third Edition_\n\n     _Printed in Great Britain\n  by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh_\n\n\n\n\n              To One\n Whose Friendship is beyond Desert\n         and above Requital\n\n\n\n\nApologia Diffidentis\n\n    \"I am naturally bashful; nor hath conversation, age,\n    or travel been able to effront or enharden me.\"\n\n                                       SIR THOMAS BROWNE\n\n\nIn the matter of avowals the diffident never speak if they can write.\nThat is why my apology for a furtive existence is here set down in\nsolitude instead of being told face to face. You have borne so many\nyears with my unresponsive and incomprehensible ways that shame at last\nconstrains me to this poor defence; for I must either justify myself in\nyour sight, or go far away where even your kindness cannot reach me. The\nfirst alternative is hard, but the second too grievous for impaired\npowers of endurance; I must therefore find what expression I may, and\ntell you how my life has been beshrewed ever since, a boy of twelve, I\nfirst incurred the obloquy of being shy. The word slips easily from the\npen though the lips refuse to frame it; for I think most men would\nrather plead guilty to a vice than to this weakness.\n\nA doom of reticence is upon all our shy confraternity, and we seldom\nmake confidences even to each other. It is only at rarest intervals that\nthe spell is lifted, by silent sympathy, by a smile, by a tear, by I\nknow not what. At such times our souls are like those deep pools of the\nshore, only open to the sky at lowest tides of still summer days, only\nto be approached across long stretches of wet sand and slippery shelves\nof rock. In their depths are delicate fronded seaweeds and shells tinted\nwith hues of sundawn; but to see them you must bend low over the\nsurface, which no lightest breath must furrow, or the vision is gone.\n\nFew of the busy toilers of the world will leave the firm sands to see so\nlittle; but sometimes one weary of keen life will stray aside, and\noftener a child will come splashing across the beach to peer down with\nartless curiosity and delight. Then the jealous ocean returns, and the\nstill clear depths are confused once more with refluent waters; soon the\nwaves are tossing above the quiet spot, and the child is gone home to\nsleep and forget. I cannot have you with me at these still hours of\nrevelation; I must tell my tale as best I can with such success as\nfortune may bestow.\n\nI shall say nothing of the miseries which embittered the life of the\ndiffident boy. But I cannot pass in silence the deeper trouble of\nearliest manhood, when my soul first awoke to the dread that though\nother clouds might drift westward and dissolve, one would impend over me\nfor ever. It was at the university that this vague misgiving crept upon\nme like a chill mist, until the hopes and aspirations of youth were one\nby one extinguished, as to a sailor putting out to sea the comfortable\nharbour lights vanish in the wracks of a tempestuous winter morning. I\nturned my face away from the gracious young life amidst which I moved,\nlike a man possessed of a dark secret to his undoing. My heart, yet\neager for the joy of living and yearning for affection, was daily\nstarved of its need as by a power of deliberate and feline cruelty; and\nwith every expansive impulse instantly restrained by this daemonic\nforce, I was left at last unresponsive as a maltreated child, who flings\nhis arms round no one, but shrinks back into his own world of solitary\nfancies.\n\nI think there is no misery so great as that of youth surrounded by all\nopportunities for wholesome fellowship, endowed with natural faculties\nfor enjoyment, yet repressed and thwarted at every turn by invincible\nself-consciousness and mistrust: surely no lost opportunities of manhood\nleave such aching voids as these. In the spring-time of life to feel day\nby day the slow erosion of the power of joy is of all pains most\npoignant; out of it grow anxieties, premature despairs, incongruous with\nfresh cheeks and a mind not yet mature. This misery was mine for those\nfour years which to most men are the happiest of a whole career, but to\nme at every retrospect seem so beset with gloomy shadows that could I\nlive my life again, I would not traverse them once more for all the gold\nof Ophir.\n\nAt first I writhed and strained in my bonds, and sometimes would make\ntimid advances to the generous young hearts around me. But the tension\nalways proved too sore; I never maintained the ground I had won, and\nwith a perilous fatalism more and more readily accepted what I deemed\ninevitable failure. There were among them, I doubt it not now,\nSamaritans who would have tended my bruised limbs; but then they all\nseemed to be gliding over the black ice, too happy to stay and lift up\nthe fallen. And bruised though I was, I still rose time and again and\nmoved painfully among them, so that theirs was no culpable or merciless\nneglect.\n\nYet the end for me was illimitable dreariness; and like Archie in _Weir\nof Hermiston_, I seemed abroad in a world from which every hope of\nintimacy was banished. And as with every month the hopelessness of\nresistance was made plainer and plainer, there came upon me the\nrecklessness of the condemned man who jests or blasphemes to hide his\nruth. Overwrought continually by forebodings of coming pain, unstrung by\nstrange revulsions, I would pass from burning wrath to cold despair, a\nmost petulant and undisciplined sufferer. Uniting in one person the\nphysical exuberance of youth and the melancholy of disillusioned\nmanhood, I was deprived of the balanced energy proper to either age, and\nkept up a braggart courage with the headiest wine of literature. I could\nnot bear the bland homilies of the preachers, but ranged myself with the\napostles of rebellion who blew imperious trumpet blasts before the walls\nof ordered life.\n\nVerily the violence of the blasts was sometimes such that the ramparts\nshould have fallen down; and often in my exaltation I already saw them\ntotter, as I strode along reciting the dithyrambs of men who like myself\ncould find scarce a responsive heart-beat in all this throbbing world.\nAbove all I gloried in the declamations of Queen Mab, which sanctioned\nby high poetic authority the waste of my affections and my moody\ndefiance of life's most salutary law. With these upon my lips I roamed,\nan absurd pathetic figure, amid the haunts of the Scholar Gipsy, and the\nwayward upland breezes conspired with my truant moods. And while I sat\nby my lamp late into the night, I turned the pages of pessimists and\ncynics, for no principles are dearer to a man than those which allow him\nto profess contempt for the benefits which he cannot enjoy.\n\nYet by seeking amid such simples a balm for wounded pride, I did not\nreally deceive myself, but lived as a sophist rather than a philosopher.\nAnd all the while I was digging graves for my better instincts, until my\nsexton's mood, confining me within churchyard walls, gave me over almost\nentirely to the company of mental bats and owls. The danger of it all\nwas that though I was yet youthful, and should have been still pliant as\na sapling, I was fostering the growth of those habits which, like rings\nin the grain, are the signature of unyielding years. Naturalists say\nthat a bullfinch fed only on hempseed gradually loses his fair plumage\nand becomes black as a raven: so my soul, nourished on thoughts of\nrebellion, put off its bright and diverse enthusiasms and was clothed in\nthe dark garment of despair.\n\nWhen the long-desired hour of release came, and I was free to turn my\nback upon the spires of my prison city, I had already plumbed an abyss\nof misery. The very thought of life in the conflict of the world was\nabhorrent; and if I had been of the Roman Church I should have become a\nBenedictine and sought a lettered and cloistered peace. I despaired of\nfinding anywhere upon earth the profound quietude, the absolute\ndetachment, when a chance occasion seemed to crown my desire, and blind\nto all warnings of disillusion, I suddenly set sail for what I then\nthought might be a permanent sojourn in the East.\n\nWithin two months' time the whole environment of my life was changed,\nand I was established on a lonely plantation set high upon a range of\nhills whose slopes were clothed with primeval forests verging to a\ntropical sea. My home, a white-walled, red-roofed bungalow with a great\ncolumned verandah like a temple's peristyle, lay in the issue of an\nupper valley threaded by a clear stream, whence you may look far down\nover rolling plains to an horizon lost in the shimmering heat of noon.\nImmediately to the east rose the cone of a great solitary hill, always\noutlined against the sky with a majestic isolation that lent it an\nalmost personal existence, and at the birth of every day bearing the orb\nof the rising sun upon its wooded shoulder. Round about, in scattered\nvillages of thatched and mud-walled huts, dwelled brown men of ancient\npagan ways, men who neither knew progress nor set any price upon time.\n\nThere I entered upon a wholly new existence as remote from all the\nsocial trials which beset shyness as if it were passed in some island of\nthe uttermost sea. I had escaped from a harrying pursuit; I was free;\nand to the bliss of this recovered liberty I abandoned myself, without\nattempting to justify my flight to conscience or forming any scheme for\nfuture years. Like a deer which has eluded the hounds, I yearned only\nfor rest and long oblivion of the chase; I wanted to live woodland days\nuntil, all the strain and panic of the past forgotten, I might rise\nrefreshed and see a new way clear before me.\n\nAnd this first abandonment was a time of ecstasy. The long tranquil days\nwere crowned by nights of peace yet more desired. I lay beneath the\nverandah and watched the stars in their splendour, not the pin-points of\ncold light that pierce our misty western heavens, but bright orbs in\ninnumerable companies hovering upon the tranced earth. Night after night\nI saw the incomparable vision; month after month the moon rose slowly\nover the high wall of the jungle, first a great globe imminent upon the\ntrees, next soaring remote through the upper heavens, waning at last to\na sphere of pale unquickening light. I would lie thus for hours\nmotionless, with lulled mind, until the breeze forerunning the dawn, or\nthe quavering wail of the jackal, recalled the startled thought to the\nprison bonds of self.\n\nWith the gentle lapse of months all these impersonal influences took\ndominion over me and gave me a quiet happiness never known before. The\nnights brought the greater light; but the days too had their glories. I\nwould climb the rugged sides of the mountain, and emerging into a colder\nworld sit beneath an overhanging rock and see the hot air quivering\nover leagues of plain; while in the nearer distance, far down beneath my\nfeet, the rice-fields shone like emerald and the palm-fringed pools like\nshields of silver. Or I would stretch myself at early afternoon on the\nclose-cropped grass on the jungle-edge, and watch the opposite sky take\non an ever-deeper blue against the setting sun behind me. Often at such\ntimes I would hear a rushing in the highest branches, and turning very\nsilently, see the outposts of a troop of monkeys peering down through\nthe gleaming foliage. Then, if I moved, neither head nor limb, others\nwould come, and yet others, leaping from branch to branch and plunging\ndown from higher to lower levels like divers cleaving a deep green sea;\nuntil at last some slightest involuntary movement of mine would put the\nwhole host to flight, and greybeards, young warriors, camp followers and\nmothers with their children on their backs would spring precipitate from\ntree to tree, screaming and gibbering like Homer's sapless dead. Then,\nwhen the stars rushed out and the darkness came on apace, it was sweet\nto wander home along those paths so dear to primitive men in all\ncountries, narrow paths and sinuous, smoothed by the footfalls of\ncenturies, winding patiently round every obstacle and never breaking\nthrough after the brutal manner of civilization. The fire-flies gleamed\nin the brushwood on either hand, and from every side rose that\nall-pervading hum of busy insects through which the tropic forest is\nnever still.\n\nAmid these surroundings, so peaceful and so new, my soul was stilled to\nthat {galene} or ocean-calm which the old Greek philosopher found the\nhighest good for man. And month by month the mere material side of life\ngrew of less moment; the body fretted the spirit less, but often seemed\na tissue of gossamer lightness through which it could pass at will, as\nthe breeze through the gleaming spider-webs upon the bushes at dawn.\nThere were times when the ideal of the mystic seemed well-nigh\naccomplished, when my body might almost have been abandoned by the soul\nfor hours upon end. The words of Emerson seemed to be fulfilled: \"By\nbeing assimilated to the original soul by whom and after whom all things\nsubsist, the soul of man does then easily flow into all things and all\nthings flow into it: they mix; and he is present and sympathetic with\ntheir structure and law.\"\n\nAs I write now amid the roar of London traffic, I well believe that to\nmen who have never bathed in eastern moonlight, the description will\nsound hyperbolical and false. But when I think of those old days, how\nserene they were, how apart, I let the words stand: I am not artist\nenough to give them a more plausible simplicity. All conditions that a\nrecluse might crave seemed now to be fulfilled for my benefit. The\nvirgin forests and great hills were a perpetual joy, but there was a\ntranquil pleasure in the plantation which man's labour had reclaimed\nfrom these. That was a meet place indeed for the meditation of a quiet\nhour, and no more grateful refuge can be conceived than such a shady\ngrove at the height of noon. You must not fancy an expanse of dusty land\nlined with prim rows of plants in the formal style of a nursery garden;\nbut, spread over the lower slopes of the valleys, spacious woods of\nclean, grey-stemmed trees, with overarching branches thinned to cast a\ndiaphanous shade over the sea of lustrous dark leaves below. The shrubs\nstood waist-high in serried, commingling ranks, their dark burnished\nleaves gleaming here and there in the sifted rays that found their way\ndown through the vaults of foliage; the groves of Daphne had no more\nperfect sheen.\n\nI learned to feel for this gracious place a love only second to that of\nthe wilder jungle; for nature thus tamed to work side by side with man\nloses indeed her austerer charm, but not her calm and dignity: these she\nbrings with her always to be a glory to the humblest associate of her\nlabour. Often as I pruned a tree, or stripped its stem of suckers, I\nfelt the soothing, quickening influence of this partnership, and my\nthoughts turned to others who had known a like satisfaction and relief;\nto Obermann forgetting his melancholy in the toil of the vintage,\nplucking the ripe clusters and wheeling them away as if he had never\nknown the malady of thought; or to Edward Fitzgerald out with the dawn\namong his roses at Little Grange.\n\nAmid these high dreams and simple occupations, time seemed to glide away\nlike a brimming stream, and the only events that marked the passing of\nthe years were wayfarings through the country-side, sojournings in\nstrange, slumbrous native towns, expeditions of wider range to old white\nports of Malabar still dreaming of the forgotten heroes whose story\nCamoens sang. After many such journeys the genius of this oriental land\nseemed to travel with us, so familiar did every aspect of this simple\nIndian life become. Our equipment was of set purpose the patriarchal\ngear of native fashion; narrow carts with great lumbering wheels were\ncovered by matting arched upon bent saplings, and had within a depth of\nclean rice-straw on which at night mattresses were spread. Beneath each\nyoke went a pair of milk-white oxen with large mild eyes and pendulous\ndewlaps, great beasts of a fine Homeric dignity and worthy of\nNausicaa's wain. They swung along with a leisurely rolling gait; and if\ntheir silent feet moved too slowly, the sleepy brown-skinned driver,\ncrouching on the pole between them, would shame them into speed by\nscornful words about their ancestry, more prompt than blows in their\neffect on beasts of ancient and sacred lineage.\n\nWe travelled at night or in the freshness of early morning, regardless\nof the hours, unfretted by the tyrannous remembrances of appointed\ntimes. Milestones passed slowly, like things drifting, which ask no\nattention, and hardly perceived in the moment of their disappearance,\nserve only to enrich and replenish the mind's voluptuous repose. It was\na joy to lie drowsily back upon the straw, awaiting sleep and looking\nout upon the stars through the open back of the cart, while the\nfire-flies darted across the feathery clusters of bamboo, and the\ncradling sound of wheels and footfalls called slumber up out of the\ndarkness. And it was equal delight to spring from the cart at first\nflush of dawn, and see some far blue hill in the east lined like a\ncloud with broadening gold, until the resistless sun rose a full orb\nabove it, flooding the grey plains and making the leaves of the banyans\ngleam with the lustre of old bronze. But though the sun was come, we\nwould often press on for yet three hours, through belts of\nsquirrel-haunted wood, beside great sheets of water with wild-duck\nfloating far amidst, and borders starred with yellow nenuphars, across\ngroves of mango and plantain trees into landscapes of tiny terraced\nplots, where the vivid green rice-blades stood thick in the well-soaked\nearth, and bowed brown figures diverted to their roots the thread-like\nrivulet from the great brown tank above.\n\nHere would be a wayside shrine, a simple stuccoed portico with columns\nstreaked in red, enclosing the sacred emblems with their offerings of\ngolden marigold, and bearing upon each corner, carved in dark grey\nstone, Siva's recumbent bull. Here millet fields, with hedges of blue\naloe or euphorbias like seven-branched candlesticks, announced a place\nof habitation; soon the village itself appeared, a long irregular line\nof white-walled houses roofed with thatch or tile, and here and there\ngreater dwellings with carved balconies and barred verandahs, behind\nwhich impassive white-robed figures sat and seemed to ponder upon life.\nOn the right, perhaps, would be a shop all open to the road, where,\ncross-legged upon a kind of dais, the merchant sat among his piled\nwares, unenterprising and unsolicitous, serenely confident in the\nbalance-sheet of fate. On the left, in a shady corner, a barber would be\nbending over a half-shaven skull. Everywhere children of every shade\nfrom yellow to deep umber would be playing solemnly about the ways,\nturning upon the passing stranger their grave, unfathomable eyes.\n\nBeyond the village there would be a rest-house maintained for the use of\nwayfaring white men, and here we would repose through the heat of the\nday, reclining with a book in rooms shaded with shutters, or with fine\nmats drenched from hour to hour with cooling sprays of water. Then with\nthe sun's decline we would set out once more, meeting a file of\nblue-robed women erect as caryatides as they came up from the well,\neach bearing upon her back-thrown head a water-jar of earthen or brazen\nware, staying her burden with a shapely brown arm circled with bangles\nof glass and silver. In the short hours before the darkness, we would\nencounter all the types of men which go to make up Indian country\nlife--the red-slippered banker jogging on his pony beneath a white\numbrella, the vendor of palm-wine urging a donkey almost lost beneath\nthe swollen skins, barefooted ryots with silent feet and strident\ntongues, crowds of boys and children driving buffaloes and cows, all\ncoming homeward from their labour with the evening.\n\nAnd when these had gone by, and we rolled on through the scented air of\nthe silent open country, we would come perhaps in the gathering darkness\nto a great river lapping and murmuring through the blackened rocks above\nthe ford, and shining like a glorious path in the light of the rising\nmoon. Silently, high above the banks, there would flit through the still\nair bands of flying foxes awakened for their nightly raid upon the\nplantain groves; and in the shadows of the further bank there would\ngleam a sudden light, or the echoes of a hailing voice would rise and\nthen die away. Steeped in the poetry of all these things we would cross\nand emerge upon the opposite slope to begin the pilgrimage of the night\nanew. So to live tranquil days and unfretful, moving in quiet through a\nstill land rich in old tradition--this was an experience of peace which\nno dreams of imagination could surpass, a freshness of joy penetrative\nas the fragrance of unplucked wayside flowers.\n\nSometimes we would set out on longer journeys by land and sea, crossing\nthe wooded ghats and descending to some old port of historic name,\nCochin or Mangalore or Calicut, white places of old memory, sleeping by\nthe blue waves as if no Vasco de Gama had ever come sailing up out of\nthe West to disturb their enchanted slumber. The approach to these\ndreamy shores was dark and tumultuous, as if nature had set an\ninitiation of contrasting toil before the enjoyment of that light and\npeace. It followed the bed of a mountain stream, which began in a mere\npleat of the hills, tumbling often in white cascades, and enduring no\nboat upon its waters until half its course was run. But here it\nchallenged man to essay a fall; for where it burst its way over rocky\nslopes were channels jeopardous and hardly navigable, sequences of\nfoaming rapids, races of wild water swirling round opposing boulders,\nand careering indignant of restraint between long walls of beetling\nrock. Here when the sun had gone down we would embark with a crew of\nlithe brown men in a boat hewn from a single tree, seamless and stoutly\nfashioned to be the unharmed plaything of such rocks and boisterous\nwaters as these. In these rapids the river waked to consciousness of\nmighty life, tossing our little craft through a riot of dancing waves,\nwhirling it round the base of perpendicular rocks set like adamant in\nthe hissing waters, sweeping it helpless as a petal down some glassy\nplane stilled, as it were, into a concentrated wrath of movement. The\nmen sprang from side to side, from bow to stern, staving the craft with\na miraculous deftness from a projecting boulder, forcing her into a new\ncourse, steadying her as she reeled in the shock and strain of the\nconflict, while their long poles bent continually like willow wands\nagainst her battered sides. The steersman stood silent, except when he\nshouted above all the din some resonant, eruptive word of command; the\nmen responded by breathless invocations to their gods, relaxing no tense\nsinew until the pent waters rushed out into some broad pool where the\neased stream went brimming silently, gathering new strength in the\ndarkness of its central deeps.\n\nAt such places the moon would perhaps be obscured by passing clouds, and\nwe would land upon an eyot until she shone once more in a clear heaven.\nStretched at length upon the fine white sand waiting for her return, we\ncould hear the boom of waters in the distance calling us on to a renewal\nof the conflict. These periods of great stillness, interposed between\ntumults past and impending, had their own refinement of pleasure as far\nabove the joys of fenced and covenanted ease as the bivouac of the hard\ncampaign surpasses slumber in the fine linen of a captured city: they\nbrought the wandering mind into communion with elemental forces, and\nseemed to hold it expectant of supernatural events. In that interlunar\ntwilight there reigned a solemn sense of wonder evoked here eternally,\none felt, from the ancient time, with the rustling of stirred foliage\nand the voice of those far waters for its music.\n\nThe lulled reason yielded place to reverie, and the whole rapt being\nabandoned itself like an Orphic worshipper to the guidance of an unseen\nmysteriarch. This acquiescence in the swift succession of calm to fury\nand stress, resembled the quiet which may be conceived to follow sudden\ndeath; the heightened sense of vicissitude in things summoned up and\nsustained a solemn mood. All the while that we lay charmed and half\noppressed in this atmosphere as of an under-world, the clouds were\ndrawing forward on their course; and as their last fringe trailed slowly\nby and the moon was revealed once more, the spell was broken in an\ninstant by human voices calling us to re-embark. Again we glided to the\nverge of tumultuous falls, again we were flung through foaming narrows\nand labyrinthine passages of torn rocks, until, the last promontory\nturned with arrowy swiftness, we shot through a postern of the granite\nbarrier and bounded far into still water fringed with trees of\nprofoundest shadow. We put in to shore, for this stage of our journey\nwas over; the dawn was near; the carts stood waiting on the road. But\nthe influence of the wonderful night, clinging about us, would keep us\nlong silent, as if awed by the passing of ancient Vedic gods.\n\nI will not describe the later stages of these journeys: the coasting\nvoyages in restful ships that seemed built to sail Maeander; the\ntouchings at old wharfless ports; the visits to lone temples where\nHerodotus would have loved to linger; the rambles on the slopes of\nAdam's Peak; the meditations amid the ruins of Anaradhapura and\nPollanarrua, ancient homes of kings, now stripped of every glory but\nthat of these sonorous names--such are the records of every traveller,\nand are chronicled to satiety by a hundred hasty pens. A month of\nwandering within the fringe of civilization would be closed by a last\nweek of patriarchal travel, bringing us back to our remote valley just\nas the clouds of the coming monsoon were ranging in denser ranks along\nthe evening sky like the tents of a beleaguering army. Hardly had we\ntime to settle down for the wet season, see to the stacking of\nfire-logs, and be sure that every tile on the roof was firm in its\nappointed place, when the embattled host seemed to break up from its\nlast camp, and advance upon us along the whole line that the eye\nperceived.\n\nOne year I was witness of the first onset, which came in the late\nafternoon--an immediate shock of massed clouds without throwing forward\nof skirmishers or any prelude of the vanguard. Our home looked down upon\na gentle incline of open grassy land to a broad belt of jungle in the\nmiddle distance; here the undergrowth and small trees had been newly\ncleared away, opening out a dim far view across an uncumbered\nleaf-strewn floor into the backward gloom of the forest. I sat with my\neyes fixed upon the trees, drawing the rain on with the whole strength\nof desire to the parched country lying there faint with the exhaustion\nof three months of drought. While I watched, the deep line of cloud, at\nfirst distinct from the forest-top along which it came rolling,\ninsensibly merged with the foliage, until every contour was lost in a\ncommon gloom, only the great bare stems below standing pale against the\ngathering darkness. There was an intense stillness everywhere like the\nsilence of expectation which falls upon an awestruck crowd; the very\ninsects had ceased their usual song. And now the ear caught a distant\nsound, vague and deep, coming up out of the mid darkness, and growing to\na mighty volume as a sudden wind swept out from the sounding foliage\ninto the open land and searched every cranny of the house as it passed.\nThen, as if drawn by the wind, there came into view among the nearest\ntree-stems a moving grey line advancing with a long roar until it hid\nthe whole forest from sight: it was the wave of battle about to break\nupon us. It came on like a wall, enormous, irresistible; one instant,\nand it had devoured the intervening space; another, and we were lost in\nthe deluge, and the great rain drops were spilled upon the roof with the\nnoise of continuous thunder. As the deep sound reverberated through the\nroof above me, I went in exulting to a hearth piled with blazing logs,\nglad in the prospect of renewing for many weeks old and quiet habitudes\nof indoor life, rich with solace of books and tranquil meditation.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI have dwelt upon the outward aspects of my life in exile, because the\nsojourn of these years amid the hills and forests taught a natural\nleechcraft which was to stand me in good stead in coming years, and may\nstand in equal stead other souls desolate as mine. Like the Nile\nbrimming over the fields, a flood of joy from nature overlaid my parched\nbeing, enriching it with a fertile loam, and shielding it from the\nirritations of the world. I lay fallow beneath the still, sunlit waters,\nunharrowed by teasing points of doubt, and porous to the influence of an\nall-encompassing peace. Exile had opened to me a new heaven and a new\nearth, whose freshness and calm charmed thought away from all vain\nquestionings; the fascination of outward things had for a while cooled\nthe useless ardour of introspection. But it was inevitable that the\nbland ease of such a contemplative life should bring no enduring\nsatisfaction to the mind; it was not an end in itself, but a mere means\nto serenity, a breathing-space useful to the recovery of a long-lost\nfortitude. The time was now come when the hunted deer, refreshed in the\nquiet of his inaccessible glen, was to awake to new thought of the herd,\nand of the duties of a common life; when the peace of successful flight\nwas to appear in its true light as a momentary release, and no longer as\nthe ultimate goal imagined in the anguish of pursuit.\n\nIt was during this last monsoon that doubts began to stir within,\ninterrupting my studies of the systems of Hindu philosophy and my\nporings over sacred books. The vague insistence of these misgivings made\nme surely aware that even in this eastern paradise all was not well;\nbut at first I refused to listen, and plunged deep into the maze of the\nVedanta to escape the importunate voice. Yet anxiety came up around me\nlike a heavy atmosphere; an indescribable sense of disillusion, clinging\nas a damp mist, brought its mildew to the soul, until my new heaven was\novercast and my new earth dispeopled of all pleasures. Then one day the\nfever struck me down, and of a sudden my mind became an arena in which\nmemories of earlier life chased one another unceasingly in the round of\na delirious dance. Trivial events impressed themselves on consciousness\nwith strange precision; objects long forgotten rose before me outlined\nin fire--one, a pane of stained glass in Fairford Church, with a lost\nsoul peering in anguish through the red bars of hell. Each and every\napparition was of the old life; all were emissaries from the forsaken\nWest summoning me back to my renounced allegiance. When the fever left\nme, returning reason slowly brought order amid the welter of confused\nideas, as the ants sorted the grain for distracted Psyche, and for the\nfirst time I considered in the detachment of reminiscence the nature of\nmy action in leaving England. I sifted the evidence at length as I lay\nunder the verandah slowly recovering strength; and when at last judgment\nwas delivered, it took the necessary form of condemnation.\n\nI saw now that unless a man is prepared to discard every western usage,\nto slough off his inherited cast of thought, to renounce his faith,\nwholly and finally to abandon his country and his father's house, his\nflight is but the blind expedient of cowardice or pride. Here and there\nmay be born one who can so cut himself off from the parent stem as to\nendure a fruitful grafting upon an oriental stock, but I knew that I at\nleast was none such. I was no more prepared for so uncompromising a\nrenunciation than any other weakling who seeks prestige by parade of\nexotic wisdom, and deems himself a seer if he can but name the Triad, or\ntell the avatars of Vishnu, I had not the credulity which may justify\nthe honest renegade, and the western blood still ran too warmly in my\nveins. I felt that were I to stay in the East for fifty years, I should\nnever reach the supreme heights of metaphysical abstraction whence men\nreally appear as specks and life as a play; therefore to remain was to\navow myself a runaway and to live henceforth despicable in my own eyes.\nFor over the unfathomable deep of oriental custom the torrent of our\ncivilization flows unblending, as in the Druid's legend the twin streams\nof Dee flow clear through Bala lake, and never mingle with its waters.\nNot for our use is that intricate mind which in logic needs more than\ntwo premises to a conclusion, and in art is intolerant of all void\nspace, entangling its figures in labyrinths of ornament which Maya\nherself might have devised to distract the sight from truth.\n\nThe Hindu has the true dignity of contemplation, and superbly removes\nhimself from the sordid greeds of life. But in imagining and reviling an\nabstraction called Matter, he abides in the errors of the first Greek\nsages, and mines so far beneath the trodden earth that when he looks up\ninto middle day he sees only the stars above him. Could I have shared\nthe eremite's belief that his prayers help not merely his own solitary\nsoul but all souls travailing through all the world, I might yet have\nremained where I was, an alien living indifferent to the common rule,\nlike a monk of some shunned exotic order. But with convictions like\nmine, to do so would have brought the drear sense of derogation. All the\nmiseries of the past were as nothing to that; there was but one manly\ncourse--to return and gird my loins for a new struggle with western\nlife. Within a month from the time when this course was seen to be a\nduty, I was standing on the deck of a homeward-bound steamer, watching\nthe harbour lights recede into the distance.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBack once more in England, I threw aside the clinging robe of\nmeditation, and falling upon work ravenously, indulged what genius of\nenergy was still alive within me. I made haste to adore all that I had\nso lately burned, making life objective, revering personal ideals, and\nin the ordinance of material things finding the truest satisfaction of\nall endeavour. I saw in civilization the world's sole hope; its brisk\nlife and abounding force took sudden hold of a fancy enervated by\ndreams. Again I found a new heaven and a new earth, though earth was now\nno more than man's dinted anvil, and heaven his reservoir of useful\nlight. I lived for action and movement; I mingled eagerly with my\nfellows, and cursed the folly which had driven me to waste three years\nin an intellectual swoon. Now the day was not long enough for work,\nLebanon was not sufficient to burn. I saw the western man with race-dust\non his cheeks, or throned in the power-houses of the world, moving upon\niron platforms and straight ladders in the mid throb and tumult of\nencompassing engines. One false step, and he must fall a crushed and\nmutilated thing. Yet unconcerned as one strolling at large, he\ncontrolled the great wheels and plunging pistons, and brought them to a\nstandstill with a touch of his finger. The confidence and strenuous ease\nof such life compelled me to marvel and admire, and I who had so lately\nlain at the feet of eastern sages, set up this mechanician as my god.\nIf I looked back at all to the land of dreams, the placid figure beneath\nthe Tree of Enlightenment took on the aspect of a fool's idol, ignobly\nself-manacled, pitiful and irksome in remembrance.\n\nBut if once more I dreamed of finality in change I deceived myself,\nforgetting that God Himself cannot unmake the past or undo what is done.\nA year had hardly gone by in this new apprenticeship to life, when at\nmoments of weariness or overstrain sharp doubts shot through me and were\ngone again, like twinges of sudden pain recalling old disease to one who\nhas lulled himself with dreams of cure. The feeling of fellowship with\nmen grew weaker, and as it waned I began to shrink once more from my\nkind. I still believed myself happy, but happiness seemed to need\nconstant affirmation, as though it could make no way in my favour\nwithout display of token or credential to confirm its truth. There were\npauses in the clatter and jangle of life; the revolutions of the great\nwheels sometimes slowed into silence; and as these interludes grew more\nfrequent, I caught myself repeating that I really was content. The faint\nassurance given, I flung myself with devouring industry upon my allotted\ntask, trying to stifle the forebodings which prophesied against my\npeace.\n\nIn one such pause my old self appeared before me again, like the face of\nan ancient enemy looking in from the darkness; stealthy footfalls which\nof late I had so often seemed to hear were now referred to their true\ncause as we saw each other eye to eye. The old Adam had awakened and was\ncome for his inheritance; and the vision of him there across the pane\ngazing in upon his own, seemed to arraign me for disowning a brother and\ndenying his indefeasible right. I recognized that with this familiar\nform cold reason had returned to oust the hopes and emotions which had\nusurped her office. My rush for freedom had ended, as such sallies often\ndo, in exhaustion, capture and despair; upon the thrill and thunder of\nthe charge followed the silence of the dungeon and the anguish of\nstiffening wounds. The truth, so simply written that a child might have\nspelled it, lay clear before me: I had left reformation till too late. I\nwas too old to change.\n\nEven a few years before, I might have dashed out, like Marmion, from the\nprison-fortress; but now the opportunity was past and the portcullis was\ndown. My character with all its faults was formed within me; and the\nvery years which I had passed in the wilderness, instead of averting the\ndanger, had set the final seal upon my fate, for when a man has reached\na certain point in life he is intractable to the reforming hand. But\nthough at last I knew myself beaten, and helpless in the hands of an\nimplacable power, I fluttered like a wounded bird and sought wildly for\na loophole of escape. I could no longer hope to stand alone against\ndestiny; that conceit was gone: could I find a comrade to help me\nthrough the press and lift me when I fell? But here the invincible pride\nof shyness barred the way, forbidding alike any confession of weakness\nor any appeal to man's compassion. I could not bring myself to say: I am\nunable to rule my life, do you undertake it for me. Was marriage a\nconceivable path of redemption? I had never envisaged it before, but\nnow, in my desperation, I dreamed it for a moment a possible issue. I\neven fixed upon the person who should thus save me from myself, and\nbeguiled many lonely hours by picturing her charms and enumerating her\nnoble qualities.\n\nShe lived in a country house where I had been several times a guest, and\nshe had one of those faces which, in Gray's beautiful expression, speak\nthe language of all nations. Her features had that sunny charm which\nthaws mistrust; she was dowered with all graces and sweet qualities; and\nyou could no more have doubted the immanent nobility of her nature than\nyou could have dreamed a stain in the texture of a white petal. And with\nall her gentleness there was present I know not what sign and promise of\nstrength, waking in those who saw her an intuitive trust in loyalty of\nuttermost proof. She would have flamed indignant against evil, but only\nevil could have moved her from that equal poise of soul which made her\nentrance into a room the prelude to higher thoughts and finer feelings.\nShe was naturally kind without consciousness of a mission, neither\nseeking to enslave nor enfranchise, but by a silent outflowing of\ngoodness ennobling whatever company she was in. Nor was her tongue the\nprattling servant of her beauty, but a guide of cheerful converse; for\njust as she charmed without device or scheme of fascination, so she\npossessed the art of speaking well without seeming to have ever studied\nit. In the chase after just and felicitous ideas, she could lead or\nfollow over the most varied fields with the intuition of the huntress\nborn. With all these excellences, her wit, her sincerity, her ardour for\nall things bright and true, she had no conceit of herself but kept her\nfather's house in gladness and loved the country-side.\n\nTo her, in these days of imminent dismay, my thoughts flew out as to a\nfair protecting saint; until the inspiration of her visionary presence\nwrought in my fancy with such a dramaturgic power, that I seemed to walk\ndaily with her, and to know all those delicate and sweet propinquities\nby which liking passes into affection and affection is glorified into\nlove. So far did these happy day-dreams carry me, that they brought me\nto the extreme of imaginary bliss, and poured out for me the wine of\nuntempered joy which thrills the hearts of lovers on the verge of their\nbetrothal. The dreams that followed that magic draught denied me no\nconvincing touch of circumstance, and projected upon a credible and\nfamiliar scene the bright possibilities to which fate denied a real\nexistence. The scene was always the same, and the words and movements\nwhich entranced me followed each other with almost religious exactitude\nof detail which the adult demands of his day-dreams and the child of the\nfairy-tale he loves.\n\nIt was always a June afternoon when we went out together, into the\nmeadows near her home; she moving with fluent grace as befitted a\ndaughter of the woods, her eyes indrawing joy from all nature, her hair\nreflecting rich gold of the sunlight, her whole face lit with the\npleasure of a bright hour; I a mere satellite attendant upon its\ncentral star. We strolled through the four home-meadows, crossed a\nhigh-banked lane and a dingle with a brook running down it, and then\nfrom an open common flooded with sunlight passed into a wood of tallest\nbeeches. In that cool, shadowy place the sun, searching a way through\ncrannies in the upper verdure, chequered with patches of silver light\nthe even mast-strewn floor. The multitude of smooth grey stems rose\naligned like cathedral columns; and the grateful dimness of the wood,\nsucceeding the glare of day, wakened a sense of purposed protection and\nquietude pervading all things, which soothed the mind with the illusion\nthat this was a sacred spot appointed for an offering of souls. Near one\nof those isles of sunlight we lingered; and as she looked up to the\nsource of light, the movement brought her face near the slanting shaft\nof rays, until there was set round it an aureole of dancing beams. It\nseemed to me at this part of my dream that there came to both of us some\ngracious influence, for as her eyes met mine they dropped again, and\nwere fixed for a moment upon the wild flowers she carried. Then my heart\nbegan to beat and my whole being to grow greater: impassioned words, to\nthat hour unconceived, came rushing to my lips; the fire and glory of a\nnew manhood were kindling in me to the transformation of my\nnature--when, in the very moment of utterance, a sheer barrier of doom\ndescended between me and my joy; the fire was quenched, and my soul was\npoured out within me.\n\nTo this fatal point my fancy always brought me and no further, that\ncoming thus to the threshold of the house of joy and hearing the bars\nshoot into their sockets I might thoroughly know my ineffectual self and\nleave untouched the forbidden latch. So far I came in my dream times\nwithout number; and always on the verge of joy there came that doom, and\nthe shooting of those adamantine bolts.\n\nYet all the while I wove it, I knew that this texture of dreams must\nsoon be drawn aside, and like the curtain in the tragedy reveal at last\nthe horror concealed within. Such brooding was but the deception of a\nreluctant spirit dallying and delaying with any trifle by the way to put\noff the arrival at the hill of evil prospect. At last I learned the\nlesson of this abrupt ending to the dream at the point of full\ndisillusion; it forced itself upon me with the power of an oracular\nutterance warning me to cease my palterings with fate. My reason now\nrebuked me like a stern judge, dissecting all false pleas and laying\nbare their weakness. What right had I, now knowing myself incurable,\neven to dream of easing my own pain by darkening and despoiling a second\nlife? The love of solitude was now more to me than even the love of a\nwife; it would surely come between us like a strange woman, and fill a\npure heart with bitterness. No smiling hopes of a possible redemption\ncould annul the immutable decree, and if I disobeyed the warning, guilt\nas well as misery would be mine; for he is pitiful indeed who only weds\nthat his wife may suck the poison from his wounds. If I married I should\nstand for ever condemned of an unutterable meanness. So I dispelled my\ndreams and looked reality in the face.\n\nIt was a dismal prospect that lay before me. Until then the future had\nheld its possible secrets, its imaginable revelations of change, which,\nlike the luminous suggestions in dark clouds, allured with a promise of\na brief and penetrable gloom. In my darkest hours I had lulled fear by\nthe thought of a haply interposing Providence, and drifted on from day\nto aimless day nursing the hope of some miraculous release upon the very\nsteps of the scaffold. But now I was twice fallen; and as a man\nabandoned by the last illusion of deliverance calls ruin to him, and in\nthe new leisure of despair calmly scans the features at which but now he\ndared not glance, so I saw as in a hard grey light the true outlines of\nmy destiny. The wreathing mist, the profound soft shadows, the clouds\nwith their promise of mutability, were now all gone, leaving the bare\nframework of a world arid and severe as a lunar landscape.\n\nI seemed to be sitting in the dust, as in inmost Asia a sick man may\ncrouch abandoned, while the caravan in which all his earthly hopes are\ncentred goes inexorably upon its way. The blue sky flushes to deep\npurple before him; night falls; all colour is swallowed up in darkness,\nuntil the jingling camel-bells receding up the pass cross the dividing\nridge, and for him the last silence is begun. Such then was the end of\nyouthful ambition: for food a mouthful of ashes instead of the very\nmarrow of joy; for home not the free ocean, but a stagnant pool ringed\nwith weeping willows, a log's fit floating-place. Here to float, marking\nthe weed creep onward until all from bank to bank was overfilmed, and\nthere remained no clear water of space for reflection of a single star:\nto float, and feel the sodden fibres of life loosening in slow\ndecay--this was to be the last state of the seedling which had sprung up\non the mountain slopes with promise of mighty stem and overarching\nbranches full of sap like the cedars of the Lord.\n\nMy life henceforth was to be ringed round and overhung with so heavy an\nair that joy and fancy should never fly in it, but fall dead as the\nbirds above Avernus according to the ancient story. I seemed to see\nnothing upon the path of the future but the stern form of Renunciation\ndrawing between me and the living world the impassable circle of death\nin life, the _ultima linea rerum_. It was the last decree, the\nirrevocable sentence, the absolute end: and I had not yet reached half\nthe Psalmist's span; I had not yet forgotten the lost summer mornings\nwhen the breeze scented with lilac came blowing through the casement,\nbearing with it the sound of glad voices welcoming the day.\n\nPhilosophers are prone to gird at the animal in man, accusing it of\ndragging the soul down to the mire in which it wallows. They forget that\nby its brutal insistence upon physical needs it often preserves from\nmadness, and timely arrests him who goes like a sleep-walker upon the\nverge of the abyss. Weariness and hunger are like brakes upon the car;\nthey stop the dire momentum of grief, and insure that if misery will\nagain drive us furiously, she must lash winded steeds anew. But what\nforce should stay a disembodied sorrow, which unbreathed by period or\nalternation of despair, should be rapt onward in the whirlwind and the\nhurricane, gathering eternally a fresh impetus of woe? Let us rail at\nthe body for its weakness if we will, but prize it also for its\nrestraint of the distracted mind. In the worst hour of my dejection it\nwas the body which called the lost reason home. I became hungry and ate,\nhardly knowing what I did; I slept exhaustion away; and after many hours\nawoke with clearer eyes, grateful to the weak flesh, and ready in its\ncompany to face life once more, a defeated but not a desperate man. I\nwas glad to be thus reminded that the body could play this helpful part,\nand my gratitude for its timely rescue taught me in after days to endure\nits tyranny with a better grace. In the interlude between despair and\nnew effort, I once more turned a dispassionate gaze upon myself, as upon\nsome abandoned slave of a drug; and maintaining an attitude of\nhalf-amused detachment, sought by a diagnosis of my case to establish\nthe real causes of my failure to lead a normal life.\n\nAt the outset I would make it clear that for me the only shyness that\ncounts, is that which is so deeply ingrained, as to have outlasted\nyouth. It may, indeed, be physically related to that transient\nbashfulness which haunts so many of us in our younger days only to\nvanish at maturity, swift as the belated ghost at cockcrow. But unlike\nthis common accident of growth, it is no surface-defect, but an inward\nstain which dyes the very fibres of the being. It may, indeed, be\nsomewhat bleached and diminished by a timely and skilful treatment, but\nis become too much a part of life to be ever wholly washed away. And the\nunhappy step-children of nature whose inheritance it is, seldom find a\ndeliverer good at need; for as the world draws no distinction between\ntheir grave affliction and that other remediable misery of youth, it\nwill sanction no other treatment than banter or mockery, which does but\ninfuse yet more deeply the mournful dye. When this fails, it leaves its\nvictims to the desolation which according to its judgment they have\nwilfully chosen; for the most part ignoring their existence, but often\nchastising them with scorpion-stings of disdain. Yet the subjects of\nthis scorn, sufferers as I believe from a hereditary tendency matured by\nneglect into disease, deserve a more merciful usage than this, and their\nplea for extenuating circumstances should not be too impatiently\nrejected. For in them what is to most men a transient ailment has thrown\ndown permanent roots to draw a nourishment from pain: and he who is\nfortunate enough to be whole should think twice before he makes sport of\nthose in this distress.\n\nTo me this malady seems to arise from an antinomy between the physical\nand intellectual elements of the personality, from an unhappy marriage\nof mind and body, suffering the lower of the two partners to abase the\nlife of the higher by the long-drawn misery of a hateful but\nindissoluble union. When the physical and mental natures in a man are\nhappily attuned, there is a fair concord in his life and the outward\nexpression of his being is an unimpeded process, to which, as to the\nfunctions of a healthy organism, no heedful thought is given. If both\nnatures are of the finest temper, they find utterance in a noble\namiability and ease of manner; if both are coarse in the grain, they\nblend in a naive freedom always sure of itself, the freedom of Sancho\nspreading himself in the duchess's boudoir. Between these two extremes\nthere intervene a hundred compromises by which minds and bodies less\nequally yoked contrive to muffle the discordant notes of an inharmonious\nwedlock.\n\nIn most cases use gives to this politic agreement the peace and\npermanence of settled habit; the body proves itself so far amenable that\nit is accepted as a needful if uninspiring companion, and its plain\nusefulness ends by dulling the edged criticisms of the mind. But\nwherever there is a permanent incompatibility too profound for\ncompromise, an elemental difference keeping the personality continually\ndistraught, then shyness, in the sense in which I understand it, assumes\nits inalienable dominion. The flame of rebellion may smoulder unobserved\nwhile the sufferer is in his own home, but among strangers it will\nblaze fiercely, as the mind protests against the misinterpretations of\nits unworthy partner. This burning shame is not the proof of a foolish\nconceit, as unsympathetic criticism proclaims it, but the visible misery\nof a keen spirit thwarted by physical defect. The man who manifests it\nis angered with himself because through a physical hindrance he has\nfailed to take the place which would otherwise be his. He is proud, it\nmay be, but not fatuous; for shyness as a rule implies a comparative\nquickness and alertness of intellect: its exceeding sensibility is\nexclusive of dulness; and it is frequently due to the presence in a\nreluctant body of a mind endowed with active powers.\n\nInasmuch as diffidence appears where the subtler formalities of life are\ncompulsory, it is clear that it essentially belongs to the class called\ngentle, for this class alone enforces that exacting code of etiquette to\nwhich our discomfiture is so largely due. Shyness has seldom place in\nthe patriarchal life where men live, \"sound, without care, every man\nunder his own vine or his own fig-tree,\" nor among those who, perforce\npursuing a too laborious existence, have no leisure for superficial\nrefinements. Though here and there you may find a Joseph Poorgrass, it\nis rare among the simple; it is not a popular weakness, and therefore\nwins no popular sympathy. Such is its first social limitation: it is\nalmost restricted to the classes which are outwardly refined.\n\nBut it has another limitation of equal importance which may be described\nas climatic; for this malady is not found in equal degrees all over the\nhabitable globe. There are many lands where it hardly exists at all even\namong the class which is alone liable to it; and in its serious form it\nis found only over a small part of the earth. There are many causes\nwhich conduce to this partial distribution. In one country manners are\nnot minutely schooled, women being held of secondary account, and men\ncontent without subtlety; in another, life is in itself too primitive to\ndevise the artifices of refinement; in a third, the fundamental disunion\nbetween the mind and the physical organism is prevented by the kindly\nhand of nature. For these reasons all the savage world, all the East,\nand the whole of southern Europe have little knowledge of the diffident,\nand what zoologists would call the area of distribution of the species\nis confined within narrow geographical limits.\n\nIt is in fact chiefly in the north and west of our own continent that\nthe haunts of the diffident are to be found, for there alone are all the\nconditions necessary to their maintenance fulfilled--a society\nsufficiently leisured and wealthy to have elaborated conventional rules\nof intercourse, the assemblage of both sexes upon an equal footing, and\na climate which exaggerates the antagonism between the quick mind and\nthe unresponsive body. Here the cold humid airs have produced a race\nwith great limbs and great appetites, but compensated these gifts by a\ncertain unreadiness in the delicate encounter of wits and graces. To\nthese impassive natures all displays of the personality are distasteful,\nand the lighter social arts, seeming both insignificant and histrionic,\nare learned with difficulty and practised with repugnance. An\nawkwardness of address, in the uneducated almost bovine, becomes in the\ncultivated a painful reserve and self-consciousness, reflecting in open\nphysical distress the uneasiness of the man's whole being.\n\nAnd among the northern nations which are thus afflicted England has\nachieved an undesirable supremacy, having herself smoothed the path of\nher eminence by a school system which withdraws her youth from female\ninfluences during the years when the tendency to reserve may be combated\nwith a certain hope of success. It would ill become one who has never\nrecovered from the effects of such deprivation to assume on the ground\nof his own narrow experience any wide dissemination of similar defects\namong his countrymen; his testimony would be received with suspicion,\nand he would be condemned as one who to justify himself would drag\nothers down to his own poor level. Let me therefore place myself on\nsurer ground by calling as a witness an impartial observer from another\ncountry, one exceptionally trained in the analysis of national\ntemperament and conduct.\n\nWhen M. Taine visited England towards the close of the nineteenth\ncentury one of the first things to attract his notice was the\nbashfulness which he encountered in unexpected places. He was surprised\nto meet travelled and cultured men who were habitually embarrassed in\nsociety, and so reserved that you might live with them six months before\nyou discovered half their excellent qualities. To unveil their true\nnature there was needed the steady breeze of a serious interest or the\nhurricane of perilous times; the faint airs of courtliness could not\nstir the heavy folds that hung before their hearts. These strong men\ncould not join in delicate raillery, but shrank back afraid; as if a\ntortoise, startled by a shower of blossoms, should withdraw into that\nthick carapace which can bear the impact of a rock. There was one who\nstammered pitifully in a drawing-room, but the next day sought the\nsuffrages of electors with an unembarrassed and fluent eloquence, so\nproving that his failure came not of folly or cowardice, but from lack\nof training in a certain school of fence. He needed the open air for the\nplay of his broadsword; and to his hand, apt to another hilt, the foil\nappeared a woman's weapon. Speaking of high aims and national ideals, he\nmoved in a large place oblivious of himself; but in the social arena he\ntripped with timid steps, like a man essaying an unfamiliar dance. On\nthe platform he had the enthusiasm and confidence of an orator; on the\ncarpet he could not string three sentences in any courtly language.\n\nIn the North the art of mercurial dialogue, which in the South is a\nnatural gift, is only learned under favourable conditions, and is often\ncondemned by those who have it not, as a popinjay's accomplishment.\nImmediate cordiality to strangers is frowned upon as tending to divorce\ncourtesy from truth. It is otherwise with the southern peoples. While\nthe Englishman conceals his benevolence by a frigid aloofness of manner,\nor blurts out friendliness like an indiscretion, the Italian is courtly\nwithout a second thought, and the Frenchman seems the comrade of a\nchance acquaintance from the moment when he has taken his hand. They are\namiable without effort in the security of a harmonious nature, and if\nthey encounter diffidence at all, observe it like an anthropologist\nconfronted with a survival of primitive times in the culture of a\ncivilized age.\n\nTaine did not err when he found the home of shyness among the Teutonic\npeoples; he saw that it flourishes in climatic conditions acting hardly\nupon a vigorous race, and only allowing it to cultivate ease of manner\nby effort and outlay, just as they only allow it to raise under glass\nthe grapes and oranges which more favoured peoples can grow in the open\nair. He saw too that this pain of diffidence becomes more subtle as the\nprogress of culture makes us more sensitive to vague impressions from\nour environment, and tunes the nerves to a higher pitch. A shy nature\nupon this plane of susceptibility suffers anguish from an uncontrollable\nbody; and even in peaceful moments the memory of the discomfitures so\ninflicted may distort a man's whole view of the world around him. He is\nimpatient of the wit which demands a versatility in response beyond his\npowers, and persuades himself into contempt of those ephemeral arts to\nwhich his nature cannot be constrained. Irritated at the injustice which\nplaces so high in the general scale of values accomplishments which he\ncannot practise, shrinking from the suave devices of gesture and\nexpression which in his own case might quickly pass into antic or\ngrimace, he withdraws more and more from the places where such arts win\nesteem to live in a private world of inner sentiment. As he leaves this\nsure retreat but rarely himself, so he forbids ingress to others; and\nbecoming yearly a greater recluse, he confines himself more and more\nwithin the walls of his forbidden city. The mind which may have been\nfitted to expand in the free play of intellectual debate or to explore\nthe high peaks of idea, loses its power of flight in this cave where it\ndwells with a company of sad thoughts, until at last the sacrifice is\ncomplete and the perfect eremite is formed.\n\nBut the virile Teutonic spirit does not suffer things to reach this\nultimate pass without stubborn resistance, and this is one reason why\nshyness is often so conspicuous, seeming deliberately to court an\navoidable confusion. Over and over again it forces the recalcitrant body\nback into the arena, preferring repeated humiliation to a pusillanimous\nsurrender. People often wonder at the recklessness with which the shy\nexpose themselves to disaster, forgetting that in this insistence of a\nsoul under discomfiture, there is evidence of a moral strength which is\nits own reward. What discipline is harder than that which conscientious\ndiffidence imposes upon itself? To stand forth and endure, though every\ninstinct implores retreat, is a true assertion of the higher self for\nthe satisfaction of imperious duty. Such deliberate return towards\nsuffering is no cowardice, but a triumph over weak flesh; and the\nawkward strife of diffidence may often prove a greater feat of arms than\nthe supple fence of self-possession.\n\nLike the physical obstacles, the mists, the snows and bleak winds, which\nhave hardened the fibre of northern men, diffidence as an obstacle to\nease has its place among the causes of strong character; and those who\nappear at a first glance weak and ineffectual as Hamlet, will often in\nthe light of knowledge be found guided by the most inflexible moral\ndetermination. They see, as in a mirage, peace supreme and adorable, but\nmay not tread the hermit's path that leads to her dwelling. Only a\nreligious vow might justify the abandonment of the human struggle, and\neven that appears desertion. The stern genius of the North grudges\nimmurement, even to great piety, remembering that Christ himself\nremained but forty days in the desert and then returned to deliver the\nworld. If he had remained there all his life, and never met the\nPharisees and high-priests, our forefathers would have rejected his law.\nFor this reason there can be no more rest for the shy than for starving\nTantalus; for this reason my flight into the East had been foredoomed to\nfailure.\n\nIf shyness is thus affected by climate and geography, its birth and\ngrowth are also conditioned by historical causes. Just as it is the\npeculiar failing of northern and western peoples, so it is the creation\nof comparatively modern times; it had no place among the classified\nweaknesses of men until these peoples began in their turn to make\nhistory.\n\nIn Greece, where limb and thought were consentient in one grace of\nmotion, the body was too perfect an expression of the mind to admit any\nconsciousness of discord; the greater simplicity of a life passed\nlargely in the open air, left no place for awkwardness in the franker\nconverse of man with man. Moreover the seclusion of women rendered\nunnecessary that complicated code of manners which the freer intercourse\nof the sexes has built up in later times as a barrier against brutality\nor the unseemly selfishness of passion. In Greece the words of the witty\nand the wise could be heard in the market-place; good conversation was\nnot for the few alone; and the common man might of unquestioned right\napproach the circle of Socrates or Plato. The sense of community was\neverywhere, overthrowing reserve, and propitious to the universal growth\nof fellowship.\n\nIn the Roman world things were changed; there were more closed doors and\ncourts impenetrable of access. Insignia of office, gradations of wealth\nand rank, sundered those of high estate from classes which now\nacknowledged their own inferiority; privacies, exclusions, distinctions\ninnumerable, altered the face of public life as the easy _mos majorum_\nwas confined by the ordinances of encroaching fashion. It was now that\nwomen began to be cast for leading parts upon the great stage of life.\nUnder the Empire, by the rapid removal of her disabilities the Roman\nmatron achieved a position of independence which made her, according to\nher nature, a potent force of good or evil. It was now that the\nintricate threads of social prescription were woven into that ceremonial\nmantle which was afterwards to sit so uneasily on the shoulders of\nbarbarian men.\n\nBut the time for shyness was not yet come, for Italy is a sunny land\nwhere clear air makes clear minds, blandly or keenly observant of the\nworld, and never impelled by onset of outer mists and darkness to tend a\nflickering light within themselves. There was melancholy, high and\nstately, such as Lucretius knew, when he went lonely among the\nhomesteads or along the shore; but it was too exalted to be one with\ndiffidence, for he who will hold the sum of things in his thoughts walks\non clouds above the heads of men, free of all misgiving. Perhaps beyond\nthe Alps, in some Rhaetian upland where Roman dignity was interfused with\nold barbaric roughness, the first signs of our malady were perceived and\nthe first ancestor of all the shy was born. But even yet the time was\nnot ripe, nor the place prepared. Christianity had to come, turning\nmen's eyes inwards and proclaiming the error of the objective pagan way.\nA new feeling, the sense of personal unworthiness before God, spreading\nthrough the Roman world, now stirred mankind to still communing with\nthemselves, and sanctioned the stealing away from the noisy festivals of\nlife. By enjoining a search into the depths of the heart, it encouraged\nthe growth of a self-consciousness hitherto unknown. It was not always a\npanic of contrition, sweeping the joyous out of the sunlight into a\nmonastic shade, which brought the troubled into a new way of peace, but\nsometimes a quiet joy in renunciation, congruous with a timid mood,\nleading by gradual allurement to cloisters of shadowy lanes and cells\nwhich were forest bowers. The new faith gave open sanction to evasion of\nthe banquet, and thus fortified and increased those who loved not the\nceremonial day. The spirit of solitude, no more a maenad, but a nun,\nsheltered earth's children in the folds of her robe, and no man said her\nnay.\n\nMoreover, Christianity quickened the force of that feminine influence\nwhich Rome had first set flowing through the civilized world, but\ndiverted the stream from irregular and torrential courses into a smooth\nchannel gliding amid sacred groves. It clothed woman with ideal grace\nand virtue, and perceived in her powers which the virile mind could\nnever wield. \"Inesse quinetiam sanctum aliquid et providum putant, nec\naut consilia earum aspernantur, nec responsa negligunt.\" So our\nancestors held in the northern woods, and Christianity, purifying and\nexpanding their belief, fulfilled it with a new perfection.\n\nBut this gradual binding of all men's limbs in silken cords of\nreverence, making a rude world civil, was now to inaugurate for\ndiffidence its miserable career. Through the rough deference of the\nGerman camp, through the Provencal code of _courtoisie_, up to the\nmodern law of fine manners, the drudge and chattel of the primeval tribe\nhas risen to impose her law upon the modern world. Earth is better for\nthis finer power, but social intercourse is less sincere. For woman,\nhaving curbed the brute man by conventional restraints of outward\ndemeanour, has made human intercourse smooth and seemly, but imposed\nupon mankind the wearing of unnatural masks. Before the multitude of\nlocked souls with labels of smiling faces the sensitive nature feels\nitself mocked, and is soon distraught. It cannot suffer convention\ngladly for an ultimate good, but is chilled by this everlasting\nurbanity, which must, it fancies, be compact of irony and conceal a\ndisingenuous soul.\n\nAll this finished science of illusion is like an east wind to the\nconfidences of the shy, and if they stay within its range they are\nblighted before their hearts have time to unfold. They long for a less\nbiting air, for vernal hours in sheltered dells, where without sheaths\nand unguarded the hearts of flowers lie open to their neighbours and to\nheaven. There was once a simple day when religion set hearts\ninterflowing, but now it can melt them only within the precincts; the\nfire which is carried from the altar is dead at the church door. The\nbrotherliness of those early days is indeed often found in humble walks\nof life, but these we cannot continually tread, because our intellectual\nand artistic tastes find there no sufficient nurture. Among the cultured\na cold convention often reigns, behind which only a more persistent\nnature than ours can pass. Unless, therefore, we find our way into some\ncircle of gentle scholars or lovers of the beautiful quite simple in\ntheir tastes, a thing possible but not often granted by a niggard\nfortune, we are perforce thrown back upon our own company, and move\ntowards the grave alone. For this we accuse none; nothing is more at\nfault than our own constitution. But to us society is a school of dames,\nwho are not to be blamed if amid the crowd that clamours for their\nteaching, they find no time for the backward scholar. We are the dunces\nof the school, and are dismissed without learning the accomplishments\nset forth upon the prospectus. That is why in our northern streets so\nmany seeming hats are cowls.\n\nIn England the loss of congenial intercourse is perhaps more certain\nthan in other lands. For through his national reserve the\nhighly-cultured Englishman has a cold perfection of good breeding to\nwhich heartiness is vulgarity; he emanates intimidation, and in courtesy\nis rather studious than spontaneous, seldom genial but in an ancient\nfriendship. If you knew him to the concealed heart, and were suffered to\nassay the fine metal beneath this polished surface, you would win a\ngolden friendship; but only on a desert island would he permit the\noperation. To the shy who may encumber his path his bearing seems marked\nby an indifference which they magnify into aversion, and are thereby the\nworse confounded. In a land where such convention reigns they go through\nlife like persons afflicted with a partial deafness; between them and\nthe happier world there is as it were a crystalline wall which the\npleasant low voices of confidence can never traverse.\n\nI say, then, that the real, the enduring shyness is that inveteration of\nreserve to which a few men in a few countries are miserably condemned.\nOthers know it as a transient inconvenience, as the croup or measles of\nchildhood; but in us it is obstinate and ineradicable as grave disease.\nIf out of the long frustration of our efforts to be whole some strain of\nbitterness passes into our nature; if sometimes we burn with unjust\nresentment against the fate which, suffers such lives as ours to be\nprolonged, let it be remembered in extenuation that to those who bear a\ndouble burden human charity owes the larger kindliness. For though like\nyou we bear our share of common troubles, O happier men and women, the\ncommon pleasures and compensations which are as wings upon your\nshoulders are heavy packs on ours. The cheerful contrasts are for you\nalone; for us the bright threads interwoven in the dark stuff of life\nwere faded before they reached the loom.\n\nYou who have the friendships and affections without which you would not\ncare to live a day, think more kindly of those to whom the interludes of\ntoil are often harder than the toil itself. Of your charity believe our\nfate ordained and not the choice of our own perversity; for what man\nborn of woman would choose a path so sad, were there not within him some\nguiding and possessing devil which he could in nowise cast out? Never\nwill in maddest hours of freedom consented to such doom; we were\ncondemned at birth, our threads were spoiled upon the fingers of the\nNorns.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSuch in its broader outlines seemed the infirmity which had grown with\nmy growth, and now had to be reckoned with, like the bridle of Theages,\nas a permanent hindrance to a reasonable happiness. Old hopes lay\nshattered about me--well, I had to pick up the fragments and piece\ntogether a less ambitious ideal.\n\nI will not linger over the forces which helped my resolution, the great\nand general remedies which come to the relief of men in like evil case.\nReligion, philosophy, art, science, literature--all promised their\nanodynes against despair; slowly they stirred in me anew those springs\nof interest in life which disillusion seemed to have choked for ever. I\nrose up, and looking round upon the world saw that it was still good;\nand there came into my memory brave words which a golden book puts in\nthe mouths of its indomitable knights: \"I will take the adventure which\nGod shall ordain me.\" I now perceived that if evil fortune had unhorsed\nme it had yet left me endurance to continue the combat on foot. My\nsecond failure was more final and disastrous than the first discomfiture\nin earlier life, but now the plague of pessimism was stayed by a\ngreater recuperative power. Those long hours of the long eastern day,\nspent under the verandah with books of many ages and languages, had not\nbeen altogether fruitless; they had helped to mature a wider and more\ncatholic taste than that of restless youth, the kind of culture that\nbrings not rebellion but peace.\n\nIn my eastern watch-tower I had re-read the great books from a new point\nof vantage, and let the eye roam over fields of literature which lie\nbeyond the undergraduate's bounds; by a still permeation of fine\ninfluence, my crude philosophy was unconsciously mellowed, as the\nsurface of ivory, according to Roman belief, by the bland air of Tibur.\nFor by the mere being in an atmosphere of serenity our nature grows\nporous to gracious influences streaming in we know not how or when, and\ntaking their abode in our very grain and structure. And so without\nconsciousness of good desert, I found myself confident in a new\ndiscipline, and looking for the word of command from wiser leaders than\nByron or the youthful Shelley. Queen Mab was now the saddest rhetoric,\nand Childe Harold's plaint unseemly lamentation; I had erased from my\ncalendar of saints the names of apostles of affliction once held in\nhonour; the Caliph Amurath with his tale of fourteen happy days out of a\nlong life of royal opportunity; Swift with his birthday lection from\nJeremiah. Rather there trooped into memory with a quiet pomp and\ninduction of joy, forms of men who, though justified in rebellion by\nevery human suffrage, remained loyal to the end and proved by endurance\na more imperial humanity. Socrates unperturbed by mortal injustice;\nDante a deep harmonious voice amid jangling destinies; William the\nSilent serene in every desperate conjecture--these seemed now the more\nperfect captains. If exile had done no more than transfer my allegiance\nto such as these, I had not borne the lash in vain.\n\nBut at the first setting out upon this later stage I had still mistakes\nto make, and the ascent to tranquillity was not to be accomplished\nwithout stumbling. It was the old Roman creed which first drew me away\nfrom fretting memories; in its high restraint, as of a hushed yet mighty\nwind, it breathed a power of valiant endurance, and promised before\nnightfall the respite of a twilight hour. For stoicism has qualities\nwhich seem foreordained for the bracing of shy souls, as if the men who\nframed its austere laws had prescience of our frailty and consciously\nlegislated to its intention. It is the philosophy of the individual\nstanding by himself, as the shy must always stand, over against a world\nwhich he likes not but may not altogether shun. And in this proud\nestrangement it promises release from all the inquisition of morbid\nfears, and an imperturbable calm above the need of earthly friends or\ncomfort or happiness; it plants the feet upon that path of nature along\nwhich a man may go strongly, consoled in solitude by a god-like sense of\nself-reliance. This immutable confidence is the essential power of\nstoicism, which does not, like the great oriental religions, tame\npersonality by ruthless maiming, but teaches it to bear the brunt of\nadversities erect, like an athlete finely trained. Its very arrogance,\nits sufficiency, perforce commend it to those whose instinct urges to\nself-abasement: its lofty disregard of adverse circumstance is medical\nto their timidity.\n\nAnd so in the hour of my bereavement its voice inspired to resistance\nlike a bugle sounding the advance; its echoes rang with the assurance\nthat man was not made to be the worm of Eden, darkly creeping in the\ndust, but rather its noblest creature, with the light crowning his head\nand the winds tossing his hair. And then its strong simplicity, so\nmasculine and unemotional, was grateful to one now finally dismated, and\nso cruelly handled as to have, it seemed, no use for a heart any more.\nBetter let feeling die than be betrayed by diffidence into the denial of\nits true allegiance, or into expressions of the inner life false and wry\nas the strange laughter which the doomed suitors in Ithaca could not\ncontrol. Though it stifled feeling, the creed of Cleanthes exalted the\nintellect, which was all that now remained to me unimpaired; surely it\nwas the appointed rule for one henceforth to be severed from the\npassions and enthusiasms through which humanity errs and is happy.\n\n\"The world,\" the wise Stoic seemed to say, \"is twofold in its nature.\nSome things may be changed by man, others are by his utmost effort\nimmutable. God has implanted in you a right reason by which, when it is\nwell trained, you can infallibly distinguish between the two, avoiding\nthus all unworthy fretfulness and all idle kicking against the pricks.\nTherefore he has made you for happiness; for the joy of men is an\nachievement; and their misery in the coveting of the unattainable end.\nIf you would fulfil his benevolent design, seek only what has been\nplaced in your power, frankly resigning all that lies beyond; but be\never difficult in renunciation; test and sound well every issue, lest\nyou leave a permitted good undone, than which nothing is a greater sin.\nTo be loyal, to be contented, to acquiesce in all things save only in\nameliorable evil, this is to live according to nature, which is God's\nadministration. If you are assiduous in careful choosing, you will learn\nat last to make a right use of every event; you will be harassed no\nmore by vain desire or unreasoning aversion, but will become God's\ncoadjutor and be always of his mind. So, when external things have\nceased to trouble your spirit, you will no longer be a competitor for\nvanities; but, enfranchised from all solicitude, you will have discarded\nenvy and conceit and intolerance, which are the ill fruits of that vain\nrivalry. You will neither cringe before power nor covet great place, for\nalike from inordinate affection and from the fear of pain or death you\nwill be free. Disenamoured of mundane things, you will live simply and\nunperturbed, in kindness and cheerfulness and in gratitude to\nProvidence. Life will be to you as a feast or solemnity, and when it\ncomes to a close, you will rise up saying, 'I have been well and nobly\nentertained, it is fit that I give place to another guest.'\"\n\nThe strength and mastery thus promised raised my dejected spirits, as\nthe words of a new and sanguine physician may hearten one who had long\nlain stricken yet now dares to hope for the day of recovery. This was a\nlaw which did not denounce the world as illusion or enjoin a cloistral\nseclusion upon the mind, but rather proposed each and every appearance\nas a touchstone on which the quality of personality should be\nunceasingly tried. By the constant application of a high standard to\nlife, it seemed to implant an incorrupt seed of manliness, and to create\nin its disciples that saner mood which holds in equal aversion a\nHeliogabalus and a Simeon Stylites. So persuaded, I could join with the\nfervour of a neophyte in the Stoic's profession: \"Good and evil are in\nchoice alone, and there is no cause of sorrowing save in my own errant\nand wilful desires. When these shall have been overcome, I shall possess\nmy soul in tranquillity, vexing myself in nowise if, in the world's\nillusive good, all men have the advantage over me. For all outward\nthings I will bear with equal mind, even chains or insults or great\npain, ashamed of this only, if reason shall not wholly free me from the\nservitude of care. Let others boast of material goods; mine is the\nprivilege of not needing these or stooping to their control. I will\nhave but a temperate desire of things open to choice, as they are good\nand present, and the tempter shall find no hold for his hands by which\nto draw me astray. I will be content with any sojourn or any company,\nfor there is none, howsoever perilous, which may not prove and\nstrengthen the defences of my soul. For I have built an impregnable\ncitadel whence, if only I am true to myself, I can repel assaults from\nthe four quarters of heaven. Who shall console one lifted above the\nrange of grief, whom neither privation nor insolence can annoy? for he\nhas peace as an inalienable possession, and by no earthly tyranny shall\nbe perturbed. Bearing serenely all natural impediments to action,\ntrespassing beyond no eternal landmark, by no foolishness provoked, he\nshall become a spectator and interpreter of God's works; he shall ripen\nto the harvest in the sunshine and wait tranquilly for the sickle,\nknowing that corn is only sown that it may be reaped, and man only born\nto die.\"\n\nThe mere repetition of these words, so instinct with the spirit of old\nRoman fortitude, roused me to a more immediate resolution than any\nother form of solace. There are times when a splendour of exaggeration\nis the best foil to truth. The Roman's pride is the best corrective to\nthe earthward bias of the diffident; by its excess of an opposite defect\nit drives us soonest into the mean of a simple and manly confidence. It\nis better for us first to repeat, \"Dare to look up to God and say: Make\nuse of me for the future as Thou wilt, I am of the same mind, I am equal\nwith Thee.... Lead me whither Thou wilt,\" than to dwell upon such words\nas these: \"It is altogether necessary that thou have a true contempt for\nthyself if thou desire to prevail against flesh and blood\"--or these:\n\"If I abase myself ... and grind myself to the dust which I am, Thy\ngrace will be favourable to me, and Thy light near unto my head.... By\nseeking Thee alone and purely loving Thee I have found both myself and\nThee, and by that love have more deeply reduced myself to nothing.\"\n\nThis supreme abnegation may leave the saint unharmed, but it is ill\nfitted for those who droop already with the malady of dejection. The\ndivine wisdom which knows the secrets of all hearts and their\nnecessities infinitely various, shall exact obedience according to no\nadamantine law: it loves not the jots and tittles of formalism, nor the\npretensions of those who would cast all things in one mould. From those\nmade perfect, from the saints whose links with earth are almost severed,\nwhose sight begins to pierce gross matter through, it may accept\nprostration and endless contrite tears, knowing that to these, upon the\nvery verge of illumination, the forms of slavery have lost their\nvileness. But to those who are still of earth and can but conceive God's\nfatherhood according to earthly similitudes, it will not ordain a prone\nobeisance. Such it will require to stand erect even in contrition, in\nthat posture which is the privilege of sons. We who are unperfected\naffront God supposing him pleased with the prostration of his children.\nIt is the ignorance of a feudal age that ascribes to him a Byzantine\nlove of adulation; but that age is no more, and he disserves the divine\nmajesty who imputes to it a liking for the _esprit d'antichambre_.\n\nI did not need to dwell upon my weakness and misery but rather upon the\ngrandeur of humanity, whose kinship and collaboration God himself does\nnot reject. The Stoic phase was a useful stage on the road of\nconvalescence, and the majestic words of Epictetus more helpful to a\nmanlier bearing than the confessions of the saintliest souls. If, as is\nnot to be doubted, there are others who seek an issue from the same dark\nregion where I wandered, I do not fear to point them to the Stoic way,\nwhich like a narrow gorge cold with perpetual shadow is yet their\nshortest path upward to the high slopes lit with sunlight. Let them\nenter it without fear and endure its shadows a while, for by other ways\nthey will fetch a longer compass and come later to their release.\n\nBut when some interval had passed I became aware that this cold ideal\nwas not the end, and that out of the gall of austerity sweetness should\nyet come forth. Wise men have said that all great systems of ethics\nmeet upon a higher plane, as the branches of forest trees rustle\ntogether in the breeze; for though in the dark earth their roots creep\napart, their summits are joined in the freedom of clear air. As I now\nstruck inland from the iron shores of shipwreck, my heart warmed to a\nbrighter and softer landscape, and with Landor I began to wish that I\nmight walk with Epicurus on the right hand and Epictetus on the left.\nWith a later thinker I reflected that if the Stoic knew more of the\nfaith and hope of Christianity, the Epicurean came nearer to its\ncharity. For it is true that Stoicism commands admiration rather than\nlove. It was indeed too harsh a saying that \"the ruggedness of the Stoic\nis only a silly affectation of being a god, to wind himself up by\npulleys to an insensibility of suffering\": that is the judgment of the\nbluff partisan, so shocked by the adversary's opinions that he feels\nabsolved from any effort to understand them. But even those who in\nextremity have been roused to new valour by the precepts as by a Tyrtaean\node, for all the gratitude which they owe, will not impute to their\ndeliverers an inhuman perfection. The Stoic does in truth wear a\nsemblance of academic conceit, as though related to God not as a child\nto its father, but as a junior to a senior colleague. And with all its\nsufficiency, his philosophy seems too Fabian in its counsels; it is\nalways withdrawing, passing by on the other side, avoiding battle--so\nthat as a preparation for the uttermost ordeal it will often prove\ninferior to the reckless pugnacity of a narrow zealot.\n\nThen, too, it acts like a frost not merely upon personal, but upon\nnational ambition, and so keeps the wellspring from the root. Its\nassumption of a superhuman fortitude accords but ill with scientific\ntruth, for if with one bound every man may become as God, he will\ndespise that infinitely slow upward progression which is the only real\nadvance. But, above all, it lives estranged from tenderness, in which\nalone at certain hours of torment the distracted mind finds God's face\nreflected. It preaches renunciation of all vain aversions and desires;\nbut it repels sweet impulses that are not vain. By exalting apathy in\nregard to personal suffering, it becomes insensible to others' pain\nalso. In the conviction that appeals for sympathy are avowals of\nunworthiness, it will have no part in the love of comrades, and it never\ndiscovered the truth that the strength and the compassion of the Divine\nare one perfection.\n\nThere is a favourite mediaeval legend depicted in one of the windows of\nthe cathedral at Bourges, which exposes in a characteristic fashion this\nweakness of the Stoic's creed. The Evangelist St John, when at Ephesus,\nremarked in the forum the philosopher Cratinus giving a lesson of\nabnegation to certain rich young men. At the teacher's bidding the\nyouths had converted all their wealth into precious stones, and these\nthey were now bidden crush to dust with a heavy hammer in the presence\nof the assembled people, that so they might make public profession of\ntheir contempt for riches. But St John was angered at so wasteful a\nrenunciation. \"It is written,\" he said, \"that whoso would be perfect\nshould not destroy his possessions, but sell them, and give the proceeds\nto the poor.\" \"If your master is the true God,\" replied Cratinus\nscornfully, \"restore these gems again to their original form, and then\nthey shall be bestowed according to your desire.\" St John prayed, and\nthe precious stones lay there once more perfect in all their brilliance\nand splendour. The moral of the old tale is clear--that all virtue\nwithout charity is nothing worth; and that of virtue without charity,\nthe Stoic's cold renunciation is the chief type and ensample.\n\nThe insight into this higher truth did not come by inspiration, but was\ngradually imparted during long summer days, when I wandered from dawn to\ndark among the fields and woods. Hoping at first no more than to tire\nthe mind with the body and so win a whole repose, I became by degrees\nreceptive of a new learning from nature, which created new sympathies\nand kindled fresh ambitions. Naturally I again read Wordsworth, and now\nfor the first time since childhood I knew what joys intimacy brings. I\nwas one of a brotherhood, and wherever I went was sure of a friendly\nsalutation. Things that grew in silence became my friends; I was with\nthem at all hours, in light and shadow, in warmth and cold, watching\ntheir gracious and responsive existences, which reject no good gift, but\nradiantly grow towards the light while it endures. Insensibly the spirit\nof this gentle expansive life was infused within me, until the heart\nwhich I had deemed useless and outworn, began to open like a flower\nscathed by frost, at the full coming of spring. The plants and trees\nwere human to me, the brooks spoke with articulate voice; by that\nancient witchery of animism, old as the relationship of man and nature,\nI was put to school again: until at last, absorbed in the vicissitudes\nof small things and surrendering reason to a host of pathetic fallacies,\nI was taught the great secret that life may not be centred in itself,\nbut in the going out of the heart is wisdom. And as among human friends\nthere are some to whom a man is bound by deeper and tenderer links than\nto the rest, so it is with these other friends which have no language,\nbut only the wild-wood power of growing about the heart. Among their\ngracious company each man will discover his own affinity, and having\nfound it will look on the rest of nature with brighter eyes. Some learn\nthe great lessons from mountains, lakes, and sounding cataracts; others\nfrom broad rivers peacefully flowing to the sea. To me there spoke no\nsuch romantic voices. My wanderings led me through a country of simple\nrural charm, and the friends that became dearest to me were just our\nEnglish elms.\n\nWho but the solitary, artists alone excepted, understand the full charm\nof elms in an English landscape? To us there is an especial appeal in\ntheir loneliness, as they range apart along the hedgerows, embayed in\nblue air and sunlight which do but play upon the fringe of your huddling\nforest. See them on a breezy August morning across a tawny corn-field,\nprinting their dark feathery contours on a blue sky and holding the\nshadows to their bosoms; or on a June evening get them between you and\nthe setting sun, and mark the droop and poise of the upper foliage\nfretted black upon a ground of red fire. Here are no cones or\nhemispheres, or shapeless bulks of green, but living beings of\narticulated form, clothed in verdure as with the fine-wrought drapery\nthat enhances rather than conceals the beauty of the statue.\n\nOr at a still later hour, over against the harvest moon, see them rise\ncongruous with the gentle night, casting round them not palls of ominous\ngloom, but clear translucent shadows sifted through traceries of leafage\nwhich do but veil the light. And what variety of form and structure\nsunders them from other trees, what irregular persuasive grace. Some are\ntall and straight, springing like fountains arrested in the moment when\nthey turn to fall; others bend oblique without one perpendicular line,\nevery branch by some subtle instinct evading the hard angles of\nearth-measurement as unmeet for that which frames the sky; others again\nspread to all the quarters of heaven their vast umbrageous arms. No\ntrees are so companionable as the elms to the red-roofed homestead which\nnestles at their feet and is glad for them. Seen from a distance, how\ndelightful is this association, how delicate the contrast of tile and\nleaf and timbered barn, each lending some complement to the other's\nfairest imperfection. Perhaps there will be a whole line of distinct\ntrees, and then you will see as it were a cliff-side of verdure in\nwhich, beneath the billowy curves of lit foliage, there open caverns and\ncool deeps of shadow fit for a Dryad's rest.\n\nTo know the elm-tree you must not come too near, for it too is wild and\ndoes not reveal its nature lightly; you may be cooler in the shadow of\nthe beech or stand drier beneath the red-stemmed leaves of the sycamore.\nYet it suffers the clinging ivy; it was beloved of poets in old days,\nand painters love it still. It has not the walnut's vivid green nor the\nrare flush that lights up the pine-stem. Its leaves are rough and of no\nbrilliance; its bark is rugged also. But in life the familiar guardian\nof home meadows, it has stood by our fathers' landmarks from generation\nto generation, and when fallen and hewn and stacked it sheds a\nfragrance which, wherever perceived in after years, brings back memories\nof wanderings in deep lanes and of the great dim barns where we played\nin childhood. In the dull winter days when only yews and cypresses wear\ntheir leaves, I sometimes wander to a place whose walls are hung with\nthe works of many a seer and lover of elms; there seated before a few\nsmall frames I give them thanks for having read the dear trees truly,\nand glorified a close and barren gallery with all the breezes and\ncolours of the fields: I am beyond all noise and murkiness, walking in\nthe peace and spaciousness of unsullied air.\n\nTo a mind now happily reverted to the primitive confidence in souls\neverywhere indwelling and creating sympathies between all things, the\nbonds of kinship between man and nature were drawn ever closer, and it\nseemed a wholly natural belief that the changes of the visible universe,\naffecting things which lived an almost personal existence, should be\ninstinct with the deeper meaning of events in the drama of human\nexistence.\n\nLike the every-day life of men with its imperceptible attritions was the\ninsensible growth and decay of things; as the tumult of his emotions\nwere the storms and catastrophes that convulse the face of nature. The\nmovement never ceased; the transforming power was never wearied; the\nspectator had but to give rapt attention, to be carried beyond his poor\nsolicitudes to a participation in elemental processes of change in which\nthe fates of humanity were mysteriously involved. The thought of this\nindissoluble union kept alive the sense of brotherhood within me, of\nresponsibility in life, of interest in all that happens; and whether it\nwas the daily contraction of a pond in drought, or a battle of ants by\nthe wayside, or the first tinge of autumn upon the woods, all was\nennobled by symbolic relationships to man's experience, which in the\nunceasing flow of their perception were lustral to a solitary heart,\nwithout them choked and stagnant.\n\nThere was a certain heath-clad ridge which like a watch-tower set above\na city never failed to bring before the ranging eye some vision\npregnant of those emotions by which the sense of humanity is quickened\nto a deeper consciousness of itself. The witchery of space was there\nalways, and seemed to draw from the soul the clinging mists of her\nindifference. It was there that I saw nature in all her moods, and felt\nthat to each my own moods responded; there that despondency, imagining\nher monotony of woe, was confuted by the saving changefulness of created\nthings. I remember one day, when a summer storm was spending its fury, I\nstood upon this ridge and looked across the low lands that stretched\naway beneath me. They lay with all their boundaries confused by a pall\nof purple gloom, then darkly transparent, and dissolving before the\nreturning sun, whose penetrative influence was felt rather than actually\nperceived. As I gazed, high in the veil of cloud there began faintly to\ngleam a spot of palest gold, so high that it seemed to belong to the sky\nand to have no part in an earthly landscape. Gradually it expanded, grew\nmore vivid, and assumed form, other forms and tints emerged beside it,\nuntil at last it was revealed as a ripe corn-field on the high slopes\nacross the valley, and before many moments had passed, a long line of\ndowns stood out in the pure air with a sculptural clearness, as if\nduring the storm all had been uprooted and moved a whole league towards\nthe spot where I stood. While the rainbow spanned the plain, and the\nthunder still rolled in the distance, all the opposite heaven cleared\nalmost to the furthest horizon; but there a remoter range yet lay\nhalf-covered by a billowy mass of clouds, like the hull of a dismasted\nship in the folds of her fallen sails. At last even this trace of the\nbattle was gone; the sun shone unopposed; the wet lands and clear sky\nwere lit with an intenser brightness for their transient eclipse.\n\nThen the humanity of all these things was borne in upon my mind, and I\nwas affected by these vicissitudes shadowing forth the destiny of man,\nand reminding him in their beautiful and majestic procession that nature\nendures no perpetual gloom. The sudden ruin of a bright day in deluge\nand darkness and sonorous thunder, the timid reappearance of faint\nlight, the natural forms strangely emerging from the perplexed wrack\ninfesting the heaven, and at last seen as never before through leagues\nof pellucid air; the thunder's silence, the final and supreme triumph of\nlight;--these swift yet utter revolutions of the visible world, by very\ngrace of mutability, were rich with instant consolations for the soul's\nmisgiving. They served to remind me that the fears, the spiritual\nconflicts, the darkness that seems eternal, are mere incidents of a\nsummer noon and leave behind them a purer and serener day. Through all\nthis close intercourse with nature my mind was being prepared for a\nhealthier relation to my fellow-man, and my heart saved from the\npetrification of melancholy self-regard. The ever-growing delight in\nthese inanimate things, the constant discovery of new charms as\nknowledge widened with experience, united to prevent stagnation and\ndespair; they kept heart and mind alert for the perception of new\nglories; and it is from a clear sense of their salutary power that I\ndwell upon them in this record of a self-tormented life. How should he\nfind life colourless whose eyes are often fixed upon the sky, who sees\ngrey zones of cloud flush crimson before the sunrise, and at evening the\nwide air richly glowing, moted as with the bloom of plums and the golden\npollen of all flowers?\n\nAt the end of that summer I returned to the occupations of life,\nappeased and almost happy in this inheritance of new sympathies. And\nbefore long I found that these were themselves but precursors of that\nwhich was to come, and that like the paranymphs who escort the bride,\nthey did but apparel the heart for a deeper and more abiding joy. They\nwere busied about me in tranquil hours, and speaking not, but seeming to\nwait in gladness for another, they made me serenely expectant also. They\ndestroyed all sadness of retrospect; they led me always forward; with\nfaces transparent with the light of an inward happiness they seemed to\npromise a vision at each near bending of the way. From glad looks and\ngestures assuring imminent joy, I too was charmed into a like faith, and\nwent on blithely in the confidence of a coming illumination. Nor was\nthat hope vain, for at length the mystery was made plain, and one day\nthey brought me exulting into the presence of the Ideal Love.\n\nThere is a place in every heart which must be filled by adoration, or\nelse the whole will grow hard and wither like a garden whose central\nfountain is grown dry. And though the affection of mortal man or woman\nmay abandon it, there remains yet this other love which by pure and\nstrenuous invocation may be drawn to it, and dwell in it, to the\nennoblement of life; so great is the care of providence for mortal need.\nLove is our need, and it is given, if we despair not of it, even to such\nas have rarely felt the glow of earthly passion. For love is of many\nkinds; yet the palest and most subtle of its forms are made real to\nthose who believe, and may become the guiding influences of their lives.\nSuch are the visions of the ideal love to which those glad natural\nsympathies now led me, leaving me alone awhile that I might worship the\norient light. And when I came out from that presence I rejoiced indeed,\nfor the path was clear for my return, and life was now glad with promise\nlike an orchard burgeoning with white blossoms. Old memories crowded\nback on me of hours beneath the cedars with the Phaedrus and the Vita\nNuova, hours made happy with intellectual and austere delights. But now\nthe joy was other than intellectual, though significant tenfold, for\nthen in untried youth I had wondered at the beauty of an imaginary\nworld; now with eyes that had looked on desolation I perceived that\nthese visions were true. For had they been no more than airy fancies,\nthey surely had not endured throughout these long ages in our laden and\nmortal air.\n\nIt was not merely the beauty of a literary setting which had preserved\nthem: the craftsman's skill might indeed have enhanced their natural\nsplendour, but it could not have alone inspired them with this perennial\nlife. The gem with fire in its heart outlives the delicate setting;\nthough it may be maltreated and buried for centuries by the wayside, it\nwill come to light when the gold that framed it is long battered or\nlost, and will be desired by new generations for its inherent and\nunalterable beauty.\n\nNot Plato's or Dante's creative power, but truth surviving all\nincarnations of genius, has kept this celestial gem aglow: they have but\ncelebrated that which was never mortal, and guided wandering eyes to\nheaven's most beautiful star. This intangible and unincarnate vision\nexacts more from its votaries than the love which walks the earth:\nholding the lover ever in the strain of apprehension, it inures him to\nunwearying worship, and itself moving in regions incorruptible, never\nloses the glory of its first hour. The years may pass, but one face,\nlike a hallowed thing, abides continually; years may fret and corrode\nother ideals, but to this they add beauties of ever fresh significance.\nThe auroral glow is always round it, brightening the world, until it\nbecomes an emblem of illumination and the symbol of eternal truths. This\nvisionary presence wakes aspiration to new effort and touches the\nintellect with passion; beleaguered thought sallies out with new\nstrength, and the frontiers of darkness recede before it. From this\ncomes the quickening of the heart without which hope wanes and the mind\nis barren: the deep pure joy of contemplation awakens all that is best\nin the soul, which goes towards it on tense wings of desire. And as with\ntime it draws further from the earth, and, following, the soul essays\never higher flights, it is often poised at a great height as in a trance\nof motion, whence it looks back upon the world it has left, and round it\nupon other worlds. Then, its love-range being wondrously expanded, it\nsees beyond that visionary countenance, which dissolves and forms again\nlike a delicate wreath of mist; and clear starlight falls upon it from\nevery side, so that all shadow is destroyed. And when it returns to\nearth again, and is forced to contemplate meaner things, it is now aware\nthat the very soil is compacted of dust of stars, and that he who looks\nlistlessly upon creation is unworthy of the human name. And so\ncontinually flying forth and returning, it weaves endless bonds between\nthe infinitesimal and the infinite, forgetting how to despise, which is\nthe heavenly science.\n\nAll this ardour is awakened and sustained by love, which began in sense\nand is now transformed. Through each succeeding change it is known for\nthe same divine power which has so attuned the body that it vibrates no\nmore to desire alone, but is now become resonant beneath a faint and\nspiritual breath.\n\nIt is an old story that love is sightless, but that is the love which\nromps among the roses and is blinded by their thorns. There is another\nand a better tradition that love's eyes pierce heaven, and this is a\ngreat truth; for infinity is cold and vaporous until man projects upon\nit his mortal ideal, his conception of an earthly love transfigured.\nWhen this beloved guide appears throned above him as in the clouds, he\ndares to lift his eyes, and there he reads through its light the divine\npurports of his existence. Is it a small thing to stand, though but for\na moment, searching infinity undismayed? This is the celestial ocean to\nwhose shore he is come; and now \"drawing towards and contemplating the\nvast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and\nnotions in boundless love of wisdom, until on that shore he grows and\nwaxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single\nscience, which is the science of beauty everywhere ... beauty absolute,\nseparate, simple, everlasting, which without diminution, without\nincrease, or any change, is imparted to the ever growing and perishing\nbeauties of all other things.\"\n\nTo some the great perception comes but late, rising from the ashes of\nlove's common furnace. But they whose hearts have never been consumed in\nthese roaring flames may find it earlier; and purged from all taints of\njealousy and covetousness, may pass straightway into the bliss of a\nhigher union. This is that supreme affiance and espousal of the soul\nwherein they may be released into a larger air, undelayed by the\nearthward longings and gradual initiations of seemingly happier men.\nThus its servants do not decline into slothful service, but are\nstrenuous always; raised above the acquiescence of use, they never know\nthe cloying of fruition or suffer the barbarian conquest of\nindifference. Their soul is unaffected by material circumstance or\nmisfortune, and illuminates their lives as often as in the silent hour\nof meditation they concentrate their thoughts upon its grace. The cup of\nearthly love, even the noblest, is often dipped in Pyriphlegethon, and\nthe draught it offers scathes the palate until its finest sensibility is\nfor ever dulled. Those who have quaffed this liquid fire can no longer\nunderstand his mood who leaves the roses and the wine to toil through\ndeserts in search of limpid water. They think him madly ungrateful for\nGod's good gifts, a fool abandoning joy proved and present for a shadow\nfar and incomprehensible. But they who have not denied themselves are no\nlonger fit judges of him who has renounced. They cannot know that by\nthis renunciation the senses are thrice refined, and receive as a vital\ninfluence the stellar beam which falls chill and ineffectual upon a\ngrosser frame. They cannot believe that this love from the infinite\ndistance wields as mighty a force over renunciant lives as the near\nflame of passion over their own. But, for all their denial, it lives and\npuissantly reigns. It reigns in very truth predominant, this ideal love\nto which space exists not and propinquity is nothing; and it will have\nnone for its subjects but those who by bereavement or aspiration or\nintense purity are inly prepared for its dominion.\n\nHappy therefore are the shy if in the midst of their tribulation they\nare guided to the gateway of so bright a kingdom. It may well be that we\nmust first be led thither by some dear-remembered and virgin form once\nalmost ours through earthly love, but now joined to us only by an\nimperishable and mystic union. Our sight may at first need the embodied\nbeauty to give it the finer powers by which the revelation of the ideal\ngrows familiar to us, but is at last attainable without mortal\nintervention by an immediate flight of the soul. Until that late day of\nenlightenment we must still be set upon the celestial path by a touch\nof human tenderness; a pure yet sensuous yearning must be ours when we\nare first girded to the ascent. If there are beings which attain the\nfulness of the ideal love without the first inspiration of a fair\nearthly form I know nothing in creation to which they may be likened,\nnor had I ever part in so rare an enfranchisement. The vision that now\nentrances my soul first arose from a living, breathing form radiant with\nearthly brightness and instinct with every charm which brings men\nfawning to the feet of women. The sensuous frenzy which lovers sing was\nalso mine, the tremor of the heart, the vibration of the very life; the\ndeep seventh wave of passion rioted through me also. But from the first\namazement of the shaken being it was not given me to pass through\nsatisfaction into tranquillity; I was held long in a whirl of trouble;\nin the anguish of denial I learned initiation into the mystery which is\neternal and supreme.\n\nIt is good for some of earth's children that passion should be stayed\nbefore it makes ashes of the fancy; for if it does but touch for a\nmoment only to be withdrawn for ever, it does not destroy, but by its\nmeteoric passage kindles the imagination with the glow of an\nincorruptible flame. It is with them long enough to brand upon memory\nthe image which, though never renewed before their bodily eyes, by its\nvery severance from perception puts on an immortality of virginal grace.\nLove is understanding, said the poet of Heaven and Hell, and love\nennobled through renunciant years shall at the last encompass the world.\nThe sensuous glow that first quickened the heart of youth is transmuted\ninto a purer fire akin to that which moves the spheres.\n\nTo know this truth is their compensation who are swiftly withdrawn from\nthe warm radiance of earthly love. They are stricken, but before passion\nblinds them are rapt into a high solitude, whence, if they truly love,\nan infinite prospect is unrolled before them. They know desire; but as\ntheir passion was hopeless in this world, their steps were mercifully\nset upon a new path, whereby the bodily semblance of the beloved became\nthe symbol of spiritual comeliness, alluring the beholder into the\npeace of a serene and unworldly mood. A thin and rarefied ideal, you\nsay, a mirage which no wayfarer can approach: experience rejects these\nsubtleties, and to these creations of a dream human affection was never\ngiven. True, to hearts established and content in happy unions, to minds\npreoccupied with the near cares and pleasures of a home, our distant\nvisions may appear frail structures wrought in mist by homeless fancy.\nBut for the exiled heart they are not such, but verities of abiding\ninspiration. For the ideal love did not die with Plato, but came again\nin mediaeval Italy, and who shall say that even our material age has\nbanished it from the earth?\n\nNo indeed it is not dead, the ideal love, but indwells, a redeeming\npower, wherever there are desolate hearts and minds to be updrawn and\nunited by its ministry; a power so lustral in its nature, that no abject\nand despairing thought creeps into its presence but is purified and\nexalted by its regard. This love brings hope and cheerful constancy;\nwith a shining falchion it affrights into their natal darkness the\nmonstrous forms of despair, and lends to all work a secret charm of\nchivalry. It sustains that high anticipatory mood to which life is but a\npreparation, and the bees buzzing round the honey-flowers seem poor\nthings toiling for an inessential gain. Because it is mystic and\ntranscendental it is the predestined guide of all whom fate holds\nremoved from earthly love. This is the old device of the world's\nfailures, you say, to trick themselves out in Plato's mantle or the\nschoolman's cowl, and conceal their spite beneath the pretensions of the\nmystic. But I answer that the causes which moved the Greek and the\nFlorentine are still at work among mankind to-day; they have never\nceased, however much obscured by the glare of triumphant luxury or the\nstress of miserable toil. Often when disillusion has laid bare a soul,\nthis love which did but slumber awakes to contest with envy or despair\nthe possession of a wounded heart. I aver that any exile from the\nhappier earth whose heart is pure, if he invokes this love with ardent\nfaith, may unbar his door and feel that it has passed his threshold.\nLet us never be persuaded that the ideal world is far from this earth of\nours, or that the way to it may not be daily traversed by him who has\nsubmitted to the heavenly guide. Not even the close entanglement of\ncommon cares can avail to keep such an one from his love; but as Bishop\nBerkeley is said to have been able to pass in a moment from the\nconsideration of trifling things to the throne of thrones and the seats\nof the Trinity, so this lover shall overpass with easy and habitual\nflight the barriers that hold most men life-long prisoners.\n\nFor to the Spirit that is chastened and endures there is given a power\nof flight and poise, by which, if it abandon itself to the celestial\nwind, it may instantly remove from the deeper planes of life, as a bird\nby the mere slanting of its wings is carried in proud quiescence into an\nupper region of the air. He shall know instant release from the leaguer\nof disillusion and vain solicitudes; in the light of one beautiful and\ncompassionate countenance the unquiet memories of failure shall give up\ntheir exceeding bitterness.\n\nAnd though the style and instinct of modern life are hostile to such\nlove, though in prosperity it is ignored and in adversity often\noverborne by a vain uproar of lamentation, yet even in a self-indulgent\nand furious world it still draws many to the severe exaltation of its\nservice. We cannot approach the heights where a Plato and a Dante walked\nwith ease, but far beneath upon the lower slopes we can draw a breath of\nnew life as we fix our weaker eyes upon the glory which they saw so\nnear. Although the men who have there ascended are a supreme company, we\nmay yet presume to follow; for let it never be said that the gods have\nreserved for surpassing genius the consolation of which lesser men have\nso much deeper need. But he who would reach a serener air must press\nforward strenuously; for as a mountain may have one bare and northern\nslope, and another sunlit and clothed with verdure, and yet there may be\na path on each side to the summit, so it is with the ascent to this\nfelicity. One lingers amid pleasant groves and laughing waters;\nanother, undistracted by the beauty of any lower zone, but fixing his\neyes upon the far summit, crosses the chill rocky slopes, never feeling\nthe warmth of the sun and only seeing his brightness reflected from the\nhighest peak. Though the ways of the two travellers lie far apart until\nthe end, their endurance may be crowned with the same reward; but he who\nknew no dalliance and plucked no fruit has from the beginning seen the\ngoal clearly, and lived steadfastly in its distant promise. And do you\ntell me that this is not love or joy, you who saunter in the verdant\nsouthern valleys breathing a present happiness with the perfume of a\nthousand flowers? Your way may lead you upward after long vicissitudes,\nbut endurance will more swiftly fail you for the last most arduous\nascent. Very love is of the heights, and he whose thoughts have long\nbeen thither exalted will breathe with least pain the attenuate upper\nair.\n\nTo this pilgrimage the diffident are foreordained; it is their happiest\nhour when they take staff and scrip and set out in earnest for the\nshrine built among the mountains. The gardens of Armida are not for\nthem, nor the warm breezes fragrant of fruit and flowers; but the vision\nof a far peak flushed at sundawn draws them onward, and strength and\npeace are increased upon them throughout the great ascent. He is still\ntoo rich for pity to whom renunciation brings these high and enviable\nhours.\n\nBut the heavens are not opened every day, and the adept of these\nmysteries must walk the dull round of common life like other men, not\nwarmed as they are by the glow of constant friendship, yet cheered by\nintermittent flames of remembrance and of hope. The real life of the\ndiffident is cunningly hidden from those around them, for whom, indeed,\nit is wont to have faint interest; but before you who have often sought\nme out through fair and foul weather, I may venture to undo the pack of\nsmall resources which brings variety and distraction into lonely days.\n\nFirstly, I still dare to haunt the forecourts of philosophy. Into her\ninner courts I may not penetrate, lacking the leisure which her whole\nservice demands; yet the loiterings which I may still enjoy are to me\nlike voyages into a foreign country, and give my mind the healthful\nenjoyment of change; they are not long enough to bring that whole\ndetachment from daily life which, in my case, might prove a perilous\nadvantage. All that I need for common use is a simple rule based on a\nfew fundamental thoughts to give me a course upon the wayward ocean, and\nthough it be full of error as the Almagest, yet it shall surpass the\nthumb-rules of Philistia. It must be a doctrine which allows imagination\nher right and durable career, and therefore not be monist. For\nmaterialism is too wildly imaginative at the start: like a runner who at\nthe outset overstrains his heart and thereafter runs no more, the\nfollower of this creed, by his postulate of a blind impersonal Law,\nexhausts his power of speed and plods henceforth eyes downward over\nflattest plains of dulness. That my mind may remain curious and alert in\nisolation, I must conceive in the universal scheme a power that does\nnot alone impel, but also draws me forward. For were it true that the\nsum of things blunders from change to change, swept by blind force into\nuncharted voids, I should abandon myself in despair to that hopeless\ncourse, and drift indifferent to the direction or the end.\n\nLet me rather believe that if each several idea is compacted by my\nactive intelligence out of some vast system of relations, then only a\nsupreme intelligence akin to man's can brace together the whole system\nor universal sum of things. For this earth, yes, and all the complex of\nthe spheres, exist to me imperfectly as idea alone, nor can I conceive\nthem any complete existence apart from a kindred but omniscient mind.\nEach advance in human knowledge should then be an infinitesimal approach\ntowards the supreme comprehension; and the aspiring race of man is\njustified in that inchoation of long hope which is folly to the single\nlife.\n\nI would also believe that new relations between things may be detected\nnot merely by the staid and ordered process of collating abstractions,\nwhich is science, but by swifter and more genial methods of intuition.\n\n    \"Hurrah for positive science,\n    Long live exact demonstration!\"\n\ncried Walt Whitman, exulting over the filed fetters of mankind; and let\nus all echo the cry, nor ever forget the razed Bastilles of\nsuperstition. But there glimmers a wealth of truth in the penumbra\nbeyond our lanterns to which science will creep too slowly without the\naid of imagination. Yet this truth may be seized by swift sallies into\nthe darkness, and assured to us as it were by some dim apperception of\nthe soul, when the whole personality is made tense, and subtly\nanticipates the cosmic argument. Life is too short to renounce this\ndaring: the sense of kinship with the All-Consciousness sanctions if not\ncommands the right adventure.\n\nIt was this feeling which led William Blake to exclaim in his impulsive\nway, that to generalize is to be an idiot, that direct perception is\nall, and the slow process of the inductive reason a devil's\nmachination. This method of intuition is to the more sober method of\nscience as the romantic to the classical spirit in literature,\npermitting to the individual mind a licence of noble vagrancy. But it\nmust be a law for the ordinary intelligence to exercise the two apart,\nelse it will fall into sick fancies of excitement, and by abuse of wild\nanalogies lose the vital art of balance and sane comparison. Only the\ngreatest minds, endowed as it were with some divine genius of\nextrication, may dare to practise the two together. So Leonardo da Vinci\ndrove inference and intuition abreast without disaster, and gathered\nfrom purple distances of thought their wildest and most splendid\nflowers. To him, as has been well said, philosophy was something giving\nstrange swiftness and double sight, clairvoyant of occult gifts in\ncommon or uncommon things. The doom of Phaeton awaits those who now would\nfollow that marvellous course; but the poetic observation of\nresemblances in things remote, which lent so rich a colour to the\nscience of the Renaissance, may yet be trained in all our minds; and\nthe philosophy which trusts in the slow suffusion of the worlds with\nintellectual light will bless and encourage its reasonable growth.\n\nSuch a philosophy brings also a living sympathy with art. For the artist\never sees a perfection of truth beyond his rendering, yet always calling\nfor expression; there is something eternally missed by his highest\neffort, and he can never know complacency. The philosophy which\nconceives the gradual growth of form through consciousness towards a\nperfection infinitely removed, yet in its remoteness drawing up our life\nas the moon sways the tides--this surely is the artist's wisdom.\nIdealism is like love, {apora porimos}, holding us as it were in touch\nwith the intangible: it will have us conceive the Absolute without that\nhelpless absorption in thought which changed Amiel's life from a\nfountain to a vapour: it would keep us near the surf and confluence of\nthings. Its function is not to give any mysterious transcendental\nknowledge, but to serve culture \"by suggesting questions which help to\ndetect the passion, and strangeness and dramatic contrasts of life.\"\nAnd not only to bring suggestions, but repose, by granting to eyes\nwearied with minute concerns the contrasts of vast times and spaces, the\nmajestic idea of the Whole; to change the focus and variously dispose\nthe perspectives of familiar things.\n\nAn old watchmaker, whose window overlooked a wide meadow, used ever and\nagain to lay down his instruments to gaze out upon the expanse of green,\npasturing upon it a wandering vague regard, and absorbing from it an\nassuagement of his wearied senses which, he said, served him more\neffectually after these bright interludes. The province of Metaphysics\nshould be to us as to this wise workman his field; not a place to dream\nour days away in, but for occasional resort; in which we may forget the\ninfinitesimal in healing visions of broad space and colour. I counsel\nevery lonely man to satisfy what has been described as the common\nmetaphysical instinct, and according to his powers to become a\nmetaphysician. There is no discipline which so well consists with\nsolitude, none which so instantly enfranchises the mind from the\ntyranny of mean self-interest or vain and envious polemics. Men do not\ngrow sour and quarrelsome about the Absolute: everything that is\npolemical is inspired, as Michelet once said, by some temporal and\nmomentary interest. The man who has climbed to the Idalian spring comes\ndown benevolent. He does not grudge this toiling ant his grain, that\nsnarling dog his bone, but is content to live serene, in the certainty\nthat his soul has great provision, and that though all human things are\nsmall, each is worth its while. Into his hand there is given a scale by\nwhich life is known in its fair proportions; a tranquil joy, disturbed\nneither by dirges nor Epinician odes, is poured into his heart and\nexalts him above distraction. He respects himself as akin to that great\nSelf whose perfection shall one day be known; he understands the passion\nfor the ideal through which men die young; he wonders at envy and in the\nhappiness of enfranchisement would have all men free.\n\nThe pages of this Almagest are for the exceptional hour; but daily, as\none bookish from the nursery, I read much in many directions. For if\nbooks are called the best friends of happy men, to the sad they are\nsaviours also. And when I remember too clearly what I am, I turn perhaps\nmost often to Lucretius. For of all those who have taken up the pen to\nassuage the miseries of men, it is he who sings most bravely of the\ngreat endurance. This austere enthusiast, whose soul was never fused in\nthe fire of friendship; who went apart, as it were, amid thunders upon\nthe lonely heights; who, without any lover, yet loved his kind so well\nthat all the years of his maturity, how short and splendid a period,\nwere poured forth in one song of human consolation,--this man for all\nthe madness of his creed, was yet aflame with a wisdom to be called\ndivine. That calm face, lit with one desire--to drive the furies from\nthe way and soothe the frightened children of men, is ever among the\nnobler countenances which fancy summons about my bed. Over the anxious\nheart they flow, those slow cadences, so vibrant yet so magnificently\npassionless, until the nerves of pain cease to throb, and fear shrinks\nas a taint impossible to the patient of such a physician. It is not his\nto intimidate or denounce, to evoke visions of lurid hell, to linger\nover dire vaticinations, or apportion to each his grade of torment, but\nwith cool fingers to smooth the hair back from the forehead, and in\ngrave, tender accents to say: Sleep now, for it was a dream.\n\nLandor, in a fine passage, compared the merciful tolerance of the Roman\npoet with the pitiless ire of Dante, contrasting in respect of the\nquality of mercy these two poets, one in their austere perfection, but\nso different in their vision of death, and judgment, and ultimate\nreward. The seer of lost worlds has written his own defence, and was\nindeed but attacked to point the sharp antithesis; but Lucretius, though\nhe owes it to a literary feint, is very finely praised. And to me it\nseems that his compassionate mood increased upon him just because he was\nnot emulous of the world's gifts or earnest for its pleasures, but\nwithdrew from the press, and lived out his few great years\ncontemplating apart the vicissitudes of orbs and men. He did not wait in\nante-chambers or sit at wedding feasts; but severing all entangling and\nintricate threads of observance, followed the voice which called him to\nsolitary places of illimitable prospect. It was not through disillusion\nor injustice, or wounded pride, that he walked aloof; but loneliness was\nhis birthright, and from the hills and headlands to which solitude\nallured his steps he saw the dust of mad encounters rise to heaven, and\nthe rent sails of foundering galleys. He saw, and could not but be wrung\nwith pity for man deafened to wise counsel by the noise of vanities, and\nfiercely conspiring to precipitate his doom. As he went by shore and\nupland, there gathered in his mind those resonant hexameters of warning\nor consolation, those similes from the life of husbandry and dumb\nthings, which, set like diamonds in clay, lend to the most arid\narguments their own incomparable splendour, or that homelier beauty\nwhich instantly pierces the defences of the heart. Not diffident as we,\nbut of a nature so infinitely absent and reserved that in the legend\nhis wife must concoct a philter to remind him of his love, he is of all\nthe pagans the best companion for our angrier moods. An archaic and\nelemental serenity is upon his language and thought, rebuking our\nunprofitable petulance; if emotion gains him he finds utterance in those\ntremendous periods \"where single words seem to gather out of the deep\nand to reverberate like thunder.\" As the reverberation dies away and the\nclouds are pierced by the sun, the world is seen in new lights through\nan air clear as upon rain-swept mountains.\n\nAs my reading is incessant, so also is my writing. For the happiness of\nman is in his fertility, and of barrenness comes the worst despair. To\nbe happy is to have issue--children, or books written, or things\nbeautifully wrought, or monuments of goodness to live after you, if only\nin the memory of some tiny hamlet of the folded hills. This is the law\nof life that Diotima knew, by which flower and tree, animal and man,\nfulfil the end of their creation; and man in nothing more surely proves\nhis lordship than by his many-handed hold upon posterity. For the lower\ncreation is procreant in one way, but man in many; who may have\noffspring not of body alone but of mind and heart, and be so redeemed\nfrom the grim dismay of childlessness. The greatest human happiness is\nto be fertile in every way, a thing granted rarely in the world we know;\nthe next, perhaps, is that of the parent who gives all of himself to his\nfamily, not tilling any field beyond the charmed walls confining his\ndesire. The author sure of his fame, the born artist, the benefactor of\nhis kind, are also happy, seeing their offspring grow in years and in\nthe power of making a brighter world.\n\nBut he is miserable who, aspiring to follow these, feels his force wane\nwithin him while he remains yet fatherless; or who has sons stillborn,\nor weakly, or dishonoured. I question whether sheer degradation into\nevil brings more pain to man than such sense of sterility or frustrate\nparentage. But it is no small part of human redemption that none need\nknow the interminable misery. A man may have neither sons nor genius,\nbut in the dark hour he can go out and give, if it be only a penny or a\nkind word, and on that foundation build a temple to receive his\nthanksgiving. To give of yourself is good. This is that grand agreement\nand oecumenical consent to which those words _quod ab omnibus quod\nubique_ in deed and truth may be applied. For this reason meanness is of\nthe deeps, and avarice groans in the lowest zone of hell. And if there\nare faces of blank and permanent despair upon your path, be sure that\nthese are not masks of whole men, but of those who wilfully abstained\nfrom joy and have received the greater damnation. My children are mostly\nwritings, poor weakly creatures dying inarticulate and unchristened,\ntenderly remembered by myself only, but at least no nuisance to the\nworld. I loved them at their birth, I hold them in remembrance, though\nthey were ever of a hectic and uncertain beauty.\n\nThe comparison of children with branches of the olive is not the mere\nornament of a Bible verse, but the wisdom of one who knew both tree and\nchild. For as children are bright creatures of swiftly changing moods,\nso are the olive leaves in the blue southern air. I once read of an\nartist who essayed to paint a group of olives and a cypress growing\nbefore them. Against their silvery leaves its dark burnished form stood\nfinely mysterious, the contrasting grey lending it a depth of almost\nsable colour; all was propitious for his work. Then suddenly, the air\nbeing to all seeming quite still, the grey-green leaves began to shake\nand quiver, until each olive tree was like a silver bonfire, tremulous\nwith a thousand waves of white flame flowing and following along the\nbranches. It was a revelation and swift effluence of life, perplexing\nand full of charm. The brush was laid down, the moment of inspiration\ngone, before the capricious leaves ceased their quivering to be robed\nonce more in grey, casting on the ground that translucent shadow which\ntempers the sunlight only, and does not spoil it of its gold. In the end\nthe canvas was covered, but with a sketch far less true and beautiful\nthan the painter's first happy vision. Even so of all our children few\nattain the perfection of our dreams. While we look, some influence comes\nupon them and they are changed, some breeze, born we know not where,\nstirs them to their heart of joy while we stand perplexed; innumerable\nlaughter of leaves, a rushing and a shivering in quick answer to a mere\nbreath, silence as swift when unperceived it dies away--these are their\nreplies to our silent invocations. We cannot follow the swift course,\nbut are quickened with a glad rejuvenescence, the true prize and guerdon\nof parentage. They may grow old or die, or bring us sorrow; it is enough\nthat once they so lived and stirred a pride within us. Let Hedonist and\nidealist dispute, let one worship pleasure and another wait on the\nintangible joy, but in the fathering and mothering and the bringing up\nof young children, of the flesh, the mind, or the spirit, lies the\nnatural happiness of men and women. It is a joy which outlasts\ndisillusions; it rests surely upon achievement and deserts which lie\nponderable in the archangel's scales. For it is certain that he who\ncreates as best he knows best serves God, the world and himself, and\nwhat system of Ethics has conceived a more perfect rule?\n\nAll young life is instinct with such a beauty and trustfulness, that\nthough he himself may have no part or lot in its creation, and be dumb\nor awkward in its presence, a man will be the brighter for having\npassed, if but for a moment, out of the darkness of his own course into\nthe radiance within its orbit. To the diffident this is an especial\ngrace. For children by some deeper intuition understand us as their\nparents cannot do; and when all the world is cold will often smile upon\nus with happy upturned faces. It is one of my consolations that the\nlittle players in the parks come running to me rather than to others\nwith their eternal question after the exact hour of day. For I reflect\nthat though my face grows wrinkled and drawn with years, there must yet\nhover something about its ugly surface which tells of a good will\nwithin. There was a time when I found the children's question\nimportunate, and drew out my watch ungraciously; but now I feel\ndisappointment if during their hours of play I can walk my mile without\nanswering one of these high-pitched inquiries.\n\nTo have the confidence of children is indeed a thing of which a poor\nwanderer may be proud, a credential confirming his self-respect, and\nworthy one day to be presented at the gate of heaven. Once during one of\nmy worst hours of desolation, when I was tramping across the fields, I\nfound a little maid of seven picking primroses on the edge of an old\norchard. For some time I stood watching, so charmed with the grace of\nher movements and the beauty of the spring sunlight on her golden mane,\nthat I lost all consciousness of present trouble, and beyond her fairy\nform began to see vague visions of lost happiness returning. As I stood\nthus forgetful and looking absently before me, I suddenly felt a touch\nwhich recalled my scattered thoughts: she had come to me and put her\nhand in mine. I think in all my lonely life I never felt so swift a\nthankfulness as that which suffused me then: the memory of it is always\nwith me, and now I never see a happy child engrossed in its little task\nof duty or pleasure without thinking to myself there is one of those who\ntruly have power to remit sins. I will not repeat the fond things often\nwritten about children. Not all of them are like the infant angels of\nBellini or Filippino Lippi or Carpaccio; some indeed are strident, pert,\nwithout charm or candour, not doves but little jays; but for the\nloveliness of those who have smiled upon me, whether rich or poor,\nwhether wild or tended flowers, I shall ever hold the whole company\ndear.\n\nWhether I read or write, or go painfully upon difficult paths of\nthought, like many other men whom the world dismays, I win a larger\ntranquillity and a clearer vision from an increased simplicity of life.\nI know that to use the word asceticism of one's daily practice is to\nincur the judgment of all those whom the world calls good fellows, whose\nmotto is live and let live, or any other aphorism of convenient and\nuniversal remission. To them asceticism is the deterrent saintliness\nwhich renounces all joy, and with a hard thin voice condemns the\nleanings of mankind to reasonable indulgence. The ill-favour drawn down\nby ecclesiastical exaggeration upon the good Greek word {askesis}, which\nmeans nothing more than the practice of fitness, has prejudiced men\nagainst all system of conduct bold enough to include it in their\nterminology.\n\nKant's chapter on the Ascetic Exercise of Ethics is a fine defence of\nthat training of the heart and mind which has no affinity with the\nmorbid discipline of hair shirt and scourge. \"The ascetic exercise of\nthe monasteries,\" he says, \"inspired by superstitious fear and the\nhypocritical disesteem of a man's own self, sets to work with\nself-reproaches, whimpering compunction and a torturing of the body. It\nis intended not to result in virtue but to make expiation for sins, and\nby self-imposed punishment the sinners expect to do penance, instead of\nethically repenting.\" And again--\"All ethical gymnastics consist\ntherefore singly in subjugating the instincts and appetites of our\nphysical system ... a gymnastic exercise rendering the will hardy and\nrobust, which by the consciousness of regained freedom makes the heart\nglad.\"\n\nThis is sound doctrine, neither ungodly nor inhuman, the word of a man\nin whose veins the warm blood yet flowed. Few pictures of venerable age\nplease more than that of the old philosopher of Koenigsberg drawn for us\nby de Quincey in one of his miscellaneous Essays. There we see Immanuel\nKant, leading his tranquil sane existence, giving his friends sober\nentertainment, talking brightly of mundane things, practising \"the\nhilarity which goes hand in hand with virtue.\" For me the very\neccentricities of his daily routine have a fascination, and I read them\nas a devout Catholic reads many a quaint passage in the _Acta\nSanctorum_. How wise was his nightly habit, as he settled himself in bed\nbefore falling asleep, to asseverate with a sigh of thankfulness that no\nman living was more contented and healthier than he! Here is the true\nasceticism, the child's glad abandonment to nature maintained and grown\narticulate in philosophic age.\n\nTo this beauty of plain life I cannot attain. But my own life is as far\nremoved as may be from brilliant or luxurious pleasures, and I divide my\ntime between the country and the town. This I do from obedience to\nreason rather than fashion; for while the country has my love, the city\nis more remedial to my peculiar pain. There the shy man may have what\nLamb called the perfect and sympathetic solitude, as opposed to the\n\"inhuman and cavern-haunting solitariness,\" to which his infirmity\ninclines. There he and those who rub shoulders with him on the pavement\ncan \"enjoy each other's want of conversation.\" No creature with a heart\ncan jostle daily with his kind, but he wins some consciousness of kindly\nfeeling. The very annoyances and constraints of propinquity are in their\nown way disciplinary, and insistent, uncongenial persons, like glaring\nred buoys with clanging bells, serve at least to keep us in the fairway\nof navigation. And in a city there are voices of cheerful exhortation\nalways echoing in the higher air above the roar and the trampling, which\nin the interludes of coarser sound, or by our removal into some quiet\ncourt or garden, may be heard repeating their stirring watchwords of\nendeavour. We are told that no word spoken ever dies, but goes\nreverberating through space for ever. It is my fancy that only evil\nwords escape into the outer void, which eternally engulfs their\nprofitless message, while words of hope and helpfulness are not thus\nlightly sundered from the world that needs them, but hover still near\nabove us, descending with every lull of the tumult into those ears which\nare strained towards them. The laden air of towns carries not the rumour\nof the battle only, but by the presence of these fair echoes held within\nit, gives back to the soul more health than ever it drew from the body.\nWith this thought I am often consoled as I go my way through gloom and\nclamour and unloveliness, finding a Providence in places which else seem\nabandoned in the outer desolation.\n\nNor is the vast city to be valued only for what it gives, but for its\nown wonderful self, an obvious point which need not be expanded into a\ntedious circle. The shy will naturally draw more advantage from so rich\na field of contemplation than those who seldom walk alone. In London I\noften map out a course of wandering which in its varied stages shall\nremind me of the change in progress or decay of particular arts or\nindustries or different quarters of the town. Reading their meaning in\nthe light of history, I make bare walls speak to me with a personal\nvoice. Let any one but acquaint himself with the styles of\necclesiastical or domestic architecture, or of monuments of the dead, or\nwith the history of the thoroughfares he frequents, and he will be\npleasantly constrained to reflection upon those who have gone before\nhim. As he stands in the shadow of an ancient church he will think to\nhimself: \"By this very wall Chaucer may have stood.\" As he walks amid\nthe reverberating ravines which are city streets he will say: \"Here\nalong green and silent paths the Roman legionary marched when Hadrian\nruled the world.\" When once the faculty of observation has been awakened\nto a permanent alertness, the desire to be widely read in history of men\nand their arts will become irresistible; and through the knowledge\ngradually amassed it will be thought a sorry chance if any ramble of\nwider compass yield no vision which in comeliness or deformity tells its\ntale of changing fortune. To appreciate human work, and the conditions\nunder which it is born, is to exult in abounding sympathy with this\nman's conquest over things poor in promise, or to condole with that\nman's failure to do the best that in him lay.\n\nAs I walk by the strand of Thames, my fancy sees upon one flood the gay\nbarge gliding upward to green fields, and the black hull bearing down\nthe prisoner to the Traitors' Gate. If I go up Holborn, I remember that\nwhere this traffic now thunders John Gerard tended his Physic Garden\nwhen Elizabeth was queen. I know where Sarah Siddons lived; and where\nWilliam Blake died; and my curious wanderings are now so far extended,\nthat when I turn to the great book of London I seldom find a tedious\npage. The places where people strove and suffered evoke before me the\nforms of men and women dead but unforgotten, and if I am alone I am not\naware of loneliness.\n\nLondon is the central wonder, but wonderful also in spirit and\nsuggestion are those old places which ring it round: these I often\nfrequent at every season, and carry their portraits over my heart. Let a\nman once learn to know them, and his memory shall never starve; he will\nnever forget the hour when first they yielded him up their secret. Many\nmoments of intimate delight do I treasure in remembrance, moments when I\nwas suddenly aware that all previous impressions were the poor\ngatherings of purblind eyes; but I will only tell you of one, which may\nsuffice to show what riches lie ever open to those who roam in solitude.\n\nIt was mid-April and the close of a cloudless day. I had been to the\nObservatory hill at Greenwich to see the sun set over London, looking\nfor such a transfiguration of the grey city as should reveal its line of\nwarehouses lying along the horizon in a mist of splendour like the walls\nof the New Jerusalem. So I had seen it before, marvellous and refined in\nunearthly fire: but to-day, in a sadder mood, and hungering more deeply\nfor the vision, I looked out to the west in vain. For the wind had set\nin from the east, and driven back upon the town a zone of iron-grey\nsmoke, ragged along its upper edge like a great water blown to spray,\nbut merging below with those gloomy and innumerable buildings. Upon this\nthe sun, which all day had ridden in a clear air, was slowly falling,\nlosing radiance with every minute, until as it approached that gloomy\nspray it was luminous no more, but a dull red orb whose light, like a\nflame withdrawn into the consumed heart of coals, glows for awhile\nbeneath a gathering film of grey. In a few minutes it descended, as if\nsadly and of resolution, into the murky sea, where for a moment its red\ncurves seemed to refine the smoke into translucency; but at last the\ndun waves gathered upon it dark and voluminous, drowning it so deeply\nthat the clearer sky above was instantly robbed of the wonted\nafter-glow. Some pale reflection there was in the upper heaven, ensuring\na time of twilight, but no glory; and smitten with a congruous sadness,\nI went down to the river. But there, pacing to and fro as if upon a\nquarter-deck, with the water lapping upon the wall beneath, I lived one\nof the happy hours of life, redeemed from disappointment, and carried\nfar into a magical world.\n\nThe flood tide, which had turned for more than an hour, was now racing\ndown wilful for the sea, though the breeze ruffling its surface seemed\nto thwart and stay its eager course. And on the surface, indeed, chafed\nand broken into innumerable ripples, the wind triumphed; but as one\nlooked westwards towards the city, it was clear that the sullen strength\nof stream and tide had the mastery. For over the broad curving reach,\nlit like white unburnished silver with the reflection of the pallid sky,\nthere glided forward a line of barges each with every red sail set, and\nas silent as if they sallied from a besieged city. One by one they hung\nout their lights, the lamps swaying and casting yellow bars over the\nquivering water, until in perfect silence all passed down before me.\nEach in turn attaining the lower bend where the river sweeps northward,\nwent about and stood for the Middlesex shore; and then for a moment the\nwind seemed to overcome the tide, for before the boat could win new way,\nlying almost broadside across the stream, the breeze held her\nmotionless, like a tired bird on a windy day when it flies out from the\nshelter of the wood. It was but for a moment, and then the blunt bows\nglided forward towards the north bank, and another barge succeeded in\nthe gathering gloom.\n\nAnd so it was until all were passed. The departing light drew the\ncolours from the red sails and the silvery brightness from the river;\nall forms became outlined in black upon what uncertain light remained.\nTwo men put off in a boat from an anchored ship; the mingled sound of\ntheir oars and voices came with subdued tone as if out of an infinite\ndistance. Then the whole reach lay bare and silent for a while, and only\nthe little waves lapping upon the stone steps played an accompaniment to\nmy dream.\n\nThe hour and the place compelled to reverie, and memory consenting to\ntheir evocative charm, I peopled the still scene with the forms of those\nwho had swayed or shared the fortunes of this land; imperious Elizabeth\nand gentler Mary, the slight heroic figure with one sleeve pinned empty\non the breast, and all those who, going down to their business in deep\nwaters or returning therefrom, have saluted with melancholy or with joy\nthese towers and this wooded hill. I thought of the lads playing beneath\nthese trees, and so inbreathing the spirit of this place that for them\nthere was no career but to follow the river down to ocean, and ocean\nhimself in his circuit of the world. I thought of the veterans returned\nfrom that quest, old Argonauts of a later day, now clustering round the\nHospital fires and perhaps recalling amid tales of havens and high seas\nthe very morning when they first dropped round the bend and passed into\nthe new world beyond. For this Thames is such an avenue and entry into\nmarvellous life that earth can show no greater rival, none more rich in\ndignity or in the multitude of its merchandise. And if the flood of that\nmerchandise shall cease, and the stream once more go lonely to the sea\nor carry coracles, it cannot be again as if it had never borne great\nships, or swung the Admiral's galley on its tide.\n\nIt is good for an Englishman to stand here and listen to the brown\nwaters lapping on the old walls and caulked timbers; to hear, as an\nunder murmur, voices of Lechlade and Bablockhythe, for all intervening\nleagues of wood and meadow not altogether lost: before this persistence\nand continuity of youth to feel high thoughts stir within him and\nsolemnize the nativity of new resolve. You cannot feel beneath your feet\nthese old stones trodden by the great generations of your own blood and\nkindred, and not be moved to walk uprightly, to be approved by their\nshades as one not unworthy of such descent. For whether such worn\nstones be in the aisle of some great minster, or here, paving this\nnarrow way for hurrying feet, the inspiration is as strong and the\nthankfulness not other. For this is a place of meridian, the navel of\nour land and empire; the wind searching its alleys has no usual voice,\nbut as it were a deep and oceanic sound, according with old ballads and\nstories of the sea.\n\nI lingered leaning upon the rail until the tide had fallen from the\nwall, tracing along the narrow pebbled foreshore a clear marginal line\nof irregular contour, now sinuous, now straight, but palely luminous\nlike a silver tone on some enamel of old Italy, a line drawn by a master\ndraughtsman, in its inevitable and sure perfection wholly satisfying the\neye. With the dark bank it vanished towards the great city, now marked\nin the upper sky by a hovering brightness of light escaped beyond the\nsmoky rampart to tell the effort of innumerable lamps beneath, all\npouring their blurred and vain effulgence to the disdainful stars.\n\nMoreover, the city will give the shy man all the consolations of art,\nphilosophy and literature of which his education or experience may have\nmade him worthy. He can see great pictures or read great books at little\ncost, and find in them the truest of friends in need. It is so obvious\nthat a solitary of any culture will find relief with such companions,\nthat here I take for granted his resort to their aid, and will only\nmention two resources from which the real recluse often draws less\nadvantage than he might, I mean orchestral music and the drama. Any man\nof feeling who hears a great symphony ceases to be self-centred with the\nfirst movement; he goes out of himself, and rides upon waves of sound,\nexalted by this majesty of collective effort. No other music thrills his\nwhole being like this, which sweeps him with all around into the very\ncourse of changing fates. In the confluence of dim hopes and passions\nwhich rise above the harmonies like smoke-wreaths riding the red flame,\nthe soul glows interfluous with other souls and is elated with the\ninspiration of their presence. He bears arms exulting who never had\ncomrades till now; his will is absorbed in confederate joy and human\nforce unanimous. In this abandonment of the whole being, the diffident\nknow their fellows near, and in the ecstasy of shared emotion learn the\nfull measure of their humanity. Philosophers in all ages have known and\ntaught the power of music in compelling ten thousand to the love of one,\nand so ennobling an infinite multitude in the glow of a common emotion.\nSound was the first instinctive language, one for man and winds and\nwaters; and music, which is the development of this primeval converse,\nleaving to grammars the expression of cold and abstract thought, has\ngathered about her in her mountain caverns the echoes of all sighs sad\nor passionate, of all inarticulate cries born of aspiration or desire,\nand there blended them into eternal harmonies which at her word flow\nforth and join the hearts of men.\n\nIndeed, that swift responsiveness of feeling which music thus awakes is\na gift beyond gems of Golconda; not youth's swift effusion cheaply given\nand soon forgotten, but the vibration of a heart stirred in sympathy\nwith some profound note of life, as the dyed pane stirs and quivers\nwhen the organ gives forth its deepest tones. Sentiment is a draught of\nold wine passing into the veins and enriching the blood, until in the\ngenerous glow all the privations and the stints of loneliness are\nforgotten. Pure emotion is like righteous anger, which may be lawfully\nindulged if the sun go not down upon it; and as he who shrinks from all\nfire of wrath lives but a vaporous life, so he who will never be moved\nis proud of a poor crustacean strength, like the limpet, winning\ndarkness in exchange for dull stability. As for me, in the propitious\nhour when the heart longs for expansion, I give it honourable licence,\nand quicken its unfolding by spells of magical words. At such times I\ninvoke the aid of passionate souls, not shrinking even from the vain,\nprovided that they loved greatly and give great expression to their\nhumanity. Such is that wild lover of George Sand whose _Souvenir_, for\nall its rhetoric, charms like an incantation. The ancients quenched the\nashes of the pyre with red wine, as if the blood of the god-given vine\ncould hearten the spirit that yet hovered near. Over my ashes let no\nwine be poured, but read me such verses high and valiant, that if my\nsoul yet lingers undelivered from the earth's attraction it may be\nregenerated and set free into a braver life.\n\nAnd let the lonely man be an assiduous frequenter of the playhouse, for\nthe drama will also open the world's heart to him, and that by a plainer\nand less elusive speech. Seated in the theatre among his kind, he knows\na deeper pleasure than other men; for while to these the changing scene\nbrings remembrance or anticipation of familiar things, to him it reveals\nwhole vistas of life which, except in dreams, his feet may never tread.\nWhen the curtain is rung down, and he goes out into the street, for a\nwhile at least his existence is transformed. All those front doors\naligned in their innumerable sequence, which in daylight or darkness he\npasses when he wanders alone, are now no longer barred against him; they\nopen at the touch of his fancy, and he sees within the light of\nhomeliness, where father, mother, and child weave round warm firesides\ntheir close conspiracies of affection. At last he knows what is passing\nbehind those bars; like an old family friend he takes his place by the\nfire and receives as of right the confidences which in his real lonely\nlife never find their way to his ears. He helps the lovers to build\ntheir cloudy castles, he reasons away the parents' care, he goes\nup-stairs with a shaded candle to look in upon the children sleeping.\nGood women unlock the jewel-caskets which are their souls; happy maidens\nare sisterly with him; strong men grapple him to their hearts and call\nhim friend. He that was vagabond has now innumerable homes, and of the\nfaces that fleet by him out of doors there are always some which seem to\ngive him greeting.\n\nThese secret and unavowed alliances transfigure the unlovely streets,\nand light in the cavernous blank houses many a glowing and familiar\nhearth. As he goes on, careless of distance or direction, he is now\ninwardly busy with fresh and delightful dreams. He plights his troth and\nearth is Eden; he imagines brilliant hours for the dream-children who\ngo by his side, holding each of his hands. And if the visions change,\nand sorrow or sin pass in over a familiar threshold, what generous\nabnegation, what pity, what righteous wrath does he not know, until the\nplastic power of fancy moulds out of this poor recluse a man like other\nmen. Amid these visionary sympathies time goes quickly by, and returning\nto his voiceless dwelling he has stored up such wealth of dreams that he\ncan even endure the supreme test when the lonely man finds himself\nsitting in the wan light with no one near him to whom he is dear. Of the\nstrength and peacefulness which bring him safely through that hour of\ndesolation he owes much to the players, who have shot the drab texture\nof life with an infinity of bright and tender hues, so that he can bear\nto turn it in his hands and look upon it with a wistful pleasure. I say,\nthen, let the shy man frequent the playhouse, and there facet and\nburnish his dulled mind until it reflects, if it may not touch, the\nmany-sided world.\n\nFor the discipline of sympathy, for the quickened sense of comradeship\nin work, for the very presence of that unloveliness which compels\nsympathy, I dwell more months in the town than in the country-side. But\nremembering what Nature did to save me, and owing her an endless debt of\nfilial duty, I return to her in the summer days, and to make up for the\nlong months of separation cling nearer to her than most of her truant\nsons. For communion with Nature, the ideal joy of country life, is not\nattained by the sportsman or the mere player of games, who think of\ntheir bodies chiefly, and use as a means to rude physical vigour the end\nordained for the fine contentience of body, mind, and spirit. Again I\nwill pass by the obvious and familiar resources of outdoor life, and\nspeak only of such as men are unaccountably prone to neglect.\n\nThere is a way of learning nature which in this wet land is mostly\nfollowed by tramps and vagrants; the way of sleeping beneath the stars.\nSo far is this joy from the thoughts of most men, that even George\nBorrow felt a strange uneasiness when for the first time the darkness\ndescended upon him in the open country. I think we carry with us all our\nlives that fear of night with which nursery tales inspired our\nchildhood; it reinforces the later more reasoned fear of boisterous\nweather, or of the men who walk in darkness because their works are\nevil. We shrink from night as a chill privation of daylight, as a gloom\nwhich we must traverse, but not inhabit; the distrust becomes with years\ninstinctive and universal, and the nearest approach to friendly relation\nwith night attained by most of us is a timid liking for the twilight\nhours. Yet as the sun rises alike upon the just and upon the unjust even\nso does he descend, and we put a slight upon Providence if we abandon to\nrogues and rakes that wonderful kingdom of the darkness of which by\nnatural prerogative we are enfranchised. By never using our proper\nfreedom, we give them prescriptive licence of usurpation, so that the\nhours in which the heavens are nearest to us are become the peculiar\ninheritance of thieves.\n\nI confess that on the night when first I set out to do without a bedroom\nI too felt all the force of the traditional mistrust. I heard human\nwhispers in the wind, and saw the shadows of walls and trees as forms of\nmen lurking to spring out against me. The movements of roosting birds\nstartled me as I passed; the sudden silences startled me more. And when\nI had spread my gear on the ground and settled down to rest, the sense\nof exposure on every side made sleep impossible; time after time I\nseemed to hear footsteps stealthily approaching; and there was a\nstrangeness pervading everything which to my nervous fancy was simply\nprovocative of apparitions. This lasted many nights; and whether I\nestablished myself on the edge of a copse, or in the open grass, or in a\nhammock beneath two trees, I continued a prey to the same uneasy\nwakefulness. But then, as if satisfied of good faith by such\nperseverance, the night began to wear a friendly aspect, the shadows\ngave up their ghosts, and the breezes became the expected messengers of\nslumber.\n\nWhen the lonely sleeper-out has grown familiar with the moonlight and\nthe darkness, he is admitted into the number of earth's favoured sons;\nfor lying like a child upon her bosom, he hears her heart beating in the\nsilence, and wakes to see her smiling in her beauty like a queen\napparelled. To no man slumber comes more gently than to him; and his\nuprising is as that of a child exulting in the cloudless day. Health and\ninnocence return to him, and his one sorrow is that he has lived into\nmaturity without continually partaking of these sane and natural\ndelights. Remorse is his that for all these years he has feared the dews\nand shrunk from the bland night airs; and remembering the needless\nimprisonment of a hundred chambers, he mourns over the irrecoverable\nhours which would have rooted his life more deeply in tranquillity and\nstrength. But the June sun is up, and the birds are singing: he strides\nwith light step over the grass, watching the rabbits play in the glades,\nand in unison with a host of fellow-creatures singing a welcome to the\ndawn. When it is time for him to think of home and he comes once more\nbeneath a doorway, he has a mind refreshed by the quietude of dim space,\nand a heart replenished with innocence and good-will. He who so sleeps\nhates no man, and will go upon the dullest way free from petulance or\ndespair. The scent of the rich earth is in his nostrils, and the\nclearness of morning air has passed into his eyes.\n\nI have made my lair in many places since I first kept house with Nature.\nI have couched in heather by the pines of hills far above the Sussex\nWeald; I have lain in dry furrows or on the margin of a copse, or in the\nparks of the children of fortune, for whose welfare, in gratitude for\ntheir unconscious hospitality, I shall ever pray. But of all wild\nresting-places I have known, the openest are the most delightful. To see\nthe whole sweep of the stars; to lie on the shorn ground free of all\nthat overshadows or encompasses or confines; to breathe in the great\ngulf of air; to stretch unhindered limbs--this is an initiation into a\nnew life, a pleasant memory in the long glooms of winter. Let nothing\ncome between you and the stars, that they may look well upon your face,\nand haply repenting of some ancient unkindliness, draw you at this\nrebirth a new horoscope of blessing and fair fortune. And if slumber\ntarries when you lie in an open spot, you may consciously ride the great\nglobe through space, and like the shepherd watching by his flock in the\nclear night while star rises after star, grow aware of the great earth\nrolling to the east beneath you.\n\nIn these still hours of night or early dawn there steals upon the\ncharmed mind an Orphic sense of worship and inexplicable joy. For here\non bare uplands and wooded hills, where the starlight rains down through\nthe silence, or the day, welling up over the rim of the downs, glides\nfresh from the lips of ocean, a calm river of light, here is the place\nof Dionysus, of him born from fire and dew, Zagreus the soul of clean\nsouls and wild lives, his heart a-quiver with vague sadness drawn from\nall the worlds, Eleutherios, loosener of heart and lip, the regenerator,\nthe absolver, the eternally misunderstood, whose true followers are\npriests of impassioned pure life, whose wine is not juice of grapes but\nthe clear air ambient upon the hills. Here when sleep is shamed away by\nexpectant awe, the whole being grows one with all-environing life;\npersonality glides into the stream of cosmic existence, lost and found a\nthousand times in the trance and ecstasy of dim divine feelings beyond\nthe power of words inexpressible. It is miracle; it is religion; it is a\nfeast of purification above pomps or mysteries, a cleansing ritual\nwithout victims and undefiled. In such hours, and in such hours alone,\nman and things are joined in a supreme utterance of life high and\nhumble, transient and immortal, by which the fellowship of all\nexistences within the universe is made real and significant to the\ninitiate mind. For in the day fences are about us, roofs and towers\nimpend above our heads, we are cribbed in streets and markets, the din\nof rhetoric or sordid bargaining fills our ears. Or if we withdraw into\nsome still chamber, yet the walls built by hired hands offend, and the\ndoorposts of sapless timber; no high influence can penetrate to us save\nthrough the close court of memory, and compared with the breezy starlit\nmeadows, how poor an avenue to the soul is that!\n\nAnd the exuberant sun of noon distracts, and the multitude of his beams\nis troublous, for what does sight avail if the things of the heart's\ndesire are lost in immeasurable perplexities of light? For in the high\nday the quivering bright air is more opaque than the dim spaces of\nnight, so tranquil and severe, or the glowing kingdoms of the morning.\nAt the springing of the day the eyes open upon awakening flowers, giving\nfilial heed to the marvellous earth which waits in patience for a human\ngreeting. I like the passage in which Chaucer tells how in May-time his\ncouch was spread in an arbour upon the margin of the grass, that he\nmight wake to see the daisies unfold their petals. Sleeping thus, he\nalso must have known those intervals of slumber when a sense of some\nimpending wonder grows too strong for sleep, and all nature seems\ncalling to high vision. Often I have been thus awakened, not by noise\nor movement, but as it were by some strange prescience of beauty\nconstraining me to rise and look. Once I was drawn some distance round\nthe corner of a copse, and there, low in the sable-blue of the sky, in a\nrivalry of intense but dazzling light, the crescent moon hung splendid\nover against a great constellation which glittered like a carcanet of\ndiamonds. They seemed to speak together as if in some scene or passage\nof celestial drama, nor did I know which was the diviner speech, the\nmoon's unwavering effulgence or that leaping coruscation of the stars.\nNothing stirred on the right hand or the left, but earth and air were\nhushed, as if before that colloquy all sound and motion were\nmiraculously holden. Tall trees brown with densest shadows were massed\nupon one side, obscuring half the heaven, and lending by their\ncontrasted gloom that sense of wizardry in natural things which enchants\nthe clear summer nights when the air is still.\n\nThis is but one among many visions of which the remembrance makes life\nworshipful; and it is pity that at the hour of their coming well-nigh\nall whom they should delight lie chambered within brick walls, lost in\nsleep or in the mazes of unprofitable thoughts. For these things in\ntheir rare appearances are more precious than an hour's slumber, were it\ndreamless as a child's, or all the watches of luxurious unrest. If\nanother summer is given me I hope to take the road when July has come\nwith balmy nights, and wander days at a stretch with all I need upon my\nshoulders. Then I shall know the real joy of vagrancy, caring little\nwhere night finds me, and quickening my steps for nothing and for no\nman. I shall linger in every glade or on every hill-top which calls to\nme to stay; I shall tell all the hedgerow flowers, and lean over the\ngates to watch the foals playing. The brooks shall be my washing-basins,\nand I shall quench hunger and thirst in the tiled kitchens of lonely\nfarmsteads. If I hear the shriek of a train I shall smile when I think\nof its cooped and harried passengers, and plunge devious into some\npathless wood, in whose depths the only sounds are the tap of the\nwoodpecker's bill or the measured axe-strokes of the woodman. I shall\nfling myself down to rest under what tree I will, and pulling from my\npocket the book of my choice, I shall summon a wise and cheerful\ncompanion to my side as easily as ever oriental magician called a jinn\nto do him service. I shall once more be commensal with wild creatures,\nand wonder that solitude was ever a pain; I shall be healthily\ndisdainful of the valetudinarian who lives to spoil either his body or\nhis soul.\n\nThese are the wanderings which henceforward will chiefly suffice to my\nneed. For since I roamed my fill in other continents the gadfly may no\nlonger sting me out of my tranquil haunts. In their youth lonely people\nsuffer more than others from that restlessness which fills the mind with\nsudden distaste for the present scene, and a fierce longing to be\nsomewhere far away. Others are preserved from it by the love of home;\nbut we, in our poverty of attachment, listen more readily to the\ndepreciating voice.\n\nI remember how deep had always been my longing to look out upon the sea\nfrom some Greek island, and how one day, when this desire was granted,\nand I walked along hills set high above the blue AEgean, I was seized\nwith an instant yearning to be instead upon Ranmore Common in Surrey.\nYet at that moment a life's ambition was being fulfilled; I stood in a\nscene of incomparable beauty, gazing down on those deep azure waters\nwhose voice is always to me as a lament for wandering Odysseus; the\nlower slopes were rich with olive trees, powdering with silver the\ntilled lands round a beautiful monastery lying there in its enchanted\nrest. Dark cypresses rose amid white walls of villages, by the contrast\nof their gloom making all bright colours glorious; away to the left,\nwhere the shore verged westward tracing inimitable curves between field\nand sea, lay slumbering a little white town with minarets and walled\ngardens and tiny haven--a very place for Argonauts; and yet my thoughts\nturned to the chalk downs of England and honeysuckle crowning the\nunfruitful hollies. _Sed quia semper abest quod aves praesentia\ntemnis_;--Such desire has distracted Roman minds; the perversity is very\nold; and perhaps only children find no disillusion in the accomplishment\nof a dream.\n\nFor our feet have one country and our dreams another, and there is no\nconstancy in us. It is not alone in the bartering of one earthly scene\nfor its fellow that we suffer the sick thirst of change; but into the\nrarest hour of achieved ideal to which hope promised her supreme\nsatisfaction, the same wayward longing will often find a way; as in a\nsacred place amid the purest and most exquisite meditations of the soul,\nthere will suddenly flit inexplicable shadows of irreverence, with\nechoes of incongruous voices from the abandoned world.\n\nBut now as the years pass and the penury of human love has made the home\nwoods and fields more dear, I feel that this unrest is drawing to its\nend. For as the seasons pass over the uplands and the meadows, clothing\nthem with new splendours between the seed-time and the harvest, no\nvision rises upon the memory dearer and more beneficent than theirs. As\nthe lover's fancy dwells upon the image of his beloved in this or that\nenvironment, and thus or thus arrayed, so I see the woods and fields in\nthe various glories of the year and know not in which garb I love them\nbest. They have heard my laments, my confidences, all my broken\nresolves: they are bound to me by so pure and intimate an affection that\nall those grander wonders of the world should never draw me again from\nthis allegiance. Not for the vision of Himalaya piercing the heaven, or\nthe sunsets of Sienna, or the moonlight on the Taj Mahal, or for any\nother beauty or any wonder shall I weary of the cornfields framed in\nelms or the great horses turning in the furrow against the evening sky.\n\nFor with the growth of years our desires wander less, and are mercifully\ncontracted to the scope of our wearying powers. We haunt the same old\nplaces and want the same old things, dwelling amongst them with an\nincreasing constancy of devotion. For we find that year by year the old\nplaces and things are not really the same; something has touched them in\nour absence; strange still agencies have intervened, long silences of\ndissolution and the ineluctable fate of change. And so that perfect\nsameness which we find unattainable takes on the quality of ideal and\ndemands the grown man's devotion, as the change that is forbidden casts\nits resistless spell over the guarded and tethered child. The eyes of\nyouth are on the far end of the vista, those of age upon the near; the\nold horse that has drawn the coulter through the clay is glad for the\nfour hedges of the paddock which irk the growing colt's desire. When\nRichard Jefferies was asked why he walked the same lane day after day,\nat first he was at a loss for a reply; but gradually the reason became\nclear to him. It was because he had become aware of the iron law:\n_Nothing twice_: he wanted the same old and loved things not twice but\nendlessly; he was yearly more eager to be with them, and paint indelibly\nupon his memory their delicate quiet beauty, their soft and perishable\ncharm.\n\nThat is how I also feel, as with the return of summer I wander out into\nthe old meadows and climb the familiar hills; I find myself hoping that\nnothing is changed, and am stirred with sweet anxieties of reminiscence.\nAnd surely within the enchanted boundaries of the counties where I\nramble, there is variety which not the hundred eyes of Argus could\nexhaust. These fields and woodlands in high summer feast all the senses\nwith a surfeit of delights. How good it is to exercise in all its range\nthe fine mechanism of the body, suffering each part of it to indulge its\nown hunger after beauty; to feel the texture of petals, and draw the\nlong grasses through the fingers; to breathe an air laden with the scent\nof blossoms, passing from uplands fragrant with bean-flowers into\nuntilled regions odorous with pines; to hear the birds' chorus at\nsunrise and the distant sound of reaping; to see innumerable marvels;\nthe belts of clover mantling wine-dark in the wind; the poppies in the\nstanding corn, the carmine yew-stems on the downs; above you the soft\ngrey clouds delicately floating; below you, as the day declines, some\ndistant lonely water emerging in its glory to be the mirror and refuge\nof all heaven's light; to remember the gorse and broom and look forward\nto the royal purple of the heather--all this is a consummation of pure\nlife, a high, sensuous pleasure penetrating to the inmost soul, and of\nsuch exceeding price that to disdain its offerings or to pass incurious\nbefore them, is to live in the blindness of the tribe of Genseric.\n\nIn such wanderings the mind is filled with slow and seasonable thoughts,\nlasting as the trees and buildings of the country-side. Old deliberate\ncontemplations, perceptions after long regard ingathered from abundant\nnature, theories leisurely compacted in sunshine or storm, to stand in\nthe fields of memory, crowned with beauty by the indulgent years. So in\nthe visible meadows stand the ancient barns, with roofs of umber tiles\nparcel-gilded with old gold of lichen, and crowning their seasoned\ntimbers \"as naturally as leaves\"; restful structures of a quiet age,\ncapacious of dim space, unvexed by the glare of a hundred summers.\n\nAnd if you ask what profit is here for one who must do battle in the\nloud world, study for a while the artifice and industrious policy of\nplants by which they attract to themselves the visitants they need or\nwith most masterful defence repel the importunate advance, and you will\nreturn to the societies of men, even to their parliaments, enriched with\narts of prudence beyond the practice of Machiavel. Examine the dog-rose\nupon the hedge, how by putting forth thorns it raises itself to the\nlight and ranges irresistible along the leafy parapets; see how the\nflowers adapt their form and colour to the convenience of the bee or the\npredilections of the bird; consider the furze armed with spines against\nbrowsing muzzles, and be near when it casts its seed wide upon the\nearth; and then say if among states or governments there is a wiser\neconomy or an intelligence more provident of its end. I myself have the\nconceit that if time, revoking my sentence of superannuation, should\nrestore my lost years and add youth to the wisdom learned along the\nhedges, even I, a very profitless weed, should not again so uncivilly\ndecay, but flower to another June and see my seed multiply around me.\n\nPerhaps, if that might be, I should strive to learn thoroughly, and\nbring science to bear upon experience. But, as I am, classifications and\ndissections are repellent to my fancy. I cannot get to the hearts of\nflowers by any Linnaean approach, but go rather by the old animistic way,\nstill honoured by Milton through his Genius of the Woods:\n\n    \"When evening gray doth rise I fetch my round,\n    Over the mount and all this hallowed ground,\n    And early, ere the breath of odorous morn\n    Awakes the slumbering leaves.\"\n\nSo I greet the blossoms of hill and upland and water-meadow, knowing\nthem all by their country names, and sometimes fancying that they know\nme back: all that is lacking is the tutelary power to guard their growth\nand prolong their bright and fragrant lives. What fine old names they\nhave, great with the blended dignities of literary and rural lore;\narchangel, tormentil, rosa solis or sun-dew, horehound, Saracen's\nwound-wort, melilot or king's clover, pellitory of Spain! I cannot\ncoldly divide so fine a company into bare genera and species, but\nimagine for them high genealogies and alliances by an imaginative method\nof my own: to me the lily and the onion shall never be connections.\n\nIf I must read books on flowers, I take down such a one as Nicholas\nCulpeper's _Complete Herbal_, written from \"my house in Spitalfields\nnext the Red Lion, September 5th, 1653.\" For here is a man who attempers\nscience with the quaintest fancies after the manner of his generation,\nand delightfully misinterprets the real affinity of the flowers and the\nheavens. \"He that would know the operation of the herbs must look up to\nthe stars astrologically,\" says this master; and so to him briony is \"a\nfurious martial plant,\" and brank ursine \"an excellent plant under the\ndominion of the moon.\" Of rosemary he says, \"the sun claims privilege in\nit, and it is under the celestial ram,\" and of viper's bugloss, \"it is\na most gallant herb of the sun.\" The bay-tree rouses him to real\neloquence, though not for Apollo's sake. \"It is a tree of the sun and\nunder the celestial sign of Leo, and resists witchcraft very potently,\nas also all the evils that old Saturn can do to the body of man; for\nneither witch nor devil, thunder nor lightning will hurt a man in the\nplace where a bay-tree is.\"\n\nReading in this old book of the ordinance and virtues of the familiar\nherbs, I escape from the severities of botanical science into a maze of\nqueer fancies, well suited to those retrospective hours when we love\nbest what we least believe. And by the pleasant suggestion of astrology\nI am led on to contemplate the starry heavens, which I do in the ancient\npastoral way, peopling them with mythical forms and connecting them with\nthe seasonable changes of rustic toil. I forget for the moment all the\ndiscoveries of Copernicus and Kepler, and see eye to eye with\nCleostratus of Tenedos who nightly watched the stars from the sacred\nslopes of Ida.\n\nMuch as the companionships of nature have meant for me, I would not have\nany man content himself with these alone. It is not right to live the\nslave of Pales, or become the rhapsode of docks and nettles. To be all\nfor the lower life, were it the fairest, is derogation; and Har and Heva\nbefore they may enter into their kingdom of the flowers must first be\nfallen spirits. But continually in the interludes of human endeavour to\nrebathe the mind at these clear wells does indeed exceedingly purify and\nstrengthen against the returning and imminent encounter. Those long\nretreats at Walden may not often be repeated, for man is either risen\ntoo high or too far fallen to live well in the sole company of animals\nand flowers. What sociologists call the consciousness of kind is as\nvital to man as the consciousness of self; and to pine for adoption into\nan alien kind is vain on this side transmigration.\n\nNot seldom my wanderings in town and country lead me to quiet\nchurchyards, or to those vast cemeteries where the living have\nestablished the dead in avenues and streets of tombs after their drear\nsuburban fashion. Solitude has ever persuaded to the contemplation of\ndeath, and in these silent places I feel no shock of sadness but am\nrather possessed by a familiar spirit of peace. As I wander from path to\npath, my fancy is not lamed by mournful thoughts, but finds suggestion\namid the poor laconic histories by which these headstones appeal to him\nthat passes by.\n\nIt is with most men a natural desire to take their last rest in some\ngreen God's acre, far from the smoke and turmoil of towns, lying in a\nfair space amid a small company, where there is a wide prospect of\ntilled lands, and the reapers cut the swathes against the very\nchurchyard wall. And this is my most usual aspiration; yet there are\ntimes when I would not shrink in thought from the Valley of Ezekiel, and\nwould be content to be written a mere number in some city of the dead,\nwhere at last after all the loneliness of life I should no longer be\nkept apart, but be gathered to my fellows where they lie in their\nthousands, and be received a member of their society. And though I well\nknow that it matters not a cummin-seed whether my bones are washed to\nand fro on the bed of the sea or my ashes cast to the winds of heaven,\nyet I humour this fancy, and find a quiet pleasure in the thought that\ndeath at least may end this isolation.\n\nAnd what if the propinquity of these poor remains be gage and promise of\na sympathy of souls unveiled and unhidden by false semblances of the\nbody? Then should death indeed be the crown of a long desire and give me\nat the last the fellowship into which life denied initiation. Surely, as\nColeridge dreamed, there is a sex in souls, which, disengaged from the\ncoarse companionship of the flesh, shall see into each other's crystal\ndeeps. Thence, in new life, when the last recondite secret is withholden\nno longer, there shall come forth those qualities and powers that\nennobled man and woman in mortality; they shall come forth in all their\nseveral strength and beauty, divinely animate, and reflecting upon each\nother bright rays and soft colours invisible upon these misty oceans of\nour navigation.\n\nIt is not terrible to think, at times, on death, for that _danse\nmacabre_ which troubled the fancy of our forefathers is now danced out,\nand the silent figure that knocks at every door comes not as a grinning\nskeleton but as one of more gentle countenance than any art can express.\nThe natural change, which to William Blake was but the passing out of\none room into another, is well personified in the merciful figure with\nthe kind eyes, coming at the sounded hour to lead away into quietness.\nMy solitude has taught me to know well those noble efforts which art has\nmade to lift from our bowed backs the burden of the fear of death: I\nlike to look upon that youthful Thanatos carved upon a column from the\ntemple of the Ephesian Diana, and every year the red leaves of autumn\npersuade my steps to that village rich in elms where lived one who also\nsaw death so, and laboured to draw the frightened eyes of men from the\nhour-glass and the skull to the gracious vision of the deliverer and\nfriend. There hands which were dear to him have raised a place of\nleave-taking upon a green slope, a house of farewell set upon the shore\nto receive the last pledges from the living to the absolved and\nunburdened dead.\n\nWhen first I saw Compton it was a cloudless noon in August, the day of\ndays in which to come alone into this silent place. Out of the fiery\nheat beaten from wall and path like a blinding spray of light, it is a\npassage into a dimness of cool space, an air glaucous as the shade of\nolives. There from the circuit of a dome look down kind faces of\nimmortal youth, in form and habit too tranquil for our life, but made\nhomely to us by the mercy in their eyes, and some quality of the white\nsoft hands which draws all weariness and all pain towards them. To me it\nwas as though some furious struggle in the waves were over, and swooning\nout of life I had awakened upon a floor of translucent ocean, where, in\na gracious and tempered light, beings of a compassion too intense for\nearth, each with a gesture that was not yet a touch, were charming all\nthe bruises of the lost battle away. Surely this is true vision of\nthings to come, and to such mercy we shall awaken. It cannot be that\nwhen the eyes reopen they shall see the forms of dark apparitors, or\nthat the ears shall hear AEacus and Rhadamanthys speaking in dim halls\ntheir cold, irrevocable dooms. No, but there shall be a pause and\nrespite upon the way from one to another life, and none may be conceived\nmore grateful than this rest, as it were a sojourn beneath waters of\nEunoe, where a flood of dear memories foreboding good shall absolve us\nfrom the mortal sin of fear.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTurning back over these pages, I am conscious that I have failed to give\nreal experiences their proper life. Describing solitude I have been\ndull; I have fixed the rushing flames of emotion in poor flamboyant\nlines. I have written far more than any reader but yourself will have\ncared to follow; but now at any rate the confession is over, and in the\nfuture I shall work, and use my sight for a worthier end than\nintrospection. It has been said that the tale of any life is\ninteresting if sincerely told; and it may be that the most ordinary\nlives have the advantage, because it is the common experience which\ntouches most hearts. For the greater part mine has been a common life,\nunglorified by hazards in the field, or bright fulfilment of ambition;\nit had been better for its peace if it might wholly have kept the\ncomfortable, usual way.\n\nI sometimes wonder whether the printing of these pages will reveal to me\nany kinsmen in affliction, for such there must be going westward alone,\nand I wish that for a moment we might foregather as we pass, to compare\nthe marvels of our isolation. Then perhaps I might be urged to higher\neffort, hearing stories more pitiful than mine, tales of silent courage\nunder ban of excommunion to shame me from the very thought of despair.\nPoets have metaphorically given colours to souls; mine, I feel, is only\ngrey, the common hue of shadows; but it was steeped in gloom by a\nveritable pain and evils really undergone. And as I reflect upon what I\nhave written, and try to imagine it read by some brisk person utterly\ncontent with life, I can well understand that the whole thing would\nappear to him incredible, too preposterously strange for belief, a\nrigmarole of sick fancies beyond the power of hellebore. So be it: I\nexpect small comprehension and no mercy, for indeed I have written\ncaring little for such consequence, yielding to that human thirst for\nutterance which only confession can slake; as one eases pain by a moan\nthough there are none to hear it. It is not altogether a grateful task.\nFor hardly, and then only in a fortunate hour, to one whose years and\nfeelings have been interwoven with his own, will even a healthy man tell\nthe tale of his hidden emotion; and mine is the deeper reticence of a\nhabit which has ever held closely to the recipe of fernseed. To entrust\na confidence to one of unproven sympathy, is to risk a profitless\nembarrassment. It has been most truly said that both parties to such\nimpulsive avowals, whenever they afterwards meet, must feel a constraint\nas of confederacy in misdemeanour.\n\nI have hope that though I came late to the steady labour of the\nvineyard, I may yet earn my wage and begin the new day with the rest.\nLike Joseph Poorgrass I can now almost regard my diffidence as an\ninteresting study, and agree with the rustic man of calamities that\ndestiny might have made things even worse. Certainly the pain grows less\nfierce; I can go more readily among my fellows for all but social ends.\nFor those who live much apart learn at last to see men not as\nindividuals but in groups: to them it is the type which counts, the\n_forma specifica per formam individualem translucens_, of which the\nscholastic jargon speaks. Those with whom I come in casual contact\nappear to me now in a vague, diffused light like the atmosphere of some\nother world. Dwelling upon none with the eyes of intimacy, and passing\nswiftly from this to that, I find each but the harmless variant of a\nspecies; if I lingered or came too near, doubtless old apprehensions\nwould oppress me still. It is a disadvantage of this outlook that the\nfascination of detail is lost, and that I have less sense for the\npersonal in life. But if I grow old I shall regain the interest in\nparticular things and persons with which age is consoled amid many\nmiseries; for while youth grows earnest over some riddle of high art or\nthe occultation of Aldebaran, age is happily absorbed in the arrangement\nof a room or discussing the destinies of a single household.\n\nMeanwhile, though uncongenial to my kind as entering little into their\npleasures, I like to be near them in their grief or happiness, standing\nunnoticed in the wind of their fortune's wheel. At least I am not soured\nor malevolent, and when there is dancing toward, I am in the crowd upon\nthe margin of the green. I have abandoned social obligations because I\nam unfitted to perform them well, and society high and low exists by\ntheir cheerful fulfilment. But I no longer rail at social law or decline\nto see anything but evil in conventions devised by the wisdom and\nrefinement of centuries. If I refuse invitations and leave calls unpaid,\nit is because I am socially bankrupt: were I solvent I should redeem all\ndebts.\n\nI decline therefore to denounce Chesterfield and deify Thoreau: there\nwas exaggeration in both men, and though my sympathies are rather with\nthe recluse of Walden pond, it is quite probable that Chesterfield was\nthe more useful of the two. I am a bad player, I have not the high\nspirits or the conversational skill which each should contribute to the\nsocial game. And in almost any sport the incompetent confer a benefit by\nstanding out: at least, that is the opinion which I hear the average\nplayer express. If I lived in the backwoods where any guest is welcome,\nit might be my duty to act differently. But my ways are cast in places\nwhere there is no need for social press-gangs, and the highways and\nhedges are left unsearched. If therefore by abstention I gain a\nqualified peace for myself, and confer positive benefit on others, I may\ngo my way without serious reproach.\n\nAnd I did wisely not to marry, for I should have clung too closely to my\nstudy for the happiness of any woman. I once saw an advertisement in\nthe newspaper inserted by a discontented young wife whose husband was a\nrecluse and would not take her out of evenings. She wanted to\ncommunicate with congenial people, and, like a desperate sailor\nmarooned, was driven to wave her signal in the sight of the casual eye.\nThis frank confession of abandonment made a profound impression upon me.\nI thought to myself, \"Master recluse, you are a pilferer and have\nfilched a life. I am yet more solitary in my estate, and if I followed\nyour example, should be guilty of a greater wrong.\" There are, indeed,\nhours when I feel embittered at the thought that for one innocent defect\na whole life should be amerced of joy; the finality of loss appals: all\nis so irrevocable; _le vase est imbibe, l'etoffe a pris son pli_.\nAvoided not without cause by those who were my natural associates, I\ngrow impenetrable of access, and even in my own family unfamiliar. The\nresentment that welled up in the man who told the story of Henry\nRyecroft obtains the mastery, and I feel one in spirit with that lonely\nanalyst of disillusions. Sometimes a worse darkness gathers round, till\nI long for one of those intense and all-absorbing creeds which somehow\nseem to tend the brightest hearth-fires which earth knows: for\nphilosophy, though it invented the void, never built a little Gidding.\n\nIt is then that I feel like the suppliant of the old Babylonian prayer,\n\"one whose kin are afar off, whose city is distant,\" and all that\nappears before my sight is one scroll of wrongs which this evil heritage\nhas inflicted upon me. It has made my best years rich in misery; it has\ncut me off from marriage; it has compelled me, one hating vain\ncomplaint, to live querulously in the optative mood. Neither poverty nor\nsickness could chastise more heavily; for poverty is strong in numbers\nand sickness rich in sympathy, but diffidence reaps laughter and is\nalone. When such thoughts win dominion over the mind I could envy what\nsufferer you will his most awful punishment. For in his agony be sure\nthere is movement and action; his limbs are torn, yet he is dragged\nonward: by his very writhing in the bonds he confesses his life. But I\nlie in some dead waste where nothing moves and all is mist without\nhorizon, lost in an abhorred blankness of dismay to which no positive\nsuffering may be likened. Thither comes no fierce provocation to quicken\ninto Promethean scorn; life lies whelmed in blackness unlit by flashes\nof defiance or the cold splendour of disdain.\n\nEmpedocles once described his dream of retribution for the last\nunutterable offence. For thrice ten thousand years the sinner roams\nestranged from bliss, taking all mortal shapes, wearing with tired feet\nall the sad ways of life. AEther sweeps him out to Ocean, Ocean casts him\nnaked on the shores of Earth, Earth hurls him upward to the flames of\nHelios, and he, relentless, spurns the victim back to AEther, that the\ndread cycle may begin anew. But to be for ever driven in this majestic\nwhirl of change, to receive the chastisement of all elements and survive\nunbroken for a new revolution of the wheel, this is but an assurance of\nthe very pride of life, it is the charter of an invincible manhood. The\ndoom which in truth befits the unutterable sin is rather the blank pain\nwithout accident or period, without point or salience to draw from\nstunned nature her last energies of resentment. It is well for me that\nthis misery is short-lived, and that either by thinking on that ideal\nlove I know the miracle of the twenty-ninth sonnet, or, struggling with\ninstant effort out of the toils, try to see myself as I appear to\nothers, one who should scorn to sit in thirst when there are wells yet\nfor the seeking.\n\nIt is a strange life to lead in this pleasureful world; and if when it\nis over I were condemned to live again, coming like Er the Armenian to\nthat meadow where the lots are thrown down for each to choose his own, I\nam already decided what character I should elect to play. I should\nneither cast myself for a protagonist's part nor again for that of a\ndumb actor in those backgrounds I know too well; but just for a plain\nmanly character, strong to face all fortunes and rich in troops of\nfriends. There should be no more evasion or dreary wrestling of mind\nwith body; but life should move to a restrained harmony, and no elusive\nwind should carry half the music away.\n\nAs for what remains of this present dispensation, I shall know how to\nendure, trusting that the years may fade finely, like the figures in an\nold tapestry, and that the end may come to me as to the old gentleman in\nHans Christian Andersen's story of the Old House. And I have this\nadvantage over other men, that while they have the whole cornucopia to\nlose, I can but be deprived of the dregs in its pointed end. For in what\ncan there be further punishment? On others, men of happy pasts, dismay\nmay fall as the ways are darkened before them. But surely I shall be of\ngood cheer as I come into the land of the fierce old robber Age; for,\nstripped long since by a more subtle and insatiate despoiler, I shall\npossess nothing of worth to draw his covetousness upon me. So many joys\ndid my very youth renounce; so many pleasures the Harpies swept from my\nplace at the spread board of life; such gags and fetters held me while\nothers danced and sang, that I was the sad familiar of evil fortune\nbefore my companions were acquainted with her name. That leaden weight\nwhich brings others low, by a nice adjustment of the scales shall raise\nme for the first time to their equality. And then, as one experienced in\nbereavements, of themselves they may seek my company; and I, so long the\nuseless and estranged, may become at the close their helpful counsellor.\n\nIf only that might be; if only upon the verge of night I might redeem by\nusefulness my lost unserviceable day. Then this grey life, so long sole\nand intrinsical to itself, should glow at last with some reflection of\nthe sunset; once more I should know young ardours imagined lost and\ndevotions miraculously born again.\n\nYou will still encounter me now and then, moving absently through the\ncrowd, or wandering in some green place, as in the garden of the\nLuxembourg Vauvenargues used to meet the wounded of the great battle,\nkeeping apart in the narrower walks, and leaving the broad central ways\nfor lighter feet than theirs. He often longed to have speech with them;\nbut always they turned away, with the proud self-sufficiency of the\ndisillusioned. Perhaps if he had succeeded he would have found that to\nsome of them life had its consolations not unlike mine, and that they\ncould still regard it as something more than a friendly process of\ndetachment. But it is not our habit to expand; we are ever held back by\nthe occult pride which the same soldier-philosopher has assigned to one\nof his imaginary characters, \"cette fierte tendre d'une ame timide, qui\nne veut avouer ni sa defaite, ni ses esperances, ni la vanite de ses\nvoeux.\"","title":"Apologia Diffidentis","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":34953}