to my point, which
is the possibility of buying happiness at a cheaper rate than London
offers it. As it took me twenty years of experience to make my
discovery, I may claim, however, that three chapters is no immoderate
amount of matter in which to describe it. My chief occupation through
these years was to keep my discontent alive. Satisfaction is the death
of progress, and I knew well that if I once acquiesced entirely in the
conditions of my life, my fate was sealed.

I did not acquiesce, though the temper of my revolt was by no means
steady. There were times when--to reverse an ancient saying--the muddy
Jordan of London life seemed more to me than all the sparkling waters
of Damascus. Humanity seemed indescribably majestic; and there were
moments when I sincerely felt that I would not exchange the trampled
causeways of the London streets for the greenest meadows that bordered
Rotha or Derwentwater. There were days of early summer when London
rose from her morning bath of mist in a splendour truly unapproachable;
when no music heard of man seemed comparable with the long diapason of
the crowded streets; when from morn to eve the hours ran with an
inconceivable gaiety and lightness, and the eye was in turn inebriated
with the hard glare and deep shadows of abundant light, with the
infinite contrasts of the streets, with the far-ranged dignity of domes
and towers swimming in the golden haze of midday, or melting in the
lilac mists of evening. I felt also, in this vast congregation of my
fellow-creatures, the exhilarating sense of my own insignificance. Of
what value were my own opinions, hopes, or programmes in this huge
concourse and confusion of opinion? Who cared what one human brain
chanced to think, where so many million brains were thinking? I was
swept on like a bubble in the stream, and I forgot my own
individuality. And this forgetfulness became a pleasure; the mind,
wearied of its own affairs, found delight in recollecting that the
things that seemed so great to it were after all of infinitesimal
importance in the general sum of things.

Astronomy is often credited with providing this sensation; writers of
fiction especially are fond of explaining how the voyage of the eye
through space humbles the individual pride of man through the
oppression of magnitude and vastness. They might come nearer home, for
terrestrial magnitudes produce the same effect as celestial magnitudes;
the mind loses itse