s a life for any one who has found that there is
a world of tender, wistful, delicate emotions, subdued and soft
impressions, in which it is peace to live; for one who has learned,
however dimly, that wise and faithful love, quiet and patient hope, are
the bread by which the spirit is nourished--that religion is not an
intellectual or even an ecclesiastical thing, but a far-off and remote
vision of the soul.

I know well the thoughts and hopes that I should desire to speak; but
they are evasive, subtle things, and too often, like shy birds, will
hardly let you approach them. But I would add that life has not been
for me a dreamy thing, lived in soft fantastic reveries; indeed, it has
been far the reverse. I have practised activity, I have mixed much with
my fellows; I have taught, worked, organized, directed. I have watched
men and boys; I have found infinite food for mirth, for interest, and
even for grief. But I have grown to feel that the ambitions which we
preach and the successes for which we prepare are very often nothing
but a missing of the simple road, a troubled wandering among thorny
by-paths and dark mountains. I have grown to believe that the one thing
worth aiming at is simplicity of heart and life; that one's relations
with others should be direct and not diplomatic; that power leaves a
bitter taste in the mouth; that meanness, and hardness, and coldness
are the unforgivable sins; that conventionality is the mother of
dreariness; that pleasure exists not in virtue of material conditions,
but in the joyful heart; that the world is a very interesting and
beautiful place; that congenial labour is the secret of happiness; and
many other things which seem, as I write them down, to be dull and
trite commonplaces, but are for me the bright jewels which I have found
beside the way.

It is, then, from College Windows that I look forth. But even so,
though on the one hand I look upon the green and sheltered garden, with
its air of secluded recollection and repose, a place of quiet pacing to
and fro, of sober and joyful musing; yet on another side I see the
court, with all its fresh and shifting life, its swift interchange of
study and activity; and on yet another side I can observe the street
where the infinite pageant of humanity goes to and fro, a tide full of
sound and foam, of business and laughter, and of sorrow too, and
sickness, and the funeral pomp of death.

This, then, is my point of view. I can truthf