alternate process of
learning and unlearning; but it is often wiser to unlearn than to learn.
For the rest, as I have ceased to be a critic, I care little whether I
was wrong or right when I played that part. I think I am right now as a
placeman. Let the world go its own way, provided the world lets you live
upon it. I drain my wine to the lees, and cut down hope to the brief
span of life. Reject realism in art if you please, and accept realism in
conduct. For the first time in my life I am comfortable: my mind, having
worn out its walking-shoes, is now enjoying the luxury of slippers. Who
can deny the realism of comfort?"

"Has a man a right," Kenelm said to himself, as he entered his brougham,
"to employ all the brilliancy of a rare wit, all the acquisitions of as
rare a scholarship, to the scaring of the young generation out of the
safe old roads which youth left to itself would take,--old roads skirted
by romantic rivers and bowery trees,--directing them into new paths on
long sandy flats, and then, when they are faint and footsore, to tell
them that he cares not a pin whether they have worn out their shoes in
right paths or wrong paths, for that he has attained the _summum bonum_
of philosophy in the comfort of easy slippers?"

Before he could answer the question he thus put to himself, his brougham
stopped at the door of the minister whom Welby had contributed to bring
into power.

That night there was a crowded muster of the fashionable world at the
great man's house. It happened to be a very critical moment for the
minister. The fate of his cabinet depended on the result of a motion
about to be made the following week in the House of Commons. The great
man stood at the entrance of the apartments to receive his guests, and
among the guests were the framers of the hostile motion and the leaders
of the opposition. His smile was not less gracious to them than to his
dearest friends and stanchest supporters.

"I suppose this is realism," said Kenelm to himself; "but it is not
truth, and it is not comfort." Leaning against the wall near the
doorway, he contemplated with grave interest the striking countenance
of his distinguished host. He detected beneath that courteous smile
and that urbane manner the signs of care. The eye was absent, the cheek
pinched, the brow furrowed. Kenelm turned away his looks, and glanced
over the animated countenances of the idle loungers along commoner
thoroughfares in life. Their eye