rd would not hear of it." "Damnation!" said the proconsul, and
went on writing. A week after he met the secretary, who felt a little
shy. "By the way, T----," said the great man, "I have been thinking over
that matter of the loan, and it was a mercy you were not successful;
it would have been a hopeless precedent, and we are much better without
it."

That is the true Anglo-Saxon spirit of optimism. The most truly British
person I know is a man who will move heaven and earth to secure a post
or to compass an end; but when he fails, as he does not often fail, he
says genially that he is more thankful than he can say; it would have
been ruin to him if he had been successful. The same quality runs
through our philosophy and our religion. Who but an Anglo-Saxon would
have invented the robust theory, to account for the fact that prayers
are often not granted, that prayers are always directly answered whether
you attain your desire or not? The Greeks prayed that the gods would
grant them what was good even if they did not desire it, and withhold
what was evil even if they did desire it. The shrewd Roman said: "The
gods will give us what is most appropriate; man is dearer to them than
to himself." But the faithful Anglo-Saxon maintains that his prayer is
none the less answered even if it be denied, and that it is made up to
him in some roundabout way. It is inconceivable to the Anglo-Saxon that
there may be a strain of sadness and melancholy in the very mind of
God; he cannot understand that there can be any beauty in sorrow. To the
Celt, sorrow itself is dear and beautiful, and the mournful wailing
of winds, the tears of the lowering cloud, afford him sweet and even
luxurious sensations. The memory of grief is one of the good things
that remains to him, as life draws to its close; for love is to him
the sister of grief rather than the mother of joy. But this is to
the Anglo-Saxon mind a morbid thing. The hours in which sorrow has
overclouded him are wasted, desolated hours, to be forgotten and
obliterated as soon as possible. There is nothing sacred about them;
they are sad and stony tracts over which he has made haste to cross, and
the only use of them is to heighten the sense of security and joy. And
thus the sort of sayings that satisfy and sustain the Anglo-Saxon mind
are such irrepressible outbursts of poets as "God's in His heaven;
all's right with the world"--the latter part of which is flagrantly
contradicted by experi