ned
(I forget the precise shade of the imperative) something for her album.
"We are in the last ages of the world," wrote Charles Lamb to Barry
Cornwall, "when St. Paul prophesied that women should be 'headstrong,
lovers of their own will, having albums.--'"

BEATUS POSSIDENS.

I can't afford a mile of sward,
Parterres and peacocks gay;
For velvet lawns and marble fauns
Mere authors cannot pay.

And so I went and pitched my tent
Above a harbour fair,
Where vessels picturesquely rigg'd
Obligingly repair.

The harbour is not mine at all:
I make it so--what odds?
And gulls unwitting on my wall
Serve me for garden-gods.

By ships that ride below kaleid-
oscopically changed,
Unto my mind each day I find
My garden rearranged.

These, madam, are my daffodils,
My pinks, my hollyhocks,
My herds upon a hundred hills,
My phloxes and my flocks.

And when some day you deign to pay
The call that's overdue,
I'll wave a landlord's easy hand
And say, "Admire _my_ view!"

Now I do not deny that a part of the content expressed in these lines may
come of resignation. In some moods, were I to indulge them, it were
pleasant to fancy myself owner of a vast estate, champaign and woodland;
able to ride from sea to sea without stepping off my own acres, with
villeins and bondmen, privileges of sak and soke, infangthef,
outfangthef, rents, tolls, dues, royalties, and a private gallows for
autograph-hunters. These things, however, did not come to me by
inheritance, and for a number of sufficient reasons I have not amassed
them. As for those other ambitions which fill the dreams of every healthy
boy, a number of them had become of faint importance even before a
breakdown of health seemed definitely to forbid their attainment.
Here at home, far from London, with restored strength, I find myself less
concerned with them than are my friends and neighbours, yet more keenly
interested than ever in life and letters, art and politics--all that men
and women are saying and doing. Only the centre of gravity has shifted,
so to speak.

I dare say, then, that resignation may have some share in this content;
but if so 'tis an unconscious and happy one. A man who has been writing
novels for a good part of his life should at least be able to sympathise
with vario