; they are so unconscious of the sad
reasons for which we desire their company, so unsuspicious, so serene!
Instead of learning by the sorrowful experience of generations what our
dark purposes are, they become more and more fraternal, more and more
dependent. And yet how little we really know what their thoughts are.
They are so unintelligent in some regions, so subtly wise in others.
We cannot share our thoughts with them; we cannot explain anything to
them. We can sympathise with them in their troubles, but cannot convey
our sympathy to them. There is a little bantam hen here, a great pet,
who comes up to the front door with the other bantams to be fed. She
has been suffering for some time from an obscure illness. She arrives
with the others, full of excitement, and begins to pick at the grain
thrown them; but the effort soon exhausts her; she goes sadly apart,
and sits with dim eye and ruffled plumage, in silent suffering,
wondering, perhaps, why she is not as brisk and joyful as ever, what is
the sad thing that has befallen her. And one can do nothing, express
nothing of the pathetic sorrow that fills one's mind. But, none the
less, one tries to believe, to feel, that this suffering is not
fortuitous, is not wasted--how could one endure the thought otherwise,
if one did not hope that "the earnest expectation of the creature
waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God!"

XIII

The Artist

I have been reading with much emotion the life of a great artist. It
is a tender, devoted record; and there is an atmosphere of delicate
beauty about the style. It is as though his wife, who wrote the book,
had gained through the years of companionship, a pale, pure reflection
of her husband's simple and impassioned style, just as the moon's
clear, cold light is drawn from the hot fountains of the sun. And yet,
there is an individuality about the style, and the reflection is rather
of the same nature as the patient likeness of expression which is to be
seen in the faces of an aged pair, who have travelled in love and unity
down the vale of years together.

In this artist's own writing, which has a pure and almost childlike
_naivete_ of phrasing, there is a glow, not of rhetoric or language,
but of emotion, an almost lover-like attitude towards his friends,
which is yet saved from sentimentality by an obvious sincerity of
feeling. In this he seems to me to be different from the majority of
artistic natures