en from generation to
generation.

But I still believe that there is a Will of God; and, more than that, I
can still believe that a day comes for all of us, however far off it
may be, when we shall understand; when these tragedies, that now
blacken and darken the very air of Heaven for us, will sink into their
places in a scheme so august, so magnificent, so joyful, that we shall
laugh for wonder and delight; when we shall think not more sorrowfully
over these sufferings, these agonies, than we think now of the sad days
in our childhood when we sat with a passion of tears over a broken toy
or a dead bird, feeling that we could not be comforted. We smile as we
remember such things--we smile at our blindness, our limitations. We
smile to reflect at the great range and panorama of the world that has
opened upon us since, and of which, in our childish grief, we were so
ignorant. Under what conditions the glory will be revealed to us I
cannot guess. But I do not doubt that it will be revealed; for we
forget sorrow, but we do not forget joy.

XXXIV

Music

I have just come back from hearing a great violinist, who played, with
three other professors, in two quartettes, Mozart and Beethoven. I
know little of the technicalities of music, but I know that the Mozart
was full to me of air and sunlight, and a joy which was not the
light-hearted gaiety of earth, but the untainted and unwearying joy of
heaven; the Beethoven I do not think I understood, but there was a
grave minor movement, with pizzicato passages for the violoncello,
which seemed to consecrate and dignify the sorrow of the heart.

But apart from the technical merits of the music--and the performance,
indeed, seemed to me to lie as near the thought and the conception as
the translation of music into sound can go--the sight of these four big
men, serious and grave, as though neither pursuing nor creating
pleasure, but as though interpreting and giving expression to some
weighty secret, had an inspiring and solemnising effect. The sight of
the great violinist himself was full of awe; his big head, the full
grey beard which lay over the top of the violin, his calm, set brows,
his weary eyes with their heavy lids, had a profound dignity and
seriousness; and to see his wonderful hands, not delicate or slender,
but full, strong, and muscular, moving neither lingeringly nor hastily,
but with a firm and easy deliberation upon the strings, was deeply
impressi