e was genuinely looking at the sea. For the edge of the
sea is like the edge of a sword; it is sharp, military, and decisive; it
really looks like a bolt or bar, and not like a mere expansion. It hangs
in heaven, grey, or green, or blue, changing in colour, but changeless
in form, behind all the slippery contours of the land and all the savage
softness of the forests, like the scales of God held even. It hangs, a
perpetual reminder of that divine reason and justice which abides behind
all compromises and all legitimate variety; the one straight line; the
limit of the intellect; the dark and ultimate dogma of the world.

The Sentimentalist

"Sentimentalism is the most broken reed on which righteousness can
lean"; these were, I think, the exact words of a distinguished American
visitor at the Guildhall, and may Heaven forgive me if I do him a wrong.
It was spoken in illustration of the folly of supporting Egyptian and
other Oriental nationalism, and it has tempted me to some reflections on
the first word of the sentence.

The Sentimentalist, roughly speaking, is the man who wants to eat his
cake and have it. He has no sense of honour about ideas; he will not see
that one must pay for an idea as for anything else. He will not see
that any worthy idea, like any honest woman, can only be won on its own
terms, and with its logical chain of loyalty. One idea attracts him;
another idea really inspires him; a third idea flatters him; a fourth
idea pays him. He will have them all at once in one wild intellectual
harem, no matter how much they quarrel and contradict each other. The
Sentimentalist is a philosophic profligate, who tries to capture every
mental beauty without reference to its rival beauties; who will not even
be off with the old love before he is on with the new. Thus if a man
were to say, "I love this woman, but I may some day find my affinity in
some other woman," he would be a Sentimentalist. He would be saying, "I
will eat my wedding-cake and keep it." Or if a man should say, "I am
a Republican, believing in the equality of citizens; but when the
Government has given me my peerage I can do infinite good as a
kind landlord and a wise legislator"; then that man would be a
Sentimentalist. He would be trying to keep at the same time the classic
austerity of equality and also the vulgar excitement of an aristocrat.
Or if a man should say, "I am in favour of religious equality; but I
must preserve the Protestan