an read all books; it is
only in a chosen few that any man will find his appointed food; and the
fittest lessons are the most palatable, and make themselves welcome to
the mind. A writer learns this early, and it is his chief support; he
goes on unafraid, laying down the law; and he is sure at heart that most
of what he says is demonstrably false, and much of a mingled strain, and
some hurtful, and very little good for service; but he is sure besides
that when his words fall into the hands of any genuine reader, they will
be weighed and winnowed, and only that which suits will be assimilated;
and when they fall into the hands of one who cannot intelligently read,
they come there quite silent and inarticulate, falling upon deaf ears,
and his secret is kept as if he had not written.

FOOTNOTE:

[29] Of _The British Weekly_.

VI

THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW

History is much decried; it is a tissue of errors, we are told, no doubt
correctly; and rival historians expose each other's blunders with
gratification. Yet the worst historian has a clearer view of the period
he studies than the best of us can hope to form of that in which we
live. The obscurest epoch is to-day; and that for a thousand reasons of
inchoate tendency, conflicting report, and sheer mass and multiplicity
of experience; but chiefly, perhaps, by reason of an insidious shifting
of landmarks. Parties and ideas continually move, but not by measurable
marches on a stable course; the political soil itself steals forth by
imperceptible degrees, like a travelling glacier, carrying on its bosom
not only political parties but their flag-posts and cantonments; so that
what appears to be an eternal city founded on hills is but a flying
island of Laputa. It is for this reason in particular that we are all
becoming Socialists without knowing it; by which I would not in the
least refer to the acute case of Mr. Hyndman and his horn-blowing
supporters, sounding their trumps of a Sunday within the walls of our
individualist Jericho--but to the stealthy change that has come over the
spirit of Englishmen and English legislation. A little while ago, and we
were still for liberty; "crowd a few more thousands on the bench of
Government," we seemed to cry; "keep her head direct on liberty, and we
cannot help but come to port." This is over; _laisser faire_ declines in
favour; our legislation grows authoritative, grows philanthropical,
bristles with new duties and ne