_gradus ad
Parnassum_, you know. But although I crib, I am candid, and you see I
fairly own it to you.'

'You are welcome to all I have ever written,' said Herbert. 'Mine were
but crude dreams. I wished to see man noble and happy; but if he will
persist in being vile and miserable, I must even be content. I can
struggle for him no more.'

'Well, you opened my mind,' said Cadurcis. 'I owe you everything;
but I quite agree with you that nothing is worth an effort. As for
philosophy and freedom, and all that, they tell devilish well in a
stanza; but men have always been fools and slaves, and fools and
slaves they always will be.'

'Nay,' said Herbert, 'I will not believe that. I will not give up
a jot of my conviction of a great and glorious future for human
destinies; but its consummation will not be so rapid as I once
thought, and in the meantime I die.'

'Ah, death!' said Lord Cadurcis, 'that is a botherer. What can you
make of death? There are those poor fishermen now; there will be a
white squall some day, and they will go down with those lateen sails
of theirs, and be food for the very prey they were going to catch; and
if you continue living here, you may eat one of your neighbours in
the shape of a shoal of red mullets, when it is the season. The great
secret, we cannot penetrate that with all our philosophy, my dear
Herbert. "All that we know is, nothing can be known." Barren, barren,
barren! And yet what a grand world it is! Look at this bay, these blue
waters, the mountains, and these chestnuts, devilish fine! The fact
is, truth is veiled, but, like the Shekinah over the tabernacle, the
veil is of dazzling light!'

'Life is the great wonder,' said Herbert, 'into which all that is
strange and startling resolves itself. The mist of familiarity
obscures from us the miracle of our being. Mankind are constantly
starting at events which they consider extraordinary. But a
philosopher acknowledges only one miracle, and that is life. Political
revolutions, changes of empire, wrecks of dynasties and the opinions
that support them, these are the marvels of the vulgar, but these are
only transient modifications of life. The origin of existence is,
therefore, the first object which a true philosopher proposes to
himself. Unable to discover it, he accepts certain results from
his unbiassed observation of its obvious nature, and on them he
establishes certain principles to be our guides in all social
relations, whethe