t the successes of a season. Heaven knows what
pains the author has been at, what bitter experiences he has
endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance
reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of
a journey. And if I may judge from the reviews, many of these
books are well and carefully written; much thought has gone to
their composition; to some even has been given the anxious
labour of a lifetime. The moral I draw is that the writer
should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in
release from the burden of his thought; and, indifferent to aught
else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.

Now the war has come, bringing with it a new attitude.
Youth has turned to gods we of an earlier day knew not, and it
is possible to see already the direction in which those who come
after us will move. The younger generation, conscious of
strength and tumultuous, have done with knocking at the door;
they have burst in and seated themselves in our seats.
The air is noisy with their shouts. Of their elders some, by
imitating the antics of youth, strive to persuade themselves
that their day is not yet over; they shout with the lustiest,
but the war cry sounds hollow in their mouth; they are like
poor wantons attempting with pencil, paint and powder, with
shrill gaiety, to recover the illusion of their spring.
The wiser go their way with a decent grace. In their chastened
smile is an indulgent mockery. They remember that they too
trod down a sated generation, with just such clamor and with
just such scorn, and they foresee that these brave torch-bearers
will presently yield their place also. There is no last word.
The new evangel was old when Nineveh reared her greatness
to the sky. These gallant words which seem so novel to those
that speak them were said in accents scarcely changed a hundred
times before. The pendulum swings backwards and forwards.
The circle is ever travelled anew.

Sometimes a man survives a considerable time from an era in
which he had his place into one which is strange to him, and
then the curious are offered one of the most singular
spectacles in the human comedy. Who now, for example, thinks
of George Crabbe? He was a famous poet in his day, and the
world recognised his genius with a unanimity which the greater
complexity of modern life has rendered infrequent. He had
learnt his craft at the school of Alexander Pope, and he wrote
moral