t the singular way in which Captain Cuttle commended his friend
Jack Bunsby as a man of extraordinary wisdom, whose advice on any point
was of inestimable value. "Here's a man," said Captain Cuttle, "who has
been more beaten about the head than any other living man!" I hail the
words as the recognition of a great principle. To Mr. Bunsby it befell
in a literal sense; but we have all been (in a moral sense) a good deal
beaten about both the head and the heart before we grew good for much.
Out of the travail of his nature, out of the sorrowful history of his
past life, the poet or the moralist draws the deep thought and feeling
which find so straight a way to the hearts of other men. Do you think
Mr. Tennyson would ever have been the great poet he is, if he had not
passed through that season of great grief which has left its noble
record in "In Memoriam"? And a youthful preacher, of vivid imagination
and keen feeling, little fettered by anything in the nature of good
taste, may by strong statements and a fiery manner draw a mob of
unthinking hearers: but thoughtful men and women will not find anything
in all _that_, that awakens the response of their inner nature in its
truest depths; they must have religious instruction into which real
experience has been transfused; and the worth of the instruction will be
in direct proportion to the amount of real experience which is embodied
in it. And after all, it is better to be wise and good than to be gay
and happy, if we must choose between the two things; and it is worth
while to be severely beaten about the head, if _that_ is the condition
on which alone we can gain true wisdom. True wisdom is cheap at almost
any price. But it does not follow at all that you will be happy (in
the vulgar sense) in direct proportion as you are wise. I suppose
most middle-aged people, when they receive the ordinary kind wish at
New-Year's time of a Happy New-Year, feel that _happy_ is not quite the
word; and feel that, too, though well aware that they have abundant
reason for gratitude to a kind Providence. It is not _here_ that we
shall ever be happy,--that is, completely and perfectly happy. Something
will always be coming to worry and distress. And a hundred sad
possibilities hang over us: some of them only too certainly and quickly
drawing near. Yet people are content, in a kind of way. They have learnt
the great lesson of Resignation.

* * * * *

There are man