and conquered in days gone by, and yet
many who possess this knowledge, and who have the gift of expression
at its highest, spend their time in one long tiresome whimper. Half
the poetry of our time is rhythmic complaint; young men who have
hardly had time to look round on the splendid panorama of life profess
to crave for death, and young women who should be thinking only of
work and love and brightness prefer to sink into languor. There is no
curing a poet when once he takes to being mournful, for he hugs his
own woe with positive pleasure, and all his musical pathos is simply
self-pity.

When Napoleon said, "You must not fear Death, my lads. Defy him, and
you drive him into the enemy's ranks!" he uttered a truth which
applies in the moral world as on the battle-field. The sudden panic
which causes battalions of troops to hesitate and break up in
confusion is paralleled by the numbing despair which seems to seize on
the forces of the soul at times. Brave men gaze calmly on the trouble
and think within themselves, "Now is the hour of trial; it is needful
to be strong and audacious;" weak men drop into hopeless lassitude,
and the few who happen to be foolish as well as weak rid themselves of
life. I dare say that hardly one of those who read these lines has
escaped that one awful moment when effort appears vain, when life is
one long ache, and when Time is a creeping horror that seems to lag as
if to torture the suffering heart. We need only turn to the vivid
chapter of modern life to see the utter folly of "giving in." Let us
look at the life-history of a statesman who died some years ago in our
country, after wielding supreme power and earning the homage of
millions. When young Benjamin D'Israeli first entered society in
London, he found that the proud aristocrats looked askance at him. He
came of a despised race, he had no fortune, his modes of acting and
speaking were strange to the cold, self-contained Northerners among
whom he cast his lot, and his chances looked far from promising. He
waited and worked, but all things seemed to go wrong with him; he
published a poem which was laughed at all over the country; he strove
to enter Parliament, and failed again and again; middle age crept on
him, and the shadows of failure seemed to compass him round. In one
terrible passage which he wrote in a flippant novel called "The Young
Duke" he speaks about the woful fate of a man who feels himself full
of strength and ability