count for the world's benefit, but should become so known and
appreciated as to make others admire and value what they admire and
value. When such a man prefers to live his life in his own way, and do
the plain duties that lie near him, with no thought of anything
further, they feel, though they may try to repress, a kind of
disappointment, as though greatness or virtue had missed its mark
because known to few besides themselves. Yet there is a sense in
which that friend is most our own who has least belonged to the
world, who has least cared for what the world has to offer, who has
chosen the simplest and purest pleasures, who has rendered the
service that his way of life required with no longing for any wider
theatre or any applause to be there won. Is there indeed anything
more beautiful than a life of quiet self-sufficing yet beneficent
serenity, such as the ancient philosophers inculcated, a life which
is now more rarely than ever led by men of shining gifts, because the
inducements to bring such gifts into the dusty thoroughfares of the
world have grown more numerous? Bowen had the best equipment for a
philosopher. He knew the things that gave him pleasure, and sought no
others. He knew what he could do well. He followed his own bent.
His desires were few, and he could gratify them all. He had made life
exactly what he wished it to be. Intensely as he enjoyed travel, he
never uttered a note of regret when the beginning of a Harrow school
term stopped a journey at its most interesting point, so dearly did
he love his boys. What more can we desire for our friends than
this--that in remembering them there should be nothing to regret,
that all who came under their influence should feel themselves for
ever thereafter the better for that influence, that a happy and
peaceful life should be crowned by a sudden and painless death?

-----

[53] Since this sketch was written a very interesting _Life of Edward
Bowen_ by his nephew (the Hon. and Rev. W. E. Bowen) has
appeared. Some of his (too few) essays and a collection of his
school-songs are appended to it.

[54] Mr. R. Bosworth Smith.

[55] It is printed in the _Life_.

[56] "Chiffers" is the typical would-be imitator of Arnold.

[57] He remarked once that he had so nearly exhausted the battlefields
of the past that he must begin to devote himself to the
battlefields of the future.

EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN

As