troke of
Fate, he is robbed of his hoard, that he becomes wretched. Then,
certainly, he suffers. He suffers proportionately to his joy. He is
smitten with sorrow more awful than any sorrow to be conceived by the
sane. I whose rainbow-coloured hoard has been swept from me, seem to
taste the full savour of his anguish.

I sit here thinking of the misers who, in life or in fiction, have been
despoiled. Three only do I remember: Melanippus of Sicyon, Pierre
Baudouin of Limoux, Silas Marner. Melanippus died of a broken heart.
Pierre Baudouin hanged himself. The case of Silas Marner is more
cheerful. He, coming into his cottage one night, saw by the dim light
of the hearth, that which seemed to be his gold restored, but was
really nothing but the golden curls of a little child, whom he was
destined to rear under his own roof, finding in her more than solace
for his bereavement. But then, he was a character in fiction: the other
two really existed. What happened to him will not happen to me. Even if
little children with rainbow-coloured hair were so common that one of
them might possibly be left on my hearth-rug, I know well that I should
not feel recompensed by it, even if it grew up to be as fascinating a
paragon as Eppie herself. Had Silas Marner really existed (nay! even
had George Eliot created him in her maturity) neither would he have
felt recompensed. Far likelier, he would have been turned to stone, in
the first instance, as was poor Niobe when the divine arrows destroyed
that unique collection on which she had lavished so many years. Or, may
be, had he been a very strong man, he would have found a bitter joy in
saving up for a new hoard. Like Carlyle, when the MS. of his
masterpiece was burned by the housemaid of John Stuart Mill, he might
have begun all over again, and builded a still nobler monument on the
tragic ashes.

That is a fine, heartening example! I will be strong enough to follow
it. I will forget all else. I will begin all over again. There stands
my hat-box! Its glory is departed, but I vow that a greater glory
awaits it. Bleak, bare and prosaic it is now, but--ten years hence! Its
career, like that of the Imperial statesman in the moment of his
downfall, 'is only just beginning.'

There is a true Anglo-Saxon ring in this conclusion. May it appease
whomever my tears have been making angry.

GENERAL ELECTIONS

I admire detachment. I commend a serene indifference to hubbub. I like
Archimedes, L