ossible) by
complaining of His gifts because they do not come just in the form _we_
should have wished. . . .

_MS. Letter_. 1844.

Unconscious Faith. November 12.

For the rest, Amyas never thought about thinking or felt about feeling;
and had no ambition whatsoever beyond pleasing his father and mother,
getting by honest means the maximum of "red quarrenders" and mazard
cherries, and going to sea when he was big enough. Neither was he what
would be nowadays called by many a pious child, for though he said his
Creed and Lord's Prayer night and morning, and went to service at the
church every forenoon, and read the day's Psalms with his mother every
evening, and had learnt from her and his father that it was infinitely
noble to do right and infinitely base to do wrong, yet he knew nothing
more of theology or of his own soul than is contained in the Church
Catechism.

_Westward Ho_! chap. i. 1855.

Silence. November 13.

There are silences more pathetic than all words.

_MS._

The Nineteenth Century. November 14.

. . . What so maddening as the new motion of our age--the rush of the
express train, when the live iron pants and leaps and roars through the
long chalk cutting, and white mounds gleam cold a moment against the sky
and vanish; and rocks and grass and bushes fleet by in dim blended lines;
and the long hedges revolve like the spokes of a gigantic wheel; and far
below meadows and streams and homesteads, with all their lazy old-world
life, open for an instant, and then flee away; while awestruck, silent,
choked with the mingled sense of pride and helplessness, we are swept on
by that great pulse of England's life-blood rushing down her iron veins;
and dimly out of the future looms the fulfilment of our primeval mission
to conquer and subdue the earth, and space too, and time, and all
things--even hardest of all tasks, yourselves, my cunning brothers; ever
learning some fresh lesson, except the hardest one of all, that it is the
Spirit of God which giveth you understanding?

Yes, great railroads, and great railroad age, who would exchange you,
with all your sins, for any other time? For swiftly as rushes matter,
more swiftly rushes mind; more swiftly still rushes the heavenly dawn up
the eastern sky. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." "Blessed
is the servant whom his Lord, when He cometh, shall find watching."

_Prose Idylls_.

Unreality. November 15.

T