r no
responsibility for suffering or wrongdoing in the days to come.

The things which had so much occupied him during the last year or two,
the state of the time, its perils and its needs, were now but seldom in
his mind: he felt himself ripening to that "wise passiveness," which,
through all his intellectual disquiet, he had regarded as the
unattainable ideal. When, as a very young man, he exercised himself in
versifying, the model he more or less consciously kept in view was
Matthew Arnold; it amused him now to recall certain of the compositions
he had once been rather proud of, and to recognise how closely he had
trodden in Arnold's footprints; at the same time, he felt glad that the
aspiration of his youth seemed likely to become the settled principle
of his maturity. Nowadays he gave much of his thought to Wordsworth,
content to study without the desire of imitating. Whether he could _do_
anything, whether he could bear witness in any open way to what he held
the truth, must still remain uncertain; sure it was that a profound
distrust of himself in every practical direction, a very humble sense
of follies committed and dangers barely escaped, would for a long time
make him a silent and solitary man. He hoped that some way might be
shown him, some modest yet clear way, by following which he would live
not wholly to himself; but he had done for ever with schemes of social
regeneration, with political theories, with all high-sounding words and
phrases. It might well prove that the work appointed him was simply to
live as an honest man. Was that so easy, or such a little thing?

Walking one day a mile or two from home, in one of those high-bowered
Somerset lanes which are unsurpassed for rural loveliness, he came
within sight of a little cottage, which stood apart from a hamlet
hidden beyond a near turning of the road. Before it moved a man,
white-headed, back-bent, so crippled by some ailment that he tottered
slowly and painfully with the aid of two sticks. Just as Dymchurch drew
near, the old fellow accidentally let fall his pipe, which he had been
smoking as he hobbled along. For him this incident was a disaster; he
stared down helplessly at the pipe and the little curl of smoke which
rose from it, utterly unable to stoop for its recovery. Dymchurch,
seeing the state of things, at once stepped to his assistance.

"I thank you, sir, I thank you," said the hobbler, with pleasant
frankness. "A man isn't much use whe