d before the fact. A frank and somewhat headlong carriage,
not looking too anxiously before, not dallying in maudlin regret over
the past, stamps the man who is well armoured for this world.

*****

It is not over the virtues of a curate-and-tea-party novel that people
are abashed into high resolutions. It may be because their hearts are
crass, but to stir them properly they must have men entering into glory
with sonic pomp and circumstance. And that is why these stories of our
sea-captains, printed, so to speak, in capitals, and full of bracing
moral influence, are more valuable to England than any material
benefit in all the books of political economy between Westminster and
Birmingham. Greenville chewing wine-glasses at table makes no very
pleasant figure, any more than a thousand other artists when they are
viewed in the body, or met in private life; but his work of art, his
finished tragedy, is an elegant performance; and I contend it ought not
only to enliven men of the sword as they go into battle, but send back
merchant-clerks with more heart and spirit to their book-keeping by
double entry.

*****

It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid.
'It may be contended, rather, that this (somewhat minor) bard in almost
every case survives, and is the spice of life to his possessor. Justice
is not done to the versatility and the unplumbed childishness of man's
imagination. His life from without may seem but a rude mound of mud;
there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it, in which he dwells
delighted; and for as dark as his pathway seems to the observer, he will
have some kind of a bull's-eye at his belt.

*****

For, to repeat, the ground of a man's joy is often hard to hit. It may
hinge at times upon a mere accessory, like the lantern; it may reside,
like Dancer's in the mysterious inwards of psychology. It may consist
with perpetual failure, and find exercise in the continued chase. It
has so little bond with externals (such as the observer scribbles in his
notebook) that it may even touch them not; and the man's true life, for
which he consents to live, lie altogether in the field of fancy. The
clergyman in his spare hours may be winning battles, the farmer sailing
ships, the banker reaping triumph in the arts: all leading another
life, plying another trade from that they chose; like the poet's
house-builder, who, after all, is cased in stone,

'By his fireside, as