e of
shame, or under such exceptional circumstances as have occurred in the
history of the Indian mutiny. At all events, we have the feeling still
strongly manifested in England that suicide is not quite manly; and this
is certainly due much more to ancestral habits of thinking, which date
back to pagan days, than to Christian doctrine. As I have said, the pagan
English would not commit suicide to escape mere pain. But the Northern
people knew how to die to escape shame. There is an awful story in Roman
history about the wives and daughters of the conquered German tribes,
thousands in number, asking to be promised that their virtue should be
respected, and all killing themselves when the Roman general refused the
request. No Southern people of Europe in that time would have shown such
heroism upon such a matter. Leaving honour aside, however, the old book
tells us that a man should never despair.

Fire, the sight of the sun, good health, and a blameless
life these are the goodliest things in this world.

Yet a man is not utterly wretched, though he have bad health, or
be maimed.

The halt may ride a horse; the handless may drive a herd; the deaf
can fight and do well; better be blind than buried. A corpse is
good for naught.

On the subject of women there is not very much in the book beyond the
usual caution in regard to wicked women; but there is this little
observation:

Never blame a woman for what is all man's weakness. Hues charming
and fair may move the wise and not the dullard. Mighty love turns
the son of men from wise to fool.

This is shrewd, and it contains a very remarkable bit of esthetic truth,
that it requires a wise man to see certain kinds of beauty, which a stupid
man could never be made to understand. And, leaving aside the subject of
love, what very good advice it is never to laugh at a person for what can
be considered a common failure. In the same way an intelligent man should
learn to be patient with the unintelligent, as the same poem elsewhere
insists.

Now what is the general result of this little study, the general
impression that it leaves upon the mind? Certainly we feel that the life
reflected in these sentences was a life in which caution was above all
things necessary--caution in thought and speech and act, never ceasing, by
night or day, during the whole of a man's life. Caution implies
moderation. Moderation inevitably develops a certain