d of himself that
he always tended to see such enormous significance in every detail
that he might just as well describe railway signals near Beaconsfield
as the light of sunset over the Golden Horn. But _The New Jerusalem_
is no mere book of description. It is the book of a man seeing a
vision. To understand how this vision broke upon him we have first to
try to understand something jealously hidden by Gilbert
Chesterton--his own suffering. Even as a boy--in the days of the
toothache and still more torturing earache--he had written

Though pain be stark and bitter
And days in darkness creep
Not to that depth I sink me
That asks the world to weep.

So much did he acclaim himself enrolled under the banner of joy that
I think most people miss the companion picture to the favourite one
of the Happy Warrior. No warrior can fight untiringly through a long
lifetime without wounds, without temptations to abandon the struggle
and seek a less glorious peace. If in what are commonly called
practical matters Chesterton was weak, he was in this almost
superhumanly strong. His fame did not rest upon success in the field
of sociology and politics. He could have increased it by neglecting
the good of England for which he fought, and living in literature,
poetry and fantasy. Here all acclaimed him great, whereas most
tolerated or despised as a hobby or a weakness the work he was
pouring into the fight for England. In this time after the Armistice
it was by a naked effort of the will that he held his ground. The
loss of Cecil with his light-hearted courage, his energy and
buoyancy, was immeasurable. And I know--for we talked of it
together--that Frances had not the complete sympathy with Gilbert
over the paper that she had over his other work. It seemed to her too
great a drain on his time and energy: it made the writing of his
important books more difficult. She would not, she told me, try to
stop it as she knew how much he cared, but she would have rejoiced if
he had chosen to let it go.

And the fight that he had almost enjoyed in Cecil's company had
become a harder one, not merely because he was alone but because the
nature of the foe had changed. He was fighting now not individual
abuses but the mood of pessimism that had overtaken our civilisation.
In an article entitled _Is It Too Late?_ he defined this pessimism as
"a paralysis of the mind; an impotence intrinsically unworthy of a
free man." He stated powerfull