hold silence; whereas they might be "operating"--beautiful word!--upon
the Stock Exchange, or painting Academy pictures, or making speeches, or
reluctantly jostling other men for places. They might be among the
involuntary busybodies who are living by futile tasks the need whereof is
a discouraged fiction. There is absolutely no limit to the superfluous
activities, to the art, to the literature, implicitly renounced by the
dwellers within such walls as these. The output--again a beautiful
word--of the age is lessened by this abstention. None the less hopes the
stranger and pilgrim to pause and knock once again upon those monastery
gates.




THE SEA WALL


A singular love of walls is mine. Perhaps because of childish
association with mountain-climbing roads narrow in the bright shadows of
grey stone, hiding olive trees whereof the topmost leaves prick above
into the blue; or perhaps because of subsequent living in London, with
its too many windows and too few walls, the city which of all capitals
takes least visible hold upon the ground; or for the sake of some other
attraction or aversion, walls, blank and strong, reaching outward at the
base, are a satisfaction to the eyes teased by the inexpressive peering
of windows, by that weak lapse and shuffling which is the London "area,"
and by the helpless hollows of shop-fronts.

I would rather have a wall than any rail but a very good one of wrought-
iron. A wall is the safeguard of simplicity. It lays a long level line