ever man put to himself. You read for your own pleasure, for your solace
and strengthening. Pleasure, then, purely selfish? Solace which endures
for an hour, and strengthening for no combat? Ay, but I know, I know.
With what heart should I live here in my cottage, waiting for life's end,
were it not for those hours of seeming idle reading?

I think sometimes, how good it were had I some one by me to listen when I
am tempted to read a passage aloud. Yes, but is there any mortal in the
whole world upon whom I could invariably depend for sympathetic
understanding?--nay, who would even generally be at one with me in my
appreciation. Such harmony of intelligences is the rarest thing. All
through life we long for it: the desire drives us, like a demon, into
waste places; too often ends by plunging us into mud and morass. And,
after all, we learn that the vision was illusory. To every man is it
decreed: thou shalt live alone. Happy they who imagine that they have
escaped the common lot; happy, whilst they imagine it. Those to whom no
such happiness has ever been granted at least avoid the bitterest of
disillusions. And is it not always good to face a truth, however
discomfortable? The mind which renounces, once and for ever, a futile
hope, has its compensation in ever-growing calm.



XXI.


All about my garden to-day the birds are loud. To say that the air is
filled with their song gives no idea of the ceaseless piping, whistling,
trilling, which at moments rings to heaven in a triumphant unison, a wild
accord. Now and then I notice one of the smaller songsters who seems to