nations fall a-slaughtering each other? Let the fools go to it! Why
should they not please themselves? Peace, after all, is the aspiration
of the few; so it always; was, and ever will be. But have done with the
nauseous cant about "dire calamity." The leaders and the multitude hold
no such view; either they see in war a direct and tangible profit, or
they are driven to it, with heads down, by the brute that is in them. Let
them rend and be rent; let them paddle in blood and viscera till--if that
would ever happen--their stomachs turn. Let them blast the cornfield and
the orchard, fire the home. For all that, there will yet be found some
silent few, who go their way amid the still meadows, who bend to the
flower and watch the sunset; and these alone are worth a thought.



VIII.


In this hot weather I like to walk at times amid the full glow of the
sun. Our island sun is never hot beyond endurance, and there is a
magnificence in the triumph of high summer which exalts one's mind. Among
streets it is hard to bear, yet even there, for those who have eyes to
see it, the splendour of the sky lends beauty to things in themselves
mean or hideous. I remember an August bank-holiday, when, having for
some reason to walk all across London, I unexpectedly found myself
enjoying the strange desertion of great streets, and from that passed to
surprise in the sense of something beautiful, a charm in the vulgar
vista, in the dull architecture, which I had never known. Deep and clear-
marked shadows, such as one only sees on a few days of summer, are in
themselves very impressive, and become more so when they fall upon
highways devoid of folk. I remember observing, as something new, the