downcast eyes and blushes of young maidens. And so, although he
fluttered in Eden, Cupid is young to-day. If Montaigne had lived in
Dreamthorp, as I am now living, had he written essays as I am now
writing them, his English Essays would have been as good as his Gascon
ones. Looking on, the country cart would not for nothing have passed
him on the road to market, the setting sun would be arrested in its
splendid colours, the idle chimes of the church would be translated
into a thoughtful music. As it is, the village life goes on, and there
is no result. My sentences are not much more brilliant than the
speeches of the clowns; in my book there is little more life than there
is in the market-place on the days when there is no market.




OF DEATH AND THE FEAR OF DYING

Let me curiously analyse eternal farewells, and the last pressures of
loving hands. Let me smile at faces bewept, and the nodding plumes and
slow paces of funerals. Let me write down brave heroical
sentences--sentences that defy death, as brazen Goliath the hosts of
Israel.

"When death waits for us is uncertain, let us everywhere look for him.
The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; who has
learnt to die, has forgot to serve. There is nothing of evil in life
for him who rightly comprehends that death is no evil; to know how to
die delivers us from all subjection and constraint. _Paulus Aemilius_
answered him whom the miserable _king of Macedon_, his prisoner, sent
to entreat him that he would not lead him in his triumph, '_Let him