Filled with peace and good-will to all men, like a
personification of Christmas in May, I started out this morning
to see my lawyers. I reached them at three o'clock, having idled
at second-hand bookstalls and lunched on the road. I signed
their unintelligible document, and wandered through the Temple
Gardens and along the Embankment. When I had passed under
Hungerford Bridge, it struck me that I was warm, a little leg-
weary, and the Victoria Embankment Gardens smiled an invitation
to repose. I struck the shady path beneath the terrace of the
National Liberal Club, and sat myself down on a comfortable
bench. The only other occupant was a female in black. As I take
no interest in females in black, I disregarded her presence, and
gave myself up to the contemplation, of the trim lawns and
flower-beds, the green trees masking the unsightly Surrey side of
the river, and the back of the statue of Sir Bartle Frere. A
continued survey of the last not making for edification (a statue
that turns its back on you being one of the dullest objects made
by man), I took from my pocket a brown leather-covered volume
which I had fished out of a penny box: "_Suite de l'Histoire du
Gouvernement de Venise ou L'Histoire des Uscoques, par le Sieur
Houssaie, Amsterdam, MDCCV._" A whole complete scholarly history
of a forgotten people for a penny. The Uscoques were originally
Dalmatians who settled at Segna on the Adriatic and became the
most pestiferous colony of pirates and desperadoes of sixteenth
century Europe. I opened the yellow-stained pages and savoured
their acrid musty smell. How much learning, thought I, bought
with the heart's-blood, how many million hours of fierce
intellectual struggle appeal to mankind nowadays but as an odour,
an odour of decay, in the nostrils of here and there a casual
student. I thought this, and my eye caught, repeated many times,