last places they would have chosen; in the last places for which
you would say they are suited. You pass a pretty country church,
with its parsonage hard-by embosomed in trees and bright with
roses. Perhaps the parson of that church had set his heart on an
entirely different kind of charge: perhaps he is a disappointed
man, eager to get away, and (the very worst possible policy) trying
for every vacancy of which he can hear. You think, as you pass by,
and sit down on the churchyard wall, how happy you could be in so
quiet and sweet a spot: well, if you are willing to do a thing,
it is pleasant: but if you are struggling with a chain you cannot
break, it is miserable. The pleasantest thing becomes painful,
if it is felt as a restraint. What can be cosier than the warm
environment of sheet and blanket which encircles you in your snug
bed? Yet if you awake during the night at some alarm of peril, and
by a sudden effort try at once to shake yourself clear of these
trammels, you will, for the half-minute before you succeed, feel
that soft restraint as irksome as iron fetters. 'Let your will lead
whither necessity would drive,' said Locke, 'and you will always
preserve your liberty.' No doubt, it is wise advice; but how to do
all that?

Well, it can be done: but it costs an effort. Great part of the
work of the civilized and educated man consists of that which the
savage, and even the uneducated man, would not regard as work at
all. The things which cost the greatest effort may be done, perhaps,
as you sit in an easy chair with your eyes shut. And such an effort
is that of making up our mind to many things, both in our own lot,
and in the lot of others. I mean not merely the intellectual effort
to look at the success of other men and our own failure in such a
way as that we shall be intellectually convinced that, we have no