essay on
Thoreau (1880), in _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_.... Hazlitt,
See Note 19 of Chapter II above. His paper, _On the Spirit of
Obligations_, appeared in _The Plain Speaker_, 2 Vols., 1826. _Penn,
whose little book of aphorisms_. This refers to William Penn's famous
book, _Some Fruits of Solitude: in Reflections and Maxims relating to
the Conduct of Human Life_ (1693). Edmund Gosse says, in his
Introduction to a charming little edition of this book in 1900,
"Stevenson had intended to make this book and its author the subject
of one of his critical essays. In February 1880 he was preparing to
begin it... He never found the opportunity... But it has left an
indelible stamp on the tenor of his moral writings. The philosophy of
B. L. S. ... is tinctured through and through with the honest, shrewd,
and genial maxims of Penn." Stevenson himself, in his _Letters_ (Vol.
I, pp. 232, 233), spoke of this little book in the highest terms of
praise.]

[Note 21: _Mitford's Tales_. Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855), a
novelist and dramatist who enjoyed an immense vogue. "Her inimitable
series of country sketches, drawn from her own experiences at Three
Mile Cross, entitled 'Our Village,' began to appear in 1819 in the
'Lady's Magazine,' a little-known periodical, whose sale was thereby
increased from 250 to 2,000. ... The sketches had an enormous success,
and were collected in five volumes, published respectively in 1824,
1826, 1828, 1830, and 1832. ... The book may be said to have laid the
foundation of a branch of literature hitherto untried. The sketches
resemble Dutch paintings in their fidelity of detail."--_Dic. Nat.
Biog_.]

IX

PULVIS ET UMBRA

We look for some reward of our endeavors and are disappointed; not
success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our
ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, are
virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of
the sun. The canting moralist tells us of right and wrong; and we look
abroad, even on the face of our small earth, and find them change with
every climate,[1] and no country where some action is not honoured for
a virtue and none where it is not branded for a vice; and we look in
our experience, and find no vital congruity in the wisest rules, but
at the best a municipal fitness. It is not strange if we are tempted
to despair of good. We ask too much. Our religions and moralities have
been trimmed to fla