h we had not. You have careers open to you, by public
examinations and so on, which is a thing much to be approved, and
which we hope to see perfected more and more. All that was entirely
unknown in my time, and you have many things to recognise as
advantages. But you will find the ways of the world more anarchical
than ever, I think. As far as I have noticed, revolution has come upon
us. We have got into the age of revolutions. All kinds of things are
coming to be subjected to fire, as it were; hotter and hotter the wind
rises around everything.

Curious to say, now in Oxford and other places that used to seem to
live at anchor in the stream of time, regardless of all changes, they
are getting into the highest humour of mutation, and all sorts of new
ideas are getting afloat. It is evident that whatever is not made of
asbestos will have to be burnt in this world. It will not stand the
heat it is getting exposed to. And in saying that, it is but saying
in other words that we are in an epoch of anarchy--anarchy _plus_ the
constable. (Laughter.) There is nobody that picks one's pocket without
some policeman being ready to take him up. (Renewed laughter.) But in
every other thing he is the son, not of Kosmos, but of Chaos. He is
a disobedient, and reckless, and altogether a waste kind of
object--commonplace man in these epochs; and the wiser kind of
man--the select, of whom I hope you will be part--has more and more a
set time to it to look forward, and will require to move with double
wisdom; and will find, in short, that the crooked things that he has
to pull straight in his own life, or round about, wherever he may be,
are manifold, and will task all his strength wherever he may go.

But why should I complain of that either?--for that is a thing a
man is born to in all epochs. He is born to expend every particle of
strength that God Almighty has given him, in doing the work he finds
he is fit for--to stand it out to the last breath of life, and do his
best. We are called upon to do that; and the reward we all get--which
we are perfectly sure of if we have merited it--is that we have got
the work done, or, at least, that we have tried to do the work; for
that is a great blessing in itself; and I should say there is not very
much more reward than that going in this world. If the man gets meat
and clothes, what matters it whether he have L10,000, or L10,000,000,
or L70 a-year. He can get meat and clothes for that; and he