nd in view.
The result of this temperament is to be seen at the present time in the
enormous and consuming passion for athletic exercise in the open air.
We are not an intellectual nation, and we must do something; we are
wealthy and secure, and, in default of regular work, we have got to
organize our hours of leisure on the supposition that we have something
to do. I have little doubt that if we became a more intellectual nation
the change would be signalized by an immense output of inferior books,
because we have not the student temperament, the gift of absorbing
literature. We have a deep instinct for publicity. If we are
athletically gifted, we must display our athletic prowess in public. If
we have thoughts of our own, we must have a hearing; we look upon
meditation, contemplation, conversation, the arts of leisurely living,
as a waste of time; we are above all things practical.

But I would pass on to consider the case of more serious writers; and I
would begin by making a personal confession. My own occupations are
mainly literary; and I would say frankly that there seems to me to be
no pleasure comparable to the pleasure of writing. To find a congenial
subject, and to express that subject as lucidly, as sincerely, as
frankly as possible, appears to me to be the most delightful occupation
in the world. Nature is full of exquisite sights and sounds, day by
day; the stage of the world is crowded with interesting and fascinating
personalities, rich in contrasts, in characteristics, in humour, in
pathos. We are surrounded, the moment we pass outside of the complex
material phenomena which surround us, by all kinds of wonderful secrets
and incomprehensible mysteries. What is this strange pageant that
unrolls itself before us from hour to hour? this panorama of night and
day, sun and moon, summer and winter, joy and sorrow, life and death?
We have all of us, like Jack Horner, our slice of pie to eat. Which of
us does not know the delighted complacency with which we pull out the
plums? The poet is silent of the moment when the plate is empty, when
nothing is left but the stones; but that is no less impressive an
experience.

The wonderful thing to me is, not that there is so much desire in the
world to express our little portion of the joy, the grief, the mystery
of it all, but that there is so little. I wish with all my heart that
there was more instinct for personal expression; Edward FitzGerald said
that he wished