ous respect paid to him by people of position, were
things that must pleasantly sweeten a mortal cup. The other day I was
in the company of an eminent prelate; there were three curates present:
they hovered round the great man like bees round a flower; they gazed
with innocent rapture upon his shapely legs, somewhat strangely
swathed, as Carlyle said, his bright, grotesque hat; and I could not
help feeling that they thought how well such raiment would become
themselves. It is of course a childish view; but then how long our
childish views survive, though hidden under grave pretences! To see a
great personage move with dignity to his appointed place in a great
ceremony, attended by all the circumstances of pomp, a congregation
gazing, with an organ above thundering out rich and solemn music, how
impressive it all appears! How hard to think that the central actor in
such a scene does not feel his heart swell with a complacent joy! And
yet I suppose that any sensible man under such conditions is far more
likely to be oppressed with a sense of weakness and anxious
responsibility; how soon such surroundings ought to, nay, do find their
true value in a wise man's mind! The triumph rather is if, in the midst
of all this glitter and glory, when a silence is made, the worshipful
man speaks simple and strong words out of a pure and noble heart; and
then one can feel that the pomp is nothing but the due homage of
mankind for real greatness, and that it has followed him rather than
been followed by him.

It was a relief to find, as I say, that, on a nearer prospect, all the
circumstance of greatness vanished into shadow--indeed more than
that--it became one of the distinct disadvantages of the position. I
felt that time and money and thought would have to be spent on the
useless and fatiguing mise-en-scene, and that it would all entail a
quantity of futile worry, of tiresome publicity, of intolerable
functions, that meant nothing but weariness of spirit. I think that men
of high official position are most to be pitied because of the time
that they have to spend, not in their work, but in the ornamental
appearances entailed on them by their duties. These things have a
certain value, I suppose, in stimulating the imagination of gazers; but
surely it is a poor value after all. A secretary of state in his study,
working out the hard and tiresome details of a plan that will benefit
perhaps a whole nation in humble ways, is a more admira