stere, so pure. I grew to love different books too. In youth one
demanded a generous glow, a fire of passion, a strongly tinged current
of emotion; but by degrees came the love of sober, subdued reflection,
a cooler world in which, if one could not rest, one might at least
travel equably and gladly, with a far wider range of experience, a
larger, if a fainter, hope. I grew to demand less of the world, less of
Nature, less of people; and, behold, a whole range of subtler and
gentler emotions came into sight, like the blue hills of the distance,
pure and low. The whole movement of the world, past and present, became
intelligible and clear. I saw the humanity that lies behind political
and constitutional questions, the strong, simple forces that move like
a steady stream behind the froth and foam of personality. If in youth I
believed that personality and influence could sway and mould the world,
in later years I have come to see that the strongest and fiercest
characters are only the river-wrack, the broken boughs, the torn
grasses that whirl and spin in the tongue of the creeping flood, and
that there is a dim resistless force behind them that marches on
unheeding and drives them in the forefront of the inundation. Things
that had seemed drearily theoretical, dry, axiomatic, platitudinal,
showed themselves to be great generalizations from a torrent of human
effort and mortal endeavour. And thus all the mass of detail and human
relation that had been rudely set aside by the insolent prejudices of
youth under the generic name of business, came slowly to have an
intense and living significance. I cannot trace the process in detail;
but I became aware of the fulness, the energy, the matchless interest
of the world, and the vitality of a hundred thoughts that had seemed to
me the dreariest abstractions.

Then, too, the greatest gain of all, there comes a sort of patience. In
youth mistakes seemed irreparable, calamities intolerable, ambitions
realizable, disappointments unbearable. An anxiety hung like a dark
impenetrable cloud, a disappointment poisoned the springs of life. But
now I have learned that mistakes can often be set right, that anxieties
fade, that calamities have sometimes a compensating joy, that an
ambition realized is not always pleasurable, that a disappointment is
often of itself a great incentive to try again. One learns to look over
troubles, instead of looking into them; one learns that hope is more
uncon