ence; and, as for the former part, if it be true,
it lends no comfort to the man who tries to find his God in the world.
Again, when Browning says that the world "means intensely and means
good," he is but pouring oil upon the darting flame of optimism, because
there are many people to whom the world has no particular meaning, and
few who can re-echo the statement that it means good. That some rich
surprise, in spite of palpable and hourly experience to the contrary,
may possibly await us, is the most that some of us dare to hope.

My own experience, the older I grow, and the more I see of life, is that
I feel it to be a much more bewildering and even terrifying thing than
I used to think it. To use a metaphor, instead of its being a patient
educational process, which I would give all that I possessed to be able
sincerely to believe it to be, it seems to me arranged far more upon
the principle of a game of cricket--which I have always held to be, in
theory, the most unjust and fortuitous of games. You step to the wicket,
you have only a single chance; the boldest and most patient man may make
one mistake at the outset, and his innings is over; the timid tremulous
player may by undeserved good luck contrive to keep his wicket up,
till his heart has got into the right place, and his eye has wriggled
straight, and he is set.

That is the first horrible fact about life--that carelessness is often
not penalised at all, whereas sometimes it is instantly and fiercely
penalised. One boy at school may break every law, human and divine, and
go out into the world unblemished. Another timid and good-natured child
may make a false step, and be sent off into life with a permanent
cloud over him. School life often emphasises the injustice of the world
instead of trying to counteract it. Schoolmasters tend to hustle the
weak rather than to curb the strong.

And then we pass into the larger world, and what do we see? A sad
confusion everywhere. We see an innocent and beautiful girl struck down
by a long and painful disease--a punishment perhaps appropriate to some
robust and hoary sinner, who has gathered forbidden fruit with both his
hands, and the juices of which go down to the skirts of his clothing;
or a brave and virtuous man, with a wife and children dependent on him,
needed if ever man was, kind, beneficent, strong, is struck down out of
life in a moment. On the other hand, we see a mean and cautious sinner,
with no touch of un