s wealth and power being nobly laid, it would not be easy to show
that we to-day are any the happier. Our own War was inherent in the
inventions of mechanical cotton-spinning and the steam-engine--the need
to compel foreign markets to buy the goods we made beyond our own needs.
We know now what were the seeds the active and clever fellows of
Gilbert's day were sowing for us. We were present at the harvesting. Why
did not those august people, absorbed in the momentous deeds which have
made history so sonorous, the powder shaking out of their wigs with the
awful gravity of their labours (while all the world wondered), just stop
doing such consequential things, and accept Gilbert's invitation to go
and listen to him about those new mice? The mice might have saved us, and
the opportunity was lost.

Looking back at those times, of all the thunderous events which then
loosened excited tongues, caused by high-minded men of action expertly
conjuring crisis after crisis while their docile followers scrambled out
of one sublime trouble into another, heated and exhausted, but still
gaping with obedience and respect, we can see that nothing remains but
the burial parties, whose work is yet uncompleted in France. What good
does persist out of those days is the light in which Gilbert's tortoise
sunned itself. It is a light which has not gone out. And it makes us
wonder, not how much of our work in these years will survive to win the
gratitude of those who will follow us, but just what it is they will be
grateful for. Where is it, and what happy man is doing it? And what are
we thinking of him? Do we even know his name?

XXIII. Ruskin

APRIL 19, 1919. Some good people have been celebrating Ruskin, whose
centenary it is. And to-day a little friend of mine left her school books
so that I might wonder what they were when I saw them on my table. One of
them was _The Crown of Wild Olive_. It put me in a reminiscent mood. I
looked at Ruskin's works on my shelves, and tried to recall how long it
was since they interested me. Nevertheless, I would not part with them.
In my youth Ruskin's works were only for the wealthy, and I remember that
my purchase of those volumes was an act of temerity, and even of
sacrifice. And who but an ingrate would find fault with Ruskin, or would
treat him lightly? With courage and eloquence he denounced dishonesty in
the days when it was not supposed that cheating could be wrong if it were
successful. H