ty, the ideals of those who are
privileged enough to have any, may be not much more useful than the
fly on the axle-tree.

It may be, it doubtless is so nowadays, although none of us can tell
to what extent.

But even if it be so, let us who have strength and leisure for
preference and ideals prepare ourselves to fit, at least to acquiesce,
in the changes we are unable to bring about. Do not let us seek our
pleasure in things which we condemn, or remain attached to those which
are ours only through the imperfect arrangements which we deplore. We
are, of course, all tied tight in the meshes of our often worthless
and cruel civilisation, even as the saints felt themselves caught in
the meshes of bodily life. But even as they, in their day, fixed their
hopes on the life disembodied, so let us, in our turn, prepare our
souls for that gradual coming of justice on earth which we shall never
witness, by forestalling its results in our valuations and our wishes.

XII.

The other evening, skirting the Links, we came upon a field, where,
among the brown and green nobbly grass, was gathered a sort of
parliament of creatures: rooks on the fences, seagulls and peewits
wheeling overhead, plovers strutting and wagging their tails; and,
undisturbed by the white darting of rabbits, a covey of young
partridges, hopping leisurely in compact mass.

Is it because we see of these creatures only their harmlessness to us,
but not the slaughter and starving out of each other; or is it because
of their closer relation to simple and beautiful things, to nature;
or is it merely because they are _not human beings_--who shall tell?
but, for whatever reason, such a sight does certainly bring up in us a
sense, however fleeting, of simplicity, _mansuetude_ (I like the
charming mediaeval word), of the kinship of harmlessness.

I was thinking this while wading up the grass this morning to the
craig behind the house, the fields of unripe corn a-shimmer and
a-shiver in the light, bright wind; the sea and distant sky so merged
in delicate white mists that a ship, at first sight, seemed a bird
poised in the air. And, higher up, among the ragwort and tall
thistles, I found in the coarse grass a dead baby-rabbit, shot and not
killed at once, perhaps; or shot and not picked up, as not worth
taking: a little soft, smooth, feathery young handful, laid out very
decently, as human beings have to be laid out by one another, in
death.

It brought to my mi