d he seek to change his conditions? But education tends to
make boys and girls fond of excitement, fond of town sociabilities and
amusements, till only the dull and unambitious are content to remain in
the country. And yet the country work will have to be done until the
end of time.

It is a dark problem; but it seems to me that we are only saved from
disaster, in our well-meant efforts, by the simple fact that we cannot
make humanity what we so short-sightedly desire to make it; that the
dull, uninspired, unambitious element has an endurance and a permanence
which we cannot change if we would, and which it is well for us that we
cannot change; and that in spite of our curricula and schedules,
mankind marches quietly upon its way to its unknown goal.

June 28, 1889.

An old friend has been staying with us, a very interesting man for many
reasons, but principally for the fact that he combines two sets of
qualities that are rarely found together. He has strong artistic
instincts; he would like, I think, to have been a painter; he has a
deep love of nature, woodland places and quiet fields; he loves old and
beautiful buildings with a tenderness that makes it a real misery to
him to think of their destruction, and even their renovation; and he
has, too, the poetic passion for flowers; he is happiest in his garden.
But beside all this, he has the Puritan virtues strongly developed; he
loves work, and duty, and simplicity of life, with all his heart; he is
an almost rigid judge of conduct and character, and sometimes flashes
out in a half Pharisaical scorn against meanness, selfishness, and
weakness. He is naturally a pure Ruskinian; he would like to destroy
railways and machinery and manufactories; he would like working-men to
enjoy their work, and dance together on the village green in the
evenings; but he is not a faddist at all, and has the healthiest and
simplest power of enjoyment. His severity has mellowed with age, while
his love of beauty has, I think, increased; he does not care for
argument, and is apt to say pathetically that he knows that his
fellow-disputant is right, but that he cannot change his opinions, and
does not desire to. He is passing, it seems to me, into a very gracious
and soft twilight of life; he grows more patient, more tender, more
serene. His face, always beautiful, has taken on an added beauty of
faithful service and gracious sweetness.

We began one evening to discuss a book that has