hello while the
clock is striking. Straightway, all the world's his bolster; there is
no creature on earth so innocent or so beautiful that he will not
smother it in the insanity of his passion. Literature is to a great
extent an indictment of suspicion. _The Ring and the Book_ is an epic
of suspicion, and the _Blot on the 'Scutcheon_ is its tragedy. In the
story of Paolo and Francesca, again, we are made feel that the hideous
thing was not the love of Paolo and Francesca, but the murderous
suspicion of Malatesta. In this case it may be admitted, there was
justice in the suspicion; but suspicion is so very loathsome a thing
that, even when it is just, we like it as little as we like spying.
All we can say in its favour is that it is more pitiable. Men do not
go spying because there is a fury in their bosoms, but the suspicious
man is one who is being eaten alive at the heart. He wears the mark of
doom on his sullen brows as surely as Cain. For such a man the sun
does not shine and the stars are silver conspirators. He is a person
who can suspect whole landscapes; he sees a countryside, not as an
exciting pattern of meadow and river-bend and hills and smoke among
trees, but as an arrangement of a thousand farms with fierce dogs
eager for the calves of his legs. He can concentrate his affections on
nothing beautiful. He can see only worms in buds. He can ultimately
follow nothing with enthusiasm but will-o'-the-wisps. To go after
these he will leave wife and children and lands, and he will dance
into the perils of the marshes, into sure drowning--a lost figure of
derision or pity, according to your gentleness.

Nor is it only in private life that suspicion is a light that leads
men into bog-holes. Suspicion in public life is also a disaster among
passions. Englishmen who realise this must have noticed with
apprehension the growth of suspicion as a principle in recent years.

Suspicion is the arch-calumniator. That is why, of all weapons, it is
most avoided by decent fighters. Every honourable man would rather be
calumniated than a calumniator--every sensible man, too, for calumny
is the worst policy. It is clear that while the public men of a
country are prepared to believe each other capable of anything there
can be no more national unity than in present-day Mexico or than in
Poland before the partition. It is the same with parties as with
nations. The reason why revolutionary parties are so rarely successful
is that t