oon telling me the story of
his life. He was the tenant, I found, of the old manor-house, which he
held at a ridiculous rent, and he had lived here nearly forty years. He
had found the place as a young man, wandering about in search of the
picturesque. I gathered that he had bright dreams and wide ambitions.
He had a small independence, and he had meant to paint great pictures
and make a name for himself. He had married; his wife was long dead,
his children out in the world, and he was living on alone, painting the
same pictures, bought, so far as I could make out, mostly by American
visitors. His drawing was old-fashioned and deeply mannerised. He was
painting not what was there, but some old and faded conception of his
own as to what it was like--missing, I think, half the beauty of the
place. He seemed horribly desolate. I tried, for his consolation and my
own, to draw out a picture of the beautiful refined life he led; and
the old fellow began to wear a certain jaunty air of dignity and
distinction, which would have amused me if it had not made me feel
inclined to cry. But he soon fell back into what is, I suppose, a
habitual melancholy. "Ah, if you had known what my dreams were!" he
said once. He went on to say that he now wished that he had taken up
some simple and straightforward profession, had made money, and had his
grandchildren about him. "I am more ghost than man," he said, shaking
his dejected head.

I despair of expressing to you the profound pathos that seemed to me to
surround this old despondent creature, with his broken dreams and his
regretful memories. Where was the mistake he made? I suppose that he
over-estimated his powers; but it was a generous mistake after all; and
he has had to bear the slow sad disillusionment, the crushing burden of
futility. He set out to win glory, and he is a forgotten, shabby,
irresolute figure, subsisting on the charity of wealthy visitors! And
yet he seems to have missed happiness by so little. To live as he does
might be a serene and beautiful thing. If such a man had large reserves
of hope and tenderness and patience; if he could but be content with
the tranquil beauty of the wholesome earth, spread so richly before his
eyes, it would be a life to be envied.

It has been a gentle lesson to me, that one must resolutely practise
one's heart and spirit for the closing hours. In the case of successful
men, as they grow older, it often strikes me with a sense of pain ho