licated life of to-day there is
no education so admirable as that education which comes from
participation in the constant trend of events. There is no doubt that
most of the misunderstandings of life are due to partial intelligence,
because our experiences have been so unlike that we cannot comprehend
each other. The old difficulties incident to the clash of two codes of
morals must drop away, as the experiences of various members of the
family become larger and more identical.

At the present moment, however, many of those difficulties still exist
and may be seen all about us. In order to illustrate the situation
baldly, and at the same time to put it dramatically, it may be well to
take an instance concerning which we have no personal feeling. The
tragedy of King Lear has been selected, although we have been accustomed
so long to give him our sympathy as the victim of the ingratitude of his
two older daughters, and of the apparent coldness of Cordelia, that we
have not sufficiently considered the weakness of his fatherhood,
revealed by the fact that he should get himself into so entangled and
unhappy a relation to all of his children. In our pity for Lear, we fail
to analyze his character. The King on his throne exhibits utter lack of
self-control. The King in the storm gives way to the same emotion, in
repining over the wickedness of his children, which he formerly
exhibited in his indulgent treatment of them.

It might be illuminating to discover wherein he had failed, and why his
old age found him roofless in spite of the fact that he strenuously
urged the family claim with his whole conscience. At the opening of the
drama he sat upon his throne, ready for the enjoyment which an indulgent
parent expects when he has given gifts to his children. From the two
elder, the responses for the division of his lands were graceful and
fitting, but he longed to hear what Cordelia, his youngest and best
beloved child, would say. He looked toward her expectantly, but instead
of delight and gratitude there was the first dawn of character. Cordelia
made the awkward attempt of an untrained soul to be honest and
scrupulously to express her inmost feeling. The king was baffled and
distressed by this attempt at self-expression. It was new to him that
his daughter should be moved by a principle obtained outside himself,
which even his imagination could not follow; that she had caught the
notion of an existence in which her relation a