oment I believe I have found myself and not my
anti-self. It is only the shrinking from toil perhaps that convinces me
that I have been no more myself than is the cat the medicinal grass it is
eating in the garden.

How could I have mistaken for myself an heroic condition that from early
boyhood has made me superstitious? That which comes as complete, as
minutely organised, as are those elaborate, brightly lighted buildings and
sceneries appearing in a moment, as I lie between sleeping and waking,
must come from above me and beyond me. At times I remember that place in
Dante where he sees in his chamber the "Lord of Terrible Aspect," and how,
seeming "to rejoice inwardly that it was a marvel to see, speaking, he
said, many things among the which I could understand but few, and of these
this: ego dominus tuus"; or should the conditions come, not as it were in
a gesture--as the image of a man--but in some fine landscape, it is of
Boehme, maybe, that I think, and of that country where we "eternally
solace ourselves in the excellent beautiful flourishing of all manner of
flowers and forms, both trees and plants, and all kinds of fruit."

II

When I consider the minds of my friends, among artists and emotional
writers, I discover a like contrast. I have sometimes told one close
friend that her only fault is a habit of harsh judgment with those who
have not her sympathy, and she has written comedies where the wickedest
people seem but bold children. She does not know why she has created that
world where no one is ever judged, a high celebration of indulgence, but
to me it seems that her ideal of beauty is the compensating dream of a
nature wearied out by over-much judgment. I know a famous actress who in
private life is like the captain of some buccaneer ship holding his crew
to good behaviour at the mouth of a blunderbuss, and upon the stage she
excels in the representation of women who stir to pity and to desire
because they need our protection, and is most adorable as one of those
young queens imagined by Maeterlinck who have so little will, so little
self, that they are like shadows sighing at the edge of the world. When I
last saw her in her own house she lived in a torrent of words and
movements, she could not listen, and all about her upon the walls were
women drawn by Burne-Jones in his latest period. She had invited me in the
hope that I would defend those women, who were always listening, and are
as necessary to