ruer
values, more proportion, more contentment. The mysteries of life were
as dark as ever, but at least he no longer thought that he had the key;
in those days his little rickety system of life, that trembled in every
breeze, had seemed for him to bridge all gaps, to explain all
mysteries. Now indeed chaos stretched all about him, full of huge
mists, dark chasms, hidden echoes; but he perceived something of its
vastness and immensity; he had broken down the poor frail fences of his
soul, and was in contact with reality. He did not doubt that he seemed
to the younger generation an elderly and sombre personage, stumbling
down the dark descent of life, with youth and brightness behind him;
but that descent appeared to himself to be rather an upward-rising
road, over dim mountains, the air glowing about him with some far-off
sunrise. Poetry, art, religion--they meant a thousandfold more to him
than they had meant in the old days. They had been pretty melodies,
deft tricks of hand, choice toys then. Now they were exultations,
agonies, surrenders, triumphs. The prospect of life had been to him in
those days like misty ranges, full of threatening precipices, and dumb
valleys in which no foot had trod. Now he saw from the hill-brow, a
broad and goodly land full of wood and pasture, clustered hamlets,
glittering, smoke-wrapt towns, rivers widening to the sea; the horizons
closed by the blue hills of hope, from which life and love, and even
death itself, seemed to wave hands of welcome ere they dipped to the
unseen. He blessed God for that; and best of all he had now no desire,
as he had had in the old days, to be understood, to be felt, to claim a
place, to exercise an influence. He had put all that aside; his only
concern was now to step as swiftly, as strongly as possible, upon the
path that opened before him, caring little whether it led on to grassy
moorlands, or sheltered valleys full of wood, or even to the towered
walls of some strong city of God.

XI

Platonism--The Pure Gospel--The Pauline Gospel--The Harmony

Hugh, in his leisure, determined to try if he could set his mind at
rest upon one point, a question that had always exercised a certain
attraction over him. This was to make himself acquainted with some
technical philosophy, or at any rate to try and see what the
philosophers were doing. He had not, he was aware, a mind suited for
the pursuit of metaphysics; he had little logical faculty an