diers, and so sorry to be in another country, that her voice
failed her and she burst into tears. I have never forgotten that girl,
and I think she very nearly deserves a statue. To call her a young lady,
with all its many associations, would be to offer her an insult. She
may rest assured of one thing, although she never should marry a heroic
general, never see any great or immediate result of her life, she will
not have lived in vain for her native land.

*****

As I went, I was thinking of Smethurst with admiration; a look into that
man's mind was like a retrospect over the smiling champaign of his past
life, and very different from the Sinai-gorges up which one looks for a
terrified moment into the dark souls of many good, many wise, and many
prudent men. I cannot be very grateful to such men for their excellence,
and wisdom, and prudence. I find myself facing as stoutly as I can
a hard, combative existence, full of doubt, difficulties, defeats,
disappointments, and dangers, quite a hard enough life without their
dark countenances at my elbow, so that what I want is a happy-minded
Smethurst placed here and there at ugly corners of my life's wayside,
preaching his gospel of quiet and contentment.

*****

There is a certain critic, not indeed of execution but of matter, whom
I dare be known to set before the best: a certain low-browed, hairy
gentleman, at first a percher in the fork of trees, next (as they
relate) a dweller in caves, and whom I think I see squatting in
cave-mouths, of a pleasant afternoon, to munch his berries--his wife,
that accomplished lady, squatting by his side: his name I never heard,
but he is often described as Probably Arboreal, which may serve for
recognition. Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all
sits Probably Arboreal; in all our veins there run some minims of his
old, wild, tree-top blood; our civilised nerves still tingle with his
rude terrors and pleasures; and to that which would have moved our
common ancestors, all must obediently thrill.

*****

This is an age when genealogy has taken a new lease of life, and become
for the first time a human science; so that we no longer study it in
quest of the Guaith Voeths, but to trace out some of the secrets of
descent and destiny; and as we study, we think less of Sir Bernard Burke
and more of Mr. Galton. Not only do our character and talents lie upon
the anvil and receive their temper during generations; but the ver