ir farces
was the bull's-eye and centrepoint of all the universe? And yet it is
not so. The ends for which they give away their priceless youth, for
all they know, may be chimerical, or hurtful; the glory and riches they
expect may never come, or may find them indifferent; and they and the
world they inhabit are so inconsiderable that the mind freezes at the
thought.

*****

As we go catching and catching at this or that corner of knowledge,
now getting a foresight of generous possibilities, now chilled with a
glimpse of prudence, we may compare the headlong course of our years to
a swift torrent in which a man is carried away; now he is dashed against
a boulder, now he grapples for a moment to a trailing spray; at the end,
he is hurled out and overwhelmed in a dark and bottomless ocean. We have
no more than glimpses and touches; we are torn away from our theories;
we are spun round and round and shown this or the other view of life,
until only fools or knaves can hold to their opinions.... All our
attributes are modified or changed; and it will be a poor account of us
if our views do not modify and change in a proportion. To hold the same
views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a
score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable
brat, well birched and none the wiser. It is as if a ship captain should
sail to India from the Port of London; and having brought a chart of the
Thames on deck at his first setting out, should obstinately use no other
for the whole voyage.

*****

It is good to have been young in youth and, as years go on, to grow
older. Many are already old before they are through their teens; but
to travel deliberately through one's ages is to get the heart out of a
liberal education. Times change, opinions vary to their opposite, and
still this world appears a brave gymnasium, full of sea-bathing,
and horse exercise, and bracing, manly virtues; and what can be more
encouraging than to find the friend who was welcome at one age, still
welcome at another? Our affections and beliefs are wiser than we; the
best that is in us is better than we can understand; for it is grounded
beyond experience, and guides us, blindfold but safe, from one age on to
another.

*****

But faces have a trick of growing more and more spiritualised and
abstract in the memory, until nothing remains of them but a look, a
haunting expression; just that secret quality in a face that