nd never. The
aspect which he gives to the day is not all his own. The sunshine is
sweet in spite of him. The clouds go under his whip, but they have
kinder greys than should be the colours of his cold. Not on an east-wind
day are these races in heaven, for the clouds are all far off. His rain
is angry, and it flies against the sunset. The world is not one in his
reign, but rather there is a perpetual revolt or difference. The lights
and shadows are not all his. The waxing and waning hours are
disaffected. He has not a great style, and does not convince the day.

All the four winds are brave, and not the less brave because, on their
way through town, they are betrayed for a moment into taking part in any
paltriness that may be there. On their way from the Steppes to the
Atlantic they play havoc with the nerves of very insignificant people. A
part, as it were, of every gale that starts in the far north-east finds
its goal in the breath of a reluctant citizen.

You will meet a wind of the world nimble and eager in a sorry street. But
these are only accidents of the way--the winds go free again. Those that
do not go free, but close their course, are those that are breathed by
the nostrils of living creatures. A great flock of those wild birds come
to a final pause in London, and fan the fires of life with those wings in
the act of folding. In the blood and breath of a child close the
influences of continent and sea.

THE HONOURS OF MORTALITY

The brilliant talent which has quite lately and quite suddenly arisen, to
devote itself to the use of the day or of the week, in illustrated
papers--the enormous production of art in black and white--is assuredly a
confession that the Honours of Mortality are worth working for. Fifty
years ago, men worked for the honours of immortality; these were the
commonplace of their ambition; they declined to attend to the beauty of
things of use that were destined to be broken and worn out, and they
looked forward to surviving themselves by painting bad pictures; so that
what to do with their bad pictures in addition to our own has become the
problem of the nation and of the householder alike. To-day men have
began to learn that their sons will be grateful to them for few bequests.
Art consents at last to work upon the tissue and the china that are
doomed to the natural and necessary end--destruction; and art shows a
most dignified alacrity to do her best, daily, for