ily, but their production has an unmistakable stamp upon it; they are not interpreters of universal life, but they slowly distil from life a few truths of luminous quality. They recall the profound saying of Alfred de Musset, that it takes a great deal of life to make a little art; the movement of a generation yields them a few meditations, but somehow these seem to open everything up and to make us feel how precious is thought, since such a vast range of action is needed to give it adequate and complete expression. After Napoleon has stormed through Europe and filled the world with the dust and uproar of change, a quiet thinker, living and dying far from the current of events, interprets for us the two or three ideas which gave the sword of the soldier its only significance and dignity.

There are a few eternal elements in life, but these are hidden for the most part by the dust of traffic and travel. Men hurry to and fro in search of truth, and are unconscious that it shines over them with the lustre of a fixed star if they would keep silent for a little, and let the air

clarify itself, and the heavens become visible once more. No life gains its per

fect poise without action, but in the exaggerated emphasis laid upon works of hand in this Western world one is often tempted at times by the silent solicitation of the meditative East. There, in the hush of thought, men have always been conscious of their souls, and, if they have fallen into the tideless sea of pantheism, have at least been delivered from the hard and dusty ways of materialism. The just balance of life among us is preserved by such men as Amiel; men who keep apart from crowds and in the perpetual presence of the everlasting verities. There is in such men a wonderful freshness of thought, which makes us conscious of the arid atmosphere in which most of us work and suffocate. Life is old only to those who live in its conventions and formulas; the soil is exhausted only for those whose ploughshare turns the shallow furrow. To all others it is still fresh with undiscovered truth, still inexhaustible in the wealth with which the Infinite Mind has stored it, as the Infinite hand has filled its veins with gold

and its mountains with iron.

Amiel's life

was not one of those overflowing rivers which make continents blossom as they sweep to the sea; it was rather one of those deep wells which are fed by hidden rills, into which a few stars shine with strange lustre, and which have power to assuage the thirst of the soul.

CHAPTER XX

THE CUCKOO STRIKES TWELVE

F Rosalind were here," I said to myself, as I gave the fire a vigorous stirring "if Rosalind were here, the fire would burn with better

heart." Everything takes advantage of Rosalind's absence; the house is less friendly and hospitable, and has become at times neglectful of the soothing ministration of a home to one's unconscious longings for mute companionship; the study has lost something which I cannot define, but the going of which has carried the charm of the place with it; even here the fire, which has been cheerful in all weathers, and set a persistent glow on the front of the sullen days, is sluggish and faint-hearted. "Why should I sing and shine if there is no face to put a halo about?" it

seems to mutter to itself as the sticks fall apart and the blaze smoulders again for the twentieth time. It is a still wintry

night, and one cannot resist the mood which bears him on into the silence and solitude of meditation. Without, the lonely stars watch the lonely earth across the abysses of space which nothing traverses save the invisible feet of light. The moon is waning below the horizon which shows yet no silvery token of its coming; the earth sleeps under the ancient spell of winter. One is driven back on himself by a world which, for the time, is as mute as if birds had never sung, nor forest rustled, nor brook prattled. One is driven back upon himself, and finds the society neither stimulating nor agreeable. There are times when one is excellent company for one's self, but not on such a night as this, when the house is deserted, and the fire watches for a chance to go out.

I suspect that the companionship of the open fire is, after all, a negative thing; an accompaniment to which one's own mood furnishes the theme that is always elaborated and expanded. If you are cheerful,