At Large | Page 6

reads, writes, sits or
paces in the garden, scours the country on still sunny afternoons. There

are many grand churches and houses within a reasonable distance, such
as the great churches near Wisbech and Lynn--West Walton, Walpole
St. Peter, Tilney, Terrington St. Clement, and a score of others--great
cruciform structures, in every conceivable style, with fine woodwork
and noble towers, each standing in the centre of a tiny rustic hamlet,
built with no idea of prudent proportion to the needs of the places they
serve, but out of pure joy and pride. There are houses like Beaupre, a
pile of fantastic brick, haunted by innumerable phantoms, with its
stately orchard closes, or the exquisite gables of Snore Hall, of rich
Tudor brickwork, with fine panelling within. There is no lack of shrines
for pilgrimage--then, too, it is not difficult to persuade some
like-minded friend to share one's solitude. And so the quiet hours tick
themselves away in an almost monastic calm, while one's book grows
insensibly day by day, as the bulrush rises on the edge of the dyke.
I do not say that it would be a life to live for the whole of a year, and
year by year. There is no stir, no eagerness, no brisk interchange of
thought about it. But for one who spends six months in a busy and
peopled place, full of duties and discussions and conflicting interests, it
is like a green pasture and waters of comfort. The danger of it, if
prolonged, would be that things would grow languid, listless, fragrant
like the Lotos-eaters' Isle; small things would assume undue
importance, small decisions would seem unduly momentous; one
would tend to regard one's own features as in a mirror and through a
magnifying glass. But, on the other hand, it is good, because it restores
another kind of proportion; it is like dipping oneself in the seclusion of
a monastic cell. Nowadays the image of the world, with all its sheets of
detailed news, all its network of communications, sets too deep a mark
upon one's spirit. We tend to believe that a man is lost unless he is
overwhelmed with occupation, unless, like the conjurer, he is keeping a
dozen balls in the air at once. Such a gymnastic teaches a man alertness,
agility, effectiveness. But it has got to be proved that one was sent into
the world to be effective, and it is not even certain that a man has
fulfilled the higher law of his being if he has made a large fortune by
business. A sagacious, shrewd, acute man of the world is sometimes a
mere nuisance; he has made his prosperous corner at the expense of
others, and he has only contrived to accumulate, behind a little fence of
his own, what was meant to be the property of all. I have known a good

many successful men, and I cannot honestly say that I think that they
are generally the better for their success. They have often learnt
self-confidence, the shadow of which is a good-natured contempt for
ineffective people; the shadow, on the other hand, which falls on the
contemplative man is an undue diffidence, an indolent depression, a
tendency to think that it does not very much matter what any one does.
But, on the other hand, the contemplative man sometimes does grasp
one very important fact--that we are sent into the world, most of us, to
learn something about God and ourselves; whereas if we spend our
lives in directing and commanding and consulting others, we get so
swollen a sense of our own importance, our own adroitness, our own
effectiveness, that we forget that we are tolerated rather than needed. it
is better on the whole to tarry the Lord's leisure, than to try impatiently
to force the hand of God, and to make amends for His apparent
slothfulness. What really makes a nation grow, and improve, and
progress, is not social legislation and organisation. That is only the sign
of the rising moral temperature; and a man who sets an example of
soberness, and kindliness, and contentment is better than a pragmatical
district visitor with a taste for rating meek persons.
It may be asked, then, do I set myself up as an example in this matter?
God forbid! I live thus because I like it, and not from any philosophical
or philanthropical standpoint. But if more men were to follow their
instincts in the matter, instead of being misled and bewildered by the
conventional view that attaches virtue to perspiration, and national
vigour to the multiplication of unnecessary business, it would be a good
thing for the community. What I claim is that a species of mental and
moral equilibrium is best attained by a careful proportion of activity
and