The British Barbarians | Page 7

true and final ones? Who shall answer that question? For
myself, as I lift up my eyes from my paper once more, my gaze falls
first on the golden bracken that waves joyously over the sandstone
ridge without, and then, within, on a little white shelf where lies the
greatest book of our greatest philosopher. I open it at random and
consult its sortes. What comfort and counsel has Herbert Spencer for
those who venture to see otherwise than the mass of their
contemporaries?
"Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it
should be too much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by
looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view. Let him duly
realise the fact that opinion is the agency through which character
adapts external arrangements to itself--that his opinion rightly forms
part of this agency--is a unit of force, constituting, with other such units,
the general power which works out social changes; and he will perceive

that he may properly give full utterance to his innermost conviction;
leaving it to produce what effect it may. It is not for nothing that he has
in him these sympathies with some principles and repugnances to
others. He, with all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an
accident, but a product of the time. He must remember that while he is
a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future; and that his
thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly let
die. He, like every other man, may properly consider himself as one of
the myriad agencies through whom works the Unknown Cause; and
when the Unknown Cause produces in him a certain belief, he is
thereby authorised to profess and act out that belief. For, to render in
their highest sense the words of the poet--
'Nature is made better by no mean, But nature makes that mean; over
that art Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes.'
"Not as adventitious therefore will the wise man regard the faith which
is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing
that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the
world--knowing that if he can effect the change he aims at--well: if
not--well also; though not SO well."
That passage comforts me. These, then, are my ideas. They may be
right, they may be wrong. But at least they are the sincere and personal
convictions of an honest man, warranted in him by that spirit of the age,
of which each of us is but an automatic mouthpiece.
G. A.

THE BRITISH BARBARIANS
I

The time was Saturday afternoon; the place was Surrey; the person of
the drama was Philip Christy.

He had come down by the early fast train to Brackenhurst. All the
world knows Brackenhurst, of course, the greenest and leafiest of our
southern suburbs. It looked even prettier than its wont just then, that
town of villas, in the first fresh tenderness of its wan spring foliage, the
first full flush of lilac, laburnum, horse- chestnut, and guelder-rose. The
air was heavy with the odour of May and the hum of bees. Philip
paused a while at the corner, by the ivied cottage, admiring it silently.
He was glad he lived there-- so very aristocratic! What joy to glide
direct, on the enchanted carpet of the South-Eastern Railway, from the
gloom and din and bustle of Cannon Street, to the breadth and space
and silence and exclusiveness of that upland village! For Philip Christy
was a gentlemanly clerk in Her Majesty's Civil Service.
As he stood there admiring it all with roving eyes, he was startled after
a moment by the sudden, and as it seemed to him unannounced
apparition of a man in a well-made grey tweed suit, just a yard or two
in front of him. He was aware of an intruder. To be sure, there was
nothing very remarkable at first sight either in the stranger's dress,
appearance, or manner. All that Philip noticed for himself in the
newcomer's mien for the first few seconds was a certain distinct air of
social superiority, an innate nobility of gait and bearing. So much at
least he observed at a glance quite instinctively. But it was not this
quiet and unobtrusive tone, as of the Best Society, that surprised and
astonished him; Brackenhurst prided itself, indeed, on being a most
well-bred and distinguished neighbourhood; people of note grew as
thick there as heather or whortleberries. What puzzled him more was
the abstruser question, where on earth the stranger could have come
from so suddenly. Philip had glanced up the road and down