Trivia | Page 6

him and dazzles in those great halls! Anything less limitless would be now a prison; and he even dares to think beyond their boundaries, to surmise that he may one day outgrow this vast Mausoleum, and cast from him the material Creation as an integument too narrow for his insolent Mind.

Dissatisfaction
For one thing I hate Spiders--I dislike all kinds of Insects. Their cold intelligence, their empty, stereotyped, unremitted industry repel me. And I am not altogether happy about the future of the Human Race; when I think of the slow refrigeration of the Earth, the Sun's waning, and the ultimate, inevitable collapse of the Solar System, I have grave misgivings. And all the books I have read and forgotten-the thought that my mind is really nothing but a sieve--this, too, at times disheartens me.

A Fancy More than once, though, I have pleased myself with the notion that somewhere there is good Company which will like this little Book--these Thoughts (if I may call them so) dipped up from that phantasmagoria or phosphorescence which, by some unexplained process of combustion, flickers over the large lump of soft gray matter in the bowl of my skull.

They
Their taste is exquisite; They live in Georgian houses, in a world of ivory and precious china, of old brickwork and stone pilasters. In white drawing rooms I see Them, or on blue, bird-haunted lawns. They talk pleasantly of me, and their eyes watch me. From the diminished, ridiculous picture of myself which the glass of the world gives me, I turn for comfort, for happiness, to my image in the kindly mirror of those eyes.
Who are They? Where, in what paradise or palace, shall I ever find Them? I may walk all the streets, ring all the door-bells of the World, but I shall never find them. Yet nothing has value for me save In the crown of Their approval; for Their coming--which will never be--I build and plant, and for Them alone I secretly write this little Book, which They will never read.

In the Pulpit
The Vicar had certain literary tastes; in his youth he had written an _Ode to the Moon_; and he would speak of the difficulty he found in composing his sermons, week after week.
Now I felt that if I composed and preached sermons, I should by no means confine myself to the Vicar's threadbare subjects-- should preach the Wrath of God, and sound the Last Trump in the ears of my Hell-doomed congregation, cracking the heavens and dissolving the earth with the eclipses and thunders and earthquakes of the Day of Judgment. Then I might refresh them with high and incomprehensible Doctrines, beyond the reach of Reason--Predestination, Election, the Co-existences and Co-eternities of the incomprehensible Triad. And with what a holy vehemence would I exclaim and cry out against all forms of doctrinal Error--all the execrable hypotheses of the great Heresiarchs! Then there would be many ancient and learned and out-of-the-way Iniquities to denounce, and splendid, neglected Virtues to inculcate--Apostolic Poverty, and Virginity, that precious jewel, that fair garland, so prized in Heaven, but so rare on earth.
For in the range of creeds and morals it is the highest peaks that shine for me with a certain splendour: it is toward those radiant Alps that, if I were a Clergyman, I would lead my flock to pasture.

Human Ends
I really was impressed, as we paced up and down the avenue, by the Vicar's words and weighty, weighed advice. He spoke of the various professions; mentioned contemporaries of his own who had achieved success: how one had a Seat in Parliament, would be given a Seat in the Cabinet when his party next came in; another was a Bishop with a Seat in the House of Lords; a third was a Barrister who was soon, it was said, to be raised to the Bench.
But in spite of my good intentions, my real wish to find, before it is too late, some career or other for myself (and the question is getting serious), I am far too much at the mercy of ludicrous images. Front Seats, Episcopal, Judicial, Parliamentary Benches--were all the ends then, I asked my self, of serious, middle-aged ambition only things to sit on?

Lord Arden
"If I were Lord Arden," said the Vicar, "I should shut up that great House; it's too big--what can a young unmarried man...?"
"If I were Lord Arden," said the Vicar's wife (and Mrs. La Mountain's tone showed how much she disapproved of that young Nobleman), "if I were Lord Arden, I should live there, and do my duty to my tenants and neighbours."
"If I were Lord Arden," I said; but then it flashed vividly into my mind, suppose I really were this opulent young Lord? I quite forgot to whom I was talking; my memory was occupied with