Trivia | Page 6

my Soul, in her swell of pride, soon outgrew these paltry limits, O
no! Never could I box up and house and localize under that lowly roof
the Magnificence and Ostentation of which I was capable.
Then for one thing there was stabling for only forty horses; and of
course, as I told them, this would never do.

Empty Shells
They lie like empty seashells on the shores of Time, the old worlds
which the spirit of man once built for his habitation, and then
abandoned. Those little earth-centred, heaven-encrusted universes of
the Greeks and Hebrews seem quaint enough to us, who have formed,
thought by thought from within, the immense modern Cosmos in which
we live--the great Creation of granite, planned in such immeasurable
proportions, and moved by so pitiless a mechanism, that it sometimes
appals even its own creators. The rush of the great rotating Sun daunts
us; to think to the distance of the fixed stars cracks our brain.
But if the ephemeral Being who has imagined these eternal spheres and

spaces, must dwell almost as an alien in their icy vastness, yet what a
splendour lights up for 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