that calamities sent by heaven may be avoided, but from those we bring on ourselves there is no escape.

Some years ago I paid a visit to the principal lake villages of Switzerland in company with a distinguished archæologist, M. Morlot. To my surprise I

found that his whole income was £100 a year, part of which, moreover, he spent in making a small museum. I asked him whether he contemplated accepting any post or office, but he said certainly not. He valued his leisure and opportunities as priceless possessions far more than silver or gold, and would not waste any of his time in making money.

Time, indeed, is a sacred gift, and each day is a little life. Just think of our advantages here in London! We have access to the whole literature of the world; we may see in our National Gallery the most beautiful productions of former generations, and in the

Royal Academy and other galleries the works of the greatest living artists. Perhaps there is no one who has ever found time to see the British Museum thoroughly. Yet consider what it contains; or rather, what does it not contain? The most gigantic of living and extinct animals; the marvellous monsters of geological ages; the most beautiful birds, shells, and minerals; precious stones and fragments from other worlds; the most interesting antiquities; curious and fantastic specimens illustrating different races of men; exquisite gems, coins, glass, and china; the Elgin marbles; the remains of the Mausoleum; of the temple of Diana of Ephesus; ancient monuments of Egypt and Assyria; the rude implements of our predecessors in England, who were coeval with the hippopotamus and rhinoceros, the musk-ox, and the mammoth; and beautiful specimens of Greek and Roman art.

Suffering may be unavoidable, but

They

no one has any excuse for being dull. And yet some people are dull. talk of a better world to come, while whatever dulness there may be here is all their own. Sir Arthur Helps has well said: "What! dull, when you do not know what gives its loveliness of form to the lily, its depth of colour to the violet, its fragrance to the rose; when you do not know in what consists the venom of the adder, any more than you can imitate the glad movements of the dove. What! dull, when earth, air, and water are all alike mysteries to you, and when as you stretch out your hand you do not touch anything the properties of which you have mastered; while all the time Nature is inviting you to talk earnestly with her, to understand her, to subdue her, and to be blessed by her! Go away, man; learn something, do something, understand something, and let me hear no more of your dulness."

CHAPTER VII

THE PLEASURES OF TRAVEL

1

"I am a part of all that I have seen."-TENNYSON.

I AM sometimes disposed to think that there are few things in which we of this generation enjoy greater advantages over our ancestors than in the increased facilities of travel; but I hesitate to say this, not because our advantages are not great, but because I have already made the same remark with reference to several other aspects of life.

The very word "travel" is suggestive. It is a form of " travail"-excessive labour; and, as Skeat observes, it forcibly recalls

1 The substance of this was delivered at Oldham.

the toil of travel in olden days. How different things are now!

It is sometimes said that every one should travel on foot "like Thales, Plato, and Pythagoras"; we are told that in these days of railroads people rush through countries and see nothing. It may be so, but that is not the fault of the railways. They confer upon us the inestimable advantage of being able, so rapidly and with so little fatigue, to visit countries which were much less accessible to our ancestors. What a blessing

it is that not our own islands only—our smiling fields and rich woods, the mountains that are full of peace and the rivers of joy, the lakes and heaths and hills, castles and cathedrals, and many a spot immortalised in the history of our country: -not these only, but the sun and scenery of the South, the Alps the palaces of Nature, the blue Mediterranean, and the cities of Europe, with all their memories