of natural quarrel. That they find plenty of things to quarrel
about is no cause for astonishment. A hundred years hence there

will be some possibility of perceiving whether international
relations are likely to obey the law which has acted with such

beneficence in the life of each civilized people; whether this
country and that will be content to ease their tempers with

bloodless squabbling, subduing the more violent promptings for the
common good. Yet I suspect that a century is a very short time to

allow for even justifiable surmise of such an outcome. If by any
chance newspapers ceased to exist . . .

Talk of war, and one gets involved in such utopian musings!
VII

I have been reading one of those prognostic articles on
international politics which every now and then appear in the

reviews. Why I should so waste my time it would be hard to say; I
suppose the fascination of disgust and fear gets the better of me in

a moment's idleness. This writer, who is horribly perspicacious and
vigorous, demonstrates the certainty of a great European war, and

regards it with the peculiarsatisfaction excited by such things in
a certain order of mind. His phrases about "dire calamity" and so

on mean nothing; the whole tenor of his writing proves that he
represents, and consciously, one of the forces which go to bring war

about; his part in the business is a fluent irresponsibility, which
casts scorn on all who reluct at the "inevitable." Persistent

prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.
But I will read no more such writing. This resolution I make and

will keep. Why set my nerves quivering with rage, and spoil the
calm of a whole day, when no good of any sort can come of it? What

is it to me if nations fall a-slaughtering each other? Let the
fools go to it! Why should they not please themselves? Peace,

after all, is the aspiration of the few; so it always; was, and ever
will be. But have done with the nauseous cant about "dire

calamity." The leaders and the multitude hold no such view; either
they see in war a direct and tangible profit, or they are driven to

it, with heads down, by the brute that is in them. Let them rend
and be rent; let them paddle in blood and viscera till--if that

would ever happen--their stomachs turn. Let them blast the
cornfield and the orchard, fire the home. For all that, there will

yet be found some silent few, who go their way amid the still
meadows, who bend to the flower and watch the sunset; and these

alone are worth a thought.
VIII

In this hot weather I like to walk at times amid the full glow of
the sun. Our island sun is never hot beyond endurance, and there is

a magnificence in the triumph of high summer which exalts one's
mind. Among streets it is hard to bear, yet even there, for those

who have eyes to see it, the splendour of the sky lends beauty to
things in themselves mean or hideous. I remember an August bank-

holiday, when, having for some reason to walk all across London, I
unexpectedly found myself enjoying the strange desertion of great

streets, and from that passed to surprise in the sense of something
beautiful, a charm in the vulgar vista, in the dull architecture,

which I had never known. Deep and clear-marked shadows, such as one
only sees on a few days of summer, are in themselves very

impressive, and become more so when they fall upon highways devoid
of folk. I remember observing, as something new, the shape of

familiar edifices, of spires, monuments. And when at length I sat
down, somewhere on the Embankment, it was rather to gaze at leisure

than to rest, for I felt no weariness, and the sun, still pouring
upon me its noontideradiance, seemed to fill my veins with life.

That sense I shall never know again. For me Nature has comforts,
raptures, but no more invigoration. The sun keeps me alive, but

cannot, as in the old days, renew my being. I would fain learn to
enjoy without reflecting.

My walk in the golden hours leads me to a great horse-chestnut,
whose root offers a convenient seat in the shadow of its foliage.

At that resting-place I have no wide view before me, but what I see
is enough--a corner of waste land, over-flowered with poppies and

charlock, on the edge of a field of corn. The brilliant red and
yellow harmonize with the glory of the day. Near by, too, is a

hedge covered with great white blooms of the bindweed. My eyes do
not soon grow weary.

A little plant of which I am very fond is the rest-harrow. When the
sun is hot upon it, the flower gives forth a strangely aromatic

scent, very delightful to me. I know the cause of this peculiar
pleasure. The rest-harrow sometimes grows in sandy ground above the

seashore. In my childhood I have many a time lain in such a spot
under the glowing sky, and, though I scarce thought of it, perceived

the odour of the little rose-pink flower when it touched my face.
Now I have but to smell it, and those hours come back again. I see

the shore of Cumberland, running north to St. Bee's Head; on the sea
horizon a faint shape which is the Isle of Man; inland, the

mountains, which for me at that time guarded a region of unknown
wonder. Ah, how long ago!

IX
I read much less than I used to do; I think much more. Yet what is

the use of thought which can no longer serve to direct life?
Better, perhaps, to read and read incessantly, losing one's futile

self in the activity of other minds.
This summer I have taken up no new book, but have renewed my

acquaintance with several old ones which I had not opened for many a
year. One or two have been books such as mature men rarely read at

all--books which it is one's habit to "take as read"; to presume
sufficiently known to speak of, but never to open. Thus, one day my

hand fell upon the Anabasis, the little Oxford edition which I used
at school, with its boyish sign-manual on the fly-leaf, its blots

and underlinings and marginal scrawls. To my shame I possess no
other edition; yet this is a book one would like to have in

beautiful form. I opened it, I began to read--a ghost of boyhood
stirring in my heart--and from chapter to chapter was led on, until

after a few days I had read the whole.
I am glad this happened in the summer-time, I like to link childhood

with these latter days, and no better way could I have found than
this return to a school-book, which, even as a school-book, was my

great delight.
By some trick of memory I always associate school-boy work on the

classics with a sense of warm and sunny days; rain and gloom and a
chilly atmosphere must have been far the more frequent conditions,

but these things are forgotten. My old Liddell and Scott still
serves me, and if, in opening it, I bend close enough to catch the

SCENT of the leaves, I am back again at that day of boyhood (noted
on the fly-leaf by the hand of one long dead) when the book was new

and I used it for the first time. It was a day of summer, and
perhaps there fell upon the unfamiliar page, viewed with childish

tremor, half apprehension and half delight, a mellowsunshine, which
was to linger for ever in my mind.

But I am thinking of the Anabasis. Were this the sole book existing
in Greek, it would be abundantly worth while to learn the language

in order to read it. The Anabasis is an admirable work of art,
unique in its combination of concise and rapid narrative with colour

and picturesqueness. Herodotus wrote a prose epic, in which the
author's personality is ever before us. Xenophon, with curiosity

and love of adventure which mark him of the same race, but self-
forgetful in the pursuit of a new artisticvirtue, created the

historical romance. What a world of wonders in this little book,
all aglow with ambitions and conflicts, with marvels of strange

lands; full of perils and rescues, fresh with the air of mountain
and of sea! Think of it for a moment by the side of Caesar's

Commentaries; not to compare things incomparable, but in order to
appreciate the perfect art which shines through Xenophon's mastery

of language, his brevity achieving a result so different from that
of the like characteristic in the Roman writer. Caesar's

conciseness comes of strength and pride; Xenophon's, of a vivid
imagination. Many a single line of the Anabasis presents a picture

which deeply stirs the emotions. A good instance occurs in the
fourth book, where a delightful passage of unsurpassable narrative