It is the very difference between the artistic mind and the mathematical that the former sees things as they are in a picture, some nearer and larger, some smaller and farther away: while to the mathematical mind everything, every inch in a million, every fact in a cosmos, must be of equal value. That is why mathematicians go mad, and poets scarcely ever do. A man may have as wide a view of life as he likes, the wider the better: a distant view, a bird's-eye view, but still a view and not a map. The one thing he cannot attempt in his version of the universe is to draw things to scale. '_G. F. Watts._' JANUARY 30th EXECUTION OF CHARLES I The face of the King's servants grew greater than the King. He tricked them and they trapped him and drew round him in a ring; The new grave lords closed round him that had eaten the abbey's fruits, And the men of the new religion with their Bibles in their boots, We saw their shoulders moving to menace and discuss. And some were pure and some were vile, but none took heed of us; We saw the King when they killed him, and his face was proud and pale, And a few men talked of freedom while England talked of ale. '_The Silent People._' JANUARY 31st The 'Iliad' is only great because all life is a battle, the 'Odyssey' because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle. '_The Defendant._' FEBRUARY FEBRUARY 1st Many modern Englishmen talk of themselves as the sturdy descendants of their sturdy Puritan fathers. As a fact, they would run away from a cow. If you asked one of their Puritan fathers, if you asked Bunyan, for instance, whether he was sturdy, he would have answered with tears, that he was as weak as water. And because of this he would have borne tortures. '_Heretics._' FEBRUARY 2nd _CANDLEMAS. THE FEAST OF THE PURIFICATION_