That is the true Anglo-Saxon spirit of optimism. The most truly British person I know is a man who will move heaven and earth to secure a post or to compass an end; but when he fails, as he does not often fail, he says genially that he is more thankful than he can say; it would have been ruin to him if he had been successful. The same quality runs through our philosophy and our religion. Who but an Anglo-Saxon would have invented the robust theory, to account for the fact that prayers are often not granted, that prayers are always directly answered whether you attain your desire or not? The Greeks prayed that the gods would grant them what was good even if they did not desire it, and withhold what was evil even if they did desire it. The shrewd Roman said: "The gods will give us what is most appropriate; man is dearer to them than to himself." But the faithful Anglo-Saxon maintains that his prayer is none the less answered even if it be denied, and that it is made up to him in some roundabout way. It is inconceivable to the Anglo-Saxon that there may be a strain of sadness and melancholy in the very mind of God; he cannot understand that there can be any beauty in sorrow. To the Celt, sorrow itself is dear and beautiful, and the mournful wailing of winds, the tears of the lowering cloud, afford him sweet and even luxurious sensations. The memory of grief is one of the good things that remains to him, as life draws to its close; for love is to him the sister of grief rather than the mother of joy. But this is to the Anglo-Saxon mind a morbid thing. The hours in which sorrow has overclouded him are wasted, desolated hours, to be forgotten and obliterated as soon as possible. There is nothing sacred about them; they are sad and stony tracts over which he has made haste to cross, and the only use of them is to heighten the sense of security and joy. And thus the sort of sayings that satisfy and sustain the Anglo-Saxon mind are such irrepressible outbursts of poets as "God's in His heaven; all's right with the world"--the latter part of which is flagrantly contradicted by experience; and, as for the former part, if it be true, it lends no comfort to the man who tries to find his God in the world. Again, when Browning says that the world "means intensely and means good," he is but pouring oil upon the darting flame of optimism, because there are many people to whom the world has no particular meaning, and few who can re-echo the statement that it means good. That some rich surprise, in spite of palpable and hourly experience to the contrary, may possibly await us, is the most that some of us dare to hope.