“All true Work is sacred; in all true Work, were it but true hand-labour, there is something of divineness. Labour, wide as the Earth, has its summit in Heaven. Sweat of the brow, and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart--which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all Sciences, all spoken Epics, all acted Heroisms, and Martyrdoms, up to that ‘Agony of bloody sweat’ which all men have called divine! O brother, if this is not ‘worship,’ then I say the more pity for worship, for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God’s sky. Who art thou that complainest of thy life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother!--see thy fellow Workmen there in God’s eternity, surviving there, they alone surviving; sacred Band of the Immortals, celestial Bodyguard of the Empire of Mankind. Even in the weak Human memory they survive so long, as saints, as heroes, as gods, they alone surviving--peopling, they alone, the measured solitudes of Time. To thee, Heaven, though severe, is _not_ unkind; Heaven is kind as a noble Mother--as that Spartan mother, saying while she gave her son his shield--“With it, my son, or upon it!” Thou too shalt return home in honour, brother Worker!--to thy far distant Home, in honour, doubt it not, if in the battle thou keep thy shield!” THE HAPPY LIFE Most people want to be happy if they can. I suppose it may be safely set down without fear of contradiction that no one who is sane and healthy wilfully elects to be miserable. Yet the secret of happiness seems to be solved by very few. People try to be happy in all sorts of queer ways--in speculation, land-grabbing, dram-drinking, horse-racing, bridge-playing, newspaper-running, and various other methods which are more or less suited to their constitutional abilities--but in many cases these channels, carefully dug out for the reception of a perpetual inflowing of the stream of happiness, appear very soon to run dry. I have been asked scores of times what I consider to be the happiest life in the world, and I have always answered without the least hesitation--the Life Literary. In all respects it answers perfectly to the description of the “Happy Life” portrayed by that gentle sixteenth-century poet, Sir Henry Wotton:-- How happy is he born and taught That serveth not another’s will, Whose armour is his honest thought, And simple truth his utmost skill.