"Now (as I understand him) Mr. Meredith connects man with the Universal, and teaches him to arrive at it and recognise it by strongly reminding him that he is a child of Earth. 'You are amenable,' he says in effect, 'to a law which all the firmament obeys. But in all that firmament you are tied to one planet, which we call Earth. If therefore you would apprehend the law, study your mother, Earth, which also obeys it. Search out her operations; honour your mother as legitimate children, and let your honour be the highest you can pay--that of making yourself docile to her teaching. So will you stand the best chance, the only likely chance, of living in harmony with that Will which over-arches Earth and us all.' "In this doctrine Mr. Meredith believes passionately; so let there be no mistake about the thoroughness with which he preaches it. Even prayer, he tells us in one of his novels, is most useful when like a fountain it falls back and draws refreshment from earth for a new spring heavenward:-- "'And there vitality, there, there solely in song Besides, where earth and her uses to men, their needs, Their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong, The Master said: and the studious eye that reads, (Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount), In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound. Pursue thy craft: it is music drawn of the fount To spring perennial; well-spring is common ground.' "And it follows that to one who believes in the teaching of earth so whole-heartedly earth is not a painted back-cloth for man to strut against and attitudinise, but a birth-place from which he cannot escape, and in relation with which he must be considered, and must consider himself, on pain of becoming absurd. Even: "'His cry to heaven is a cry to her He would evade.' "She is a stern mother, be it understood, no coddling one:-- "'He may entreat, aspire, He may despair, and she has never heed, She, drinking his warm sweat, will soothe his need, Not his desire.' "When we neglect or misread her lessons, she punishes; at the best, she offers no fat rewards to the senses, but-- "'The sense of large charity over the land; Earth's wheaten of wisdom dispensed in the rough, And a bell ringing thanks for a sustenance meal.' "('Lean fare,' as the poet observes; and unpalatable, for instance, to our Members of Parliament, to whom our Mr. Balfour one evening paid the highest compliment within their range of apprehension by assuming that quite a large number of them could write cheques for 69,000 pounds without inconvenience.) At the best, too, she offers, with the loss of things we have desired, a serene fortitude to endure their loss:-- "'Love born of knowledge, love that gains Vitality as Earth it mates, The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains, The Life, the Death, illuminates.