DURING the retreat from Moscow a French soldier was mortally wounded. His comrades tried to lift him into a waggon. ‘No bandages, no brandy!’ he cried; ‘go, you cannot help me.’ They hesitated, but seeing that he could not recover, and knowing that the enemy was hard upon them in pursuit, they left him. For half an hour he was alive and alone. The Emperor, whom he worshipped, was far away; his friends had fled; to remain would have been folly, and yet! It was late in the afternoon and bitterly cold. He looked with dim and closing eyes over the vast, dreary, snowy and silent plain. What were the images which passed before them? Were they of home, of the Emperor and the retreating army, of the crucifix and the figure thereon? Who can tell? Death is preceded by thoughts which life cannot anticipate. Perhaps his herald was a simple longing to be at rest, joy at his approach blotting out all bitterness and regret. Who can tell? But I dream and dream; the dying, wintry day, the dark, heavily-clouded sky, the snow, and the blood. A Cossack came up and drove his lance through him. OURSELVES LORD BACON says that ‘To be wise by rule and to be wise by experience are contrary proceedings; he that accustoms himself to the one unfits himself for the other.’ It is singular how little attention, in the guidance of our lives, we pay to our own needs. It is a common falsehood of these times that all knowledge is good for everybody, the truth being that knowledge is good only if it helps us, and that if it does not help us it is bad. ‘Whatever knowledge,’ to quote from Bacon again, ‘we cannot convert into food or medicine endangereth a dissolution of the mind and understanding.’ We ought to turn aside from what we cannot manage, no matter how important it may seem to be. David refused Saul’s helmet of brass and coat of mail. If he had taken the orthodox accoutrements and weapons he would have been encumbered and slain. He killed Goliath with the rustic sling and stone. No doubt if we determine to be ignorant of those things with which the world thinks it necessary that everybody should be familiar we shall be thought ill-educated, but our very ignorance will be a better education, provided it be a principled ignorance, than much which secures a local examination certificate or a degree. At the same time, if any study fits us, it should be pursued unflaggingly. We must not be afraid of the imputation of narrowness. Our subject will begin to be of most service to us when we have passed the threshold and can think for ourselves. If we devote ourselves, for example, to the works and biography of any great man, the pleasure and moral effect come when we have read him and re-read him and have traced every thread we can find, connecting him with his contemporaries. It is then, and then only, that we understand him and he becomes a living soul. Flesh and blood are given by details.