In the history of nations as in the history of individuals there are periods when the formative ideals of life (through some hidden influence) change; and the mode of life and evolution in consequence changes also. I remember when I was a boy wishing--like many other boys--to go to sea. I wanted to join the Navy. It was not, I am sure, that I was so very anxious to defend my country. No, there was a much simpler and more prosaic motive than that. The ships of those days with their complex rigging suggested a perfect paradise of CLIMBING, and I know that it was the thought of THAT which influenced me. To be able to climb indefinitely among those ropes and spars! How delightful! Of course I knew perfectly well that I should not always have free access to the rigging; but then--some day, no doubt, I should be an Admiral, and who then could prevent me? I remember seeing myself in my mind's eye, with cocked hat on my head and spy-glass under my arm, roaming at my own sweet will up aloft, regardless of the remonstrances which might reach me from below! Such was my childish ideal. But a time came--needless to say--when I conceived a different idea of the object of life. It is said that John Tyndall, whose lectures on Science were so much sought after in their time, being on one occasion in New York was accosted after his discourse by a very successful American business man, who urged him to devote his scientific knowledge and ability to commercial pursuits, promising that if he did so, he, Tyndall, would easily make "a big pile." Tyndall very calmly replied, "Well, I myself thought of that once, but I soon abandoned the idea, having come to the conclusion that I had NO TIME TO WASTE IN MAKING MONEY." The man of dollars nearly sank into the ground. Such a conception of life had never entered his head before. But to Tyndall no doubt it was obvious that if he chained himself to the commercial ideal all the joy and glory of his days would be gone. We sometimes hear of the awful doom of some of the Russian convicts in the quarries and mines of Siberia, who are (or were) chained permanently to their wheelbarrows. It is difficult to imagine a more dreadful fate: the despair, the disgust, the deadly loathing of the accursed thing from which there is no escape day or night--which is the companion not only of the prisoner's work but of his hours of rest--with which he has to sleep, to feed, to take his recreation if he has any, and to fulfil all the offices of nature. Could anything be more crushing? And yet, and yet... is it not true that we, most of us, in our various ways are chained to our wheelbarrows--is it not too often true that to these beggarly things we have for the most part chained OURSELVES?