Matthew Arnold, in his splendid sonnet on Austerity as the poet must practice it, has brought this out very forcibly. He tells the story of Jacopone da Todi, the author of the Stabat Mater, who, on his wedding day, saw his bride of the morning killed by the fall of a stand at a spectacle and found beneath her bridal robes a penitential garment. He was so deeply impressed that he became a Franciscan and subsequently the author of the famous hymn. Certainly pathos was never more wondrously expressed than by this man whose own austerities, initiated by the example of his beloved bride, made him ready to strip himself of every trivial interest in the cult of the eternal verities. {166} "That son of Italy who tried to blow, Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song, In his light youth amid a festal throng Sate with his bride to see a public show. Fair was the bride, and on her front did glow Youth like a star; and what to youth belong-- Gay raiment, sparkling gauds, elation strong. A prop gave way! crash fell a platform! lo, 'Mid struggling sufferers, hurt to death, she lay! Shuddering, they drew her garments off--and found A robe of sackcloth next the smooth, white skin. Such, poets, is your bride, the Muse! young, gay, Radiant, adorn'd, outside; a hidden ground Of thought and of austerity within." So far from mortification being in any sense of the word an old-fashioned, worn-out practice, good enough for the foolish people of the dark ages who had nothing better to think of, it is, in so far as it brings about training of the will and exercise in self-denial and self-control, the most important element in education at all times. We have unfortunately been neglecting it, but that neglect is the real trouble with our modern education. Nearly every one who talks about education has some mental panacea for it; but the trouble lies deeper than that. It is the education of the will that has unfortunately been neglected and that requires, to cite once more the Century definition, the subduing of appetites, even though painful severities should have to be inflicted on the body. Huxley, in his address on "A Liberal Education; and Where to Find It", delivered before the South London Workingmen's College, has a passage in which he brings this out very well. Almost needless to say Huxley was the farthest possible from being medievally minded, and {167} yet he placed the essence of a liberal education in will power over self rather than in intellectual development, or above all the accumulation of information. He said: