If it were proper to treat a poetical utterance of this kind like a deliberate philosophical theory, I might wish to argue the point a little with the rabbi. But, at any rate, he points to considerations which show how little any one can judge of merit by any tangible and generally accessible test. I am content to say that this sentiment gives one--and a very impressive--answer to a problem which presses upon us the more as we grow older. It is natural for a man who feels that he has done most of his work, that the night is coming, and, as it seems, coming with accelerated speed; who feels, too, that whatever he has done or may do, he can no longer have the approval of those whose approval was dear to him as his breath;--it is natural for such a man to look back, to take stock more or less of his own performances perhaps, and at any rate to endeavour to estimate at their true worth the services which he has received from others. What, he may ask, has he done with his talents? what little fragment has he achieved of what might once have been in his power? The answer is pretty sure to have a very melancholy side to it; and it will lead to the question, what part of that fragment was really worth doing? What were the few really solid services which he may set off as some satisfaction to his self-esteem, against his countless errors and his wanderings in wrong directions, and his attempts to achieve the impossible, and the waste of energy upon the trifling and the worthless in which he is pretty sure to have spent a very large proportion of his time? When we try to return a verdict upon such issues, we feel painfully to how many illusions we are subject. When we are young we naturally accept the commonplaces, and do not question the ideals amid which we happen to have grown up; we are not conscious of the movement which we share. As long as we are floating with the current, we are not even aware that any current exists. We take our own little world to be the fixed base, quite unconscious that it is all the time whirling and spinning along a most complex course. And so it is difficult, even if the thought of making the attempt ever occurs to us, to try to occupy the position of a bystander looking on at life from outside, and endeavouring to pronounce some general opinion as to its merits or defects--its happiness or misery as a whole. "What a queer place this is!" I remember a man once saying to me abruptly; and I thought that he was referring to the steamboat on which we were fellow-passengers. I found that he had been suddenly struck by the oddity of the universe in general; and it seemed to me that there was a great deal to be said for a remark which seldom occurs to those people who take things for granted. We are roused sometimes by a philosopher who professes pessimism or optimism, to ask and to try to answer such questions. The answers, we know, are apt to be painfully discordant. Is