I lay innocent traps for my casuals now and then, when I can persuade some of the effaced ones to come and dine with us, but it is often just a little too sad. They are like the ghosts of the heroic dead. Men of sixty, old before their time; the broad massive brow, with the bar of Michael Angelo, is there, but--the eyes that used to flash and kindle have grown dim and sleepy, those lips that curled with such fierce scorn, or quivered with such glad playfulness or subtle drollery--it seems as if it were yesterday--have become stiff and starched. Poverty has come and hope has gone. Dawkins knew so little about the matter that he actually believed he only required to get a _pied à terre_ such as a college living would afford him, and a (nominal) income of £700 a year, and there would be a fresh world to conquer as easy to subdue as the old Academic world which was under his feet. Poor Dawkins! Poor Parkins! Poor any one who finds himself high and dry some fine morning on his island home, while between him and the comrades who helped him to his fate the distance widens; for him there is no escape, no sailing back. There are the fruits of the earth, and the shade of the trees, and the wreckage of other barks that have stranded there; but there is no to-morrow with a different promise from to-day’s, nor even another islet to look to when this one has been made the most of and explored, only the resource of acquiescence as he muses on the things that were, Gazing far out foamward. Such men as these I have in my mind were never meant to be straitened and poor. They never calculated upon six or eight children who have to be educated; the real dreariness of the prospect, its crushing unchangeableness only gradually reveals itself to them; they shut their eyes not so much because they will not as because they _cannot_ believe that such as they have no future. Their first experience of life led up to the full conviction that character and brain-power _must_ sooner or later bring a man to the first rank--what did it matter where a man cast anchor for a time? So they burnt their ships bravely, “hope like a fiery column before them, the dark side not yet turned.” But suppose there was no scope for the brains and consequently no demand for them? We in the wilderness have abundance of butter and eggs, but _keep_ these commodities long enough, and they infallibly grow a trifle stale. People say with some indignation, “What a pity, what a shame, that Parkins and Dawkins should be buried as they are!” No, that is not the shame nor the pity; the shame is that, being buried, they should have no hope of being dug up again. Yonder splendid _larva_ may potentially be a much more splendid _imago_; let it bury itself by all means, but do not keep it for ever below ground. Do not say to it, “Once there, you must stop there, there and there only. For such as you there shall be no change, your resting place shall inevitably be your grave.”