Is it all a delusion? But that is a foolish wonder: nothing is a delusion, except the extremes of pleasure and of pain. Take what you will of the world; its crowds, or its calms: there is nothing altogether wrong to every one. Lucretius, upon his watch-tower, deny it as he may, found some exultation and delight in the lamentable prospect below: it filled him with a magnificent darkness of soul, a princely compassion at heart. And Milton, in his evil days, felt himself to be tragic and austere: he knew it, not as a proud boast, but as a proud fact. No! life is never wrong, altogether, to every one: you and I, he and she, priest and penitent, master and slave: one with another, we compose a very glory of existence before the unseen Powers. Therefore, I believe in my measured way of life; its careful felicities, fashioned out of little things: to you, the change of Ministries, and the accomplishment of conquests, bring their wealth of rich emotion: to me, who am apart from the louder concerns of life, the flowering of the limes, and the warm autumn rains, bring their pensive beauty and a store of memories. Is it I, am indolent? Is it you, are clamorous? Why should it be either? Let us say, I am the lover of quiet things, and you are enamoured of mighty events. Each, without undue absorption in his taste, relishes the savour of a different experience. But I think, I am no egoist: no melancholy spectator of things, cultivating his intellect with old poetry, nourishing his senses upon rural nature. There are times, when the swarms of men press hard upon a solitary; he hears the noise of the streets, the heavy vans of merchandise, the cry of the railway whistle: and in a moment, his thoughts travel away, to London, to Liverpool; to great docks and to great ships; and away, till he is watching the dissimilar bustle of Eastern harbours, and hearing the discordant sounds of Chinese workmen. The blue smoke curls and glides away, with blue pagodas, and snowy almond bloom, and cherry flowers, circling and gleaming in it, like a narcotic vision. O magic of tobacco! Dreams are there, and superb images, and a somnolent paradise. Sometimes, the swarms of humanity press wearily and hardly; with a cruel insistence, crushing out my right to happiness. I think, rather I brood, upon the fingers that deftly rolled the cigarette, upon the people in tobacco plantations, upon all the various commerce involved in its history: how do they all fare, those many workers? Strolling up and down, devouring my books through their lettered backs; remembering the workers with leather, paper, ink, who toiled at them, they frighten me from the peace. What a full world it is! What endless activities there are! And, oh, Nicomachean Ethics! how much conscious pleasure is in them all! Things, mere tangible things, have a terrible power of education: of calling out from the mind innumerable thoughts and sympathies. Like childish