effort of striving in the consciousness of work well

done.

The prime object of existence is happiness. If we work merely for money, we may get some sort of pleasure out of it, but we know that when the Dark Angel rings down the curtain of Death our money will be parted from us; and in that thought lies the doubt that sours the whole of life. The pursuit of worldly advantage is a noble aim, but it is not the chief end of existence. The best things of life, the things which tell us surely and convincingly that the pleasures of prosperity are not everything, dwell in states of the mind. The only real happiness is in the mind; the grasp of a friend's hand, the sound of a voice that thrills the heart, the uplifting melody of some strain of music, the joy of feeling the spring stirring in the blood-these are the things that really matter, that link us to Nature, and that hold the promise of life here and through all the ages.

A successful man once said to me, "I would not give a fig for a man who has not had some great set-back in his life. The man who has never tasted the bitterness of defeat and found it a spur to increased effort has never tasted the real joy of victory." I never think of this without recalling the experience of two men with whom I was very closely connected. Both of them experienced a

sudden, sharp reversal of fortune.

One was left with

a bare means of living, the other lost everything. The former turned tail on his troubles, and went away into the country, where he determined to live on what he had saved out of the wreck. He brooded on his misfortunes, told people they had ruined his health, and, though a perfectly strong man, became a hypochondriac. The other could not have run away even if he had wanted to. He summoned all his fortitude to his aid, all his optimism, all his faith, and fortune came tumbling at him on the heels of his troubles. What had seemed a disaster turned out the best thing that could possibly have happened. If he, too, had run away he would never have had that fortune and would never have tasted the sweets of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Be sure that whatever troubles come to you, if you face them with courage they will pass by as the idle wind, and leave behind the prosperity of which they are only the harbingers.

Every one who has faced sorrow and disaster, who has come through the fires of adversity, knows well from his own experience that for every trouble life can bring there is some greater compensating advantage. "All things work together for good." The snows of winter serve to warm the earth and protect the seeds that bring forth the glorious blooms of summer.

All through Nature and all through life we see that the things which are gloomy and unpleasant inevitably develop into brightness and happiness. Who does not know the beautiful lines:

"Hark, hark, my soul, angelic songs are swelling

O'er earth's green fields and ocean's wave-beat shore." But, in days of doubt and difficulty, how many go out into the fields to hear the immortal strains of the angelic songs which are wafted in every breeze from the four corners of the world to bear a message of hope to those who will listen?

One knows, of course, that there have been great minds who, out of their innermost convictions, have asserted that everything ends with this life. One must respect honest thought, but the fact remains that the majority of thinkers through all the ages have held that the ultimate end of all things is Paradise, the land of Promise, where all tears will be wiped from our eyes, "and those that are good shall be happy." Quite apart from any religious belief in the life to come-and the earnest worker will always be content to be judged by his life's work-it is clearly demonstrable that there is a reward for every earnest endeavour, every loving thought and every kindly act. Why should there be a need for rewards in a life hereafter? Paradise is not merely a state of the hereafter, it is here and now. It is in the mind, and is revealed in the

thoughts of those we love and those who love us. Who that has seen his mother praying by her bedside has not felt the angels hovering near? Who that has loved his friend has not tasted the sweets of life and found that the world was good? Are these things visions to torment us with an unrealisable hope? Or are they glimmerings of a perfect realisation of all those things which we hold dearest? If there is any virtue in thinking for oneself in the solitudes that come to all of us, surely it lies in the hope and faith that must be born when we turn our thoughts to the riddle of life and find a satisfying answer in the depths of our own souls.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE LESSONS OF ART

"Art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance on every side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of universal relation and power which the work evinced in the artist, and its highest effect is to make new artists."

HAZ

EMERSON.

AZLITT opens his essay "On the Pleasure of
Painting" with the following words :—

You

There is a pleasure in painting which none but painters know.' In writing, you have to contend with the world in painting, you have only to carry on a friendly strife with Nature. From the moment that you take up the pencil and look Nature in the face you are at peace with your own heart. No angry passions rise to disturb the silent progress of the work, to shake the hand, or dim the brow; no irritable humours are set afloat. You have no absurd opinions to combat, no point to strain, no adversary to crush, no fool to annoy. are actuated by fear or favour to no man. There is 'no juggling here,' no sophistry, no intrigue, no tampering with the evidence, no attempt to make black white or white black; but you resign yourself into the hands of a greater power, that of Nature, with the simplicity of a child and the devotion of an enthusiast. 'Study with joy her manner, and with rapture taste her style.' The mind is calm and full at the same time. The hand and eye are equally employed. In tracing the commonest