*
Whether we regard life as a lane leading to a dead wall--a
mere bag's end, as the French say--or whether we think of
it as a vestibule or gymnasium, where we wait our turn and
prepare our faculties for some more noble destiny; whether
we thunder in a pulpit, or pule in little atheistic poetry-
books, about its vanity and brevity; whether we look justly
for years of health and vigour, or are about to mount into
a bath-chair, as a step towards the hearse; in each and all
of these views and situations there is but one conclusion
possible: that a man should stop his ears against
paralysing terror, and run the race that is set before him
with a single mind.
As courage and intelligence are the two qualities best
worth a good man's cultivation, so it is the first part of
intelligence to recognise our precarious estate in life,
and the first part of courage to be not at all abashed
before the fact. A frank and somewhat headlong carriage,
not looking too anxiously before, not dallying in maudlin
regret over the past, stamps the man who is well armoured
for this world.
*
It is not over the virtues of a curate-and-tea-party novel
that people are abashed into high resolutions. It may be
because their hearts are crass, but to stir them properly
they must have men entering into glory with sonic pomp
and circumstance. And that is why these stories of our
sea-captains, printed, so to speak, in capitals, and full of
bracing moral influence, are more valuable to England than
any material benefit in all the books of political economy
between Westminster and Birmingham.
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