From a College Window

s, too, to bear the sad burden of its own misuse by affected people. Moreover, it stands for so many things, that one is never quite sure what the people who use it inte

ic, coupled as a rule, in the artistic temperament, with a certain power of expression, an imaginative gift which can ra

ave a strong sense of their own significance and position, a sense which is not justified by any particular performance, who are contemptuous of others, critical, hard to satisfy, who have a general sense of disappointment and dreariness, a craving for recognition, and a feeling that they are not appreciated at their true worth? To such people, sensitive, ineffective, proud, every circumstance of life gives food for discontent. They have vague perceptions which they cannot translate

one sees the outward and the inward combined, but then we get the humble, hopeful artist who lives for and in his work; he is humble because he cannot reach the perfection for which he strives; he is hopeful because he gets nearer to it day by day. But, speaking generally, the temperament is not one that brings steady happiness; it brings with it moments of rapture, when some bright dream is being realized; but

beautiful, mysterious savour. Such people have a strong sense of the significance of their relations with others, they enjoy dealing with characters, with problems, with situations. Having both interest and sympathy, they get the best out of other people; they pierce through the conventional fence that so many of us erect as a protection against intrusion. Such people bring the same perception to bear on technical art. They enjoy books, art, music, without any envious desire to produce; they can enjoy the noble pleasure of admiring and praising. Again and again, in reading the lives of artists, one comes across traces of thes

ves of noble feeling. This is often a great mistake; far below the rapid current of changing and glittering emotion there often lies, in the artistic nature, a reserve, not of tenderness or depth, but of cold and critical calm. There are very few people who are highly developed in one faculty who do not pay for it in some other part of their natures. Below the emotion itself there sits enthroned a hard intellectual force, a power of appraising quality, a Rhadamanthine judgment. It is this hardness which has so

an believe that all experience, all relations with others, all emotions, are and must be subservient to this one aim; they can deepen for him the channels in which his art flows; they can reveal and illustrate to him the significance of the world of which he is the interpreter. Such an aspiration can be a very high and holy thing; it can lead a man to live purely and laboriously, to make sacrifices, to endure hardness. But the altar on which the sacrifice is made, stands, when all is said and done, before the idol of self. With women, though, it is different. The deepest quality in their hearts is, one ma

easure lies in the delight of expression, and who seems, in the zest of shaping a melodious sentence to express as perfectly and lucidly as possible the shape of the thought within, to touch the highest joy of which the spirit is capable. A thought, a scene of beauty comes home with an irresistible sense of power and meaning to the mind or eye; for God to have devised the pale liquid green of the enamelled evening sky, to have set the dark forms of trees against it, and to have hung a star in the thickening gloom-to have done this, and to see that it is good, seems, in certain moods, to be the dearest work of the Divine mind; and the desire to express it, to speak simply of the sight, and of the joy that it arouses, comes upon the mind with a sweet agony; an irresistible spell; life would seem to have been well spent if one had only caught a few such

reciate sense, vigour, faithfulness, kindness, rectitude, and originality, in however humble a sphere these qualities may be displayed. That one should fight hard against conventionality, that one should welcome beauty, both the beauty of natural things, as well as the beauty displayed in sincere and simple lives in every rank of life. I have heard conventional professional people, who thought they were giving utterance to manly and independent sentiments, speak slightingly of dukes and duchesses, as if the possession of high rank necessarily forfeited all claims to simplicity and true-heartedness. Such an attitude is as inartistic and offensive as for a duchess t

of the most unaffected and humble-minded persons I have ever met was a duke, while one of the proudest and most affected Pharisees I ever encountered was a servant. It all depends upon a consciousness of values, a sense of proportion; the only way in which wealth and poverty

ly cultivated. It is not an easy thing to get rid of conventionality, if one has been brought up on conventional

t to the opinion of others; they ought not to insist upon obedience, without giving the reasons why it is desirable and necessary; they ought resolutely to avoid malicious gossip, but not the interested discussion of other personalities; they ought to follow, and to give, direct and simple motives for action, and to learn, if they do not know it, that it is from this simple and quiet independence

e. I saw that it was a mistake to coerce, to correct, to enforce; of course such things have to be done occasionally with wilful and perverse natures; but I realized, after I had gained some practice in dealing with boys, that generous and simple praise, outspoken encouragement, admiration, directness, could win victories that no amount of strictness or repression could win. I began to see th

s to try to disentangle it from the prejudices, the false judgments, the severities, the heavinesses, with which human nature tends to overlay it. Imagine a man oppressed by all the ills which humanity can suffer, by shame and disease and failure. Can it be denied, in the presence of the life of Christ, that it is yet possible to make out of such a situation a noble and a beautiful thing? And that is the supreme value of the example of Christ to the world, that He displayed, if I may so speak, the instinct which I have described in its absolute perfection. He met all humanity face to face, with perfect directness, perfect sympathy, perfect p