Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge

k at Cambridge. In the Classical Tripos Arthur contrived to secure a second; in the translations, notably Greek, we heard he d

cepted Arthur's failure to get a scholarship or exhibition, not with equanimity, but with a resolute silence, knowing that strict scholarship

be in the bush-my present life for a doubtful future provision. I think I am ambitious after the event. Every normal human being ought to be capable either of strong expectation or strong disappointment, according as the character lives most in the future or in the past. Those capable of both generally succeed and

aged in my sons would say, 'If this is worth doing, it is worth doing well.' I did not want them to say, 'I mean to work in order to be first in this or that, to beat other people, to court success'-I do not suspect you of that-but to say, 'I mean to do my best, and if I am rewarded with honours to accept them gratefully, as a sign that my endeavours have been blest.' I fear that in your case you have done

u haven't changed your mind; for that is what I have always hoped and prayed for you.

g this letter was very charact

dvice or immediate action-these rarely extorted an answer from him. "It did not seem to me to be very important," he used to say. Neither would he be dictated to. A friend who had asked

f apparently almost unnecessary urgency and affection. A boy who wrote to him from school about a long and difficult moral case, infinitely complicated by side issues and unsatisfactory action, got back the

his leaving Cambridge, neither did he mention the subject. I do not think he gave it a thought, e

apitulating what he had said, and saying that he supposed f

returned the fo

mbridge, Thursday ev

ear F

nsidering the subject; it seemed to me that I could better say what I wished in a personal interview, and I therefore r

for a moment to any other man except one or two friends for whose opinion I have the highest respect; but it is a subject upon which, though I can not exactly say that my mind is made up, yet I s

those from whom he dissents; and nothing but a desire for absolute sincerity would induce me to enter upon it. But knowing and trusting you as I do, with a firm and filial confidence i

that success is either a test of greatness nor, as you suggest, an adequate aim for it, though you will per

ties of moral action which fall in every feeling man's way. I rather mean that I shall face them from the ordinary standpoint, and not thrust myself into any position where helping my fellow-creatures is merely an official

o see if I can piece together in the least the enormous problem of which God has flung us the fragments. I do not despair of arriving at some inkling of that truth. I shall try, if I gain it, to communicate t

. I will not let it overwhelm me. I want to stand aside and think; and my own prayer for my own children, if I had them, would

r travel not a luxury, but a necessity. If you will make me an allowance for that purpose I shall very gladly accept it. If not, I shall endeavour to get so

two. This letter contains only a draft of what

r affecti

r Hami

ng more; and left the discussion of the subject to be

was to make his choice; if he decided not to take up any profession, his father promised to allow him ￡350 a year as long as he lived, and to secure

a post at an upper-class private school, being a substantial suburban house

time our correspondence waned, as we were both very busy. H

with each event, indeed, as it occurs, is thus nothing but interpretation, an earnest endeavour to exclude regret or disappointment, and to see how best to link each fact in our past on with what we know of ourselves, to see its bearing on our individual case. Of course this will ope

but without a predisposition to profit by them leaves school hardly altered in person or mind. It is true that circumstances alter character-that can not be disputed; but circumstances are precisely what we can not touch. A boy, ε?φ?η? as I have described, brought up as a street-arab, would only so far profit by it as to be slightly less vicious and disgusting than his companions. But education, which we speak of as a panacea for all ills, only deals with what it finds, and does not, as we ought to claim, rub down bad points and accentuate good, and it is this, that perhaps more than anything else has made

two letters that his ethical

s time, as they were very much bound up with his life. He told me not unfrequently that religion had been nothing whate

at it is customary for men of marked religious views and high position to have a la

teaching of one of these men. The living original of these words will pardon me if I here insert the words of my friend

e into connection with themselves? what mysterious currents do they set in motion to and from them, so that those who do not t

ious of its own power than any I have seen-a rare quality. He finds all societies into which he enters, stung by his words and looks, serious, sweet, interested in, if not torn by moral and social problems of the deepest import; yet he

ever extended itself to imitation in matters theoretical or religious. Arthur was not one of those i

speaking-in which he shunned the subject in conversation; but I have reason to believe from the books he read, and from two

nt that many whose faith has been very keen and integral in their lives pass through, the dark valley of doubt. His religion ha

understand the darkness you are in. But I have been in deep waters myself, though of another kind. I have seen an old ideal foully shattered in a moment, and a hope that I had held and that had c

was hopeless. My dear friend, I know that God will bring you out into a place of liberty, as He has brought me; in the day when you come and tell me that He has

nsiderable period, and give a fair picture of what

lve not to interfere in any way with the princi

l think, that it is sophistical in tone, and tampers with one of the most sacred of our instincts. It never in his case, I think, made any difference to his presentment of the truth, but it

of one system worked into the fabric by the overmastering new im

er' into a sceptic than vice versa. The habit of firm adherence to principle, the capacity for trust, the adaptation of intellectual resou

e. A great deal of cultivation, of logical readiness, of eloquence, seem to be essentially secular, to belong essentially to the old life, and to need imperativel

ad a moral awakening, which was rude but effective, n

idealism, and a natural enthusiasm, saved him from the pa

n, but it is a complete deception-so complete as not to affect in the slightest my interest in what is going to happen, nor my unconscious posing as a factor in that result. Though I am only a cogwh

it, but I do not; if man was created with a free will, he was also created with pr

ordinarily fascinating to me because it is so hidden; and the least indication of law that I can seize upon-such as this law of necessity-is an entrancing glimpse into reality. It may not be quite so delig

llustration of the phenom

the effect upon our senses is completely illusive; and, what is more, we act as though they were smaller; we act as if what they gained in distance they lost in size; we aim at a target which is m

ason that the thing is impossible; we act

nity was shortly as follows; it is s

dual, dealing with man alone, an infinitesimal part of His creation ... for compare the shred, the span of being which man's existence represents with the countless ?ons of animal and vegetable life which have preceded, and surround, and will in all p

lings and emotions as if they were the end of all these gigantic works-the Milky Way, the blazing sun, the teeming earth-only

but not as my God.'" One sees, I think, where the difficulty lies; it must be fe

ag

y be among us now, though we do not suspect it, in t

about to take. This revelation, too, will be as unexpected as it will be new-it will come in the night as a thief; the 'quo modo' I can no

though he deemed them, often putting a strong constraint upon himself in conversation. If he was pressed to give an account of his religious principles he

gue; you are like a clock that has gone wrong, but insists on chiming to show everybody that it hasn't the least idea of the time;" and secondly, the men who "took no interest" in the problems of religion and morals; for a

y and an Established Church are very striking, and after what has preceded might

ethods are passés, and compare the crude new ideas with them for effect

ed, that has insinuated itself year by year into all the irregularities and whimsical, capricious, unexpected chinks and crannies of human nature, accommodating itself gradually to

purely agnostic view of life, he should continue to receive the Communion with his parents when at home; as t

It would be so much nobler (we are tempted to think) to stand up and protest and denunciate; to throw gloom and dissension into a happy home and wreck (if you are the affectionate son I believe you to be) your own happiness, not to speak of usefulness. It would be more arduous, I admit; not therefore nobler. Your duty is most plain; you have no right to

idea to the Christian creed, were in so many points different from the principles taught and demanded by the Chu

orality, it is your duty to bear such a part in relation to it as shall not mar its usefulness; and you may no more throw it away through caprice or indifferentism than you may throw away your own life, simply because you did not agree

a very heavy responsibility, and it is at any rate

to that position is not quite so secure as the governor alleges; but rather accept his religion together with his life, his circumstances, his disposition, as a condition under which he is born:

s to be quite satisfactory, though we have nothing to offer in its stead? It is like plucking down a savage's wattled cabin. 'First-rate stone ho

position. People will say, Mr. C-- ought to know; he has had opportunities of judging from the inside which other people have not-whereas you have really less opportunity because your horizon is far more limited because you have only seen it from the inside. You are rathe

k their mind about a thing." "The art of life," he said, "consists in knowing exactly what to keep out of sight at any given moment, and

letter about a leading poli

ites, as an instance of a public man who has

to say, not the line you may feel to be highest, but the line that you recognize to be so. Not what your fluctuating emotions may commend, but that which the best moral tact seems to pronounce best. Yo

dence moving to good, and ordering life down to the smallest details with special reference to each man's case;

et home, pushes against the side of the railway carriage which is carrying him so smoothly and seren

unished by long-hidden suffering-the sharp stress of temptation yielded to, requited by the sharp pang-the glorious feeling which I have once or twice felt-the sin once sinned and the punishment once over, as one is assured supremely sometimes that it is without doubt-of trustful freedom, and fresh fitness for battling one's self and helping others to battle-a mood that is soon broken, but is an earnest while it lasts of infinite satisfaction. The extraordinary delicacy with which the screw of pain and mental suffering is adjusted, just lifted when we can bear no more (not when we think we can b

in what we are pleased to call our "plans," and "interrupting,"

intend to write, the petty occupations you think you discharge so gracefully? He means to teach you a great high truth, worth knowing;

ime. He confessed that he did not personally at all like giving up the school work; he had got very much interested in some of the bo

to be a kind of probation. That is to say, I have promised to try what it

. I hate making occupations for myself, and this provides me with regular work at stated hours, leaving other stated hours free, and free in the best way; that is to say, it works the

ce. I don't mean to say I do not or have not disobeyed it, but it is always the worse for me in the end; it is like taking a short cut in the mountains; you get to your end in tim

of education that is to take, say, thirty years, giving them a year of it, and then taking to another; you not only lose your year, but you unfit them for other systems. That is what I should do; my

y theory would forbid me to think so; but it also infor

pendent gentleman. I wish I were a Fellow of a College at Cam