pulses going true and fast, and gathers impetus as he runs, until, if he be running towards anything better than wildfire, he may shoot up and become a constellation in the end.  Lord look after his health, Lord have a care of his soul, says he; and he has at the key of the position, and swashes through incongruity and peril towards his aim.  Death is on all sides of him with pointed batteries, as he is on all sides of all of us; unfortunate surprises gird him round; mim-mouthed friends[19] and relations hold up their hands in quite a little elegiacal synod about his path:  and what cares he for all this?  Being a true lover of living, a fellow with something pushing and spontaneous in his inside, he must, like any other soldier, in any other stirring, deadly warfare, push on at his best pace until he touch the goal.  “A peerage or Westminster Abbey!"[20] cried Nelson in his bright, boyish, heroic manner.  These are great incentives; not for any of these, but for the plain satisfaction of living, of being about their business in some sort or other, do the brave, serviceable men of every nation tread down the nettle danger,[21] and pass flyingly over all the stumbling-blocks of prudence.  Think of the heroism of Johnson, think of that superb indifference to mortal limitation that set him upon his dictionary, and carried him through triumphantly until the end!  Who, if he were wisely considerate of things at large, would ever embark upon any work much more considerable than a halfpenny post card?  Who would project a serial novel, after Thackeray and Dickens had each fallen in mid-course?[22] Who would find heart enough to begin to live, if he dallied with the consideration of death?

And, after all, what sorry and pitiful quibbling all this is!  To forego all the issues of living in a parlour with a regulated temperature—­as if that were not to die a hundred times over, and for ten years at a stretch!  As if it were not to die in one’s own lifetime, and without even the sad immunities of death!  As if it were not to die, and yet be the patient spectators of our own pitiable change!  The Permanent Possibility is preserved, but the sensations carefully held at arm’s length, as if one kept a photographic plate in a dark chamber.  It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser.  It is better to live and be done with it, than to die daily in the sickroom.  By all means begin your folio; even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.  It is not only in finished undertakings that we ought to honour useful labour.  A spirit goes out of the man who means execution, which outlives the most untimely ending.  All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work,[23] although they may die before they have the time to sign it.  Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in