our affair!  And the unwearied self-forgetful attention to every phase of the living universe reflected in our consciousness may be our appointed task on this earth.  A task in which fate has perhaps engaged nothing of us except our conscience, gifted with a voice in order to bear true testimony to the visible wonder, the haunting terror, the infinite passion and the illimitable serenity; to the supreme law and the abiding mystery of the sublime spectacle.

Chi lo sa?  It may be true.  In this view there is room for every religion except for the inverted creed of impiety, the mask and cloak of arid despair; for every joy and every sorrow, for every fair dream, for every charitable hope.  The great aim is to remain true to the emotions called out of the deep encircled by the firmament of stars, whose infinite numbers and awful distances may move us to laughter or tears (was it the Walrus or the Carpenter, in the poem, who “wept to see such quantities of sand"?), or, again, to a properly steeled heart, may matter nothing at all.

The casual quotation, which had suggested itself out of a poem full of merit, leads me to remark that in the conception of a purely spectacular universe, where inspiration of every sort has a rational existence, the artist of every kind finds a natural place; and amongst them the poet as the seer par excellence.  Even the writer of prose, who in his less noble and more toilsome task should be a man with the steeled heart, is worthy of a place, providing he looks on with undimmed eyes and keeps laughter out of his voice, let who will laugh or cry.  Yes!  Even he, the prose artist of fiction, which after all is but truth often dragged out of a well and clothed in the painted robe of imaged phrases—­even he has his place amongst kings, demagogues, priests, charlatans, dukes, giraffes, Cabinet Ministers, Fabians, bricklayers, apostles, ants, scientists, Kaffirs, soldiers, sailors, elephants, lawyers, dandies, microbes and constellations of a universe whose amazing spectacle is a moral end in itself.

Here I perceive (speaking without offence) the reader assuming a subtle expression, as if the cat were out of the bag.  I take the novelist’s freedom to observe the reader’s mind formulating the exclamation, “That’s it!  The fellow talks pro domo.”

Indeed it was not the intention!  When I shouldered the bag I was not aware of the cat inside.  But, after all, why not?  The fair courtyards of the House of Art are thronged by many humble retainers.  And there is no retainer so devoted as he who is allowed to sit on the doorstep.  The fellows who have got inside are apt to think too much of themselves.  This last remark, I beg to state, is not malicious within the definition of the law of libel.  It’s fair comment on a matter of public interest.  But never mind.  Pro domo.  So be it.  For his house tant que vous voudrez.  And yet in truth I was by no means anxious to justify my existence.  The attempt would have been not only needless and absurd,