different way from what the Latin races do.  There was very little suicide among the men of the North, because every man considered it his duty to get killed, not to kill himself; and to kill himself would have seemed cowardly, as implying fear of being killed by others.  In modern ethical training, quite apart from religious considerations a man is taught that suicide is only excusable in case of shame, or under such exceptional circumstances as have occurred in the history of the Indian mutiny.  At all events, we have the feeling still strongly manifested in England that suicide is not quite manly; and this is certainly due much more to ancestral habits of thinking, which date back to pagan days, than to Christian doctrine.  As I have said, the pagan English would not commit suicide to escape mere pain.  But the Northern people knew how to die to escape shame.  There is an awful story in Roman history about the wives and daughters of the conquered German tribes, thousands in number, asking to be promised that their virtue should be respected, and all killing themselves when the Roman general refused the request.  No Southern people of Europe in that time would have shown such heroism upon such a matter.  Leaving honour aside, however, the old book tells us that a man should never despair.

    Fire, the sight of the sun, good health, and a blameless
    life these are the goodliest things in this world.

    Yet a man is not utterly wretched, though he have bad health, or
    be maimed.

    The halt may ride a horse; the handless may drive a herd; the deaf
    can fight and do well; better be blind than buried.  A corpse is
    good for naught.

On the subject of women there is not very much in the book beyond the usual caution in regard to wicked women; but there is this little observation: 

    Never blame a woman for what is all man’s weakness.  Hues charming
    and fair may move the wise and not the dullard.  Mighty love turns
    the son of men from wise to fool.

This is shrewd, and it contains a very remarkable bit of esthetic truth, that it requires a wise man to see certain kinds of beauty, which a stupid man could never be made to understand.  And, leaving aside the subject of love, what very good advice it is never to laugh at a person for what can be considered a common failure.  In the same way an intelligent man should learn to be patient with the unintelligent, as the same poem elsewhere insists.

Now what is the general result of this little study, the general impression that it leaves upon the mind?  Certainly we feel that the life reflected in these sentences was a life in which caution was above all things necessary—­caution in thought and speech and act, never ceasing, by night or day, during the whole of a man’s life.  Caution implies moderation.  Moderation inevitably develops a certain habit of justice—­a justice that might not