passes for “beautiful writing,” but there is always something in really unaffected truth from nature which is caught by the true critic.  I read lately a French romance which is much admired, of this manufactured or second-hand kind.  Every third page was filled with the usual botany, rocks, skies, colors, fore and backgrounds—­“all very fine”—­but in the whole of it not one of those little touches of truth which stir us so in SHAKESPEARE, make us smile in HERRICK or naive PEPYS, or raise our hearts in WORDSWORTH.  These were true men.

To be true we must be far more familiar with Nature than with scene painting or photographs, and to do this we must, so to speak, fascinate ourselves with pictures in life, glad memories of golden hours, rock and river and greenwood tree.  We must also banish resolutely from our past all recollections of enemies and wrongs, troubles and trials, and throw all our heart into doing so.  Forgive and forget all enmities—­those of Misfortune and Fate being included.  Depend upon it that the brighter you can make your Past the pleasanter will be your Future.

This is just the opposite to what most people do, hence the frequent and fond quotation of pessimistic poetry.  It is all folly, and worse.  One result is that in modern books of travel the only truthful or vivid descriptions are of sufferings of all kinds, even down to inferior luncheons and lost hair brushes.  Their joys they sketch with an indifferent skill, like HEINE’S monk, who made rather a poor description of Heaven, but was “gifted in Hell,” which he depicted with dreadful vigor.

I find it a great aid to recall what I can of bygone beautiful associations, and then sleep on them with a resolve that they shall recur in complete condition.  He who will thus resolutely clean up his past life and clear away from it all sorrow as well as he can, and refurnish it with beautiful memories, or make it better, coute que coute, will do himself more good than many a doleful moral adviser ever dreamed of.  This is what I mean by self-fascination—­the making, as it were, by magic art, one’s own past and self more charming than we ever deemed it possible to be.  We thus fascinate ourselves.  Those who believe that everything which is bygone has gone to the devil are in a wretched error.  The future is based on the past—­yes, made from it, and that which was never dies, but returns to bless or grieve.  We mostly wrong our past bitterly, and bitterly does it revenge itself.  But it is like the lion of ANDROCLES, it remembers those who treat it kindly.  “And lo! when ANDROCLES was thrown to the lion to be devoured, the beast lay down at his feet, and licked his hands.”  Yes, we have all our lions!