them; they are sad and stony tracts over which he has made haste to cross, and the only use of them is to heighten the sense of security and joy.  And thus the sort of sayings that satisfy and sustain the Anglo-Saxon mind are such irrepressible outbursts of poets as “God’s in His heaven; all’s right with the world”—­the latter part of which is flagrantly contradicted by experience; and, as for the former part, if it be true, it lends no comfort to the man who tries to find his God in the world.  Again, when Browning says that the world “means intensely and means good,” he is but pouring oil upon the darting flame of optimism, because there are many people to whom the world has no particular meaning, and few who can re-echo the statement that it means good.  That some rich surprise, in spite of palpable and hourly experience to the contrary, may possibly await us, is the most that some of us dare to hope.

My own experience, the older I grow, and the more I see of life, is that I feel it to be a much more bewildering and even terrifying thing than I used to think it.  To use a metaphor, instead of its being a patient educational process, which I would give all that I possessed to be able sincerely to believe it to be, it seems to me arranged far more upon the principle of a game of cricket—­which I have always held to be, in theory, the most unjust and fortuitous of games.  You step to the wicket, you have only a single chance; the boldest and most patient man may make one mistake at the outset, and his innings is over; the timid tremulous player may by undeserved good luck contrive to keep his wicket up, till his heart has got into the right place, and his eye has wriggled straight, and he is set.

That is the first horrible fact about life—­that carelessness is often not penalised at all, whereas sometimes it is instantly and fiercely penalised.  One boy at school may break every law, human and divine, and go out into the world unblemished.  Another timid and good-natured child may make a false step, and be sent off into life with a permanent cloud over him.  School life often emphasises the injustice of the world instead of trying to counteract it.  Schoolmasters tend to hustle the weak rather than to curb the strong.

And then we pass into the larger world, and what do we see?  A sad confusion everywhere.  We see an innocent and beautiful girl struck down by a long and painful disease—­a punishment perhaps appropriate to some robust and hoary sinner, who has gathered forbidden fruit with both his hands, and the juices of which go down to the skirts of his clothing; or a brave and virtuous man, with a wife and children dependent on him, needed if ever man was, kind, beneficent, strong, is struck down out of life in a moment.  On the other hand, we see a mean and cautious sinner, with no touch of unselfishness and affection, guarded and secured in material contentment.  Let any one run over in his mind the memories of his own circle,