m throughout a life of
stress and of striving, may, when he nears the end, be dishonoured by a
weakness which is mere disease. But happily I am not often troubled by
that dark anticipation.

I always turn out of my way to walk through a country churchyard; these
rural resting-places are as attractive to me as a town cemetery is
repugnant. I read the names upon the stones, and find a deep solace in
thinking that for all these the fret and the fear of life are over. There
comes to me no touch of sadness; whether it be a little child or an aged
man, I have the same sense of happy accomplishment; the end having come,
and with it the eternal peace, what matter if it came late or soon? There
is no such gratulation as _Hic jacet_. There is no such dignity as that
of death. In the path trodden by the noblest of mankind these have
followed; that which of all who live is the utmost thing demanded, these
have achieved. I cannot sorrow for them, but the thought of their
vanished life moves me to a brotherly tenderness. The dead, amid this
leafy silence, seem to whisper encouragement to him whose fate yet
lingers: As we are, so shalt thou be; and behold our quiet!



XIII.


Many a time, when life went hard with me, I have betaken myself to the
Stoics, and not all in vain. Marcus Aurelius has often been one of my
bedside books; I have read him in the night watches, when I could not
sleep for misery, and when assuredly I could have read nothing else. He
did not remove my burden; his proofs of the vanity of earthly troubles
availed me nothing; but there was a soothing harmony in his thought which
partly lulled my mind, and the mere wish that I could find strength to
emulate that high example (though I knew that I never should) was in
itself a safeguard against the baser impulses of wretchedness. I read
him still, but with no turbid emotion, thinking rather of the man than of
the philosophy, and holding his image dear in my heart of hearts.

Of course the intellectual assumption wh