with a deeper dredging of pearls and coral; but
it has also the chance of shipwrecks, and water-
spouts, and foundering in mid-channel, of beating
to pieces on sullen sand-bars, and of hurling
in desperate destruction against stubborn rocks.
The narrow harbour, on the contrary, is poor and
strait. There is not a shell on its shores, there
is not a pearl in all its oysters—and there are not
many oysters at the best, with pearls or without;
its coasts are flat, the trees are dwarfed, and
the corn-fields scant and ragged; there is no
beauty in all its borders, and no wealth in all its
width; but then it is safe and certain; and poor
as is the food to be found in its dull waters, it
is food fit for human use, say what you will,
and keeps the bolt shot against starvation. The
hand or the bush? Safe stowage and a narrow
margin for pleasure, gain, or beauty—or a
potentiality of pearls and shipwreck, by no means
unlikely? Of the two, which?

Who among us knows what were the words
that wisdom whispered in our ears, until after
the event? We can all see clearly enough the
road travelled over, and it costs few of us any
trouble is, indeed, rather a favourite exercise
than not—to point out where John fell, and
James tripped; and why Richard lost his way,
the coward! being frightened at molehills,
which he swore were mountains; and how
William went supperless to bed, making for an
old scarecrow in the fields which he mistook for
the bush above the inn door, and so missing wine
and aim and shelter all at a blow. Post-dated
criticism on our neighbours' actions is as easy as
the alphabet; but how about pilotage? When
the mists hang thick and the rain falls fast, and
when the lengthening evening shadows distort
all they touch, who can walk in the unknown
land with such confidence as to be sure that
nothing will betray him into danger or lure him
into erring? No one. With the wisest it is only
hope and the nice calculations of the keen-eyed;
it can never be certainty and the knowledge of
the approved, until the ground has been gone
over and the measuring-tape rolled up.

And small blame to those who, forsaking the
mean actual, go after the grander ideal, with all
sails set, with banners flying, with trumpets
blaring, and wild eyes strained upward to the
heaven they seek to scale in a two-horsed
chariot, silver bright, and hot as love and zeal
can make it! Had we not these, where would
be our heroes and our poets, our saints and our
martyrs, our demi-gods drinking nectar with the
Son of Chronos, and our apostles calmly giving
themselves to the death which was the world's
life? What was in their hands?—the bird of
safety, ease, the world's esteem and woman's
love, of children playing round their knees, and
of honours lasting for a lifetime; and what did
they see in the green bush beyond? They saw
the realisation of the Divine Law and the re-
generation of the sons of men; they saw the
Holiness of a world and the love of God; they
saw the life which knows no death, the beauty
which can never fade, the glory that has no
decay, the peace which passeth not away;
all this they saw in the green bush beyond the
homestead, and they let go what they had, to
compass, if they could, what they hoped. Shall
we blame them? No; to them at all events
the greater possible was the truth, and to have
held on to the smaller actual would have been
the lie.

Sometimes, too, the temptation of the chance
is so overpowering that we should be more than
men did we refrain from letting the plain brown
hen escape while making a clutch at those two
gold and silver pheasants strutting along the
hedge-row, quite within grasp as it would seem.
Gold and silver pheasants quite within grasp are
not so plentiful as hedge-row bearings, that we
should let them wander on unquestioned; and
plain brown hens, laying their one egg daily,
are to be had at every barn-door, and are, therefore,
not such wonderful possessions, judging
of value by rarity. True, they lay their one
egg daily, which makes an omelette whereby
the hungry can live; but the soul soon sickens
of its eternal omelette, and the feathers of
the gold and silver pheasants sparkle in the
sun radiantly. What if the eggs were of the
same? The chance, to souls sickened of the
Dorking omelette, is worth something! And
yet how often that chance turns out to be a
mere delusion and a snare, and poor old Brownie
would have been the better portion after all!
It was such a hen as this which young Lightfoot
let escape, when he gave up his clerk's stool—
which at least had its legs of bread-and-butter
certain, though the butter was thin and only
Dorset—for the chance of promotion in India,
that land of gold and silver pheasants and all
rare fruits and flowers to boot. The bird in
the hand flew away never to be recaptured, and
the two stately pheasants in the bush just
winked at young Lightfoot knowingly, then
spread their wings and soared aloft, and left
him with his nose to the grindstone and his
feet in the stocks, a spectacle for gods and men
to pity or deride, according to their humour.

So with Miss Clarissa Manlove. Clarissa had
a good fat Dorking (what matter if the word
looks like donkey on paper?) in serviceable
leash, when the greatest brewer for twenty miles
round made her the offer of his house and heart,
if she would share the one and join hands over the
other. Clarissa's father was not a man of many
omelettes, nor yet of roasts as daily food; and the
silly young woman might have feathered her nest
and furnished the spit for the rest of her
natural term, had she but accepted the brewer's
friendly offer. But she refused, flying at higher
game forsooth. For who but Cashbox, the rich
banker's handsome son, had danced with her
four times in succession last week at the County
ball, and called her a houri at the end? (Cashbox
had been in the East, he said; his friends
said for him that he had only gone through a
severe course of Layard and the Arabian
Nights.) Cashbox was a golden pheasant ten
thousand strong; and the respectable brewer
with the small eyes and the heavy jowl had
not one-twentieth that weight; still, he was