successfully intrusive. In any case, of final
halting on the top of the hill or not, it is a
sadly unprofitable way of spending the time
given us as a day-school for eternity; and there
is no need to waste much sympathy on the
miserable Sisyphus who has placed his soul's
chief good in the drawing-rooms of certain
fellow-mortals, and who, in striving after that
good, gets his knuckles well rapped, and his
toes well pinched, by the headlong descent
of the stone so laboriously hoisted.

Others, also spending their lives in the same
endeavour, have the disadvantage against them
of a blot on the family arms, or their own hands
not always kept in ermine-like purity and
cleanliness. Either of which dead weights makes
the stone-rolling of acceptance into good society
a very Sisyphusian matter indeed, and the
rebuffs, and tumbles backward, and sprawlings
prostrate in the great plain of failures, well
bespattered, of quite as frequent occurrence as
the liftings and the strainings. One can
understand this manner of stone-rolling though, as
emblemising the condonation of past offences—
the whitewashing of befouled escutcheons, the
cleansing of bemired hands. Taken in this
light it has its value, and is not altogether of
such contemptible activity as that involved in
the attempt to obtain an arm-chair in grand
houses, where rightfully, according to the
rightfulness of social fitness, Sisyphus has no
business, and ought not to put in his appearance
at all. But how many people are there,
who, instead of being contented with pleasant
ledges flower strewn, and the shady angles to
be found half way up the social hill, where they
might sit and take their ease for ever, lose all
the advantages of the one without gaining any
of the other; and so, striving ever to reach the
summit which rejects them ignominiously, pass
by the pleasant places where they might have
rested at their ease, obtaining nothing in the
struggle but unending failure and enduring
shame.

Another and a graver manner of rolling
stones up-hill, with apparently as hopeless
results, is to be found with all teachers and
preachers of good doctrines, not palatable to
the grosser multitude. This rolling the stone
of truth up-hill is hard work; for it is sure to
come clattering down again in a shower of
ancient sins, so soon as it seems to have reached
the top, bringing with it a cloud of dust obscuring
all visible things for the time being. Every
teacher of good doctrines, every preacher of
new truths, bewails this sadly certain result.
Sometimes, indeed, the stone comes back like
the boomerang, on the head of the sender; and
sometimes it brings with it a fagot all in flames
and a san benito fluttering on a pole; and
sometimes a sharpened knife; and sometimes a
hempen cord with a running knot just fitting
under the left ear; the meeds and guerdons of
those who roll stones the multitude would
rather were left undisturbed. Line upon line
and precept upon precept—inch by inch, ledge
by ledge, tract by tract, Sisyphus, as the
teacher, rolls his stone up the steep hill of
human ignorance and vice; he clears this broken
bit of ground, he avoids that tract of thorny
scrub, he surmounts that formidable crag—bad
habits, prejudice, and pride, he overcomes them
all—and his stone rolls slowly on to the hill-
top. He utters his lo pæans and takes breath
after his labour; but in a moment the pleasant
dream of rest and success is broken, down
comes the stone of truth, tearing across the
face of the steep hill; for whatever else may
have been conquered, a platform of stability,
broad and level enough for its sure resting-place,
has not been gained. And so, all his labour is in
vain, and the work must be begun anew. Every
earnest pastor, every zealous schoolmaster,
every conscientious parent, will echo these words:
they will all confess to the perpetual falling
back into chaotic ruin of the stones with which
they had hoped to build an enduring temple of
truth in the young souls hanging on them for
noble guidance. They will all sigh over the
incessant repetition of effort needed, and the
depressing recurrence of failure. They will all
understand feelingly the myth of Sisyphus in
Hades, and know what rolling stones up-hill
without ever reaching the summit, or resting
in success, means as a spiritual parable.

Making unacceptable love, culminating in
rejected offers of marriage, is another kind of
stone-rolling never out of date. Some men
spend the best years of their lives in this kind
of thing, always essaying the impossible, and
unable to take the first No for the final one.
Heavily rolling up the unlovely stone over every
delicate fence-work set up to keep off such
ponderous boulders, at last they reach the top,
where they have all along persuaded themselves
stands a cozy little arbour full of blisses, and
kisses, and roses, and doves, and skewered
hearts, and all the rest of it, with "Rest and be
thankful" printed in golden letters across a sky-
blue ground outside. No evidence midway can
persuade them that their cozy little arbour is a
mere hallucination of the senses, a mere phantasy
and make-up of their own. On they go, plodding
painfully; and when they reach the top and make
the final and unmistakable essay, which must
be success or failure—in a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye, in the space of a sob—down
comes the stone with a clatter on to the plain,
sometimes breaking the heart of poor Sisyphus
as it falls.

Another rolls his stone up the parliamentary
incline, without ever reaching the summit where
St. Stephen's stands; another jerks his from
race-course to race-course, and from stable to
stable, but always lands in the mire, whatever
the colours wrapped round his boulder; another
tries coal-pits; another gold-mines; another
crack companies; and another new inventions;
all with eyes fixed on the same point—the golden
image of generous Fortune standing like a
shining beacon on the top of the hill up which
they hoist their stones with diligence more
praiseworthy than successful. Some make
themselves into the likeness of old Sisyphus in