AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PASSAGES.

The reading of the police will not long satisfy an active conscience or a thoughtful head. But to show you how one or the other may trouble a man, and what a vast extent of frontier is left unridden by this invaluable eighth commandment, let me tell you a few pages out of a young man's life.

He was a friend of mine; a young man like others; generous, flighty, as variable as youth itself, but always with some high motions and on the search for higher thoughts of life. I should tell you at once that he thoroughly agreed with the eighth commandment. But he got hold of some unsettling works, the New Testament among others, and this loosened his views of life and led him into many perplexities. As he was the son of a man in a certain position and well off, my friend had enjoyed from the first the advantages of education, nay, he had been kept alive through a sickly childhood by constant watchfulness, comforts and change of air; for all of which he was indebted to his father's wealth.

At college he met other lads more diligent than himself, who followed the plough in summer-time to pay their

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college fees in winter; and this inequality struck him with
some force. He was at that age of a conversable temper and
insatiably curious in the aspects of life; and he spent
much of his time scraping acquaintance with all classes of
man and womankind. In this way he came upon many depressed
ambitions and many intelligences stunted for want of oppor-
tunity; and this also struck him. He began to perceive
that life was a handicap upon strange wrongsided principles;
and not, as he had been told, a fair and equal race. He
began to tremble lest he himself had been unjustly favoured,
when he saw all the avenues of wealth and power and comfort
closed against so many of his superiors and equals, and held
so unceasingly open before so idle, so desultory and so
dissolute a being as himself. There sat a youth beside
him on the college benches, who had only one shirt to his
back, and, at intervals sufficiently far apart, must stay
at home to have it washed. It was my friend's principle
to stay away as often as he dared; for I fear he was no
friend to learning. But there was something that came home
to him sharply in this fellow who had to give over study
till his shirt was washed, and the scores of others who had

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never an opportunity at all. If one of these could take his
place! he thought; and the thought tore away a bandage
from his eyes. He was eaten by the shame of his discoveries
and despised himself as an unworthy favourite and a creature
of the backstairs of Fortune. He could no longer see with-
out confusion one of these brave young fellows battling up-
hill against adversity. Had he not filched that fellow's
birthright? At best, was he not profiting by the injustice
of society, greedily devouring stolen goods? The money be-
longed to his father, who had worked and thought and given
up his liberty to earn it; but by what justice could the
money belong to my friend, who had as yet done nothing but
help to squander it? A more sturdy honesty, joined to a
more even and impartial temperament, would have drawn from
these considerations a new force of industry, that this
equivocal position might be brought as swiftly as possible
to an end, and some good services to mankind justify the ap-
propriation of expense. It was not so with my friend, who
was only unsettled and discouraged and filled with that trum-
peting anger with which young men regard injustices in the

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first blush of youth: although in a few years they will
tamely acquiesce in their existence and knowingly profit by
their complications. Yet all this time he suffered many in-
dignant pangs. And once when he put on his boots, like
many another unripe donkey, to run away from home, it was
his best consolation that he was now, at a single plunge, to
free himself from the responsibility of this wealth that was
not his, and do battle equally against his fellows in the
warfare of life.

Some time after this, falling into ill-health, he
was sent at a great expense to a more favourable climate;
and then I think his perplexities were thickest. When he
thought of all the other young men of singular promise, up-
right, good, the prop of families, who must remain at home
to die and with all their possibilities be lost to life and
mankind; and how he, by one more unmerited favour, was
chosen out from all these others to survive; he felt as if
there were no life, no labour, no devotion of soul and body,
that could repay and justify these partialities. A reli-
gious lady to whom he communicated these reflections, could
see no force in them whatever. 'It was God's will' said she.

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But he knew, it was by God's will that Joan of Arc was burn-
ed at Rouen, which cleared neither Bedford nor Bishop Canchon;
and again by God's will that Christ was crucified outside
Jerusalem, which excused neither the rancour of the priests
nor the timidity of Pilate. He knew moreover that although
the possibility of this favour he was now enjoying issued
from his circumstances, its acceptance was the act of his
own will, and he had accepted it greedily, longing for rest
and sunshine. And hence this allegation of God's providence
did little to relieve his scruples. I promise you he had a
very troubled mind. And I would not laugh if I were you,
though, while he was thus making mountains out of what you
think molehills, he were still (as perhaps he was) content-
edly practising many other things that to you seem black as
hell. Every one is his own judge and mountain guide through
life. There is an old story of a mote and a beam, apparent-
ly not true, but worthy perhaps of some consideration. I
should, if I were you give some consideration to these scru-
ples of his, and if I were him I should do the like by yours;
for it is not unlikely there may be something under both.
In the meantime you must hear how my friend acted. Like

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many invalids, he supposed that he would die. Now should
he die, he saw no means of repaying this large loan, which,
by the hands of his father, mankind had advanced him for his
sickness. In that case, it would be lost money. So he
determined that the advance should be as small as possible;
and as long as he continued to doubt his recovery, lived in
an upper room and grudged himself all but necessaries. But
so soon as he began to perceive a change for the better, he
felt justified in spending more freely to speed and brighten
his return to health, and trusted in the future to lend a
help to mankind, as mankind, out of its treasury, had lent
a help to him.

I do not say but that my friend was a little too
curious and partial in his view, nor thought too much of him-
self and too little of his parents. But I do say that here
are some scruples that tormented my friend in his youth, and
still perhaps at odd times give him a prick in the midst of
his enjoyments.

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I remember a time when I was very idle and loved
and profited by that humour. I have no idea why I ceased
to be so, yet I scarce believe I have the power to return
to it; it is a change of age. I made consciously a thou-
sand little efforts, but the determination from which these
arose came to me while I slept and in the way of growth.
I have had a thousand skirmishes to keep myself at work upon
particular mornings and sometimes the affair was hot: but
of that great change of campaign which decided all this part
of my life, and turned me from one whose business it was to
shirk into one whose business it was to strive and persevere
- it seems as though all that had been done by someone else.
The life of Goethe affected me, as did that of Balzac, and
some very noble remarks in a pretty bad book, the Cousine
Bette. I daresay I could trace some other influences in
the change. All I mean is; I was never conscious of a
struggle nor registered a vow, nor, seemingly had anything
personally to do with the matter. I came about like a well-
handled ship. There stood at the wheel that Unknown Steers-
man whom we call God.