due to a want of that kind of imagination which enables us to realise sufferings with which we have never been brought into direct contact, and that once this power of realisation is acquired, the coldness is speedily dispelled. Nor can it be doubted that in the management of thought, the dream power often plays a most important part in alleviating human suffering; illuminating cheerless and gloomy lives, and breaking the chain of evil or distressing thoughts.

The immense place which the literature of fiction holds in the world shows how widely some measure of it is diffused, and how large an amount of time and talent is devoted to its cultivation. It is probable, however, that it is really stronger in the earlier and uncultivated than in the later stages of humanity, as it is more vivid in childhood and in youth than in mature life. 'A child,' as an American writer' has well said, 'can afford to sleep without dreaming; he has plenty of dreams without sleep.' The childhood of the world is also eminently an age of dreams. There are stages of civilisation in which the dream world blends so closely with the world of realities, in which the imagination so habitually and so spontaneously transfigures or distorts, that men become almost incapable of distinguishing between the real and the fictitious. This is the true age of myths and legends; and there are strata in contemporary society in which something of the same conditions are reproduced. To those who do not read or write much,' says an acute observer, 'even in our days, dreams are much more real than to those who are continually exercising the imagination.... Since I have been occupied with literature my dreams have lost all vividness, and are less real than the shadows 1 Cable.

of the trees; they do not deceive me even in my sleep. At every hour of the day I am accustomed to call up figures at will before my eyes, which stand out welldefined and coloured to the very hue of their faces. . . . The less literary a people the more they believe in dreams; the disappearance of superstition is not due to the cultivation of reason or the spread of knowledge, but purely to the mechanical effect of reading, which so perpetually puts figures and aerial shapes before the mental gaze that in time those that occur naturally, are thought no more of than those conjured into existence by a book. It is in far-away country places where people read very little that they see phantoms and consult the oracles of fate. Their dreams are real.'1

The last point I would notice in the management of character is the importance of what may be called moral safety-valves. One of the most fatal mistakes in education is the attempt which is so often made by the educator to impose his own habits and tastes on natures that are essentially different. It is common for men of lymphatic temperaments, of studious, saintly, and retiring tastes, to endeavour to force a high-spirited young man starting in life into their own mould-to prescribe for him the cast of tastes and pursuits they find most suited for themselves, forgetting that such an ideal can never satisfy a wholly different nature, and that in aiming at it a kind of excellence which might easily have been attained is missed. This is one of the evils that very frequently arise when the education of boys after an early age is left in the hands of women. It is the true explanation of the fact, which has so often been noticed, that children of clergymen, or at least children educated on

Jefferies, Field and Hedgerow, p. 242.

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a rigidly austere, puritanical system, so often go conspicuously to the bad. Such an education, imposed on a nature that is unfit for it, generally begins by producing hypocrisy, and not unfrequently ends by a violent reaction into vice. There is no greater mistake in education than to associate virtue in early youth with gloomy colours and constant restrictions, and few people do more mischief in the world than those who are perpetually inventing crimes. In circles where smoking, or field sports, or going to the play, or reading novels, or indulging in any boisterous games or in the most harmless Sunday amusements are treated as if they were grave moral offences, young men constantly grow up who end by looking on grave moral offences as not worse than these things. They lose all sense of proportion and perspective in morals, and those who are always straining at gnats are often peculiarly apt to swallow camels. It is quite right that men who have formed for themselves an ideal of life of the kind that I have described should steadily pursue it, but it is another thing to impose it upon others, and to prescribe it as of general application. By teaching as absolutely wrong things that are in reality only culpable in their abuse or their excess, they destroy the habit of moderate and restrained enjoyment, and a period of absolute prohibition is often followed by a period of unrestrained license.

The truth is there are elements in human nature which many moralists might wish to be absent, as they are very easily turned in the direction of vice, but which at the same time are inherent in our being, and if rightly understood are essential elements of human progress. The love of excitement and adventure; the fierce combative instinct that delights in danger, in struggle, and

even in destruction; the restless ambition that seeks with an insatiable longing to better its position and to climb heights that are yet unscaled; the craving for some enjoyment which not merely gives pleasure but carries with it the thrill of passion-all this lies deep in human nature, and plays a great part in that struggle for existence, in that harsh and painful process of evolution by which civilisation is formed, faculty stimulated to its full development, and human progress secured. In the education of the individual as in the education of the race, the true policy in dealing with these things is to find for them a healthy, useful, or at least harmless sphere of action. In the chemistry of character they may ally themselves with the most heroic as well as with the worst parts of our nature, and the same passion for excitement which in one man will take the form of ruinous vice, in another may lead to brilliant enterprise, while in a third it may be turned with no great difficulty into channels which are very innocent.

Take, for example, the case to which I have already referred, of a perfectly commonplace boy who, on coming of age, finds himself with a competence that saves him from the necessity of work; and who has no ambition, literary or artistic taste, love of work, interest in politics, religious or philanthropic earnestness, or special talent. What will become of him? In probably the majority of cases ruin, disease, and an early death lie before him. He seeks only for amusement and excitement, and three fatal temptations await him-drink, gambling, and If he falls under the dominion of these, or even of one of them, he almost infallibly wrecks either his fortune, his constitution, or both. It is perfectly useless to set before him high motives or ideals, or to incite him

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to lines of life for which he has no aptitude, and which can give him no pleasure. What then can save him? Most frequently a happy marriage; but even if he is fortunate enough to attain this, it will probably only be after several years, and in those years a fatal bias is likely to be given to his life which can never be recovered. Yet experience shows that in cases of this kind a keen love of sport can often do much. With his gun and with his hunter he finds an interest, an excitement, an employment which may not be particularly noble, but which is at least sufficiently absorbing, and is not injurious either to his morals, his health, or his fortune. It is no small gain if in the competition of pleasures, country pleasures take the place of those town pleasures which, in such cases as I have described, usually mean pleasures of vice.

Nor is it by any means only in such cases that field sports prove a great moral safety-valve scattering morbid tastes, and giving harmless and healthy vent to turns of character or feeling which might very easily be converted into vice. Among the influences that form the character of the upper classes of Englishmen they have a great part, and in spite of the exaggerations and extravagances that often accompany them, few good observers will doubt that they have an influence for good. However much of the Philistine element there may be in the upper classes in England; however manifest may be their limitations and their defects, there can be little doubt that on the whole the conditions of English life have in this sphere proved successful. There are few better working types within the reach of commonplace men than that of an English gentleman with his conventional tastes, standard of honour, religion, sympathies, ideals, opinions and