IN the first flush of youth our imaginative faculties are very active. In childhood we rove through Fairyland and play with the little elves; in youth the tiny elves have grown up to be nymphs of our own size and age, and from the summer moonlight we step into the rosy dawn, all fragrant and lightsome, with a glamour over everything which is delicious to our senses. By-and-by, as youth falls from us, we step out from the glades and meadows into the dry and dusty highway of life, our bags upon our backs and our rakes in our hands, with a long stretch of uninteresting country before us and a shadeless sky above us; we go out to gather specimens and dissect everything which we cannot understand. Then comes the twilight, when we sit down to rest upon the cliffs at the end of the road, with a limitless ocean in front of us, and what we have left behind.

In childhood, youth, and manhood we are for ever looking forward; in age we are apt to look behind.

In childhood, youth, and manhood we have very little room in our hearts for pity or charity, but when we sit down calmly to rest and look back, if the angels of divine pity and universal charity are not near to us to counsel and condone, our case is hopeless in the extreme.

The world has lost its childhood, and so there are no longer fairies in it; it is quickly losing its youth, and Love does not now flutter through the sky, a living cherub, but lies on the ground motionless, denuded of its wings, waiting shiveringly for the sharp knife of the vivisector.

Everything sacred or emotional is put to the test of reason, and we are growing so hard and matter-of-fact, that what might have made us weep before only affords matter for discussion now.

Yet misery and poverty and suffering are with us still, as they were always; perhaps more so now, when the few are becoming richer and the many poorer and less able to fight.

Still, one softening relic of the past remains to us, although it is taking on the garments of the age—Art, which, however much it may strive to imitate the emotionless present, no more can exist without emotion than could the rainbow without colour.

True art is like what religion ought to be—all-sufficing and all-embracing. Within its magic circle live the virtues and the vices, so that when the student approaches he may take his choice with which to walk through life.

If he takes the virtues as his guides, he paints and understands only beauty, and thus raises himself and his audience towards faith, love, and charity.

If he takes the vices, he becomes brutishly realistic and degraded, inspiring his audience with unbelief, passion, and hopeless selfishness.

And therefore, as charity is the greatest of all the virtues, I take my art as the direct inspiration towards charity; feeling that if this angel follows me along the dry highway, and shelters me with her spreading wings, when I come to the cliffs and sit down to rest I may look behind and see the sins I have left covered with white flowers and that limitless ocean bathed in the golden glory of the setting day—a day not all mis-spent or profitless.

How to do the best for art, since art can do so much for us, is the intention I have had in the writing of these chapters. How to live so that we may be in the best condition to fulfil our obligations without losing a moment of the time at our disposal, this is the motive of these self-reflections.

Looking round upon nature, I find that the animals nearest perfection are graminivorous—that is, nearest to that state of peace and purity which we believe Heaven to be—whilst the carnivora represent the vices of unrest, passion, cruelty, and ambition.

Reasoning out this observation further, I think that if man could live naturally, without excitement and haste or the voracious desire for place and fortune, he would become more poetic, more art-loving, and charitable; therefore, nearer to a state of perfection by imitating the graminivora than he will by following the habits of the carnivora.

Still, I must admit that before this can be accomplished society must be altogether changed. From experience as a vegetarian and a non-vegetarian, I have come to the conclusion that unless man can afford to step aside from the rushing stream of competition, and the thousand excitements which hurry us along in a mad race with every nerve on the strain, he cannot possibly be a vegetarian, or, in its highest sense, a true artist.

I think that climate has nothing whatever to do with this question, but that the false conditions of life have everything to do with it. The most God-like man is the one who can abnegate without feeling the sacrifice. This is the ideal man, and he will be a vegetarian.

But he who is forced into the arena of life by circumstances, and who is compelled to fight, must live as the fighting animals live, and be carnivorous.

This is the choice in life which some of us have before us at the start, and to those who can choose I mainly address these chapters. For the rest, who, like myself, must run at breakneck pace until we fall down and die, I can only pray for indulgence from the angels of pity and charity.

GROUP OF FISHER-FOLK (From a photograph by John Foster of Coldstream)
GROUP OF FISHER-FOLK
(From a photograph by John Foster of Coldstream)