of all but the luckiest and sturdiest.  Of course, if there are too many either cattle or schools, they browse so effectually that they find no more food, and starve till equilibrium is restored; but it seems to be a provision of nature that there should always be these alternate periods, during which either the cattle or the trees are getting the best of it; and, indeed, without such provision we should have neither the one nor the other.  At this moment the cattle, doubtless, are in the ascendant, and if university extension proceeds much farther, we shall assuredly have no more Mrs. Newtons and Mrs. Bromfields; but whatever is is best, and, on the whole, I should propose to let things find pretty much their own level.

However this may be, who can question that the treasures hidden in many a country house contain sleeping beauties even fairer than those that I have endeavoured to waken from long sleep in the foregoing article?  How many Mrs. Quicklys are there not living in London at this present moment?  For that Mrs. Quickly was an invention of Shakespeare’s I will not believe.  The old woman from whom he drew said every word that he put into Mrs. Quickly’s mouth, and a great deal more which he did not and perhaps could not make use of.  This question, however, would again lead me far from my subject, which I should mar were I to dwell upon it longer, and therefore leave with the hope that it may give my readers absolutely no food whatever for reflection.

How to Make the Best of Life {142}

I have been asked to speak on the question how to make the best of life, but may as well confess at once that I know nothing about it.  I cannot think that I have made the best of my own life, nor is it likely that I shall make much better of what may or may not remain to me.  I do not even know how to make the best of the twenty minutes that your committee has placed at my disposal, and as for life as a whole, who ever yet made the best of such a colossal opportunity by conscious effort and deliberation?  In little things no doubt deliberate and conscious effort will help us, but we are speaking of large issues, and such kingdoms of heaven as the making the best of these come not by observation.

The question, therefore, on which I have undertaken to address you is, as you must all know, fatuous, if it be faced seriously.  Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.  One cannot make the best of such impossibilities, and the question is doubly fatuous until we are told which of our two lives—­the conscious or the unconscious—­is held by the asker to be the truer life.  Which does the question contemplate—­the life we know, or the life which others may know, but which we know not?