THE WORLD’S A BUBBLE

From ‘Works,’ Vol. xiv.

The world’s a bubble, and the life of man
less than a span;
In his conception wretched, from the womb
so to the tomb: 
Curst from the cradle, and brought up to years
with cares and fears. 
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns the water, or but writes in dust.

     Yet since with sorrow here we live opprest,
                         what life is best? 
     Courts are but only superficial schools
                         to dandle fools. 
     The rural parts are turned into a den
                         of savage men. 
     And where’s the city from all vice so free,
     But may be termed the worst of all the three?

     Domestic cares afflict the husband’s bed,
                         or pains his head. 
     Those that live single take it for a curse,
                         or do things worse. 
     Some would have children; those that have them moan,
                         or wish them gone. 
     What is it then to have or have no wife,
     But single thraldom, or a double strife?

     Our own affections still at home to please
                         is a disease: 
     To cross the seas to any foreign soil
                         perils and toil. 
     Wars with their noise affright us:  when they cease,
                         we are worse in peace. 
     What then remains, but that we still should cry
     Not to be born, or being born to die.

WALTER BAGEHOT

(1826-1877)

BY FORREST MORGAN

Walter Bagehot was born February 3d, 1826, at Langport, Somersetshire, England; and died there March 24th, 1877.  He sprang on both sides from, and was reared in, a nest of wealthy bankers and ardent Liberals, steeped in political history and with London country houses where leaders of thought and politics resorted; and his mother’s brother-in-law was Dr. Prichard the ethnologist.  This heredity, progressive by disposition and conservative by trade, and this entourage, produced naturally enough a mind at once rapid of insight and cautious of judgment, devoted almost equally to business action and intellectual speculation, and on its speculative side turned toward the fields of political history and sociology.

[Illustration:  WALTER BAGEHOT]

But there were equally important elements not traceable.  His freshness of mental vision, the strikingly novel points of view from which he looked at every subject, was marvelous even in a century so fertile of varied independences:  he complained that “the most galling of yokes is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor,” the obligation of thinking as he thinks.  He had a keen, almost reckless wit and delicious buoyant humor, whose utterances never pall