Curious to say, now in Oxford and other places that used to seem to live at anchor in the stream of time, regardless of all changes, they are getting into the highest humour of mutation, and all sorts of new ideas are getting afloat.  It is evident that whatever is not made of asbestos will have to be burnt in this world.  It will not stand the heat it is getting exposed to.  And in saying that, it is but saying in other words that we are in an epoch of anarchy—­anarchy plus the constable. (Laughter.) There is nobody that picks one’s pocket without some policeman being ready to take him up. (Renewed laughter.) But in every other thing he is the son, not of Kosmos, but of Chaos.  He is a disobedient, and reckless, and altogether a waste kind of object—­commonplace man in these epochs; and the wiser kind of man—­the select, of whom I hope you will be part—­has more and more a set time to it to look forward, and will require to move with double wisdom; and will find, in short, that the crooked things that he has to pull straight in his own life, or round about, wherever he may be, are manifold, and will task all his strength wherever he may go.

But why should I complain of that either?—­for that is a thing a man is born to in all epochs.  He is born to expend every particle of strength that God Almighty has given him, in doing the work he finds he is fit for—­to stand it out to the last breath of life, and do his best.  We are called upon to do that; and the reward we all get—­which we are perfectly sure of if we have merited it—­is that we have got the work done, or, at least, that we have tried to do the work; for that is a great blessing in itself; and I should say there is not very much more reward than that going in this world.  If the man gets meat and clothes, what matters it whether he have L10,000, or L10,000,000, or L70 a-year.  He can get meat and clothes for that; and he will find very little difference intrinsically, if he is a wise man.

I warmly second the advice of the wisest of men—­“Don’t be ambitious; don’t be at all too desirous to success; be loyal and modest.”  Cut down the proud towering thoughts that you get into you, or see they be pure as well as high.  There is a nobler ambition than the gaining of all California would be, or the getting of all the suffrages that are on the planet just now. (Loud and prolonged cheers.)

Finally, gentlemen, I have one advice to give you, which is practically of very great importance, though a very humble one.

I have no doubt you will have among you people ardently bent to consider life cheap, for the purpose of getting forward in what they are aiming at of high; and you are to consider throughout, much more than is done at present, that health is a thing to be attended to continually—­that you are to regard that as the very highest of all temporal things for you. (Applause.) There is no kind of achievement you could make in the world that is equal to perfect health.  What are nuggets and millions?  The French financier said, “Alas! why is there no sleep to be sold?” Sleep was not in the market at any quotation.  (Laughter and applause.)