to keep the body in sound working condition, the plumbing, the gas, the woodwork, the paintings and repaintings, the tons of fuel, the lighting in winter, the contrivances against frost and rain, the never-ending repairs to houses, the daily polishings and dustings and scrubbings and those thousand other impediments to the life of the spirit!  Half of them are non-existent in these latitudes; half the vitality expended upon them could therefore be directed to other ends.  At close of day, your Northerner is pleased with himself.  He has survived; he has even prospered.  His family is adequately housed and clothed.  He feels ‘presentable,’ as he calls it, in the eyes of those who share his illusions.  He fancies he has attained the aim and object of existence.  He is too dazed with the struggle to perceive how incongruous his efforts have been.  What has he done?  He has sacrificed himself on the altar of a false ideal.  He has not touched the fringe of a reasonable life.  He has performed certain social and political duties—­he knows nothing of the duties towards himself.  I am speaking of men from whom better things might have been expected.  As for the majority, the crowd, the herd—­they do not exist, neither here nor anywhere else.  They leave a purely physiological mark upon posterity; they propagate the species and protect their offspring.  So do foxes.  It is not enough for us.  Living in our lands, men would have leisure to cultivate nobler aspects of their nature.  They would be accessible to purer aspirations, worthier delights.  They would enjoy the happiness of sages.  What other happiness deserves the name?  In the Mediterranean, Mr. Heard, lies the hope of humanity.”

The bishop was thoughtful.  There occurred to him various objections to this rather fanciful argument.  Still, he said nothing.  He was naturally chary of words; it was so interesting to listen to other people!  And at this particular period he was more than usually reflective and absorbent.

Happiness—­an honourable, justifiable happiness—­how was it to be attained?  Not otherwise, he used to think, than through the twofold agency of Christianity and civilization.  That was his old College attitude.  Imperceptibly his outlook had shifted since then.  Something had been stirring within him; new points of view had floated into his ken.  He was no longer so sure about things.  The structure of his mind had lost that old stability; its elements seemed to be held in solution, ready to form new combinations.  China had taught him that men can be happy and virtuous while lacking, and even scorning the first of these twin blessings.  Then had come Africa, where his notions had been further dislocated by those natives who derided both the one and the other—­such fine healthy animals, all the same!  A candid soul, he allowed his natural shrewdness and logic to play freely with memories of his earlier experiences among the London poor.  Those experiences now became fraught with a new meaning.  The solemn doctrines he had preached in those days:  were they really a panacea for all the ills of the flesh?  He thought upon the gaunt bodies, starved souls, and white faces—­the dirt, the squalor of it!  Was that Christianity, civilization?