the old tradition of multifarious humanity that has century by century entwined itself with the very fabric of the place.  I love the youthful spirit that flashes and brightens in every corner of the old courts, as the wallflower that rises spring by spring with its rich orange-tawny hue, its wild scent, on the tops of our mouldering walls.  It is a gracious and beautiful life for all who love peace and reflection, strength and youth.  It is not a life for fiery and dominant natures, eager to conquer, keen to impress; but it is a life for any one who believes that the best rewards are not the brightest, who is willing humbly to lend a cheerful hand, to listen as well as to speak.  It is a life for any one who has found that there is a world of tender, wistful, delicate emotions, subdued and soft impressions, in which it is peace to live; for one who has learned, however dimly, that wise and faithful love, quiet and patient hope, are the bread by which the spirit is nourished—­ that religion is not an intellectual or even an ecclesiastical thing, but a far-off and remote vision of the soul.

I know well the thoughts and hopes that I should desire to speak; but they are evasive, subtle things, and too often, like shy birds, will hardly let you approach them.  But I would add that life has not been for me a dreamy thing, lived in soft fantastic reveries; indeed, it has been far the reverse.  I have practised activity, I have mixed much with my fellows; I have taught, worked, organized, directed.  I have watched men and boys; I have found infinite food for mirth, for interest, and even for grief.  But I have grown to feel that the ambitions which we preach and the successes for which we prepare are very often nothing but a missing of the simple road, a troubled wandering among thorny by-paths and dark mountains.  I have grown to believe that the one thing worth aiming at is simplicity of heart and life; that one’s relations with others should be direct and not diplomatic; that power leaves a bitter taste in the mouth; that meanness, and hardness, and coldness are the unforgivable sins; that conventionality is the mother of dreariness; that pleasure exists not in virtue of material conditions, but in the joyful heart; that the world is a very interesting and beautiful place; that congenial labour is the secret of happiness; and many other things which seem, as I write them down, to be dull and trite commonplaces, but are for me the bright jewels which I have found beside the way.

It is, then, from College Windows that I look forth.  But even so, though on the one hand I look upon the green and sheltered garden, with its air of secluded recollection and repose, a place of quiet pacing to and fro, of sober and joyful musing; yet on another side I see the court, with all its fresh and shifting life, its swift interchange of study and activity; and on yet another side I can observe the street where the infinite pageant of humanity goes to and fro, a tide full of sound and foam, of business and laughter, and of sorrow too, and sickness, and the funeral pomp of death.