Another melancholy fact which I believe to be true is this—­that the only good work one does is work which one finds easy and likes.  I have one or two patiently acquired virtues which are not natural to me, such as a certain methodical way of dealing with business; but I never find myself credited with it by others, because it is done, I suppose, painfully and with effort, and therefore unimpressively.

I look round, and the same phenomenon meets me everywhere.  I do not know any instance among my friends where I can trace any radical change of character.  “Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum.”

Indeed the only line upon which improvement is possible seems to me to be this—­that a man shall definitely commit himself to a course of life in which he shall be compelled to exercise virtues which are foreign to his character, and any lapses of which will be penalised in a straightforward, professional way.  If a man, for instance, is irritable, impatient, unpunctual, let him take up some line where he is bound to be professionally bland, patient, methodical.  That would be the act of a philosopher; but, alas, how few of us choose our profession from philosophical motives!

And even so I should fear that the tendencies of temperament are only temporarily imprisoned, and not radically cured; after all, it fits in with the Darwinian theory.  The bird of paradise, condemned to live in a country of marshes, cannot hope to become a heron.  The most he can hope is that, by meditating on the advantages which a heron would enjoy, and by pressing the same consideration on his offspring, the time may come in the dim procession of years when the beaks of his descendants will grow long and sharp, their necks pliant, their legs attenuated.

And anyhow, one is bound in honour to have a try; and the hopefulness of my creed (you may be puzzled to detect it) lies in the fact that one has a sense of honour about it all; that one’s faults are repugnant, and that missing virtues are desirable—­ possunt quia posse videntur!

Thank you for the photographs.  I begin to realise your house; but I want some interiors as well; and let me have the view from your terrace, though I daresay it is only sea and sky.—­Ever yours,

T. B.

Upton,
March 15, 1904.

Dear Herbert,—­You say I am not ambitious enough; well, I wish I could make up my mind clearly on the subject of ambition; it has been brought before me rather acutely lately.  A post here has just fallen vacant—­a post to which I should have desired to succeed.  I have no doubt that if I had frankly expressed my wishes on the subject, if I had even told a leaky, gossipy colleague what I desired, and begged him to keep it to himself, the thing would have got out, and the probability is that the post would have been offered to me.  But I held my tongue, not, I confess, from any very high motive, but merely from a natural dislike of being importunate—­it does not seem to me consistent with good manners.