THE EDUCATION OF AFTER-LIFE. 



261 



appreciated with a keenness, and sought with 

 an enjoyment, which must add new life and new 

 vigor even to the most secluded among us. 



6. Besides the education which distant travel 

 may give, there is also a constant process of self- 

 education which may be carried on nearer home. 

 It is not only that in each successive age, or at 

 least in the age in which we live, a new eye or 

 faculty has been created by which we are en- 

 abled to see remote objects which to our fore- 

 fathers were absolutely unknown ; but, according 

 to the familiar story which we read in our child- 

 hood, every human being may pass through the 

 most familiar scenes with "eyes" or "no eyes." 

 Let me illustrate this by the instruction which 

 can be conveyed to an inquiring and observant 

 mind by the city in which our lot is cast. " What a 

 book ! " as Joan of Arc would have said — " what 

 a book of endless interest is opened to us in Bris- 

 tol ! " How it tells its own story of the long uu- 

 broken continuity of importance in which it 

 stands second among British cities only to Lon- 

 don ! It is, as Lamartine says of Damascus, a 

 predestinated city. Why was it of such early 

 political eminence ? Because, if I may use knowl- 

 edge imparted to me since I came among you, it 

 was the frontier fortress of the English race in 

 the south, as Chester was in the north — to keep 

 a watch on the wild Welshmen in their hills be- 

 yond the Severn. Why was it of such early com- 

 mercial eminence, before the birth of Manchester, 

 or Liverpool, or Birmingham, or Glasgow ? Be- 

 cause it stood near the mouth of that great est- 

 nary by which alone at that time England was 

 able to hold communion with the unknown West, 

 with the Atlantic, and with the transatlantic 

 world. At the mouth of the Severn, yet what in 

 those early days was even yet more valued, not 

 quite at the mouth — parted only by that marvel- 

 ous cleft of the Avon, up which the ships of old 

 time came stealing, as by a secret passage, on the 

 back of the enormous tide of the Bristol Channel, 

 beyond the grasp of the pirate or buccaneer 

 of the open sea. 1 And why did it become the 

 scene of all those pleasant tales of Miss Burney, 

 or Miss Edgeworth, or Miss Austen, in later days, 

 which made its localities familiar to the childhood 

 of those who, like myself, knew Bristol like a 

 household word fifty years before they explored 

 it for themselves ? It was the gush of mineral 

 springs, the "hot wells," now forgotten, but then 

 the rallying-point of fashion and society, beneath 



1 " The ancient cities of Greece, on account of the 

 piracy then prevailing on the sea, were built rather at 

 a distance from the shore." 1 (Thucydides, i., 7.) 



your limestone-rocks. And what makes it such 

 an ever-growing, ever-inspiring centre of institu- 

 tions, such as Clifton College, already venerable 

 with fame, and this new University College ? It 

 is the unrivaled combination of open downs, and 

 deep gorges, and distant views, and magnificent 

 foliage — magnificent still, in the wreck and de- 

 vastation which cause even a stranger almost to 

 weep, as he passes through the carnage of gigan- 

 tic trunks with which the late hurricane has 

 strewed the park of King's Weston. These are 

 among the lessons which the education of after- 

 life may bring out from the pages of this vast il- 

 luminated book of the natural situation of Bris- 

 tol, which, more even than the Charter of King- 

 John or the Bishopric of Henry VIII., have given 

 to it its long eventful history and its never-ceas- 

 ing charm. 



7. Apart from the education to be derived 

 from inanimate objects, there is the yet deeper 

 education to be derived by those who have 

 senses exercised to discern between true and 

 false, between good and evil, from the great flux 

 and reflux of human affairs, with which the pe- 

 culiarity of our times causes all to become more 

 or less conversant. One of the experiences which 

 the education of life brings with it, or ought to 

 bring with it, is an increasing sense of the 

 difference between what is hollow and what 

 is real, what is artificial and what is honest, 

 what is permanent and what is transitory. 

 "There are," says Goethe, in a proverb point- 

 ed out to me long ago by Lord Houghton as 

 a summary of human wisdom, "many echoes 

 in the world, but few voices." It is the business 

 of the education of after-life to make us more 

 and more alive to this distinction. Think of the 

 popular panics and excitements which we have 

 outlived — of the delusions which we have seen 

 possess whole masses of the people, educated 

 and uneducated, and then totally pass away. 

 You have, many of you, I doubt not, heard the 

 story of the conversation of the most famous of 

 all the Bishops of Bristol as he was walking in 

 the dead of night in the garden of the now de- 

 stroyed episcopal palace. " His custom," says 

 his chaplain, " was, when at Bristol, to walk for 

 hours in his garden in the darkest night which 

 the time of year would afford, and I had frequent- 

 ly the honor to attend him. He would take a 

 turn, and then stop suddenly short, and ask the 

 question : ' Why might not whole communities 

 and public bodies be seized with fits of insanity 

 as well as individuals ? Nothing but this prin- 

 ciple, that they are liable to insanity equally at 



