1895.] on Bobert Louis Stevenson. 585 



avoid imposing his misfortunes on their notice. " Once when I was 

 groaning aloud with physical pain," he says in the essay on * Child's 

 Play,' lt a young gentleman came into the room and nonchalantly 

 inquired if I had ^een his bow and arrow. He made no account of 

 my groans, which he accepted, as he had to accept so much else, as 

 a piece of the inexplicable conduct of his elders ; and, like a wise 

 young gentleman, he would waste no wonder on the subject." Was 

 there ever a passage like this? The sympathy of the writer is 

 wholly with the child, and the child's absolute indifference to his 

 own sufferings. It might have been safely predicted that this man, 

 should he ever attain to pathos, would be free from the facile, maudlin 

 pathos of the hired sentimentalist. 



And so, also, with what Dr. Johnson has called " metaphysical 

 distresses." It is striking enough to observe how differently the quiet 

 monasteries of the Carthusian and Trappist brotherhoods affected 

 Matthew Arnold and Bobert Louis Stevenson. In his well-known 

 elegiac stanzas Matthew Arnold likens his own state to that of the 

 monks : — 



" Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 



The other powerless to be born, 



With nowhere yet to rest my head, 



Like these on earth I wait forlorn. 



Their faith, my tears, the world deride, — 



I come to shed them at their side ! " 



To Stevenson, on the other hand, our Lady of the Snows is a 

 mistaken divinity, and the place a monument of chilly error, — for 

 once in a way he takes it upon himself to be a preacher, his tem- 

 perament gives voice in a creed : — 



" And ye, O brethren, what if God, 

 When from Heaven's top He spies abroad, 

 And sees on this tormented stage 

 The noble war of mankind rage, 

 What if His vivifying eye, 

 O monks, should pass your corner by ? 

 For still the Lord is Lord of might; 

 In deeds, in deeds, he takes delight; 

 The plough, the spear, the laden barks, 

 The held, the founded city, marks; 

 He marks the smiler of the streets, 

 The singer upon garden seats ; 

 He sees the climber in the rocks ; 

 To Him, the shepherd folds his flocks ; 

 For those He loves that underprop 

 With daily virtues Heaven's top, 

 And bear the falling sky with ease, 

 Unfrowning Caryatides. 

 Those He approves that ply the trade, 

 That rock the child, that wed the maid, 

 That with, weak virtues, weaker hands, 

 Sow gladness on the peopled lands, 

 And still with laughter, song, and shout 

 Spin the great wheel of earth about. 



