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achieved an equal fame. He deserved this popularity for only a 
man of fine temper would boldly write within sight of a painful 
death ‘* Every fortune, welcome or unwelcome, has for its object 
the reward or trial of the good or the punishing and amending of 
the bad. Every fortune therefore, must be good.” 
The monks who shaped the romantic stories of Arthur and his 
knights, had been brought up on Boethius, and they wrought 
into their work his lofty and noble spirit, his scorn of baseness, 
his disregard of the accidents that befall from without. The 
same spirit brought about the founding of the Institution of 
Chivalry, which gave the tone to manners and literature in the 
Middle Ages. Spenser handed on the tradition, giving us in the 
‘‘ Faérie Queene ”’ a series of portraits of noble knights, great in 
themselves and despising all other greatness. It would be quite 
impossible to describe fully the unnumbered channels through 
which this spirit has worked in our prose literature, and through 
it on our popular aspirations and conduct. In our own day 
Tennyson has re-written some of the old stories, and the knightly 
ideals live again for us in his pages. So the spirit of the Stoies is 
still with us, touching the conscience to finer issues, and bidding us 
hold cheaply the things that are seen, and prize only the loftiness 
of soul which cannot be moved by the accidents of this world. 
The discussion which followed was taken part in by the President, 
Messrs. J. S. Sutcliffe, Osborn, Crossland, J. Lancaster T. Preston, 
W. Thompson, and A. R. Pickles, and in replying to their observa- 
tions, and to a hearty vote of thanks, the Lecturer added that he 
had fastened on the one formula of living according to ‘‘ Nature,” 
which was so much misunderstood, because those who expounded 
Stoicism had not lived it. They never knew where the draughts 
got into a house until they had lived in it. He had honestly 
tried to live the Stoic doctrine in its entirety, and that was one 
reason why he had chosen the subject. He did not find that the 
Stoic’s doctrine was fatal to progress. If he had the typhoid fever, 
the lesson he got was go and mend the drains. It was the same in 
cholera—something was wroug, and ‘‘ Nature’’ meant them to put 
it right. Instead of being an obstacle to progress, it was a vital 
incentive to progress. It was an erroneous idea to think that the 
Stoics meant by their formula the simple economical life. They 
did not dispense with luxuries. If‘‘Nature” put a Stoicina position 
where he had to do something, he did it; if he was in a position 
where there was only bread and water for him, he got it and 
thanked the gods for it; if he could not get that he did without 
it. Wealth or the absence of wealth made no difference to him. 
It was complained against Marcus Aurelius that he persecuted 
the Christians. He had heard of Protestants burning Catholics, 
and Catholics burning Protestants. They made mistakes in 
