WELL, I think I

am fairly

started at last. It is the easiest thing in the world to write a book: but it is nearly impossible to begin one. That is the reason why every man who can sign his name does not belong to the Guild of Literature.' His feelings are as acute, his passions as tense and imaginative, as your own; he can fuse them into eloquent deeds, into eloquent speech; he can charge the enemy at the head of his column, he can ask the woman he loves to give him back his heart, or her own; but he cannot write a book. And why? Because he does not know how to begin. The incapacity is no doubt a merciful provision for if we all wrote, there would be none to read. Most authors resemble the late mild-eyed laureate; they never read anythingheartily at least that is written by other people. Wordsworth, indeed, professed to study profoundly, and admire keenly, the Book of Nature; but, on cross-examination, it would no doubt have appeared that he did not think nearly so well of it as of his own account of it. Moreover, none would be left to work. There would be no eloquent statesmen, no gallant soldiers, no indefatigable explorers; the fire-struck words would never again, like hail-stones, strike upon the upturned faces of

:

VOL. LXV. NO. CCCLXXXV.

the people; the five hundred would

never again sweep through the cloudy valley, and dream as they fell of the triumphant tears that were wept for them in the Holy Land. The moment we all took to writing, nothing would remain to write about; for the career of a writing-man is the most prosaic of all careers, and bears telling least of any. I would rather hear of Columbus, or of Drake, or of Wellington, or of the meanest trooper in his army, than learn how Walter Scott wrote Marmion, or how Shakspeare wrote Macbeth. For those take us with them into the vivid pressure of living men, and under the smoky glare of battle, or the sad twilight of defeat, human nature acquires a powerful and bewitching interest. The Duke's' life is our great national epic; and it was a better epic acted by him than written by Tennyson.

This incapacity to begin is not, however, confined to the writing of books. Most men would be estimable, charitable, religious, successful, if they only knew how to begin. Jones really desires to do something for the working-classes: but he does not know where or how to begin; and so he does nothing. Robinson, profoundly versed in the principles of jurisprudence, fails at the bar; when Brown, who knows

A

only, but knows exactly, where to find the page he wants, succeeds. The tools may be at hand; but they wont work of themselves. Practical life is a science to which there is no index; and to learn how to use our weapons-in other words, how to begin-is the most perplexing of all studies.

It has been a lovely morningtide; but the noon is sultry and lowering, and a picturesque ridge of storm-charged cloud stretches along the sea-line in our wake. To-night we shall have a blow,-a lash of rain, and the wind rattling among the rigging. But now it is calm as Paradise, or as that still marble face which has never deigned even to smile upon our pain. O violet-eyed Evadne, grant us thy peace! Let us know the truth once and for ever. The bleeding heart may break, but death is preferable to this torturing toothache. We pray for rest,rest, rest,-in æterna pace.

But

the still maiden stirs not, answers not; but looks with those clear cold eyes-cold and elemental as the winter stars-right away past us into the outermost horizon. Oh, my wintry heaven, for whom wait you? The old heroic ages have departed, and do not return any more. But in one breast there still beats knightly faith, and truth, and loyalty, and they are all laid at your feet. Bend your eyes, and kill us, if you will, with passion, or mockery, or tender tears; but do not remain for ever so inaccessibly, so snowily divine.

Such was the Confession of Faith which I had addressed to a mortal Saint Cæcilia about a fortnight before the date at which this narrative commences. I am naturally eloquent, I believe; yet I do not deny that I may have polished the speech a very little since its delivery. Evadne, though an exceedingly sensible girl, who would never dream of marrying a man without knowing his rent-roll, is still on certain speculative points charmingly capricious and sentimental. Bending her superb eyes, in answer to my appeal, 'You are a knight,'

she said, and a true knight must do his devoir before he wins his lady. Find first the Holy Grail, and when you return to Belgravia do not forget this souvenir,' and she presented me with a fairy gauntlet, a wonderful little pink-coloured, lavender-scented Parisian kidglove (No. 74), which I kissed devoutly. But if I return not? Then I will weep for you,' replied the maiden, with heavenly composure. This was altogether very consolatory; but Evadne

was

mildly inexorable as any saint, and I was forced to quit on the quest. I had not the most distant conception who or what the Holy Grail might be, or where he, she, or it was to be met with; and none of my club-friends, I found, were better informed. The Arthurian knights, however, when in search of the supernatural, commonly went north; and as it was now the middle of June, a yacht voyage to Norway I fancied would be an exceedingly pleasant way of passing the time. So here I am,-in the first place, in search of the blessed Grail, and in the second, provided with rods and guns for the salmon and wildfowl of the Scandinavian fjords.

I must write an account some day of life on board a yacht;-like Cerito's dancing, it is the poetry of motion. Not yet embalmed in a poem, indeed; but this happens because the poets are bilious, and when at sea keep mostly to the cabin. The morning is pretty well advanced before I rise,-for I like to lie and listen to the water as it whistles, and whispers, and plashes, and gurgles restlessly on the other side of the thin board which keeps the ocean out of my crib. Good heavens! I waken sometimes in the deep of the dead night, and feel with a chill sense of terror that there is only a fir-plank between me and the mysterious creatures of the deep who follow in the wake of the ship, and, with cruel stony eyes, wait for us outside. But the morning light scatters the mists, and Ponto and I leap overboard, where he sometimes nearly drowns me outright with his rough dogplay. Now, Ponto, let us pass the