shower, descending on this fallow ground, can quicken it to flowering glory. Both in their best are much similar forms of the same feeling,- visible devotions of that love which is one kind through all degrees and, whether it rock the cradle or, as some say, move the sun and other stars, is perfect in proportion to its fulness of devotion. And as love is the all-inclusive virtue, so these activities of it-generosity and gratitude, the quickening and the quickened — are no less inclusive, a complete moral system.

As a moral system this has, we may mention, marked advantages over certain others of that name. It does not depend for operation on halfhearted feelings chiefly painful — fear or its reverential derivatives: it is itself the impulsive feeling, joyful and its own sufficient reward. It has also, we must mention, some disadvantages in common with its kind, and with whatever has to deal with variable human nature: it depends partly, as most other schemes do mainly, on a doubtful factor, one not always surely found or safely depended upon. For whereas we may reasonably look to find in everyone a certain strength of gratitude, may in fact demand it in the name of duty and decency,we may neither look nor call for any large generosity, nor hope to find it fairly common. It is not in normal human nature to be largely generous: that is the godlike attitude the divine nature, as we guess at it: for average humanity a

good, lasting power of gratitude is all that may with wisdom be expected.

Nor is it within my expectation or most ambitious hope, by means of this or any other book or word whatever, noticeably to increase the number of the generous. That does not happen in the twinkling of an eye or turning of a page: it comes, when not by lucky chance of birth, only by long care and tending, or perhaps transference of a re-directed, usually religious, gratitude. But the present number of generous, though comparatively small, is absolutely considerable,― numerous enough, at any rate, to be addressed with hope of an occasional hearing; and it is for this group, then, that these utterances are intended.

What is there to say to these? Nothing as to their private quality; but something as to their generally obtaining public practice,— which is not at all, in my opinion, the ablest and best possible, but proceeds with dubious aims or makes for misregarded or mistaken ends. An instance? Well, the common instances are needless to enumerate: notice rather the exceptional practice that should be the rule. For if there is anything of truth or worth in all that I have thus extendedly been saying, the chief aim of generosity should be the stimulation of gratitude, the conscious begetting, cherishing, and cultivating of it to its highest health, strength, and achievement. Now that is not the usual aim of generosity: the most generous

a

usually have it least of all in mind. And yet what better aim might be,— what truer magnanimity than to give the means of loving gratefully joy greater than all other given joys, and of giving in return devotion? With commendable modesty the generous keep themselves in the background of their giving, their devotion, and show themselves but half and briefly, craving some, but fearing too much interchange of feeling. With more commendable boldness might they stand forth to claim, not for their own but for the giver's sake, the fullest of devotion. Were not that possible without suspicion of pride or conviction of vanity? That is not, I think, the danger that deters our generous: it is not so much magnanimous modesty as it is pusillanimous impersonalism that fears, while it craves, the personal approach, the human touch in anything, and makes a virtue of its vain perversity.

Thus it goes, and the generous of the age might almost seem in league against its greater joy. They will give freely of their goods, their strength, their lives and selves, to furnish opportunities for public play, to preach the trivial virtues and the petty impersonalities of moralism, or otherwise labor blindly in "the general good": and will shrink the while from reaching forth one finger of themselves to touch those inner springs of personal love, of that single joy through which alone the general is found and fed. How we have changed! how utterly forgotten the old life of hall and field,

the childlike generosity and gratitude, the shoulder-comradeship in arms, the ever-ready life-surrender! Forgotten, too, the feeble struggles, when all this had gone, of what little righteousness was left, against the raging lusts of men. But though we have forgotten this shelved and faded history, how can we shut eye to the daily evidences of our need, the need of something more than makeshift moralism as the connection between men,— the need of some bond that shall be both strong and full of joy, human and made for men? The world demands it; begs for such a bond. How can we mistake men's craving for it, testified perchance in their complaint that such a one (politician probably, as best shepherd of the people in these days) is too distant, cold, impersonal; or their praise of him for the main merit of some aimless generosity that showed his human heart?

Yes, the world does genuinely long to love, and craves a living, visible object of grateful devotion; but at the same time and here's the rub-forbids anyone to aim at its affections and demands that he be only incidentally lovable. And thus, too, the generous natures that would gladly show the love within them feel and shrink from the bleak barriers of their age's frigid life and thought. Their warm, impulsive hearts spring forth to close the gap between themselves and others and become once more parts of a single continent," but with the first move feel the forbidding flow of icy cus

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tom, recognize their severance, and resign themselves to crowded isolation and faint signalings from shore to shore.

But must their bounds be endless? Is it not both possible and devoutly to be undertaken this vitalizing of the unlive ties of life? And the opportunity that especially offers is through the stimulation and direction of gratitude. If there be those who by loving generously may with love's bold modesty demand the due response of gratitude, were it not advisable they did so both for the debtor's sake and for sake of those to whom they might direct the practical payment? See how with all our feigned indifference and fostered neglect these sleeping possibilities have now and again waked into very active realities, have given the gratitude and devotion that we did not ask or want, and wondered what to do with, in considerable embarrassment.

that were in

What to do with such devotion deed a question,- not to be answered now but briefly pondered in its full significance. Think what this does truly mean by the mere fact of its being askable: that men may be not only gladdened through their gratitude but also governed and guided through their love helped by their own help, and brought to multiply the broader aims innumerably. Aims themselves good, bad, and mixed are, Heaven knows, numerous enough: they push upon us from all quarters; and men are familiar with them to the point of con