and respect will soon belong as entirely to the past as if they had lived in the days of Queen Elizabeth. From the intellectual point of view their lives were hardly worth living, but we are beginning to ask ourselves whether their ignorance (I use the plain term) and their prejudices (the plain term again) were not essential parts of a whole that commanded our respect. Their simplicity of mind may have been a reason why they had so much simplicity of purpose in well-doing. Their strength of prejudice may have aided them to keep with perfect steadfastness on the side of moral and social order. Their intellectual restfulness in a few clear settled ideas left a degree of freedom to their energy in common duties that may not always be possible amidst the bewildering theories of an unsettled and speculative age.-Faithfully yours, THE AUTHOR OF The Intellectual Life. ESSAY XXVI. AMUSEMENTS. ONE of the most unexpected discoveries that we make on entering the reflective stage of existence is that amusements are social obligations. The next discovery of this kind is that the higher the rank of the person the more obligatory and the more numerous do his so-called " amusements" become, till finally we reach the princely life which seems to consist almost exclusively of these observances. Why should it ever be considered obligatory upon a man to amuse himself in some way settled by others? There appear to be two principal reasons for this. The first is, that when amusements are practised by many persons in common it appears unsociable and ungracious to abstain. Even if the amusement is not interesting in itself, it is thought that the society it leads us into ought to be a sufficient reason for following it. The second reason is that, like all things which are repeated by many people together, amusements soon become fixed customs, and have all the weight and authority of customs, so that people dare not abstain from observing them for fear of social penalties. If the amusements are expensive they become not only a sign of wealth but an actual demonstration and display of it, and as nothing in the world is so much respected as wealth, or so efficient a help to social position, and as the expenditure which is visible produces far more effect upon the mind than that which is not seen, it follows that all costly amusements are useful for self-assertion in the world, and become even a means of maintaining the political importance of great families. On the other hand, not to be accustomed to expensive amusements implies that one has lived amongst people of narrow means, so that most of those who have social ambition are eager to seize upon every opportunity for enlarging their experience of expensive amusements in order that they may talk about them afterwards, and so affirm their position as members of the upper class. The dread of appearing unsociable, of seeming rebellious against custom, or inexperienced in the habits of the rich, are reasons quite strong enough for the maintenance of customary amusements even when there is very little real enjoyment of them for their own sake. But, in fact, there are always some people who practise these amusements for the sake of the pleasure they give, and as these people are likely to excel the others in vivacity, activity, and skill, as they have more entrain and gaiety, and talk more willingly and heartily about the sports they love, so they naturally come to lead opinion upon the subject and to give it an appearance of earnestness and warmth that is beyond its real condition. Hence the tone of conversation about amusements, though it may accurately represent the sentiments of those who enjoy them, does not represent all opinion fairly. The opposite side of the question found a witty exponent in Sir George Cornewall Lewis, when he uttered that immortal saying by which his name will endure when the recollection of his political services has passed away"How tolerable life would be were it not for its pleasures!" There you have the feeling of the thousands who submit and conform, but who would have much to say if it were in good taste to say anything against pleasures that are offered to us in hospitality. Amusements themselves become work when undertaken for an ulterior purpose such as the maintenance of political influence. A great man goes through a certain regular series of dinners, balls, games, shooting and hunting parties, races, wedding-breakfasts, visits to great houses, excursions on land and water, and all these things have the outward appearance of amusement, but may, in reality, be labours that the great man undertakes for some purpose entirely outside of the frivolous things themselves. A Prime Minister scarcely goes beyond political dinners, but what an endless series of engagements are undertaken by a Prince of Wales ! Such things are an obligation for him, and when the obligation is accepted with unfailing patience and good temper, the Prince is not only working, but working with a certain elegance and grace of art, often involving that prettiest kind of self-sacrifice which hides itself under an appearance of enjoyment. Nobody supposes that the social amusements so regularly gone through by the eldest son of Queen Victoria can be, in all cases, very entertaining to him; we suppose them to be accepted as forms of human intercourse that bring him into personal relations with his future subjects. The difference between this Prince and King Louis II. of Bavaria is perhaps the most striking contrast in modern royal existences. Prince Albert Edward is accessible to everybody, and shares the common pleasures of his countrymen; the Bavarian sovereign is never so happy as when in one of his romantic and magnificent residences, surrounded by the sublimity of nature and the embellishments of art, he sits alone and dreams as he listens to the strains of exquisite music. Has he not erected his splendid castle on a rock, like the builder of "The Palace of Art"? "A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnish'd brass From level meadow-bases of deep grass Suddenly scaled the light. Thereon I built it firm. Of ledge or shelf The life of the King of Bavaria, sublimely serene in its independence, is a long series of tranquil omissions. There may be a wedding-feast in one of his palaces, but such an occurrence only seems to him the best of all reasons why he should be in another. He escapes from the pleasures and interests of daily life, making himself an earthly paradise of architecture, music, and gardens, and lost in his long dream, assuredly one of the most poetical figures in the biographies of kings, and one of the most interesting, but how remote from men ! This remoteness is due, in great part, to a sincerity of disposition which declines amusements that do not amuse, and desires only those real pleasures which are in perfect harmony with one's own nature and constitution. We like the sociability, the ready human sympathy, of the Prince of Wales; we think that in his position it is well |