thing are we to learn of them? Not simplicity, for they are intricate enough. Not gratitude, for their usual sincere thanklessness makes half the pleasure of doing them good. Not obedience, for the child is born with the love of liberty. And as for humility, the boast of a child is the frankest thing in the world. . . . It is the sweet and entire forgiveness of children, who ask pity for their sorrows from those who have caused them, who do not perceive that they are wronged, who never dream that they are forgiving, and who make no bargain for apologies—it is this that men and women are urged to learn of a child. Graces more confessedly childlike they make shift to teach themselves."
Many a man, and many a woman, have written more nobly than they have lived: into the art has gone the truest part of the soul. But what unique conviction breathes from work which is at one with life—nay, which is the fruit of deep and costly living! The acuteness, the activity, the profundity of Mrs. Meynell's thought could not fail to achieve their own place in English letters. But her sympathy and her eternal rightness of vision are qualities in which we rejoice, humbled. These have given to her work that peculiar intuitive truth which is the rarest of beauties. "Her manner," wrote Mr. George Meredith, "presents to me the image of one accustomed to walk in holy places and keep the eye of a fresh mind on our tangled world." But no single virtue of all Mrs. Meynell's work is of the obvious or popular kind. Her pages are packed with thought, and the style—one of exceptional precision and exceptional beauty—is yet given to ellipse, to suggestion rather than emphasis, and to a quite inalienable subtlety. She speaks to the higher, even the highest, faculties of the mind. She has pleaded
