Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

The judicious management of parents by good sons and daughters often makes a home seem happy for a time ; but I think a few open and even angry discussions are wholesomer for the characters of the young than a trained duplicity implying peace where there is no peace. In our present civilisation, no one being can rule the destiny of another by force, not even in the case of a father and his children. I think it well to remember in our homes Swift's saying that ' Government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery, though eleven men well armed will certainly subdue one 268 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN single man in his shirt.' A father cannot get the eleven men, so he had better not try to govern in this spirit. His only power, if he loses the affection and respect of his- children, is that base and ignoble one given by money, which— in the case of men, at any rate — is powerless against the noblest and best. All people, both young and old, should remember the wise saying that we never feel so much at ease with our consciences as when we are dwelling complacently on the faults of others. There will always be men and women, but perhaps more men than women, who all through life believe in luck — those who think when things go wrong that they have been cheated and frustrated by others, whereas nothing has happened but what was bound to happen. Men of this stamp often endure life heroically and are clever, inventive, interesting human beings ; but they are ruled by circumstances, instead of ruling them : they submit to life, instead of making it. I must not omit to mention a book, called ' Notes from Life,' by Sir Henry Taylor. It is out of fashion and forgotten now, but it made a very great impression upon me in my youth. Sir Henry Taylor, as everyone knows, was the author of ' Philip Van Artevelde : a Dramatic Romance.' This work made him famous at the time of its publication ; it is still read by students of English literature, and there is no grander subject for a dramatist than the moulding of tough natures. I believe it was never put on the stage ; and, after all, an unactable play must always remain a kind of literary mule. Sir Henry Taylor bound himself to us most tenderly by writing a poem in memory of my father, who died at Nice in 1843. It was reprinted in Sir Henry's autobiography a few years ago. One of the most distinguished of our Lord Chancellors described it to me as the finest memorial poem in the English language. What little worldly SONS 269 philosophy I acquired in my youth I learnt from Sir Henry. The ' Notes from Life ' are on Money, Humility and Independence, Choice in Marriage, Wisdom, Children The Life Poetic, and The Ways of the Eich and Great. In spite of all that has been written on such subjects since, I still think the book well worth reading. The tone of the articles is more religious than would be the case now if written by a man who held the same broad and elastic views that he did. He belonged essentially to that large band of good and wise men who never tell their religion, but his language in these essays is that of the fashion of his time. The essays called 'Money/ * Marriage,' and ' Children ' seem to me now as interesting and suggestive as when I first read them.