Imatges de pàgina
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you, not for what you may do with it. is a state, not a profession."

It

"That is harder upon us still," said Cicely. "Alas! I shall never be rich enough nor have time enough to be disinterested. Good-night, Mr. Mildmay; that is the way to the rectory."

"Are you tired of me so soon?" "Tired of you?" said Cicely, startled; "oh, no! It is very pleasant to talk a little; but that is your way."

"I should like to go with you to your door, please," he said; "this is such an unusual chance. Miss St. John, poor John Wyborn is dying; he has four children and a poor little wife, and he is just my age."

There was a break in the rector's voice that made Cicely turn her face towards him and silently hold out her hand.

"What am I to say to them?" he cried; "preach patience to them? tell them it is for the best? I who am not worthy the poor bread I eat, who live for myself, in luxury, while he -ay, and you

"Tell them," said Cicely, "the tears dropping from her eyes, "that God sees all that comforts them the most; that He will take care of the little ones somehow and bring them friends. Oh, Mr. Mildmay, it is not for me to preach to you; I know what you mean; but they, poor souls, don't go thinking and questioning as we do and that comforts them the most. Besides," said Cicely, simply, "it is true; look at me-you spoke of me. See how my way has been made plain for me. I did not know what I should do, and now I can manage very well, live, and bring up the children; and after all these are the great things, and not pleasure," she added, with a soft little sigh.

"The children!" he said. "There is something terrible at your age to hear you speak so. Why should you be thus burdened why?"

"Mr. Mildmay," said Cicely, proudly, "one does not choose one's own burdens. But now that I have got mine I mean to bear it, and I do not wish to be pitied. I am able for all I have to do

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and see if I will not bear it! Don't leave me a ghost any more!"

"Mr. Mildmay!" cried Cicely, in dismay. She did not even understand what he meant in the confusion of the moment. She gave him no answer, standing at her own door, alarmed and bewildered; but only entreated him to leave her, not knowing what to think. "Please go, please go; I must not ask you to come in," said Cicely. Oh, I know what you mean is kind, whatever it is; but please, Mr. Mildmay, go! Good-night!"

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Good-night!" he said. "I will go since you bid me; but I will come back tomorrow for my answer. Give me a chance for life."

"What does he mean by life?" Cicely said to herself, as, trembling and amazed, she went back into her bare little parlour, which always looked doubly bare after Mab had gone. Annie had heard her coming, and had lighted the two candles on the table; but though it was still cold, there was no fire in the cheerless little fireplace. The dark walls, which a large cheerful lamp could scarcely have lit, small as the room was, stood like night round her little table, with those two small sparks of light. A glass of milk and a piece of bread stood ready on a little tray, and Annie had been waiting with some impatience her young mistress's return in order to get to bed. The little boys were asleep long ago, and there was not a sound in the tiny house as Cicely sat down to think, except the sound of Annie overhead, which did not last long. Life! Was this life, or was he making a bad joke at her expense? What did he mean? It would be impossible to deny that Cicely's heart beat faster and faster as it became clearer and clearer to her what he did mean; but to talk of life! Was this life - this mean, still, solitary place, which nobody shared, which neither love nor fellowship brightened? for even the children, though she devoted her life to them, made no warm response to Cicely's devotion. She sat till far into the night thinking, wondering, musing, dreaming, her heart beating, her head buzzing with the multitude of questions that crowded upon her. Life! It was he who was holding open to her the gates of life; the only life she knew, but more attractive than she had ever known it. Cicely was as much bewildered by the manner of his appeal as by its object. Could he-love her? Was that the plain English of it? Or was there any other motive that could

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make him desirous of taking her burden | Brentburn, when she looked at him like upon his shoulders? Could she, if a man an enemy, what he was doing now had did love her, suffer him to take such a come into his mind; and on this subject weight on his shoulders? And then he was eloquent, as a man has a right to she did not love him. Cicely said this to be once in his life, if no more. He had so herself falteringly. No, she had never much to say, that he forgot the open pubthought of loving him. She had felt that lic place in which he was telling his lovehe understood her. She had felt that tale, and scarcely remarked the little rehe was kind when many had not been sponse she made. But when it came to kind. There had been between them her turn to reply, Cicely found herself no rapid communications of sentiment, im- less impassioned, though in a different pulses flashing from heart to heart, which way. so often accompany very close relations. "But all that is not being in love," Cicely said to herself. Nothing could have taken her more utterly by surprise; but the surprise had been given, the shock received. Its first overpowering sensation was over, and now she had to look forward to the serious moment when this most serious thing must be settled, and her reply given. Cicely did not sleep much that night. She did not know very well what she was doing next morning, but went through her work in a dazed condition, fortunately knowing it well enough to go on mechanically, and preserving her composure more because she was partially stupefied than for any other reason. Mr. Mildmay was seen on the road by the last of the little scholars going away, who made him little bobs of curtsies, and of whom he asked where Miss St. John was.

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Upon this young woman the rector bestowed a sixpence and a smile. And then he went into the schoolroom, the place she had decided to receive him in. The windows were all open, the desks and forms in disorder, the place as mean and bare as could be, with the maps and bright-coloured pictures of animal history on the unplastered walls. Cicely stood by her own table, which was covered with little piles of plain needlework, her hand resting upon the table, her heart beating loud. What was she to say to him? The truth somehow, such as it really was; but how?

But Mr. Mildmay had first a great deal to say. He gave her the history of his life since August, and the share she had in it. He thought now, and said, that from the very first day of his arrival in

Mr. Mildmay," she said, "there is no equality between us. How can you, such a man as you, speak like this to a girl such as I am? Don't you see what you are doing-holding open to me the gates of Paradise; offering me back all I have lost; inviting me to peace out of trouble, to rest out of toil, to ease and comfort, and the respect of the world."

"You

"Cicely!" he said; he was discouraged by her tone. He saw in it his own fancy thrown back to him, and for the first time perceived how fantastic that was. do not mean," he said, faltering, "that to work hard as you are doing, and give up all the pleasure of existence, is necessary to your-your-satisfaction in your life?"

"I don't mean that," she said, simply; "but when you offer to take up my burden, and to give me all your comforts, don't you see that one thing one great thing is implied to make it possible? Mr. Mildmay, I am not-in love with you," she added, in a low tone, looking up at him, the colour flaming over her face.

He winced, as if he had received a blow; then recovering himself, smiled. "I think I have enough for two," he said, gazing at her, as pale as she was red.

"But don't you see, don't you see," cried Cicely passionately, "if it was you, who are giving everything, that was not in love, it would be simple; but I who am to accept everything, who am to put burdens on you, weigh you down with others beside myself, how can I take it all without loving you? You see-you see it is impossible!"

"Do you love any one else?" he asked, too much moved for grace of speech, taking the hand she held up to demonstrate this impossibility. She looked at him again, her colour wavering, her eyes filling, her lips quivering.

"Unless it is you— nobody!" she said.

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A GREAT chess-player died the other day, who was said to have injured his brain by playing a considerable number of games at once blindfold, and though we believe the statement as to the cause of death was untrue, certainly it is difficult to imagine a more wonderful intellectual feat than that of playing a game of chess at all without the board, much less seven or eight games at once. There can be no doubt that a man who could do this must be a man with very singular powers of vivid conception of the positions on a chess-board; and the fact that almost all the greatest players can do this, shows very distinctly what the chief faculty which makes a great chess-player really is, namely, an unusual capacity for so conceiving space and the various divisions of space, and the relative position of the objects situated in it, as to realize completely how the change of any one object alters the reciprocal relations of all, without verifying this by actual eyesight. In ordinary chess-playing, this power has reference solely to the future, and the player is assisted by the board before his eyes in conceiving what the successive changes are which will be produced by particular moves and the moves to which they should lead. In fact, in ordinary play, all you have to do is to imagine distinctly beforehand for one, or two, or three, or four moves according to your capacity, the proper result of the change of position you are about to make. What the really great players can do is to keep so strong an imaginative hold of all the sixty-four squares of the board and the various pieces distributed over them, that they do not need the visible register of what has taken place before their eyes, since they see in their "mind's eye not less distinctly how the pieces actually stand, and much more distinctly what effect a slight change would produce, than the ordinary player can see this by the help of his retina and the board and the pieces. Unquestionably, then, it is the chief note of a good chess-player to be able to construct the effect of various changes of place in his own mind, and without the help of a chess-board to work them out. A very strong player "by letter " may be a very feeble player when he is matched against a present antagonist, because, with plenty of time for every move, he can work out the effects of each suggestion without putting any strain on his imagination. But in

playing with a present antagonist, this is impossible; he must foresee, or fail to see altogether; and no man can foresee well without being able to construct the relative positions of the pieces fully in his imagination, and to perceive all the moves which it is open to him and to his antag onist to make. That which makes a good player, therefore, is, in the main at least, the same faculty which enables him to play, partly or wholly, without a board. With sufficient time allowed, and a board on which to work out all his conceptions, it is certain that a very weak but industrious player might appear the equal of a very brilliant one, though, of course, he would take about ten times the trouble about his moves that his adversary would take. For even a great chess-player, then, hardly any great capacity is requisite, except what is implied in the power to follow the game distinctly in imagination. Suppose a man who could carry the board in his imagination, and distinctly vary the positions of the pieces in his imagination, so as to describe precisely the visible results of any change, and you suppose a great chess-player.

It might be said indeed that you want more than this, that you want not only a distinct conception of the game, and of the results of any move, once suggested, but a distinct conception of the sort of strategy which is most likely to change your position for the better and your adversary's for the worse. But that is, we maintain, necessarily implied in the power of realizing distinctly the various moves possible and the new positions to which they would lead. The mistake of people who think that great chess-playing should imply a great power of strategy in war, is this, that in chess, all you need is a vivid and accurate conception of how the board will look if particular moves be made, for in the look of the board, if you can forecast it as well as grasp it at the moment, everything is implied. Take the simple case of discovering check, for example, so as to threaten one piece with the piece you move away, while the king is checked by the piece which remains where it was. Any player who can carry the game in his imagination, and all the variations which may be made by moving a piece, sees the double effect of the removal of the mask at a glance, in the very act of conceiving these changes as possible. No estimate has to be formed as to whether the piece will or will not arrive in time, will or will not carry its point, will or will not find the expected forces at the

expected points. All the effects in chess | chess-player may be so deficient that he are certain. Within the limits of the pos- would be a nonentity instead of a great sible moves the effects are as definite as general at the head of an army. There is the moves, and all that is needed is a a real analogy between the two kinds of strong and accurate conception of the powers, only it goes a very little way. further moves which then become possi- Thus, a bad chess-player will often fail to ble, and of the new combinations to which see that he is using a piece for two disthey give rise. A man who could in his tinct purposes which can only be really mind fill at most thirty-two out of sixty-used for one of them,- for instance, that four squares of tesselated pavement with thirty-two or fewer distinct figures, and carry in his head how each of them would stand in reference to all the others after any one was moved to a different square, would become, as soon as he knew the moves and rules, a first-rate chess-player, and would, in all probability, possess already a very unusual and first-rate power of constructing geometrical figures vividly, though not by any means necessarily of solving geometric problems. There is no greater delusion than the notion that chess is a game which calls the reasoning powers strongly into play. It is a strain not on the powers of reasoning, but on the power of distinctly imagining space. To plan an ambush at chess is not to catch your opponent in a spot where your good sense tells you that he is unable to defend himself, but to discern a move which he, from imperfect powers of constructing the game, is likely to make, without foreseeing the disastrous character of its consequences.

There is no calculation of probabilities in chess, unless you speculate, which is always bad play, on the weakness of your opponent, and make a move the effect of which ought to be injurious to you, but by which, if he misses the right reply to it, you will gain a great advantage. In the true play there is no discipline of judgment at all, and no more reasoning than is implied in assuming that if your opponent sees an advantage he will take it, and that you can't have a piece at two places at the same time. These, no doubt, are, strictly speaking, acts of reasoning, but they are very simple ones, of which every man not an idiot is capable. The whole charm and mystery of the game lie not in the least in the exercise of the understanding, but in the exercise of the space-imagination, - a faculty, no doubt, useful in war, but only one of the elements in true strategy. On the one hand, the power of a really great chess-player is in relation to a particular class of imaginative efforts far beyond the power of even very great generals. On the other hand, in fifty other exercises of imaginative power, all needful for a good strategist, the great

he is using a pawn which is needed to cover his king from check to protect another piece, though in case that other piece were taken, the pawn could not be moved away from its actual position to revenge the loss; and a bad strategist might make a corresponding mistake and suffer for it. But the quickness of eye which would discern at once the blunder in such a double use of a military force for two distinct purposes, both of them essential to safety, yet not compatible with each other, would go a very little way indeed towards making a good strategist. A good strategist must have the power of constructing in his imagination all the physical features of the country, especially the roads, out of the hints furnished by a map,-which implies imaginative power of a very much more complicated kind, though not of so unusual a degree as the powers of a great chess-player. He must have a very exact sense of the time requisite for the operations of war, and of the physical, and moral expedients by which that time may be reduced; and he must, in addition, be able to conceive graphically the physical and moral capacity of his own forces, and those of his adversaries, and to stimulate his own to the utmost. All these powers imply a very much wider range of imagination, though probably not near so much intensity in particular exercises of it, as the powers of a first-rate chess-player. Indeed, the former bear to the latter the relation which the power of conceiving minutely the ground-plan and elevation of a house bears to the power of reconstructing in imagination, though not necessarily so accurately, its whole interior with all the available resources for living and enjoyment which it contains. But there is a real foundation, however slight, for the notion that the powers of a great chess-player bear some analogy to the powers of a great strategist. At the basis of both stands the power of promptly grasping the various space-relations of a limited area, and of varying in the mind's eye the positions occupied by different pieces on that area. Without a tolerably high degree of this power, you would not get either a great chess-player or a

great strategist; though it is quite true | ably the highest chess-imagination which that with it alone, you would get only the the world ever knew would be compatible, former and not the latter. and has been compatible, we take it, with extreme imbecility, even of the imaginative kind, in dealing with the affairs of life or the characters of men. And as for the power required to play a good game of chess, with ample time for each move, and full leisure to work out its effect on a board, it really is not remarkable at all. The only remarkable power displayed in chess is the power of anticipating or imagining the exact state of the board without seeing it; and that can only be properly displayed in playing with a present adversary, and not playing very slowly either.

From The Saturday Review. SPELLING.

For this notion, then, that there is really a kind of strategy in chess, there is a sound basis. But there is no such excuse for the vague popular notion that great powers of chess-playing imply the sort of craft necessary for statesmanship. As a matter of fact, the truly wonderful chess-players of the world have very seldom been remarkable for anything else. We think we have shown that they ought to have had at least the imaginative qualities of good geometricians, but we are not aware that they often have made great geometricians, and probably they would not have been likely to do so without unusual reasoning powers as well, which chess does not either require or educate. Certainly, while there are plenty of instances of great politicians and great statesmen delighting in deep gambling, we cannot recall one who was THE amusement called a "spelling-bee known as a first-rate chess-player. Peo- has the advantage of being cheap and ple are deceived by words. They hear of easily got up, and it may be useful in helpa "brilliant combination" in chess and of ing to shake off the common aversion of a "brilliant combination" in politics, and Englishmen to opening their mouths in they think there is some analogy between public. Almost the only objection is the two. But look at what you really that, unless tolerably big words are used mean, and you will find that a brilliant among fairly educated people as tests, combination in chess, is nothing in the there cannot be much risk of failure, and world but a power of so anticipating people who find that they can spell big moves, and the effects of moves, as to words correctly, may be too apt to make bring a good many pieces to act on the familiar use of them. The notion, howsame square-i.e., either on the same ever, that correct spelling is to be expiece or else on the pieces which support pected from those who have had ordinary it. But in politics a brilliant combination opportunities of education is modern, and means something entirely different; it it would be easy to attach too much immeans a brilliant insight into character, a portance to the want of it. The Duke of clear perception of the sort of moral influ- Marlborough's letters are always quoted ence which will carry this point, and the as an example of the deficiency of a resort which will carry that, and a power of markably able man in knowledge which is marshalling all the influences needed so as now required in every schoolboy. But it to bring them to bear simultaneously on the must be remembered that even in the podifferent persons whose consent is wanted lite age of Queen Anne people wrote far to any policy. Consider this sort of fac- less than they do now, and as long as ulty closely, and you will find that it has not words are used chiefly in conversation it necessarily any single element in common is difficult to say precisely what is right with the power of producing what are and wrong. There are indeed, and for a called "brilliant combinations" at chess. long time past have been, certain books Indeed, though the play of a great chess- of which one would be ashamed to conplayer is a very high and intense exercise fess ignorance, and which could not be of the imagination, it is an exercise of im- read attentively without learning to spell agination of a very thin kind indeed, which as many words as would serve the ordineed not imply any considerable imaginary purposes of life. As an indication native grasp of the realities of life. The of want of knowledge or of interest about man who has the most vivid geographical such books incorrect spelling might reaconceptions may have the most pallid of moral and practical conceptions. Indeed, the imagination useful in chess need not be useful at all in politics or diplomacy, and very rarely indeed would be. Prob

sonably be thought disgraceful. But if the failure only occurred in polysyllabic words, we should be disposed to view leniently an indication of imperfect study of certain newspapers. We have before

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