And then Lord Knollys and Sir Dighton Probyn, those two Great Pillars of Wisdom and Judgment, who so reminded me, as they used to sit side by side in the Royal Chapel, of those two who on either side held up the arms of Moses in fighting the Amalekites:
“And Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands,
The one on the one side, and the other on the other side;
And his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.”
Yes! King Edward’s hands were held steady till the setting of his sun on May 6th, 1910, and so did he “discomfit his enemies by their aid.”
For over forty years Lord Knollys played that great part in great affairs which will occupy his Biographer with Admiration of his Self-Effacement and unerring Judgment. Myself I owe him gratitude inexpressible.
For myself, those Great Three ever live in my heart and ever will.
There are no such that I know of who are left to us to rise in their place.
CHAPTER II
“THE MOON SWAYS OCEANS AND PROVOKES THE HOUND.”
The hound keeps baying at the moon but gets no answer from her, and she continues silently her mighty influence in causing the tides of the earth, such a mighty influence as I have seen in the Bay of Fundy, and on the coast of Arcadia where the tide rises some 40 feet—you see it like a high wall rolling in towards you on the beach! It exalts one, and the base things of earth vanish from one’s thoughts. So also may the contents of this book be like-minded by a mighty silence against baying hounds! I hope to name no living name except for praise, and even against envy I hope I may be silent. Envy caused the first murder. It was the biggest and nastiest of all Cæsar’s wounds: