"What is the meaning of nobleness?" asks Carlyle. "In a valiant suffering for others did nobleness ever lie. Every noble crown is, and on earth will for ever be, a crown of thorns. All true work is sacred. In all true work, were it but true hand labour, there is something of divineness. Sweat of the brow; and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; up to that 'agony of bloody sweat' which all men have called divine. Oh, brother, if this is not worship, then, I say, the more pity for worship: for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky. Who art thou that complainest of thy life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy fellow workmen there in God's eternity surviving those, they alone surviving; peopling, they alone, the unmeasured solitudes of Time. To thee Heaven, though severe, is not unkind. Heaven is kind, as a noble mother; as that Spartan mother, saying, while she gave her son his shield, 'With it, my son, or upon it, thou, too, shalt return home in honour--to thy far distant home in honour--doubt it not--if in the battle thou keep thy shield!' Thou in the eternities and deepest death kingdoms art not an alien; thou everywhere art a denizen. Complain not; the very Spartans did not complain."
Would that the toiling labourer in the Cotswolds and in our great smoky cities might keep these words continually before him, so that he might grasp, not merely the secret of content and happiness in this life, but the golden key to the immeasurable blessings of "the sure and certain hope" of that life which is to come! Then shall he hear the words:
"King, thou wast called Conqueror;
In every battle thou bearest the prize."
Conqueror will he be in life's battle if he follow in the footsteps of the Spartan of old or of Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior":
"Who, doomed to go in company with pain,
And fear, and bloodshed--miserable train!--
Turns his necessity to glorious gain."
Finally, the countryman who feels discontented with his lot--and there are few indeed who do not occasionally pine for a change of employment--should go on a railway journey through "the black country" at night, and mark the fierce light that reddens the murky skies as the factory fires send forth their livid flames and clouds of sooty smoke. He should watch the swarms of long-suffering human beings going to and fro and in and out like busy bees around their hive, toiling, ever toiling, round about the blazing fires. He should spend an hour in the streets of Birmingham, where, as I passed through one fine September morning recently on my way to Ireland, the atmosphere was darkened and the human lungs stifled by a thick yellow fog. Or he should go down to the engine-room of a mighty liner, when it is doing its twenty knots across the seas, and then think of his own life in the happy hamlets and the fresh, green fields of our English country.
Coming once more down the hill into the valley of the Coln, we must cross the old Roman road known as the Fossway, follow the course of the stream, and, about a mile beyond the snug little village of Fossbridge, we reach the great woods of Chedworth.
These coverts form part of the property of Lord Eldon. His house of Stowell stands well up on the hill. It is a grey, square building of some size, placed so as to catch all the sun and the breezes too,--very much more healthy and bright than most of the old houses we have passed, which were built much too low down in the valley, where the winter sunbeams seldom penetrate and the river mists rise damp and cold at night. As we walk along the drive which leads through the woods to the Roman villa, any amount of rabbits and pheasants are to be seen. And here take place annually some of those big shoots which ignorant people are so fond of condemning as unsportsmanlike, simply because they have not the remotest idea what they are talking about. Why it should be cruel to kill a thousand head in a day instead of two hundred on five separate days, one fails to understand. As a matter of fact, the bigger the "shoot" the less cruelty takes place, because bad shots are not likely to be present on these occasions, whilst in small "shoots" they are the rule rather than the exception. Instead of birds and ground game being wounded time after time, at big battues they are killed stone dead by some well-known and acknowledged good shot. To see a real workman knocking down rocketer after rocketer at a height which would be considered impossible by half the men who go but shooting is to witness an exhibition of skill and correct timing which can only be attained by the most assiduous practice and the quickest of eyes. No, it is the pottering hedgerow shooter, generally on his neighbour's boundary, who is often unsportsmanlike. We know one or two who would have no hesitation in shooting at a covey of partridges on the ground, when they were within shot of the boundary hedge; and if they wounded three or four and picked them up, they would carry them home fluttering and gasping, because they are too heartless to think of putting the wretched creatures out of their sufferings.
The extensive Roman remains discovered some years ago in the heart of this forest doubtless formed the country house of some Roman squire. They are well away from the river bank, and about three parts of the way up the sloping hillside. The house faced as nearly as possible south-east. In this point, as in many others, the Romans showed their superiority of intellect over our ancestors of Elizabethan and other days. Nowadays we begin to realise that houses should be built on high ground, and that the aspect that gives most sun in winter is south-east. The old Romans realised this fifteen hundred years ago. In other words, our ancestors in the dark ages were infinitely behind the Romans in intellect, and we are just reaching their standard of common sense. The characteristics of the interior of these old dwellings are simplicity combined with refinement and good taste. And it is worthy of remark that the men who are ahead of the thought and feeling of the present day are crying out for more simplicity in our homes and furniture, as well as for more refinement and real architectural merit. No useless luxuries and nick-nacks, but plenty of public baths, and mosaic pavements laboriously put together by hard hand labour,--these are the points that Ruskin and the Romans liked in common.