| the spirit of the prayer `Hallowed be Thy Name', ought to do what he can, however little that may be,
to check it. So I have gladly taken this unique opportunity, however unfit the topic may seem for the
Preface to a book of this kind, to express some thoughts which have weighed on my mind for a long
time. I did not expect, when I wrote the Preface to Vol. I, that it would be read to any appreciable extent: but
I rejoice to believe, from evidence that has reached me that it has been read by many, and to hope that
this Preface will also be so: and I think that, among them, some will be found ready to sympathize with
the views I have put forwards, and ready to help, with their prayers and their example, the revival, in
Society, of the waning spirit of reverence.
Christmas, 1893.
Bruno's Lessons DURING the next month or two my solitary town-life seemed, by contrast, unusually dull and
tedious. I missed the pleasant friends I had left behind at Elveston--the genial interchange of thought--
the sympathy which gave to one's ideas a new and vivid reality: but, perhaps more than all, I missed the
companionship of the two Fairies--or Dream-Children, for I had not yet solved the problem as to who or
what they were--whose sweet playfulness had shed a magic radiance over my life.
In office-hours--which I suppose reduce most men to the mental condition of a coffee-mill or a mangle--
time sped along much as usual: it was in the pauses of life, the desolate hours when books and newspapers
palled on the sated appetite, and when, thrown back upon one's own dreary musings, one strove--all in
vain--to people the vacant air with the dear faces of absent friends, that the real bitterness of solitude
made itself felt.
One evening, feeling my life a little more wearisome than usual, I strolled down to my Club, not so much
with the hope of meeting any friend there, for London was now `out of town', as with the feeling that
here, at least, I should hear `sweet words of human speech', and come into contact with human thought.
However, almost the first face I saw there was that of a friend. Eric Lindon was lounging, with rather
a `bored' expression of face, over a newspaper; and we fell into conversation with a mutual satisfaction
which neither of us tried to conceal.
After a while I ventured to introduce what was just then the main subject of my thoughts. `And so the
Doctor' (a name we had adopted by a tacit agreement, as a convenient compromise between the formality
of `Doctor Forester' and the intimacy--to which Eric Lindon hardly seemed entitled--of `Arthur') `has gone
abroad by this time, I suppose? Can you give me his present address?'
`He is still at Elveston--I believe,' was the reply. `But I have not been there since I last met you.'
I did not know which part of this intelligence to wonder at most. `And might I ask--if it isn't taking too
much of a liberty--when your wedding-bells are to--or perhaps they have rung, already?'
`No,' said Eric, in a steady voice, which betrayed scarcely a trace of emotion: `that engagement is at an
end. I am still "Benedick the unmarried man".'
After this, the thick-coming fancies--all radiant with new possibilities of happiness for Arthur--were far
too bewildering to admit of any further conversation, and I was only too glad to avail myself of the first
decent excuse, that offered itself, for retiring into silence.
The next day I wrote to Arthur, with as much of a reprimand for his long silence as I could bring myself
to put into words, begging him to tell me how the world went with him.
Needs must that three or four days--possibly more--should elapse before I could receive his reply; and
never had I known days drag their slow length along with a more tedious indolence.
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