Excerpt from An Onlookers¿ Note-Book

The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality.14 collections and recollections.

It was his constant endeavour to keep that eye clear and bright. He never willingly suffered its vision to be obscured either by the glamour of an idealized past, or by the inevitable mistiness of the unknown future. And yet there were certain phenomena in contemporary life and thought on which he looked with increasingly grave misgiving. I purpose, as these chapters proceed, to deal with those phenomena one by one. To-day my text bids me deal rather with a general habit of mind than with a particular instance. And, if it is permissible to translate Mr. Gladstone's dignified English into the vulgar tongue, that habit may be called Cocksureness.

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