Three generations

INADEQUATELY REWARDED MERIT 339
my sister's and mine. Since these now distant years
a wide reading world has known how to value him as
the cultured and witty author of " Obiter Dicta," and
in more strenuous political battle-fields he has taken
his place as Secretary of State for Ireland in Mr.
Asquith's Cabinet.
I am brought forward to the summing-up of the
many thoughtful, educated men and women whose
path crossed mine, with regard to whom some had
won their literary qualification by long struggles and
rigid self-denial. Yet they have remained less known
to the world than others I have mentioned who are
hardly more worthy — nay, in some instances their
deserts have been less high — for the race is not always
to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; and now,
when younger men and women have arisen eager to
tell their tales, and the older men and women have
largely joined the great majority, such name and fame
as they achieved has in many instances been blotted
out, they and their work are alike for the most part
forgotten, thrust aside and heavily overlaid by fresh
material.
It looks at the first glance like a waste of human
talent and human ambition, of humble hearts pouring
out their life-blood in vain. But one knows there
can be no waste in this as in any other kingdom of
the great Creator's. The whole goes to swell the
spiritual wealth which must sound from the past,
and throughout the future, with the addition of a
further development and a fresh stamp. There is no
finality in the succession of poets, historians, philoso-
phers, story-tellers, no end to it until the end of
the world itself. An eminent Englishwoman
naturalized in France has recently arranged, in what