Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 21, 1896 - Miscellanies, Volume IV

LORD LYTTONS FABLES
possibilities of the external world. The companion
fable to this is also excellent. It tells us of a man
who had, all his life through, entertained a passion
for certain blue hills on the far horizon, and had
promised himself to travel thither ere he died, and
become familiar with these distant friends. At last,
in some political trouble, he is banished to the very
place of his dreams. He arrives there overnight,
and, when he rises and goes forth in the morning,
there sure enough are the blue hills, only now they
have changed places with him, and smile across to
him, distant as ever, from the old home whence
he has come. Such a story might have been very
cynically treated ; but it is not so done, the whole
tone is kindly and consolatory, and the disenchanted
man submissively takes the lesson, and understands
that things far away are to be loved for their own
sake, and that the unattainable is not truly un-
attainable, when we can make the beauty of it our
own. Indeed, throughout all these two volumes,
though there is much practical scepticism, and much
irony on abstract questions, this kindly and consola-
tory spirit is never absent. There is much that is
cheerful and, after a sedate, fireside fashion, hopeful.
No one will be discouraged by reading the book ;
but the ground of all this hopefulness and cheerful-
ness remains to the end somewhat vague. It does
not seem to arise from any practical belief in the
future either of the individual or the race, but rather
from the profound personal contentment of the
writer. This is, I suppose, all we must look for
21— Q 24I