The Poet Laureate On Happiness

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 10, 2 September 1908, Page 38

The Poet Laureate On Happiness

A COMPLIMENT TO WOMEN. The poet Laureate, Mr. Alfred Austin, opened a “ Country in Town ” exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery last month. He said he could not help feeling that the utmost which could be done to bring the country in to the town was at most a mitigation of the inevitable shadows attached to town life, and he knew nothing that struck him as more pathetic in our time, or that went more directly to their hearts than the splendid continuous, and ingenious efforts of mankind to mitigate the evils that our material civilisation hadi brought in its train. The chief source of human happiness, reasonable and worthy happiness, which might be considered synonymous with virtue and the highest morality were health and strength, domestic happiness and! comfort and right thinking, and all the efforts which were being made were really to increase the sum total, and widen the area of human happiness. As to domestic happiness, he was pleased to think that that was possible everywhere, and, as woman was the chief cause of it, she could make us happy in the town as well as in the country.