Alas, alas! On this food had Richard Mutimer
pastured his soul since he grew to manhood, on this and this only.
English literature was to him a sealed volume; poetry he scarcely
knew by name; of history he was worse than ignorant, having looked
at this period and that through distorting media, and congratulating
himself on his clear vision because he saw men as trees walking; the
bent of his mind would have led him to natural science, but
opportunities of instruction were lacking, and the chosen directors
of his prejudice taught him to regard every fact, every discovery,
as _for_ or _against_ something.
A library of pathetic significance, the individual alone considered.
Viewed as representative, not without alarming suggestiveness to
those who can any longer trouble themselves about the world's
future. One dreams of the age when free thought--in the popular
sense--will have become universal, when art shall have lost its
meaning, worship its holiness, when the Bible will only exist in
'comic' editions, and Shakespeare be down-cried by 'most sweet
voices as a mountebank of reactionary tendencies.
Richard was to lecture on the ensuing Sunday at one of the branch
meeting-places of his society; he engaged himself this morning in
collecting certain data of a statistical kind.
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