Talk, indeed, about luck and cunning; what
a grain of sand as against a hundredweight is cunning's share here
as against luck's. What moment could be more humdrum and unworthy
of special record than the one chosen by the artist for the chapel
we are considering? Why should this one get arrested in its flight
and made immortal when so many worthier ones have perished? Yet
preserved it assuredly is; it is as though some fairy's wand had
struck the medieval Miss Pinkerton, Amelia Sedley, and others who do
duty instead of the Hebrew originals. It has locked them up as
sleeping beauties, whose charms all may look upon. Surely the hours
are like the women grinding at the mill--the one is taken and the
other left, and none can give the reason more than he can say why
Gallio should have won immortality by caring for none of "these
things."
It seems to me, moreover, that fairies have changed their practice
now in the matter of sleeping beauties, much as shopkeepers have
done in Regent Street.
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