Purple eBooks

"]
[Footnote 31: Aloof, O keep aloof, ye uninitiated!]
[Footnote 32: A titbit.]


THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER[33]
LESLIE STEPHEN

I have often felt a sympathy, which almost rises to the pathetic, when
looking on at a cricket-match or boat-race. Something of the emotion
with which Gray regarded the "distant spires and antique towers" rises
within me. It is not, indeed, that I feel very deeply for the fine
ingenuous lads who, as somebody says, are about to be degraded into
tricky, selfish Members of Parliament. I have seen too much of them.
They are very fine animals; but they are rather too exclusively animal.
The soul is apt to be in too embryonic a state within these cases of
well-strung bone and muscle. It is impossible for a mere athletic
machine, however finely constructed, to appeal very deeply to one's
finer sentiments. I can scarcely look forward with even an affectation
of sorrow for the time when, if more sophisticated, it will at least
have made a nearer approach to the dignity of an intellectual being.


Pages:
209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233