One Has A Sketch Of Him, Another His Card, With The Address
Written Yesterday, And Given With An Invitation To Come And See Him
At Home In The Country, Where His Children Are Looking For Him.
He
is dead in a day, and buried in the walls of the prison.
A doctor
felt his pulse by deputy - a clergyman comes from the town to read
the last service over him - and the friends, who attend his funeral,
are marshalled by lazaretto-guardians, so as not to touch each
other. Every man goes back to his room and applies the lesson to
himself. One would not so depart without seeing again the dear
dear faces. We reckon up those we love: they are but very few,
but I think one loves them better than ever now. Should it be your
turn next? - and why not? Is it pity or comfort to think of that
affection which watches and survives you?
The Maker has linked together the whole race of man with this chain
of love. I like to think that there is no man but has had kindly
feelings for some other, and he for his neighbour, until we bind
together the whole family of Adam. Nor does it end here. It joins
heaven and earth together. For my friend or my child of past days
is still my friend or my child to me here, or in the home prepared
for us by the Father of all. If identity survives the grave, as
our faith tells us, is it not a consolation to think that there may
be one or two souls among the purified and just, whose affection
watches us invisible, and follows the poor sinner on earth?
CHAPTER V: ATHENS
Not feeling any enthusiasm myself about Athens, my bounden duty of
course is clear, to sneer and laugh heartily at all who have. In
fact, what business has a lawyer, who was in Pump Court this day
three weeks, and whose common reading is law reports or the
newspaper, to pretend to fall in love for the long vacation with
mere poetry, of which I swear a great deal is very doubtful, and to
get up an enthusiasm quite foreign to his nature and usual calling
in life? What call have ladies to consider Greece "romantic," they
who get their notions of mythology from the well-known pages of
"Tooke's Pantheon"? What is the reason that blundering Yorkshire
squires, young dandies from Corfu regiments, jolly sailors from
ships in the harbour, and yellow old Indians returning from
Bundelcund, should think proper to be enthusiastic about a country
of which they know nothing; the mere physical beauty of which they
cannot, for the most part, comprehend; and because certain
characters lived in it two thousand four hundred years ago? What
have these people in common with Pericles, what have these ladies
in common with Aspasia (O fie)? Of the race of Englishmen who come
wandering about the tomb of Socrates, do you think the majority
would not have voted to hemlock him?
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