FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   606   607   608   609   610   611   612   613   614   615   616   617   618   619   620   621   622   623   624   625   626   627   628   629   630  
631   632   633   634   635   636   637   638   639   640   641   642   643   644   645   646   647   648   649   650   651   652   653   654   655   >>   >|  
t of any of the straiter sects, he has only to hand over that box of rouleaux to the trustees of one of its educational institutions for the endowment of two or three professorships. If he would dream of being remembered by coming generations, what monument so enduring as a college building that shall bear his name, and even when its solid masonry shall crumble give place to another still charged with the same sacred duty of perpetuating his remembrance. Who was Sir Matthew Holworthy, that his name is a household word on the lips of thousands of scholars, and will be centuries hence, as that of Walter de Merton, dead six hundred years ago, is to-day at Oxford? Who was Mistress Holden, that she should be blessed among women by having her name spoken gratefully and the little edifice she caused to be erected preserved as her monument from generation to generation? All these possibilities, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life; the tears of grateful orphans by the gallon; the prayers of Westminster Assembly's Catechism divines by the thousand; the masses of priests by the century;--all these things, and more if more there be that the imagination of a lover of gold is likely to range over, the miser hears and sees and feels and hugs and enjoys as he paddles with his lean hands among the sliding, shining, ringing, innocent-looking bits of yellow metal, toying with them as the lion-tamer handles the great carnivorous monster, whose might and whose terrors are child's play to the latent forces and power of harm-doing of the glittering counters played with in the great game between angels and devils. I have seen a good deal of misers, and I think I understand them as well as most persons do. But the Capitalist's economy in rags and his liberality to the young doctor are very oddly contrasted with each other. I should not be surprised at any time to hear that he had endowed a scholarship or professorship or built a college dormitory, in spite of his curious parsimony in old linen. I do not know where our Young Astronomer got the notions that he expresses so freely in the lines that follow. I think the statement is true, however, which I see in one of the most popular Cyclopaedias, that "the non-clerical mind in all ages is disposed to look favorably upon the doctrine of the universal restoration to holiness and happiness of all fallen intelligences, whether human or angelic." Certainly, most of t
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   606   607   608   609   610   611   612   613   614   615   616   617   618   619   620   621   622   623   624   625   626   627   628   629   630  
631   632   633   634   635   636   637   638   639   640   641   642   643   644   645   646   647   648   649   650   651   652   653   654   655   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

college

 
monument
 

generation

 

yellow

 
misers
 

shining

 
sliding
 

Capitalist

 

persons

 

ringing


innocent

 

understand

 

devils

 

carnivorous

 

forces

 

monster

 

latent

 
terrors
 

economy

 

glittering


angels
 

handles

 
counters
 
played
 

toying

 

Cyclopaedias

 

popular

 

clerical

 
freely
 

follow


statement

 
disposed
 

intelligences

 

fallen

 

Certainly

 

angelic

 

happiness

 

holiness

 

favorably

 

doctrine


universal

 

restoration

 

expresses

 

notions

 

surprised

 
endowed
 

contrasted

 
liberality
 

doctor

 

scholarship