gh humility."

That adjective "high" is not only one of the sudden and stunning
inspirations of literature; it is also one of the greatest and gravest
definitions of moral science. However far aloft a man may go, he is
still looking up, not only at God (which is obvious), but in a manner
at men also: seeing more and more all that is towering and mysterious in
the dignity and destiny of the lonely house of Adam. I wrote some part
of these rambling remarks on a high ridge of rock and turf overlooking a
stretch of the central counties; the rise was slight enough in reality,
but the immediate ascent had been so steep and sudden that one could not
avoid the fancy that on reaching the summit one would look down at the
stars. But one did not look down at the stars, but rather up at the
cities; seeing as high in heaven the palace town of Alfred like a lit
sunset cloud, and away in the void spaces, like a planet in eclipse,
Salisbury. So, it may be hoped, until we die you and I will always look
up rather than down at the labours and the habitations of our race; we
will lift up our eyes to the valleys from whence cometh our help. For
from every special eminence and beyond every sublime landmark, it is
good for our souls to see only vaster and vaster visions of that dizzy
and divine level; and to behold from our crumbling turrets the tall
plains of equality.

The Chorus

One of the most marked instances of the decline of true popular sympathy
is the gradual disappearance in our time of the habit of singing
in chorus. Even when it is done nowadays it is done tentatively and
sometimes inaudibly; apparently upon some preposterous principle
(which I have never clearly grasped) that singing is an art. In the new
aristocracy of the drawing-room a lady is actually asked whether she
sings. In the old democracy of the dinner table a man was simply told to
sing, and he had to do it. I like the atmosphere of those old banquets.
I like to think of my ancestors, middle-aged or venerable gentlemen, all
sitting round a table and explaining that they would never forget old
days or friends with a rumpty-iddity-iddity, or letting it be known that
they would die for England's glory with their tooral ooral, etc. Even
the vices of that society (which 'sometimes, I fear, rendered the
narrative portions of the song almost as cryptic and inarticulate as the
chorus) were displayed with a more human softening than the same
vices in the saloon bars