With all the waters of the firmament, The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods -BRYANT, A Forest Hymn 29–34, 100–11. 38. So live, that, when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take -BRYANT, Thanatopsis. 39. Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, 40. When a new planet swims into his ken; -KEATS, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer. -SHAKESPEARE, Henry VIII iii. 2. 432-38. 41. Now is the high-tide of the year, And whatever of life hath ebbed away Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, The breeze comes whispering in our ear That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the robin is plastering his house hard by; We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,- LOWELL, The Vision of Sir Launfal. 42. If we would know what a University is, considered in its elementary idea, we must take ourselves to the first and most celebrated home of European literature and source of European civilization, to the bright and beautiful Athens,-Athens, whose schools drew to her bosom, and then sent back again to the business of life, the youth of the Western world for a long thousand years. Seated on the verge of the continent, the city seemed hardly suited for the duties of a central metropolis of knowledge; yet, what it lost in convenience of approach, it gained in its neighbourhood to the traditions of the mysterious East, and of the loveliness of the regions in which it lay. Hither, then, as to a sort of ideal land, where all archetypes of the great and the fair were found in substantial being, and all departments of truth explored, and all diversities of intellectual power exhibited, where taste and philosophy were majestically enthroned as in a royal court, where there was no sovereignty but that of mind, and no nobility but that of genius, where professors were rulers, and princes did homage, hither flocked continually from the very corners of the orbis terrarum [circle of lands, i. e., the earth], the many-tongued generation, just rising, or just risen into manhood, in order to gain wisdom. -NEWMAN, The Office and Work of Universities. 43. But have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us; it revives for us the Age of Wonder, endowing us with the shoes of swiftness and the cap of darkness, so that we walk invisible like fern-seed, and witness unharmed the plague at Athens or Florence or London; accompany Cæsar on his marches, or look in on Catiline in council with his fellow-conspirators, or Guy Fawkes in the cellar of St. Stephen's. We often hear of people who will descend to any servility, submit to any insult, for the sake of getting themselves or their children into what is euphemistically called good society. Did it ever occur to them that there is a select society of all the centuries to which they and theirs can be admitted for the asking, a society, too, which will not involve them in ruinous expense, and still more ruinous waste of time and health and faculties?-LOWELL, Books and Libraries. 44. One is sometimes asked by young people to recommend a course of reading. My advice would be that they should confine themselves to the supreme books in whatever literature, or still better to choose some one great author, and make themselves thoroughly familiar with him. For, as all roads lead to Rome, so do they likewise lead away from it, and you will find that, in order to understand perfectly and weigh exactly any vital piece of literature, you will be gradually and pleasantly persuaded to excursions and explorations of which you little dreamed when you began, and will find yourselves scholars before you are aware. For remember that there is nothing less profitable than scholarship for the mere sake of scholarship, nor anything more wearisome in the attainment. But the moment you have a definite aim, attention is quickened, the mother of memory, and all that you acquire groups and arranges itself in an order that is lucid, because everywhere and always it is in intelligent relation to a central object of constant and growing interest. This method also forces upon us the necessity of thinking, which is, after all, the highest result of all education. For what we want is not learning but knowledge; that is, the power to make learning answer its true end as a quickener of intelligence and a widener of our intellectual sympathies. I do not mean to say that every one is fitted by nature or inclination for a definite course of study, or indeed for serious study in any sense. I am quite willing that these should "browse in a library," as Dr. Johnson called it, to their hearts' content. It is, perhaps, the only way in which time may be profitably wasted.-LOWELL, Books and Libraries. 45. For when I shall have brought them into the land which I sware unto their fathers, that floweth with milk and honey; and they shall have eaten and filled themselves, and waxen fat; then will they turn unto other gods, and serve them, and provoke me, and break my covenant.-Deuteronomy xxxi. 20. 46. The Congress, whenever two-thirds shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a con vention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the various States, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by Congress; provided that no amendments which may be made prior to the year 1808 shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.-Constitution of the United States, Article V. 47. As an oak profits by the foregone lives of immemorial vegetable races that have worked over the juices of earth and air into organic life out of whose dissolution a soil might gather fit to maintain that nobler birth of nature, so we may be sure that the genius of every remembered poet drew the forces that built it up out of the decay of a long succession of forgotten ones.-LOWELL. 48. There it comes, at last-the flash of the starting-gun. Long before the sound of the report can roll up the river, the whole pent-up life and energy which has been held in leash, as it were, for the last six minutes, is loose, and breaks away with a bound and a dash which he who has felt it will remember for his life, but the like of which, will he ever feel again?-THOMAS HUGHES, Tom Brown at Oxford. CHAPTER XVI VERBALS 231. Certain forms of the verb are used to express or denote action or being without asserting it; they cannot, therefore, have subjects and be used as predicate verbs. They may be called VERBALS. Verbals are of two sorts, INFINITIVES and PARTICIPLES. Infinitives resemble nouns in that they name the action which they express; participles are adjuncts of nouns, like adjectives, and are so named because they are partakers (Latin participulum from pars, parti-, "part," and capere, "take") of both verb and adjective natures. Infinitives are, by their forms and use, divided into two classes, ROOT INFINITIVES and GERUNDS. The gerund is identical in form with the participle, but has the syntax of the noun. Root infinitive: They came to see us. Gerund: They were surprised at seeing us. THE INFLECTIONS OF VERBALS 232. Since verbals have no asserting power and no subject, they are wanting in such inflectional modifications as depend, in predicate verbs, on their subject, or on their asserting power. They have no mood, person, or number. Compare the infinitive and the predicate verb: He comes to see; we come to see. Observe that the predicate verb changes to suit the person and number of the subject, but that the infinitive is invariable. It is this fact that they are unlimited (Latin infinitum, from in-, "un-," and finitum "ended," cf. finis) by the necessity of agreeing with a subject in person and number forms that gives such words the name infinitive. Predicate verbs, on the other hand, are often called finite verbs. |