|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: mean curiosity, as of a child opening a forbidden door, or a servant
prying into her master's business;--and a noble curiosity,
questioning, in the front of danger, the source of the great river
beyond the sand,--the place of the great continents beyond the sea;-
-a nobler curiosity still, which questions of the source of the
River of Life, and of the space of the Continent of Heaven,--things
which "the angels desire to look into." So the anxiety is ignoble,
with which you linger over the course and catastrophe of an idle
tale; but do you think the anxiety is less, or greater, with which
you watch, or OUGHT to watch, the dealings of fate and destiny with
the life of an agonized nation? Alas! it is the narrowness,
|