The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: concetto, that fair and sacred head whereon they grew, to be shorn from
which is so dire a sorrow, that apotheosis itself can hardly reconcile
them to the parting.
Worthy, was not all this, of the descendants of the men who fought at
Marathon and Thermopylae? The old Greek civilisation was rotting
swiftly down; while a fire of God was preparing, slowly and dimly, in
that unnoticed Italian town of Rome, which was destined to burn up that
dead world, and all its works.
Callimachus's hymns, those may read who list. They are highly finished
enough; the work of a man who knew thoroughly what sort of article he
intended to make, and what were the most approved methods of making it.
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