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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: you watch, or OUGHT to watch, the dealings of fate and destiny with
the life of an agonized nation? Alas! it is the narrowness,
selfishness, minuteness, of your sensation that you have to deplore
in England at this day;--sensation which spends itself in bouquets
and speeches: in revellings and junketings; in sham fights and gay
puppet shows, while you can look on and see noble nations murdered,
man by man, without an effort or a tear.
I said "minuteness" and "selfishness" of sensation, but it would
have been enough to have said "injustice" or "unrighteousness" of
sensation. For as in nothing is a gentleman better to be discerned
from a vulgar person, so in nothing is a gentle nation (such nations
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