In appreciation of Sublime

Such were the thoughts—if to visions so imperfect and undefined as those which wandered through his enfeebled brain, the term can be applied—which

But, it is well known, what strikes the capricious mind of the poet is not always what affects the mass of readers. Now, while admiring, as others doubtless will admire, the details we have to relate, our main preoccupation concerned a matter to which no one before ourselves had given a thought. D'Artagnan

Do you, I wonder, little children, who read this story? Or are you like the boy in the kindergarten to whom I was telling a fairy story and who interrupted me contemptuously with the remark: "Fairies don't exist!" "O don't they my little man!" said I. "Well you think so." Presently we read of a ball that grew, and he spoke again with great energy:

For the perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them;

"Go, my son, and do something worth doing,"

that glorious vision of doing good, which is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds,

It would be worse still if this short human life were broken up into yet shorter lives, each of which was in its turn forgotten.