... A wild tone pervades
the whole utterance of the man, like its key-note and regulator; now
screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill
mockery of fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious
heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch,
when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true
character is extremely difficult to fix....
"Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse,
do we still lie with regard to the professor's moral feeling. Gleams
of an ethereal love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite
pity; he could clasp the whole universe into his bosom, and
keep it warm; it seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a
very seraph. Then, again, he is so sly, and still so imperturbably
saturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness, towards all that
men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter,
sardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,--that you
look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate
Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial Round,
after all, were but some huge foolish whirligig, where kings and
beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were
chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest.
Pages:
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212