But the society named
polite is volatile in its adorations, and to-morrow will be petting a
bronzed soldier, or a black African, or a prince, or a spiritualist:
ideas cannot take root in its ever-shifting soil. It is besides addicted
in self-defence to gabble exclusively of the affairs of its rapidly
revolving world, as children on a whirligoround bestow their attention on
the wooden horse or cradle ahead of them, to escape from giddiness and
preserve a notion of identity. The professor is better out of a circle
that often confounds by lionizing, sometimes annoys by abandoning, and
always confuses. The school that teaches gently what peril there is lest
a cultivated head should still be coxcomb's, and the collisions which may
befall high-soaring minds, empty or full, is more to be recommended than
the sphere of incessant motion supplying it with material.
Lands where the Comic spirit is obscure overhead are rank with raw crops
of matter. The traveller accustomed to smooth highways and people not
covered with burrs and prickles is amazed, amid so much that is fair and
cherishable, to come upon such curious barbarism.
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