They were not destined to get beyond the first fifty yards, nevertheless. The rifle that had fired at Landor as he came upon the malpais went glistening up again. There was a puff of blue-hearted smoke in the still air, and Cairness's bronco, struck on the flanks, stung to frenzy, stopped short, then gathering itself together with every quivering sinew in a knot, after the way of its[Pg 280] breed, bounded off straight in among the jagged boulders. It was all done in an instant, and almost before Landor could see who had dashed ahead of him the horse had fallen, neck to the ground, throwing its rider with his head against a point of stone.
THREE:As I live and breathe! Mr. Everdail slapped his thigh. I forgot all about our birthday dinner and cruise for Sandy.
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THREE:It was the most cherished compliment he could wish.Son, turn that preserver overlet me see the other side.
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TWO:It is, perhaps, characteristic of the times that Aelians stories should redound more especially to the credit of Asclpius and Heracles, who were not gods of the first order, but demi-gods or deified mortals. Their worship, like that of the Nature-powers connected with earth rather than with heaven, belongs particularly to the popular religion, and seems to have been repressed or restrained in societies organised on aristocratic principles. And as more immediate products of the forces by which supernaturalist beliefs are created and maintained, such divinities would profit by the free scope now given to popular predilections. In their case also, as with the earth-goddesses Dmtr and Isis, a more immediate and affectionate relation might be established between the believer and the object of his worship than had been possible in reference to the chief Olympian gods. Heracles had lived the life of a man, his activity had been almost uniformly beneficent, and so he was universally invoked, as a helper and healer, in the sick-chamber no less231 than on the storm-tost ship.354 Asclpius was still more obviously the natural refuge of those who were afflicted with any bodily disease, and, in a time of profound peace, this was of all calamities the most likely to turn mens thoughts towards a supernatural protector. Hence we find that where, apart from Christianity, the religious enthusiasm of the second century reaches its intensest expression, which is in the writings of the celebrated rhetor Aristeides, Asclpius comes in for the largest share of devotional feeling. During an illness which continued through thirteen years, Aristeides sought day and night for help and inspiration from the god. It came at last in the usual form of a prescription communicated through a dream. Both on this and on other occasions, the excitement of an overwrought imagination combined with an exorbitant vanity made the sophist believe himself to be preferred above all other men as an object of the divine favour. At one time he would see himself admitted in his dreams to an exchange of compliments with Asclpius; at other times he would convert the most ordinary incidents into signs of supernatural protection. Thus his foster-sister having died on the day of his own recovery from a dangerous epidemic, it was revealed to him in a dream that her life had been accepted as a ransom for his. We are told that the monks of the Middle Ages could not refrain from expressing their indignant contempt for the insane credulity of Aristeides, in marginal notes on his orations; but the last-mentioned incident, at least, is closely paralleled by the well-known story that a devout lady was once permitted to redeem the life of Pius IX. by the sacrifice of her own.355
Golly-gracious! Larry exclaimed. Do you think?[Pg 87]For a long time the history of the Roman Empire was written by the descendants of its most deadly enemiesby Christian ecclesiastics or by scholars trained under their influence, and by the inheritors of the northern races who overran and destroyed it. The natural tendency of both classes was to paint the vices of the old society in the most glaring colours, that by so doing they might exhibit the virtues of its conquerors and the necessity of their mission in stronger relief. In this respect, their task was greatly facilitated by the character of the authorities from whom their information was principally derived. Horace and Petronius, Seneca and Juvenal, Tacitus and Suetonius, furnished them with pictures of depravity which it was impossible to exaggerate, which had even to be toned down before they could be reproduced in a modern language. No allowance was made for the influence of a rhetorical training in fostering the cultivation of effect at the expense of truth, nor for the influence of aristocratic prejudice in securing a ready acceptance for whatever tended to the discredit of a monarchical government. It was also forgotten that the court and society of Rome could give no idea of the life led in the rest of Italy and in the provinces. Moreover, the contrast continually instituted or implied by these historians was not between the ancient civilisation and the state of things which immediately succeeded it, nor yet between the society of a great capital as it was then, and as it was in the historians own time. The points selected for contrast were what was worst in Paganism and what is best in Christianity. The one was judged from the standpoint of courtiers and men of the world,197 embittered by disappointment and familiar with every form of depravity, the other was judged from the standpoint of experience acquired in a college quadrangle, a country parsonage, or a cathedral close. The modern writer knew little enough even about his own country, he knew next to nothing about what morality was in the Middle Ages, and nothing at all about what it still continues to be in modern Italy.
