It pains me to see coarseness predominant in the human countenance,—a thing so ethereal and divine of itself. Think of the forerunning wrongs back in the generations which have prompted and helped it to its present degradation!
The poets, in chronicling strong emotion over things actual or imagined, must frequently outgo the force of the emotion in the expression of it, so that they have the power of draining off the whole supply and depth of their feeling.
Coleridge should have lived in the times of the oracles. He would have "drawn," as we say, better than Delphi.
At the funeral of a celebrated artist, wherein I took no part whatever, and had only a genuine sorrow for the public loss to excuse my slipping into the church, the sexton wanted to seat me conspicuously, taking me for a chief mourner, for a relative at least, he said. I was pleased at the limiting clause.
Children are born optimists, and we slowly educate them out of their heresy.