Page:Some soldier poets.djvu/146

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That question is so much more winsome than an accusation. What have we, any of us, added to favouring circumstance to warrant pride? Asked not in the name of justice, but of Glory. How universal the difficulty of a reply appears! To rail at tyrants is by comparison as though, when a little girl was naughty, we should scold her dolls; for kings and governors are only the toys of that lust for possessing which makes us all, rich and poor alike, so negligent of nobler things.

Though the first line of Endymion has become a proverb and already smells musty, serious people have not acquired the habit of looking for truth in beauty, where the nearest approach to it can be made. They expect and 142