Page:The Harveian oration for 1874.djvu/37

 or reports like those of thunder or of discharges of artillery, which tell how the masses of solid ice are giving way beneath the influence of the returning warmth. And next, for the simile still holds good, the swollen river overflows its banks, and terrifies by strange portents of evil the inhabitants, unable to realise the fertility which the receding waters will leave behind them.

says Horace; and much, I think, is to be said in behalf of those who, like ‘Gravissimus et Excellentissimus Dominus Ortuinus Gratius,’ shrank from the new learning and its results. The laugh was with Ulrich von Hütten: his own life and death were not so edifying as to make one cast in one’s lot unhesitatingly with him and his compeers.

By degrees the disturbances which ushered