Pelham — CompleteLytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
History
Pelham — Complete
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
Adventure stories; English fiction -- 19th century; Great Britain -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction
of uncertainty and doubt, with those bright spirits which we do now
converse with so imperfectly; that I may catch from the very lips of
Homer the unclouded gorgeousness of fiction, and from the accents of
Archimedes, the unadulterated calculations of truth.”
Clutterbuck ceased, and the glow of his enthusiasm diffused itself over
his sunken eye and consumptive cheek. The boy, who had sat apart, and
silent, during our discourse, laid his head upon the table, and sobbed
audibly; and I rose, deeply affected, to offer to one for whom they
were, indeed, unavailing, the wishes and blessing of an eager, but not
hardened disciple of the world. We parted: on this earth we can never
meet again. The light has wasted itself away beneath the bushel. It
will be six weeks to-morrow since the meek and noble-minded academician
breathed his last.
CHAPTER LXIV.
‘Tis but a single murder.--Lillo: Fatal Curiosity.
It was in a melancholy and thoughtful mood that I rode away from the
parsonage. Numerous and hearty were the maledictions I bestowed upon a
system of education which, while it was so ineffective with the many,
was so pernicious to the few. Miserable delusion (thought I), that
encourages the ruin of health and the perversion of intellect by studies
that are as unprofitable to the world as they are destructive to the
possessor--that incapacitate him for public, and unfit him for private
life--and that, while they expose him to the ridicule of strangers,
render him the victim of his wife, and the prey of his domestic.
Busied in such reflections, I rode quickly on till I found myself once
more on the heath. I looked anxiously round for the conspicuous equipage
of Lady Chester, but in vain--the ground was thin--nearly all the higher
orders had retired--the common people, grouped together, and clamouring
noisily, were withdrawing: and the shrill voices of the itinerant
hawkers of cards and bills had at length subsided into silence. I rode
over the ground, in the hope of finding some solitary straggler of
our party. Alas! there was not one; and, with much reluctance at, and
distaste to, my lonely retreat, I turned in a homeward direction from
the course.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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