Sanitary and Social Lectures and EssaysKingsley, Charles
Science
Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays
Kingsley, Charles
Essays; Social problems
“Yes, my boy. And for that very reason, I think we, the people, will
have our fountains; if it be but to make our governments, and
corporations, and all public bodies and officers, remember that they
all—save Her Majesty the Queen—are our servants, and not we theirs; and
that we choose to have water, not only to wash with, but to play with, if
we like. And I believe—for the world, as you will find, is full not only
of just but of generous souls—that if the water-supply were set really
right, there would be found, in many a city, many a generous man who,
over and above his compulsory water-rate, would give his poor
fellow-townsmen such a real fountain as those which ennoble the great
square at Carcasonne and the great square at Nismes; to be ‘a thing of
beauty and a joy for ever.’”
“And now, if you want to go back to your Latin and Greek, you shall
translate for me into Latin—I do not expect you to do it into Greek,
though it would turn very well into Greek, for the Greeks know all about
the matter long before the Romans—what follows here; and you shall verify
the facts and the names, etc., in it from your dictionaries of antiquity
and biography, that you may remember all the better what it says. And by
that time, I think, you will have learnt something more useful to
yourself, and, I hope, to your country hereafter, than if you had learnt
to patch together the neatest Greek and Latin verses which have appeared
since the days of Mr. Canning.”
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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