who had collected several such pieces.'
'_A kind of injury_.'--That is the thought which would naturally take
possession of any mind, charged with the responsibility of keeping
back for years this man's writings, especially his choicest
ones--papers that could not be published then on account of the
subject, or that came out with the leaves uncut, labouring with the
restrictions which the press opposed then to the issues of such a
mind.
That great result which the chief minds of the Modern Ages, under the
influence of the new culture, in that secret association of them were
able to achieve, that new and all comprehending science of life and
practice which they made it their business to perfect and transmit,
could not, indeed, as yet be communicated directly to the many. The
scientific doctrines of the new time were necessarily limited in that
age to the few. But another movement corresponding to that,
simultaneous in its origin, related to it in its source, was also in
progress here then, proceeding hand in hand with this, playing its
game for it, opening the way to its future triumph. This was that
movement of the new time,--this was that consequence, not of the
revival of learning only, but of the growth of the northern mind which
touched everywhere and directly the springs of government, and made
'bold power look pale,' for this was the movement in 'the many.'
This was the movement which had already convulsed the continent; this
was the movement of which Raleigh was from the first the soldier; this
was 'the cause' of which he became the chief. It was as a youth of
seventeen, bursting from those old fastnesses of the Middle Ages that
could not hold him any longer, shaking off the films of Aristotle and
his commentators, that he girded on his sword for the great
world-battle that was raging already in Europe then. It was into the
thickest of it, that his first step plunged him. For he was one of
that company of a hundred English gentlemen who were waiting but for
the first word of permission from Elizabeth to go as volunteers to the
aid of the Huguenots. This was the movement which had at last reached
England. And like these other continental events which were so slow in
taking effect in England when it did begin to unfold here at last;
there was a taste of 'the island' in it, in this also.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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