20 ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS
The Possessor of the Earth
I COULD there sit quietly, and, looking on the waters, see fishes leap-
ing at flies of several shapes and colours. Looking on the hills, I
could behold them spotted with woods and groves. Looking down
the meadows, I could see here a boy gathering lilies and ladysmocks
and there a girl cropping columbines and cowslips, all to make gar-
lands suitable to this present month of May.
As I thus sat, joying in mine own happy condition, I did thank-
fully remember what my Saviour said, that the meek possess
the earth. Izaak Walton
The England Passing Away
npHE paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old
JL things were passing away, and the faith and the life of ten cen-
turies were dissolving like a dream.
Chivalry was dying ; the abbey and the castle were soon together
to crumble into ruins; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions,,
of the old world were passing away, never to return. A new con-
tinent had risen up beyond the western sea. The floor of heaven,
inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable
space ; and the firm earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, was
seen to be but a small atom in the vastness of the Universe.
And now it is all gone—like an unsubstantial pageant faded ; and
between us and old England there lies a gulf of mystery which the
prose of the historian will never adequately bridge. They cannot
come to us, and our imagination can but feebly penetrate to them.
Only among the aisles of the cathedrals, only as we gaze upon their
silent figures sleeping on their tombs, some faint conceptions float
before us of what these men were when they were alive ; and perhaps
in the sound of church bells, that peculiar creation of medieval age,
which falls upon the ear like the echo of a vanished world.
J. A. Froude, writing of England 400 years ago
The Place Beloved
f~*\ OD gave all men all earth to love,
^J But since our hearts are small,
3rdained for each one spot should prove
Beloved over all. Rudyard Kipling
The Cowards
npHE worst of the worthy sort of people is that they are such cowards,
1 A man groans over wrong; he shuts his lips, he takes his supper \
he forgets. " Voltaire