Mr. Thornton was annoyed more than he ought to have been at all

that Mr. Bell was saying. He was not in a mood for joking. At

another time, he could have enjoyed Mr. Bell's half testy

condemnation of a town where the life was so at variance with

every habit he had formed; but now, he was galled enough to

attempt to defend what was never meant to be seriously attacked.

'I don't set up Milton as a model of a town.' 'Not in architecture?' slyly asked Mr. Bell.

'No! We've been too busy to attend to mere outward appearances.' 'Don't say mere outward appearances,' said Mr. Hale, gently.

'They impress us all, from childhood upward--every day of our

life.' 'Wait a little while,' said Mr. Thornton. 'Remember, we are of a

different race from the Greeks, to whom beauty was everything,

and to whom Mr. Bell might speak of a life of leisure and serene

enjoyment, much of which entered in through their outward senses.

I don't mean to despise them, any more than I would ape them. But

I belong to Teutonic blood; it is little mingled in this part of

England to what it is in others; we retain much of their

language; we retain more of their spirit; we do not look upon

life as a time for enjoyment, but as a time for action and

exertion. Our glory and our beauty arise out of our inward

strength, which makes us victorious over material resistance, and

over greater difficulties still. We are Teutonic up here in

Darkshire in another way. We hate to have laws made for us at a

distance. We wish people would allow us to right ourselves,

instead of continually meddling, with their imperfect

legislation. We stand up for self-government, and oppose

centralisation.' 'In short, you would like the Heptarchy back again. Well, at any

rate, I revoke what I said this morning--that you Milton people

did not reverence the past. You are regular worshippers of Thor.' 'If we do not reverence the past as you do in Oxford, it is

because we want something which can apply to the present more

directly. It is fine when the study of the past leads to a

prophecy of the future. But to men groping in new circumstances,

it would be finer if the words of experience could direct us how

to act in what concerns us most intimately and immediately; which

is full of difficulties that must be encountered; and upon the

mode in which they are met and conquered--not merely pushed aside

for the time--depends our future. Out of the wisdom of the past,

help us over the present. But no! People can speak of Utopia much

more easily than of the next day's duty; and yet when that duty

is all done by others, who so ready to cry, "Fie, for shame!"' 'And all this time I don't see what you are talking about. Would

you Milton men condescend to send up your to-day's difficulty to

Oxford? You have not tried us yet.' Mr. Thornton laughed outright at this. 'I believe I was talking

with reference to a good deal that has been troubling us of late;

I was thinking of the strikes we have gone through, which are

troublesome and injurious things enough, as I am finding to my

cost. And yet this last strike, under which I am smarting, has

been respectable.' 'A respectable strike!' said Mr. Bell. 'That sounds as if you

were far gone in the worship of Thor.' Margaret felt, rather than saw, that Mr. Thornton was chagrined

by the repeated turning into jest of what he was feeling as very

serious. She tried to change the conversation from a subject

about which one party cared little, while, to the other, it was

deeply, because personally, interesting. She forced herself to

say something.




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