" As if one had ever belonged to anybody else!
DORA. But, surely, great good has come out of the monastic system
--our books,--our sciences--all saved by the monks?
L. Saved from what, my dear? From the abyss of misery and ruin
which that false Christianity allowed the whole active world to
live in. When it had become the principal amusement, and the most
admired art of Christian men, to cut one another's throats, and
burn one another's towns; of course the few feeble or reasonable
persons left, who desired quiet, safety, and kind fellowship, got
into cloisters; and the gentlest, thoughtfullest, noblest men and
women shut themselves up, precisely where they could be of least
use. They are very fine things, for us painters, now--the towers
and white arches upon the tops of the rocks; always in places
where it takes a day's climbing to get at them; but the intense
tragi-comedy of the thing, when one thinks of it, is unspeakable.
All the good people of the world getting themselves hung up out of
the way of mischief, like Bailie Nicol Jarvie;--poor little lambs,
as it were, dangling there for the sign of the Golden Fleece; or
like Socrates in his basket in the "Clouds"! (I must read you that
bit of Aristophanes again, by the way.
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