Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Posted here Wednesday, July 14, 2004 at 8:57:39 AM     I've been slowly going through the extraordinary experience of reading the core eighteenth and nineteenth century English novels. I just finished Middlemarch and have to say, these books are an education about how life can be experienced, not just that experience, but approaches that work in the newest of circumstances. Part of it is the play of empathy and discernment into one's own and other people's character, and the ethical commitment to do so in the presence of very good manners. The story ends with Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. ********