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Post by deuce on Mar 31, 2017 9:53:13 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Apr 2, 2017 15:53:25 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Apr 4, 2017 10:45:05 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Apr 7, 2017 22:27:39 GMT -5
Sir Richard Francis Burton, explorer and frontier partisan extraordinaire, considered Alexander Kinglake's travelogue, Eothen, the "book of books". There are quite a few exciting passages, but I always liked this passage about a man's need to rebel and wander...
If a man, and an Englishman, be not born of his mother with a natural Chiffney-bit in his mouth, there comes to him a time for loathing the wearisome ways of society; a time for not liking tamed people; a time for not dancing quadrilles, not sitting in pews; a time for pretending that Milton and Shelley, and all sorts of mere dead people, were greater in death than the first living Lord of the Treasury; a time, in short, for scoffing and railing, for speaking lightly of the very opera, and all our most cherished institutions. It is from nineteen to two or three and twenty perhaps that this war of the man against men is like to be waged most sullenly. You are yet in this smiling England, but you find yourself wending away to the dark sides of her mountains, climbing the dizzy crags, exulting in the fellowship of mists and clouds, and watching the storms how they gather, or proving the mettle of your mare upon the broad and dreary downs, because that you feel congenially with the yet unparcelled earth.
A little while you are free and unlabelled, like the ground that you compass; but civilisation is coming and coming; you and your much-loved waste lands will be surely enclosed, and sooner or later brought down to a state of mere usefulness; the ground will be curiously sliced into acres and roods and perches, and you, for all you sit so smartly in your saddle, you will be caught, you will be taken up from travel as a colt from grass, to be trained and tried, and matched and run. All this in time, but first came Continental tours and the moody longing for Eastern travel. The downs and the moors of England can hold you no longer; with large strides you burst away from these slips and patches of free land; you thread your path through the crowds of Europe, and at last, on the banks of Jordan, you joyfully know that you are upon the very frontier of all accustomed respectabilities. There, on the other side of the river (you can swim it with one arm), there reigns the people that will be like to put you to death for NOT being a vagrant, for NOT being a robber, for NOT being armed and houseless.  |
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Post by deuce on Apr 12, 2017 16:27:59 GMT -5
Sir Richard Francis Burton, explorer and frontier partisan extraordinaire, considered Alexander Kinglake's travelogue, Eothen, the "book of books". There are quite a few exciting passages, but I always liked this passage about a man's need to rebel and wander...
If a man, and an Englishman, be not born of his mother with a natural Chiffney-bit in his mouth, there comes to him a time for loathing the wearisome ways of society; a time for not liking tamed people; a time for not dancing quadrilles, not sitting in pews; a time for pretending that Milton and Shelley, and all sorts of mere dead people, were greater in death than the first living Lord of the Treasury; a time, in short, for scoffing and railing, for speaking lightly of the very opera, and all our most cherished institutions. It is from nineteen to two or three and twenty perhaps that this war of the man against men is like to be waged most sullenly. You are yet in this smiling England, but you find yourself wending away to the dark sides of her mountains, climbing the dizzy crags, exulting in the fellowship of mists and clouds, and watching the storms how they gather, or proving the mettle of your mare upon the broad and dreary downs, because that you feel congenially with the yet unparcelled earth.
A little while you are free and unlabelled, like the ground that you compass; but civilisation is coming and coming; you and your much-loved waste lands will be surely enclosed, and sooner or later brought down to a state of mere usefulness; the ground will be curiously sliced into acres and roods and perches, and you, for all you sit so smartly in your saddle, you will be caught, you will be taken up from travel as a colt from grass, to be trained and tried, and matched and run. All this in time, but first came Continental tours and the moody longing for Eastern travel. The downs and the moors of England can hold you no longer; with large strides you burst away from these slips and patches of free land; you thread your path through the crowds of Europe, and at last, on the banks of Jordan, you joyfully know that you are upon the very frontier of all accustomed respectabilities. There, on the other side of the river (you can swim it with one arm), there reigns the people that will be like to put you to death for NOT being a vagrant, for NOT being a robber, for NOT being armed and houseless.The full text of Eothen in a very nice format: ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kinglake/alexander_william/eothen/contents.html |
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Post by deuce on Apr 19, 2017 7:17:40 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on May 7, 2017 13:08:17 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on May 10, 2017 9:29:58 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on May 21, 2017 2:47:15 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on May 22, 2017 21:12:49 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on May 23, 2017 16:37:37 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Jun 20, 2017 13:14:40 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Jun 22, 2017 13:37:56 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Jun 25, 2017 21:11:20 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Jun 30, 2017 13:21:41 GMT -5
"Untamed" by Robert Stanley...  |
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