Fraser's magazine - 1882 Author:James Anthony Froude Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Seed-time Of HEALTH.1 By Benjamin Ward Richardson, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., President Of The Brighton Health Congress. IN the depths of the night, in a cl... more »imate where night is short; in the midst of that short interval, when even the gods are supposed to rest; when the sun-god himself has withdrawn from the earth, and the sun sees not the deeds of men, some men and women of the earth, in solemn silence, bring something forth from home. If they should speak there would flow from the lips of those people a. language so beautiful, so perfect, so expressive, that though the listening ear were foreign to it and understood it not, it would be held listening. But there is not a sound. If these people could be seen in their fair stature and build of body, draped in their loose garments, the eye, like the ear, would be vanquished. Such incomparable beauty! Should a sculptor want a model for a work he would leave for all time, he would find it in them ; should a painter want a face for his perfected art, he would find it in them; should a poet want the theme for a song on living beauty, he would find his inspiration in them ; should a physician want a text for a discourse on the types of health and sanity, he would find it in those types of beauty. In those faces, which actually live to this hour in marble more precious than gold, there would be seen, if they were unveiled from this awful stillness and darkness of the night, two living passions, engraved in life through expression of the soul, resigned grief and sublime fear. What has happened can never be recalled, and grief, therefore, is chastened by reason: but what has happened is so unnatural, so wrong, that reason, in its turn, is sublimed to fear. It is so terrible, none must look on it: if the sun-god, source of ligh...« less