| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: like any of the rest of us.
The panacea is by no means an original one. Wagner was
anticipated in the year 1819 by a young country gentleman from
Sussex named Shelley, in a work of extraordinary artistic power
and splendor. Prometheus Unbound is an English attempt at a Ring;
and when it is taken into account that the author was only 27
whereas Wagner was 40 when he completed the poem of The Ring, our
vulgar patriotism may find an envious satisfaction in insisting
upon the comparison. Both works set forth the same conflict
between humanity and its gods and governments, issuing in the
redemption of man from their tyranny by the growth of his will
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: the claims of Mr. and Mrs. Allen were not to be superseded;
but on some other day he trusted, when longer notice could
be given, they would not refuse to spare her to her friend.
"Oh, no; Catherine was sure they would not have the least
objection, and she should have great pleasure in coming."
The general attended her himself to the street-door,
saying everything gallant as they went downstairs,
admiring the elasticity of her walk, which corresponded
exactly with the spirit of her dancing, and making
her one of the most graceful bows she had ever beheld,
when they parted.
Northanger Abbey |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: and it will stand few jars or discords. The student of
ecclesiastical biography will find that an early vocation has in
every age been almost universal among them; few are there among
these lives that do not display the incipient bishop from the
tenderest years. Bishop How of Wakefield composed hymns before he
was eleven, and Archbishop Benson when scarcely older possessed a
little oratory in which he conducted services and--a pleasant
touch of the more secular boy--which he protected from a too
inquisitive sister by means of a booby trap. It is rare that
those marked for episcopal dignities go so far into the outer
world as Archbishop Lang of York, who began as a barrister. This
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