| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: females destined to be demoiselles de magasins, and with some
Flamandes, genuine aborigines of the country. In dress all were
nearly similar, and in manners there was small difference;
exceptions there were to the general rule, but the majority gave
the tone to the establishment, and that tone was rough,
boisterous, masked by a point-blank disregard of all forbearance
towards each other or their teachers; an eager pursuit by each
individual of her own interest and convenience; and a coarse
indifference to the interest and convenience of every one else.
Most of them could lie with audacity when it appeared
advantageous to do so. All understood the art of speaking fair
 The Professor |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: was probably due to their definite form, and to their inimitable
excellence. The three dialogues which we have offered in the Appendix to
the criticism of the reader may be partly spurious and partly genuine; they
may be altogether spurious;--that is an alternative which must be frankly
admitted. Nor can we maintain of some other dialogues, such as the
Parmenides, and the Sophist, and Politicus, that no considerable objection
can be urged against them, though greatly overbalanced by the weight
(chiefly) of internal evidence in their favour. Nor, on the other hand,
can we exclude a bare possibility that some dialogues which are usually
rejected, such as the Greater Hippias and the Cleitophon, may be genuine.
The nature and object of these semi-Platonic writings require more careful
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay:
For misery is trodden on by many,
And being low never reliev'd by any. 708
'Lie quietly, and hear a little more;
Nay, do not struggle, for thou shalt not rise:
To make thee hate the hunting of the boar,
Unlike myself thou hear'st me moralize, 712
Applying this to that, and so to so;
For love can comment upon every woe.
'Where did I leave?' 'No matter where,' quoth he
'Leave me, and then the story aptly ends: 716
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