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The Son of God atoning for the sins of the world, whilst angels and glorified spirits crowd the walls of the celestial city to look down at the spectacle; and, within a yard of His sacred Person, the soldiers, in absolute apathy, gambling for these poor shreds of clothing! So much, and no more, did they perceive of the stupendous drama they were within touch of.

I got him through it for the time; and his eyes showed that he understood me when I told him, the next morning, that I had posted the letter. This was his last effort of consciousness. When I saw him again he was sunk in apathy. Bronchitis, terminating in pneumonia there is no more doubt that this, and this only, was the malady of which he expired, than that two and two make four.

Just as the relative defects of the common British, their apathy, their unreasoning conservatism, and their sordid scorn of intellectual things is bound up with their politico-social scheme, so, I believe, the noisiness, the mean practicalness, and the dyspeptic-driving restlessness that are the shadows of American life, are bound up with the politico-social condition of America.

During the period of moral awakening, after the Crimean War and the death of Nicholas I., society revelled in virtuous indignation against the prevailing abuses, and placed on the pillory the most prominent delinquents; but the intensity of the moral feeling has declined, and something of the old apathy has returned.

The result of the proceedings was foreordained. But with the convening of the delegates of the Independence Party the apathy of the people gives way to intense interest. They realize that at least there will be a lively contest over the choice of a leading candidate. Political forecasters have been chary of expressing opinions, for the much depended on precedent is lacking.

None of these authorities can have been so much as heard of by the official historian I have quoted. It would be redundant to press the point. Most readers know well enough what labour the just writing of history involves, and how excellent a type it is of that "making of a book" which art is, as I have said, imperilled by apathy at the present day.

The criminal himself appeared to be in a state, in which the most sensitive and startling terror was singularly combined with total physical apathy. The truth was, that while his person had been numbed by the shock, his susceptibility to apprehension kept his agitated mind in unrelieved distress.

Unmindful of the sullen apathy of men and women, the wailing of children stifling under the wagon tops, the moans of the sick and wounded in their ghastly discomfort, Jed sang with his cracked lips as he swung from one jig to the next, the voice of the violin reaching all the wagons of the shortened train. "Choose yore pardners!" rang his voice in the joyous jesting of youth.

This is the reason why, in ages assumed to be refined, it is not a rare thing to see gentleness degenerate into effeminacy, politeness into platitude, correctness into empty sterility, liberal ways into arbitrary caprice, ease into frivolity, calm into apathy, and, lastly, a most miserable caricature treads on the heels of the noblest, the most beautiful type of humanity.

We have reward enough for the effort needed to learn to set our faith before our happiness: for, in doing so, we have come by a feeling of such moral force, that, amid the apathy of the world, we have no doubt, even of victory in the end.