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Guido Cavalcanti disdained the ignorant folk who believed in the immortality of the soul. The following phrase by him was quoted: 'The death of man is exactly similar to that of brutes. Later, when antique beauty was excavated from ruins, the Christian style of art seemed sad. The painters that worked in the churches and cloisters were neither devout nor chaste.
Some truth may possibly be concealed in his devout assertion that the wrath of heaven supplied the imperfections of hostile rage; and that the proud Forum of Rome, decorated with the statues of so many gods and heroes, was levelled in the dust by the stroke of lightning.
Miss Pembroke, en grande toilette, sat by her side. Rickie, looking plain and devout, perched opposite. And Stephen actually came too, murmuring that it would be the Benedicite, which he had never minded. There was also the Litany, which drove him into the air again, much to Mrs. Failing's delight. She enjoyed this sort of thing.
"I have seen," said he, "the Chosroes of Persia and the Cæsar of Rome, but never did I behold a king among his subjects like Mahomet among his companions." The devout fervor of enthusiasm acts with more energy and truth than the cold and formal servility of courts.
"For," said he, "besides that we always make them most hideous, we think of nothing but painting saints, both men and women, on walls and pictures, which is much worse, since we thereby render men better and more devout to the great despite of the demons; and for all this, the devils being angry with us, and having more power by night than by day, they play these tricks upon us.
"The King is a devout believer," remarked a dainty, effeminate-looking youth, arrayed in a wonderfully picturesque garb of glistening purple, "He pays his vows to Nagaya three times a day, at sunrise, noon, and sunset, and 'tis said he hath oft been seen of late in silent meditation alone before the Sacred Veil, even after midnight.
Extremely ambitious, he had been unable to find such a wife as he desired in his native province a well-connected young woman capable of helping him to push both forward and upward in the world; and so he had joined the Hospitality, and betook himself every summer to Lourdes, in the vague hope that amidst the mass of believers, the torrent of devout mammas and daughters which flowed thither, he might find the family whose help he needed to enable him to make his way in this terrestrial sphere.
Many short sighted persons complain that such a theory sets in the back-ground the idea of a personal Creator; but minds no less devout, and perhaps a trifle more thoughtful, see the hand of a Creator not less in the evolution of plants and animals from prëexistent forms, through natural laws, than in the evolution of a summer's shower, through the laws discovered by the meteorologist, who looks back through myriads of ages to the causes that led to the distribution of mountain chains, ocean currents and trade winds, which combine to produce the necessary conditions resulting in that shower.
Ever since the SPECTATOR appear'd, have I remarked a kind of Men, whom I choose to call Starers, that without any Regard to Time, Place, or Modesty, disturb a large Company with their impertinent Eyes. Spectators make up a proper Assembly for a Puppet-Show or a Bear-Garden; but devout Supplicants and attentive Hearers, are the Audience one ought to expect in Churches.
He spent the remainder of the day in making preparations for his journey, and informing himself from the princess of the directions which the devout woman had left her. The next morning Bahman mounted his horse, and Perviz and the princess embraced, and wished him a good journey. But in the midst of their adieus, the princess recollected what she had not thought of before.
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