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On one side, very likely, is a Russian Jew just from the Steppes; on the other, a negro with centuries of heathendom and slavery hinting themselves in lip and eye; the driver is a Fenian, with the blood of the Phoenicians in his veins; in front of you is a gentleman with the unmistakable Huguenot nose, and chin; while an almond-eyed pagan, disguised behind moustache and eye-glasses, courteously takes your fare and drops it for you in the Slawson box.
The false sentiment and partial science of the pagan which stresses the identification of man and beast is the first quarrel that religionist and humanist alike have with him.
This absurd feast is truly one of bacchanalian character; in it are committed a thousand excesses of many kinds, among which that of drunkenness, especially among the lower classes, greatly prevails. There is not in any modern society a more faithful copy of Pagan festivities than that we are now describing, as witnessed every year in Madrid.
As for Miss Jemima, the parson left her with a pious thanksgiving that Riccabocca at least was a Christian, and not a Pagan, Mahometan, or Jew! There is that in a wedding which appeals to a universal sympathy. No other event in the lives of their superiors in rank creates an equal sensation amongst the humbler classes.
Gibson can scarcely be said to practise. . . . The difference between the Pre-Raphaelites and himself is deep and genuine, they being literalists and realists, in a certain sense, and he a pagan idealist. Methinks they have hold of the best end of the matter. March 18th.
And as we propose to treat of the arts in their culminating excellence chiefly, to show what the Pagan intellect of man could accomplish, unaided by light from heaven, we turn to the great teacher of the last two thousand years. It was among the ancient Dorians, who descended from the mountains of Northern Greece eighty years after the fall of Troy, that art first appeared.
They preach and pray and shriek and groan in their huts; some swear that they have the spirit of prophecy, others that they are possessed of devils, others imagine witchcraft, like Lovisa and altogether there is such a howling on the name of Christ, that I am glad to be out of it, for 'tis a sight to awaken the laughter and contempt of a pagan such as I am!"
He abolished the punishment of crucifixion out of reverence for the Son of God, who had died upon the Cross, put a stop to the cruel games of the arena and bettered the condition of the slaves. Constantine's nature was really a noble one, but there was much in him still of the pagan and the barbarian.
As it has been put, the Christians were regarded as the "Nihilists" of the period. We are apt to judge the Romans from the standpoint of Christianity dominant and understood; it is fairer to judge them from the standpoint of a dominant pagan empire looking on at a strange new phenomenon altogether misunderstood and often deliberately misrepresented.
Successive historians have celebrated the flexibility of intelligence and firmness of purpose which were combined in the brain of Julian with a passion for abstract beauty and an enthusiasm for a restored system of pagan Hellenic worship.
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