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He was, in fact, the incarnation of that great spirit which the laws of the world raise up against the world, and by which the world's injustice on a large scale is awfully chastised; on a small scale, merely nibbled at and harassed, as the rat that gnaws the hoof of the elephant: the spirit which, on a vast theatre, rises up, gigantic and sublime, in the heroes of war and revolution in Mirabeaus, Marats, Napoleons: on a minor stage, it shows itself in demagogues, fanatical philosophers, and mob-writers; and on the forbidden boards, before whose reeking lamps outcasts sit, at once audience and actors, it never produced a knave more consummate in his part, or carrying it off with more buskined dignity, than William Gawtrey.
Corinne in this part, if it were possible, surpassed herself; her step was so light, as she tripped two or three times round the same circle, that her buskined feet seemed to fly over the floor with the velocity of lightning; and when she lifted up one of her hands, shaking the tambourine, while with the other she motioned the Prince Amalfi to rise, all the male part of the company were tempted to throw themselves on their knees too, except Oswald, who retired a few paces backward, and the Count d'Erfeuil, who advanced a few paces forward to compliment Corinne.
The Libyans were among the horde, and the buskined Paphlagonians, with helms of network; and the Cappadocian Syrians; and the Phrygians; and the Armenians; the Lydians, equipped similarly to the Greeks; the Strymonian Thracians, clad in tunics, below which were flowing robes like the Arabian zirae or tartan, but of various colours, and buskins of the skins of fawns armed with the javelin and the dagger; the Thracians, too, of Asia, with helmets of brass wrought with the ears and horns of an ox; the people from the islands of the Red Sea, armed and people like Medes; the Mares, and the Colchians, and the Moschi, and other tribes, tedious to enumerate, swelled and diversified the force of Xerxes.
In a revulsion of feeling he forgot the distance separating the buskined from the fashionable world; the tragic scatterlings from the conventions of Vanity Fair! He forgot all save that she was to him now the one unparagoned entirety, overriding other memories. "Will not a life of devotion atone for this day, Constance?" he cried. "Do you know how far-reaching are these lands?
Never did two valiant train-band captains, or two buskined theatric heroes, in the renowned tragedies of Pizarro, Tom Thumb, or any other heroical and fighting tragedy, marshal their gallows-looking, duck-legged, heavy-heeled myrmidons with more glory and self-admiration.
Harold led him to the stable, where just within the door stood a knot of stout hearty boys, snorting with fun, hiding their heads on each other's shoulders, and bending their buskined knees with merriment. 'Now then! cried Charles Hayward, and he had got hold of the only button that held Paul's coat together.
So will ye cheat it, or ye will cheat it also by affecting the false virtues which it admires itself, rouge your sentiments highly, and let them strut with a buskined air; thirdly, my good young men, ye will cheat it by profuse flattery, and by calling it in especial "the mirror of chivalry." The plain, sensible, honest man, a favourable, but not elevated specimen of our race.
So will ye cheat it, or ye will cheat it also by affecting the false virtues which it admires itself, rouge your sentiments highly, and let them strut with a buskined air; thirdly, my good young men, ye will cheat it by profuse flattery, and by calling it in especial "the mirror of chivalry." The plain, sensible, honest man, a favourable, but not elevated specimen of our race.
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