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The "separation" from Rome fifty years after Bosworth had no conscious imperial purpose, but it rescued the rising empire of England from the taint of medievalism which sapped the empires of Spain, of the Bourbons, and of the Hapsburgs.
There is no difficulty in giving an explanation of this unfortunate condition. Greek intellectual life had passed the period of its maturity, and was entering on old age. Moreover, the talent which might have been devoted to the service of science was in part allured to another pursuit, and in part repressed. Alexandria had sapped Athens, and in her turn Alexandria was sapped by Rome.
It strengthened the Roman Church and gave it an indefinite renewal of life; but it sapped the foundations of religious faith. The appearance of Henry the Huguenot as the champion of the Council of Trent was of itself too biting an epigram not to be extensively destructive.
With some curiosity as to what could have sent a brother medico to us at such an hour, I followed Holmes into our sanctum. A pale, taper-faced man with sandy whiskers rose up from a chair by the fire as we entered. His age may not have been more than three or four and thirty, but his haggard expression and unhealthy hue told of a life which has sapped his strength and robbed him of his youth.
The night was mystic, in its odd blend of moon and shadows. However hardened one may be, it is a nerve-strain to creep through long grass, like a red Indian, to the murder of a hostile sentinel. And every German in the "Pocket" had been under frightful mental and physical stress, for the past week. Corporal Rudolph Freund was a brave man and a brute. But that week had sapped his nerve.
Had his fierce words to Morewood reproduced exactly what he felt, it may be doubted whether the resultant of two forces so opposite and so equal could have been the ultimately unwavering intention that now possessed him. In truth, the aggressive strength of his belief had been sapped from within.
He deprecated the constant checking and blaming of children which was part of the system of education then in vogue; he declared that it sapped the confidence of the young, their inherent sense of virtue; and he exclaimed, "Why does no one dream of training children to be original, bold and independent?"
Shut off from the rest of the world, knowing only what the Church and civil government allowed him to know, he became provincial in his horizon and conservative in his habits of mind. The paternal policy of the authorities sapped his initiative and left him little scope for personal enterprise, so that he passed for being a dull fellow.
That they are, however, sadly sapped and blighted in their growth among the mass; and that there are influences at work which endanger them still more, and give but little present promise of their healthy restoration; is a truth that ought to be told.
Only when, as occasionally happened, the rest of the family were absent together, Oliver about his plays, Lucy on a visit to Richmond, and Harry and Jenny at college, an awful sense of futility descended upon her, and she felt that both the purpose and the initiative were sapped from her character.
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