Trivia | Page 3

and boys from the Hall. Having culled from the newspapers a
few phrases, I had composed a speech which I delivered with a spirit
and eloquence surprising even to myself, and which was now
enthusiastically received. The Vicar cried "Hear, Hear!", the Vicar's
wife pounded her umbrella with such emphasis, and the villagers
cheered so heartily, that my heart was warmed. I began to feel the
meaning of my own words; I beamed on the audience, felt that they
were all brothers, all wished well to the Republic; and it seemed to me
an occasion to express my real ideas and hopes for the Commonwealth.
Brushing therefore to one side, and indeed quite forgetting my safe
principles, I began to refashion and new-model the State. Most existing
institutions were soon abolished; and then, on their ruins, I proceeded
to build up the bright walls and palaces of the City within me--the City
I had read of in Plato. With enthusiasm, and, I flatter myself, with
eloquence, I described it all--the Warriors, that race of golden youth
bred from the State-ordered embraces of the brave and fair; those
philosophic Guardians, who, being ever accustomed to the highest and
most extensive views, and thence contracting an habitual greatness,
possessed the truest fortitude, looking down indeed with a kind of
disregard on human life and death. And then, declaring that the pattern
of this City was laid up in Heaven, I sat down, amid the cheers of the
uncomprehending little audience.
And afterward, in my rides about the country, when I saw on walls and
the doors of barns, among advertisements of sales, or regulations about
birds' eggs or the movements of swine, little weather-beaten,
old-looking notices on which it was stated that I would "address the
meeting," I remembered how the walls and towers of the City I had
built up in that little schoolroom had shone with no heavenly light in
the eyes of the Vicar's party.

Stonehenge
They sit there forever on the dim horizon of my mind, that Stonehenge

circle of elderly disapproving Faces--Faces of the Uncles and
Schoolmasters and Tutors who frowned on my youth.
In the bright centre and sunlight I leap, I caper, I dance my dance; but
when I look up, I see they are not deceived. For nothing ever placates
them, nothing ever moves to a look of approval that ring of bleak and
contemptuous Faces.

The Stars
Battling my way homeward one dark night against the wind and rain, a
sudden gust, stronger than the others, drove me back into the shelter of
a tree. But soon the Western sky broke open; the illumination of the
Stars poured down from behind the dispersing clouds.
I was astonished at their brightness, to see how they filled the night
with their soft lustre. So I went my way accompanied by them;
Arcturus followed me, and becoming entangled in a leafy tree, shone
by glimpses, and then emerged triumphant, Lord of the Western sky.
Moving along the road in the silence of my own footsteps, my thoughts
were among the Constellations. I was one of the Princes of the starry
Universe; in me also there was something that was not insignificant and
mean and of no account.

Silvia Doria
Beyond the blue hills, within riding distance, there is a country of parks
and beeches, with views of the far-off sea. I remember in one of my
rides coming on the place which was the scene of the pretty,
old-fashioned story of Silvia Doria. Through the gates, with fine
gate-posts, on which heraldic beasts, fierce and fastidious, were
upholding coroneted shields, I could see, at the end of the avenue, the
façade of the House, with its stone pilasters, and its balustrade on the
steep roof.
More than one hundred years ago, in that Park, with its Italianized
house, and level gardens adorned with statues and garden temples,
there lived, they say, an old Lord with his two handsome sons. The old
Lord had never ceased mourning for his Lady, though she had died a
good many years before; there were no neighbours he visited, and few
strangers came inside the great Park walls. One day in Spring, however,

just when the apple trees had burst into blossom, the gilded gates were
thrown open, and a London chariot with prancing horses drove up the
Avenue. And in the chariot, smiling and gay, and indeed very beautiful
in her dress of yellow silk, and her great Spanish hat with drooping
feathers, sat Silvia Doria, come on a visit to her cousin, the old Lord.
It was her father who had sent her--that he might be more free, some
said, to pursue his own wicked courses--while others declared that he
intended her to marry the old Lord's eldest