Page:Books and men.djvu/217

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THE CAVALIER.
207

ancient Greece, may be realized the throbbing intensity of an unreflecting happiness. For the Greek drank deeply of the cup of knowledge, and its bitterness turned his laughter into tears; the Cavalier looked straight into the sunlight with clear, joyous eyes, and troubled himself not at all with the disheartening problems of humanity. How could a mind like Macaulay's, logical, disciplined, and gravely intolerant, sympathize for a moment with this utterly irresponsible buoyancy! How was he, of all men, to understand this careless zest for the old feast of life, this unreasoning loyalty to an indifferent sovereign, this passionate devotion to a church and easy disregard of her precepts, this magnificent wanton courage, this gay prodigality of enjoyment! It was his loss, no less than ours, that, in turning over the pages of the past, he should miss half of their beauty and their pathos; for History, that calumniated muse, whose sworn votaries do her little honor, has illuminated every inch of her parchment with a strong, generous hand, and does not mean that we should contemptuously ignore the smallest fragment of her work. The superb charge of