Anthony the Great

“ Anthony, from afar off, reads all these thoughts upon his brow. They penetrate his own brain, and he becomes Nebuchadnezzar. Immediately he is cloyed with orgiastic excesses, [Pg 45] sated with fury of extermination; and a great desire comes upon him to wallow in vileness. For the degradation of that which terrifies men is an outrage inflicted upon their minds—it affords yet one more way to stupefy them; and as nothing is viler than a brute, Anthony goes upon the table on all fours, and bellows like a bull. ”

“ Faithfulness to his old love made him quick to resent for Margaret Hare any injustice done to her daughter, and yet the estrangement from Anthony was very painful to him. He had tried to prevent it, but he could not show that there was perfect trust in his mind, and Anthony was keenly offended. Throughout his boyhood and bright youth the young fellow had been full of sanguine ardour, flushed with dreams and visions of great things to be done, where he was always the champion and deliverer, and would go forth, single-handed if need were, to fight against wrong. ”

“ The Bishop looked out after him, and Princess Osra heard the sound of a great splash in the water of the moat below; for very horror she sank against the door, seeming to be held up more by the sword that had pinned her hair than by her own strength. Then came up through the window, from which the Bishop still looked with a strange smile, the clatter of a hundred feet, running to the gate of the Castle. The bridge was let down; the confused sound of many men talking, of whispers, of shouts, and of cries of horror, mounted up through the air. ”

“ Strange thoughts for a man not yet grown? I am not altogether of that mind. For then my trust seemed very great, almost holy, armed with majesty; I had not learned the little real power that lay in it. To-day, if I threw away my crown, I should not exaggerate the value of my sacrifice. Then it seemed that I gave a great thing, and great was my betrayal. Therefore I could not rest for the thought of what I had put my hand to, chafed at Wetter's words that sounded now like a taunt, and seemed again to see old Hammerfeldt dying and to flush red in shame before the utterance of his eyes. ”

“ But Jove, great Jove—old Jove, the King of Olympus, hero among gods and men, how does he carry himself in these councils summoned by his voice? Does he lie there at his ease, with his purple cloak cut from the firmament around his shoulders? Is his thunderbolt ever at his hand to reduce a recreant god to order? Can he proclaim silence in that immortal hall? Is it not there as elsewhere, in all places, and among all nations, that a king of gods and a king of men is and will be king, rules and will rule, over those who are smaller than himself? ”

“ Is Anthony, or we in fault for this?
Eno. Anthony onely, that would make his will
Lord of his Reason. What though you fled,
From that great face of Warre, whose seuerall ranges
Frighted each other? Why should he follow?
The itch of his Affection should not then
Haue nickt his Captain-ship, at such a point,
When halfe to halfe the world oppos'd, he being
The meered question? 'Twas a shame no lesse
Then was his losse, to course your flying Flagges,
And leaue his Nauy gazing
Cleo. Prythee peace.
Enter the Ambassador, with Anthony.
Ant. Is that his answer?
Amb. I my Lord
Ant. ”

“ Say this becoms him
(As his composure must be rare indeed,
Whom these things cannot blemish) yet must Anthony
No way excuse his foyles, when we do beare
So great waight in his lightnesse. If he fill'd
His vacancie with his Voluptuousnesse,
Full surfets, and the drinesse of his bones,
Call on him for't. But to confound such time,
That drummes him from his sport, and speakes as lowd
As his owne State, and ours, 'tis to be chid:
As we rate Boyes, who being mature in knowledge,
Pawne their experience to their present pleasure,
And so rebell to iudgement. ”

“ She gave it with what heartiness she could, and laughed only in her sleeve. Surely a man facing death could have forgotten all this? Not Alexander Quisanté. He could die, and die bravely; but the world must stand by his bedside. So till the end, whenever that most uncertainly dated end might come, the old mixture promised to go on, the great and small, the mean and grand, the call for tears and throbs of the heart alternating with the obstinate curling or curving of lips swift to respond to the vision of the contemptible or the ludicrous. ”

“ Anthony. "Yes!... yes! My intelligence grasps the great truth! It is a joy greater than all tender pleasures! Breathless I find myself with astonishment at the enormity of God!"
The Devil. "Even as the firmament ever rises as thou dost ascend, so with the expansion of thy thought will He become greater to thee; and after this discovery of the universe thou wilt feel thy joy augment with the broadening and deepening of the infinite." ”

“ That idea of a marriage with a moulded wife should at any rate be abandoned. Whether it might be his great destiny to be the husband of Madeline Staveley, or whether he might fail in achieving this purpose, he declared to himself that it would be impossible that he should ever now become the husband of Mary Snow. And the ease with which his conscience settled itself on this matter as soon as he had received from the judge that gleam of hope astonished even himself. He immediately declared to himself that he could not marry Mary Snow without perjury! ”

“ The night is calm; multitudes of stars are palpitating; only the crackling noise made by the tarantulas is audible.
[Pg 12]
The two arms of the cross make a shadow upon the sand; Anthony, who is weeping, observes it.)
"Am I, then, so weak, O my God! Courage, let me rise from here!"
(He enters his hut, turns over a pile of cinders, finds a live ember, lights his torch and fixes it upon the wooden desk, so as to throw a light upon the great book.) ”

“ The superior of his convent forbade him to perform miracles; but, one day, seeing a man falling from a high tower, he ordered him to remain suspended in the air until the superior should give the saint permission to let him fall without injury. The devotees of Saint Anthony treat him with great familiarity, and even punish him when he does not satisfy their desires. When they wish to obtain some favour from his protection,—for example, to draw a prize in a lottery, to find a lost cow, or to find a husband for a damsel,—they burn tapers before his image, and adorn it with flowers. ”

“ If we say we love the Cause, and then sit down at our ease, surely does our action speak the lie. And now permit me once more to beg of you to lend your aid to this great Cause, the Cause of God and all Mankind.
The next day on the streets, so the letters say, everybody was exclaiming, "Miss Anthony is the smartest woman who ever has been in Canajoharie." Soon afterwards the school closed and, after spending the summer visiting eastern relatives and friends, Miss Anthony returned to Rochester in the autumn of 1849. The thing she remembers most vividly is how she reveled in fruit. ”

“ Should it ever be said that he had robbed those old men, whom he so truly and so tenderly loved in his heart of hearts? As he slowly paced, hour after hour, under those noble lime-trees, turning these sad thoughts within him, he became all but fixed in his resolve that some great step must be taken to relieve him from the risk of so terrible a fate. ”

“ Those who sat silent, being great of mind, and those who, being weak, could not restrain their notes of triumph or their notes of woe; but they were all of them as animated and intense as a tiger springing at its prey. ”

“ In the middle of the arena, a vase of incense smokes upon an altar.
Anthony thus knows that the people with him are Christians condemned to be thrown to the wild beasts. The men wear the red mantle of the pontiffs of Saturn; the women, the bandellettes of Ceres. Their friends divide among themselves shreds of their garments, and rings. To obtain access to the prison, they say, costs a great deal of money. ”

“ Distance gives one of its greatest charms, but it does so by concealing rather than displaying an expanse of surface. The beauty of distance arises from the romance,—the feeling of mystery which it creates. It is like the beauty of woman which allures the more the more that it is veiled. But open, uncovered land and water, mountains which simply rise to great heights with long unbroken slopes, wide expanses of lake, and forests which are monotonous in their continued thickness, are never lovely to me. A landscape should always be partly veiled, and display only half its charms. ”

“ Velvet and gilding do not make a throne, nor gold and jewels a sceptre. It is a throne because the most exalted one sits there,—and a sceptre because the most mighty one wields it. So it is with Mount Olympus. Should a stranger make his way thither at dull noonday, or during the sleepy hours of the silent afternoon, he would find no acknowledged temple of power and beauty, no fitting fane for the great Thunderer, no proud façades and pillared roofs to support the dignity of this greatest of earthly potentates. ”

“ The path was not just now in the Marchesa's thoughts. Nothing very definite was. Rather, as her eyes ranged from moor to sea, from the splendid uniformity of the unclouded sky to the ravishing variety of many-tinted earth, from the green of the Grange meadows (the one spot of rich emerald on the near coast-line, owing its hues to Sandy Nab's kindly shelter) to the gray mass of Scarsmoor Castle—there was in her heart that great mixture of content and longing that youth and— (what put bluntly amounts to) —a fine day are apt to raise. ”

“ It is I who have taken upon myself to lead many astray, and I fight against every man, and I am against righteousness, and I am, even as the Prophet called me, the ‘spirit of fornication’ (Hosea 4:12) , for through me have gone astray all those who have stumbled. It is I who have injured thee on several occasions, and thou hast been held in contempt by me in everything.”
And the blessed Anthony gave thanks unto the Lord, and gained great encouragement, and said, “What power thinkest thou that thou hast in thee, O Enemy, to resist the might of the Cross? ”

“ Even those who differed radically from her views paid tribute to the persistence with which she had urged them and the sacrifices she had made for them during the past thirty years. Not only had there been developed a recognition of her high purposes and noble life, but also of her great intellectual ability and clear comprehension of all the issues of the day. An extract from the Terre Haute Express, February 12, 1879, illustrates this:
Miss Anthony's lecture was full of fine passages and strong appeals, and replete with well-stated facts in support of her arguments. ”

“ Anthony (drily) . Does that heresy still flourish? God is not His creation.
The Woman. Is knowledge to vanish from the earth? Must none seek after beauty?
Anthony (raising his right hand and speaking with deliberation) . None may seek knowledge for the sake of wisdom. None may seek beauty for the sake of happiness. These things are but the raiment of God. Your great ones count the threads in God’s garment, but do they seek God? (He delicately shrugs his shoulders.) Does France worship clothes? ”

“ But the moonlight still pierced brightly through the little avenue, and she, as she looked up to him, could see the form of his face and the loving softness of his eye.
"Because——," said he; and then he stooped over her and pressed her closely, while she put up her lips to his, standing on tiptoe that she might reach to his face.
"Oh, my love!" she said. "My love! my love!"
As Crosbie walked back to the Great House that night, he made a firm resolution that no consideration of worldly welfare should ever induce him to break his engagement with Lily Dale. ”

“ Furnival herself was a stout, solid woman, sensible on most points, but better adapted, perhaps, to the life in Keppel Street than that to which she had now been promoted. As Kitty Blacker she had possessed feminine charms which would have been famous had they been better known. Mr. Furnival had fetched her from farther East—from the region of Great Ormond-street and the neighbourhood of Southampton Buildings. Her cherry cheeks, and her round eye, and her full bust, and her fresh lip, had conquered the hard-tasked lawyer; and so they had gone forth to fight the world together. ”

“ Days of idleness are not always the emptiest; life may justify its halts; our spirits may mount to their sublimest pitch in hours of play. At least, the temper of that holiday, and her eager prizing and recording of it, show well the manner of woman that she was—her passionate love of beauty, her eager stretching out to all that makes life beautiful, her spirit, sensitive to all around, taking color from this and that, reflecting back every ray which the bounty of nature or of man poured upon it, her great faculty of living. ”

“ We awake to find done what our sleepy brains missed in the doing, and after months or years perceive ourselves in a second older by all that period. We are jogged by the elbow, roused ruthlessly and curtly bidden to look and see how we are changed, and wonder, weep, or smile as may seem best to us in face of the metamorphosis. A moment of such awakening came to me now; I seemed a man different from him who had, no great number of minutes before, hastened to the house, inspired by an insane hope, and aflame with a passion that defied reason and summed up life in longing. ”