Gentian

“ They are sown more thickly than the stars in heaven, and the rainbow itself does not show so many tints. Here they are mingled like the threads of some strange embroidery; and there again nature has massed her colours; so that one spot will be all pale blue with innumerable forget-me-nots, or dark blue with gentians ”

“ Then the unseen painter begins to mix the royal colour on his palette, and the red of the bee-balm catches your eye. If you are lucky, you may find, in midsummer, a slender fragrant spike of the purple-fringed orchis, and you cannot help finding the universal self-heal. Yellow returns in the drooping flowers of the jewel-weed, and blue repeats itself in the trembling hare-bells, and scarlet is glorified in the flaming robe of the cardinal-flower. Later still, the summer closes in a splendour of bloom, with gentians and asters and goldenrod. ”

“ The word gentleman has not any correlative abstract to express the quality. Gentility is mean, and gentilesse is obsolete. But we must keep alive in the vernacular, the distinction between fashion, a word of narrow and often sinister meaning, and the heroic character which the gentleman imports. The usual words, however, must be respected: they will be found to contain the root of the matter. The point of distinction in all this class of names, as courtesy, chivalry, fashion, and the like, is, that the flower and fruit, not the grain of the tree, are contemplated. ”

“ Gentola—By some spirit friends I have been named Gentola̤, and am not of your people, but am of a World afar in space, which by its peoples is known as Earth. In a manner which I now cannot explain I can leave my living physical body, and by some wise and strong Spirits who understand Spiritual Laws, I have been borne from Earth to your World, that through me they might reveal to you and to your people that the Spirit, the Real Self of humans survives death of the physical body. ”

“ While Miss Genth was drawing 'Woodland Nude,' 'Summer Breezes,' and 'The Glen,' she was learning the secrets of filtered sunlight, of exquisite greens in shadow and when transfigured by light, and she had mastered the drawing of the human form, and the lovely lights that play upon human flesh, so that some time when venturing into strange lands, she could take her palette and paint what pleased her, and so give us the romance of Spain and of mysterious Africa. ”

“ For if the great citizen of Ghent combines in an extraordinary degree the reflective and the energetic character, our author unites, in a manner almost as peculiar, two modes of thinking which at first appear to be opposed: he unites that practical sagacity which gives grave, and serious, and useful counsels upon human conduct, with that sad and profound irony—that reasoned despondency—which so generally besets the speculative mind. ”

“ I speak of that unclassified order peculiar to England, which, no doubt, forming itself originally from the ideal standard of honour and truth supposed to be maintained by the gentilshommes, or well-born, no longer requires pedigrees and acres to confer upon its members the designation of gentleman; and when I hear a ‘gentleman’ say that he has no option but to think one thing and say another, at whatever risk to his country, I feel as if in the progress of the age the class of gentleman was about to be superseded by some finer development of species. ”

“ But it flourishes for all that, and all genteel people, looking into each other’s eyes with the desperation of gentility, agree to endure it for gentility’s sake. My instance may seem feeble, and I speak honestly when I say I might give others, forming part of an immense body of prescriptive usage, to which a society possessing in the largest manner, both by temperament and education, the sense of the “inalienable” rights and comforts of the individual, contrives to accommodate itself. I do not mean to say that usage in England is always uncomfortable and arbitrary. ”

“ The characteristics of a gentleman are high feeling—a determination never to take a cowardly advantage of another—a liberal education—absence of narrow views—generosity and courage, propriety of behaviour. Now a person may be genteel according to one or another of the three standards described above, and not possess one of the characteristics of a gentleman. Is the emperor a gentleman, with spatters of blood on his clothes, scourged from the backs of noble Hungarian women? ”

“ Worlds where having become a spiritualized conscious being, man is looking about him in fear and [Pg 171] amazement. Worlds where man has evolved varying degrees of civilization, and yet other worlds, where the peoples, compared with those of Ento or Earth, are as gods.
Gentola—You will pardon me, sir, if my question may have seemed to involve a doubt as to the correctness of your statements. No such thought was in my mind. On the contrary, I so implicitly believe what you have said, that I realize that I am as an atom of a boundless universe. ”

“ M. Le Génil, popular preacher as he was both in Paris and Versailles, did his own mending, partly to save his old servant the trouble and partly because he was fond of handling a needle, a taste he had acquired during the years of grinding poverty that he had endured when he first entered the Church. And now this giant with lungs of brass, who fulminated against atheists from the elevation of a pulpit, was meekly sitting on a rush-bottomed chair, occupied in drawing a needle in and out with his huge red hands. ”

“ Oh, that the time may quickly arrive when Ento's despairing people may learn that their sorrowful belief in utter annihilation is false. That continuity of existence is a glorious reality.
Gentola—With all my heart I pray that it may be so, and if I, in the slightest degree, may be made to further the fulfillment of your desire, I shall rejoice that I have not lived in vain.
Genessano—Emana̤ (friend) , no one lives in vain. From the least developed to the highest evolvement of the human of any planet, all are fulfilling the Infinite, Intelligent, Divine Will. ”

“ GENTILE, in the English Bible, the term generally applied to those who were not of the Jewish race. It is an adaptation of the Lat. gentilis, of or belonging to the same gens, the clan or family; as defined in Paulus ex Festo “gentilis dicitur et ex eodem genere ortus et is qui simili nomine; ut ait Cincius, gentiles mihi sunt, qui meo nomine appellantur.” In post-Augustan Latin gentilis became wider in meaning, following the usage of gens, in the sense of race, nation, and meant “national,” belonging to the same race. ”

“ Gentilism is a tie by itself; distinct from the family ties, but presupposing their existence and extending them by an artificial analogy, partly founded in religious belief, and partly on positive compact, so as to comprehend strangers in blood. All the members of one gens, or even of one phratry, believed themselves to be sprung, not indeed from the same grandfather or great-grandfather, but from the same divine or heroic ancestor.... ”

“ Presently getting disgusted at the want of respect shown to him by an old gentleman in front, who is watching the performance most intently, with his head reclining on his arms, which are again supported by the rail, and who requests that he will have the goodness to shut the door, the Gent walks grandly away, and goes round to the other side, evidently conceiving that his dignity has been hurt. Here the same process of observation is repeated; and, if the Gent sees a pretty girl in a private box, he stares unflinchingly at her, 28until he thinks he has made an impression. ”

“ Perhaps, after all, fear is at the root of the English veneration for gentility.
[316] Gentle and gentlemanly may be derived from the same root as genteel; but nothing can be more distinct from the mere genteel, than the ideas which enlightened minds associate with these words. Gentle and gentlemanly mean something kind and genial; genteel, that which is glittering or gaudy. A person can be a gentleman in rags, but nobody can be genteel.
[332] The writer has been checked in print by the Scotch with being a Norfolk man. ”

“ In the last chapter have been exhibited specimens of gentility, so considered by different classes; by one class, power, youth, and epaulets are considered the ne plus ultra of gentility; by another class, pride, stateliness, and title; by another, wealth and flaming tawdriness. But what constitutes a gentleman? It is easy to say at once what constitutes a gentleman, and there are no distinctions in what is gentlemanly, [331] as there are in what is genteel. ”

“ At the end of the 16th century the French gentil was again adapted into English in the form “gentile,” later changed to “genteel.” The word was common in the 17th and 18th centuries as applied to behaviour, manner of living, dress, &c., suitable or proper to persons living in a position in society above the ordinary, hence polite, elegant. ”

“ When the fisherman heard this he gave himself up for lost, yet he did not the less continue by prayer and supplication to entreat the Genie from his purpose. But when he found that there was no heart left in him to be moved, then for the first time he bestirred his wits, and remembering how that which is evil contains far less wisdom than that which is good, and so falls ever the more readily into the trap prepared for it, he spoke thus: "O Genie, since thou art determined on my death, there is yet a certain thing touching thine honour that I would first know. ”

“ It is impossible not to recognize the voice of the famous Genevese in the words of Alexander Hamilton: “The sacred rights of men are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of divinity itself, and can never be erased by mortal power.” ”

“ Fifty years later, around rebellious Ghent, the peasantry "chose death rather than ask quarter, declaring that they would perish as martyrs in a fair fight." In these swarming hives an abundance of food and habits of personal activity maintain courage, turbulence, audacity and even insolence, all excesses of brutal and boundless energy; these weavers were men, and when we encounter man we may expect soon to encounter the arts. ”

“ He endeavoured still to appease the genie, and said, "Alas! be pleased to take pity on me, in consideration of the service I have done you." "I have told thee already," replied the genie, "it is for that very reason I must kill thee." "That is strange," said the fisherman, "are you resolved to reward good with evil? The proverb truly says, 'He who does good to one who deserves it not, is always ill rewarded.'" "Do not lose time," interrupted the genie; "all thy chattering shall not divert me from my purpose; make haste, and tell me what kind of death thou preferrest?" ”

“ Wherever, under the impassioned enthusiasm of such words as Justice, Liberty, Equality, Reason, Nature, Love, self-idealising, self-worshipping, self-deceiving prophets of magnetic genius give way to their weaknesses, their perversities, their anti-social reactions, the vibrant nerves of the great citizen of Geneva may still be felt, quivering melodiously ”

“ There is everywhere a cottage beside a palace, a man who weeps beside a man who laughs, a ragman carrying his basket beside a king losing his throne: what was the fall of Darius [308] to the slave present at the Battle of Arbela?
Ghent, then, was only a tiring-room behind the slips of the spectacle opened in Paris. Some famous personages still remained in Europe. I had, in 1800, commenced my career with Alexander and Napoleon; why had I not followed those leading actors, my contemporaries, on the great stage? Why only at Ghent? Because Heaven casts you where it wills. ”

“ Which decision, it seems to me, is as if some modest and rational gnat, who had submitted to the humiliating conviction that it could know no more of the world than might be traversed by flight, or tasted by puncture, yet, in the course of an experiment on a philosopher with its proboscis, hearing him speak of the Institutes of Justinian, should observe, on its return to the society of gnats, that the Institutes of Justinian were not objective realities, any more than they were absolute truths. ”

“ For my view is, that as all things are supplied to the man of art according to the rules of art, and to the Gentile in a Gentile way, so also to the Gnostic all things are supplied gnostically. And the man who turns from among the Gentiles will ask for faith, while he that ascends to knowledge will ask for the perfection of love. And the Gnostic, who has reached the summit, will pray that contemplation may grow and abide, as the common man will for continual good health. ”

“ The Gent who goes to the races must not be confounded with the Sporting Gent, of whom we may speak by-and-by. He knows nothing in the world about the running, nor indeed does he care much about 44it, beyond the manner in which it may affect a chance he has in a “Derby Sweep.” ”

“ Most of the figures that stand out in history, do so through some exceptional personal quality, good or bad, that makes them more significant than their fellows. But there was born at Ghent in Belgium in 1500 a man of commonplace abilities and melancholy temperament, the son of a mentally defective mother who had been married for reasons of state, who was, through no fault of his own, to become the focus of the accumulating stresses of Europe. ”

“ In them Goethe's words were fulfilled: "None are so Legitimist as those who can legitimise themselves." The cause Gentz championed was a bad cause, but even the champion of a bad cause is interesting if possessed of remarkable talent. And Gentz was talented in an extraordinary degree. Varnhagen rightly said of him: "Never has the dust of German scholarship been stirred up with greater éclat; never has learning been displayed to such advantage." ”