But what meteor is this proceeding with as much noise as light ...

But what meteor is this proceeding with as much noise as light across the sky? Once it was Bulwer: now it is Kipling. In their sudden and world-wide popularity they stand together, and the contrast between the sentimental exuberance of the one, and the aggressive ebullience of the other, does not go very deep.

The introversion of the early time, its mournful and Byronic self-contemplation, had been relaxed, and turned outward on the world until it was ready to explode into a muscular and masterful self-expression. When the Pamphylian in Plato's Republic watched the souls choosing their destiny, he saw one who chose power, having lived its last life in a well-ordered state, practicing virtue without philosophy.

It is no bad account of the ideal which the mid-Victorian participate, the Arnoldians, the Christian Socialists, the believers in God's earth and the healthy mind, transmitted to their successors of the age of iron and empire.

More faithfully than any of the sister nations, England had cherished the Renaissance figure of the Courtier,

the man of bodily and social accomplishment and

learning subdued to an accomplishment, a man of authority but a ready servant of the State.

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