Читать книгу A Treasury of English Prose - Logan Pearsall Smith - Страница 5
ОглавлениеTHE STARS
And certainly it cannot be doubted, but the Stars are instruments of far greater use, than to give an obscure light, and for men to gaze on after sunset; it being manifest that the diversity of seasons, the Winters and Summers more hot and cold, are not so uncertained by the Sun and Moon alone, who alway keep one and the same course, but that the Stars have also their working therein.
And if we cannot deny but that God hath given virtues to springs and fountains, to cold earth, to plants and stones, minerals, and to the excremental parts of the basest living creatures, why should we rob the beautiful Stars of their working powers? For seeing they are many in number, and of eminent beauty and magnitude, we may not think that in the treasury of his wisdom, who is infinite, there can be wanting (even for every star) a peculiar virtue and operation; as every herb, plant, fruit, and flower adorning the face of the Earth hath the like. For as these were not created to beautify the earth alone, and to cover and shadow her dusty face, but otherwise for the use of man and beast, to feed them and to cure them; so were not those uncountable glorious bodies set in the firmament to no other end than to adorn it, but for instruments and organs of his divine Providence, so far as it has pleased his just will to determine.
The History of the World, Book I, chap. i.
DEATH
“I have considered,” saith Solomon, “all the works that are under the Sun, and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit”: but who believes it, till Death tells it to us? It was Death which, opening the conscience of Charles the Fifth, made him enjoin his son Philip to restore Navarre; and King Francis the First of France, to command that justice should be done upon the murderers of the Protestants in Merindol and Cabrières, which till then he neglected. It is therefore Death alone that can suddenly make man to know himself. He tells the proud and insolent that they are but abjects, and humbles them at the instant; makes them cry, complain, and repent, yea, even to hate their forepassed happiness. He takes the account of the rich, and proves him a beggar; a naked beggar, which hath interest in nothing but in the gravel that fills his mouth. He holds a glass before the eyes of the most beautiful, and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness; and they acknowledge it.
O eloquent, just and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacit.
The History of the World, Book V, chap. vi.
