[The Ordeal of Richard Feverel by George Meredith]@TWC D-Link book
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel

CHAPTER XII
17/23

If he reach that pure--in the untainted fulness and perfection of his natural powers--I am indeed a happy father! But one thing he will owe to me: that at one period of his life he knew paradise, and could read God's handwriting on the earth! Now those abominations whom you call precocious boys--your little pet monsters, doctor!--and who can wonder that the world is what it is?
when it is full of them--as they will have no divine time to look back upon in their own lives, how can they believe in innocence and goodness, or be other than sons of selfishness and the Devil?
But my boy," and the baronet dropped his voice to a key that was touching to hear, "my boy, if he fall, will fall from an actual region of purity.

He dare not be a sceptic as to that.

Whatever his darkness, he will have the guiding light of a memory behind him.

So much is secure." To talk nonsense, or poetry, or the dash between the two, in a tone of profound sincerity, and to enunciate solemn discordances with received opinion so seriously as to convey the impression of a spiritual insight, is the peculiar gift by which monomaniacs, having first persuaded themselves, contrive to influence their neighbours, and through them to make conquest of a good half of the world, for good or for ill.

Sir Austin had this gift.


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