Ardath eBook

Marie Corelli
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 793 pages of information about Ardath.

Ardath eBook

Marie Corelli
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 793 pages of information about Ardath.
the two perishable prizes for which men struggle with one another in ceaseless and cruel combat, bring no absolute satisfaction in the end—­they are toys that please for a time and then grow wearisome.  But the conquering of Self is a battle in which each fresh victory bestows a deeper content, a larger happiness, a more perfect peace,—­and neither poverty, sickness, nor misfortune can quench the courage, or abate the ardor, of the warrior who is absorbed in a crusade against his own worser passions.  Egotism is the vice of this age,—­the maxim of modern society is “each man for himself, and no one for his neighbor”—­and in such a state of things, when personal interest or advantage is the chief boon desired, we cannot look for honesty in either religion, politics, or commerce.  Nor can we expect any grand work to be done in art or literature.  When pictures are painted and books are written for money only,—­when laborers take no pleasure in labor save for the wage it brings,—­when no real enthusiasm is shown in anything except the accumulation of wealth,—­and when all the finer sentiments and nobler instincts of men are made subject to Mammon worship, is any one so mad and blind as to think that good can come of it?  Nothing but evil upon evil can accrue from such a system,—­and those who have prophetic eyes to see through the veil of events can perceive, even now, the not far distant end—­namely, the ruin of the country that has permitted itself to degenerate into a mere nation of shopkeepers, —­and something worse than ruin,—­degradation!

It was past eight in the evening when Alwyn, after having spent a couple of days in bright little Brussels, arrived at Cologne.  Most travelers know to their cost how noisy, narrow, and unattractive are the streets of this ancient Colonia Agrippina of the Romans,—­ how persistent and wearying is the rattle of the vehicles over the rough, cobbly stones—­how irritating to the nerves is the incessant shrieking whistle and clank of the Rhine steamboats as they glide in, or glide out, from the cheerless and dirty pier.  But at night, when these unpleasant sounds have partially subsided, and the lights twinkle in the shop-windows, and the majestic mass of the Cathedral casts its broad shadow on the moonlit Dom-Platz, and a few soldiers, with clanking swords and glittering spurs, come marching out from some dark stone archway, and the green gleam of the river sparkles along in luminous ripples,—­then it is that a something weird and mystical creeps over the town, and the glamour of ancient historical memories begins to cling about its irregular buildings,—­one thinks of the legendary Three Kings, and believes in them, too,—­of St. Ursula and her company of virgins; of Marie de Medicis dying alone in that tumbled-down house in the Stern-gasse,—­of Rubens, who, it is said, here first saw the light of this world,—­of an angry Satan flinging his Teufelstein from the Seven Mountains in an impotent attempt to destroy the Dom; and gradually, the indestructible romantic spell of the Rhine steals into the spirit of common things that were unlovely by day, and makes the old city beautiful under the sacred glory of the stars.

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Project Gutenberg
Ardath from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.