When he spoke to the
Romans with that voice and with that look, they rose quickly to a
tumult, as the sea under a gale, and he could guide them in their
storming to ends of destruction and terror. But there was no drop of
southern blood in Gilbert's veins nor anything to which the passionate
Italian's eloquence appealed. Instead of catching fire, he argued;
instead of joining Arnold in his attempt to turn the world into a
republic, he was more and more persuaded of the excellence of all he
had left behind him in the north. He incarnated that aristocratic
temper which has in all times, since Duke William crossed the water,
leavened the strong mass of the Anglo-Saxon character, balancing its
rude democratic strength with the keenness of a higher physical
organization and the nobility of a more disinterested daring, and again
and again rousing the English-speaking races to life and conquest,
when they were sunk deep in the sordid interests of trade and money-
making. So when Arnold talked of laws and institutions which should
again make Rome the mistress of the world, Gilbert answered him by
talking of men who had the strength to take the world and to be its
masters and make it obey whatsoever laws they saw fit to impose.
Between the two there was the everlasting difference between theory and
action; and though it chanced that just then Arnold, the dreamer, was
in the lead of change and revolution, while Gilbert, the fighter, was
idling away weeks and months in a dream, yet the fact was the same, and
in manly strength and inward simplicity of thought Gilbert Warde, the
Norman, was far nearer to the man who made Rome imperial than was the
eloquent Italian who built the mistress city of his thoughts out of
ideas and theories, carved and hewn into shapes of beauty by the
tremendous tools of his wit and his words.
Pages:
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121