They were touched with a profound sadness, which was
exhaled like a mist by the conditions they portrayed; they were full
of a sympathy born of knowledge and of sorrow; their roots were in the
rich soil of the life they described. The latest of them, Count
Tolstoi's "Master and Man," is one of those masterpieces which take
rank at once, not by reason of their magnitude, but by reason of a
certain beautiful quality which comes only to the man whose heart is
pressed against the heart of his theme, and who divines what life is
in the inarticulate soul of his brother man. Such books are the rich
material of culture to the man who reads them with his heart, because
they add to his experience a kind of experience otherwise inaccessible
to him, which quickens, refreshes, and broadens his own nature.
Chapter VIII.
By Way of Illustration.
The peculiar quality which culture imparts is beyond the comprehension
of a child, and yet it is something so definite and engaging that a
child may recognise its presence and feel its attraction. One of the
special pieces of good fortune which fell to my boyhood was
companionship with a man whose note of distinction, while not entirely
clear to me, threw a spell over me.
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