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Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1905)
PreRaphaelitism and the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood - 1905 Author:William Holman Hunt Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III i855-i856 The eye sees what it brings with it the power to sec. Without eyesight indeed the task might be hard. The blind or purblind man trav... more »els from Dan to Bcershecba and finds it all barren. —Carlyle. Pursuing my solitary way, there seemed at first nothing to distract moodiness, and I rode on, taking stock of the thoughts I had gathered in Syria, of the friends I had made there, and of the work I had done, and this led me into a reverie about my many much-loved friends at home. I was awakened from this at the edge of a precipitous cliff; for I had again come to the ravine which divides the whole tableland of Syria and Moab, making the gulf which reaches from the north to the south, and I had here to descend the western brink. I had never divined till then one use of a pack animal's tail. The heavily laden mule had to drop its fore-feet over so deep a step that its centre of gravity was in peril ; a counterpoise was therefore urgently needed. The muleteer then removed from the load his choice hubble-bubble, and with his disengaged hand took a firm grip of the mule's tail. The animal, appreciating this attention, then felt its way to the very verge of the cliff, while the muleteer sloped back to the most oblique possible line, and the well-trained brute cautiously advanced his hoofs and then slipped both over the edge at the same moment : he had dropped about a foot. Great skill was needed on the part of the mule and the master to enable the former to turn aside in the direction of the escalier track and leave space for the descent of the hind-legs ; all this time the man held on until he was convinced that the animal had recovered his equilibrium without further balks ting. Notwithstanding all the art used, it seemed a marvel when the leading beast...« less