there stood in heaven a linden tree
Feb. 17th, 2003 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
incandescensWhen I remember Christ's Hospital, I always remember the linden trees. I prefer that name to lime trees; there's something smoother about it, more fluid.
Christ's Hospital was the boarding school that I attended from 11-18. (People wanting boarding school details for rpg settings or Harry Potter stories may turn me upside down and shake me till they fall out of my pockets later.) A main avenue ran through the school buildings, out from either side of the main quadrangle, and the boarding houses were spaced along it, four on each side of the quadrangle. There were also huge old linden trees planted along it, which had been there long enough that their roots left big creases and cracks in the pavement. In summer they'd be in full bloom, and the whole avenue smelt of them. In spring -- in spring there was always a day when you'd still be feeling as though it was winter, but then for some reason you'd look up, and the sky would be clear clear blue, and the fresh leaves on the trees would be clear clear green. It was a clear green. Fresh, springing, transparent in a way, as though it was a window on a brighter green. (Actually, the adjective "clear" was once used in the sense of "beautiful", I believe, which would certainly suit here.)
In my fourth year at Christ's Hospital, there was a heavy storm -- not a real hurricane, but a serious one, bad enough to bring down a lot of trees. (The ironic bit, in retrospect, is that the night before all the weather forecasters were mocking the idea of any possible storm. Ah hah hah hah, we've just had a question in from one of our viewers, but don't worry. Whoops.) The school authorities decided that it was time to do a thorough clearance, and removed most of the old linden trees, putting in new saplings instead. A sad change.
Though by my last year there, the saplings had grown to young trees, and the avenue was looking more the way it used to.
I will have to see what it looks like in another ten years or so.
---
We are able to answer the question, 'Why have we no great men?' We have no great men chiefly because we are always looking for them. We are connoisseurs of greatness, and connoisseurs can never be great; we are fastidious -- that is, we are small. When Diogenes went about with a lantern looking for an honest man, I am afraid he had very little time to be honest himself. And when anybody goes about on his hands and knees looking for a great man to worship, he is making sure that one man at any rate shall not be great. Now the error of Diogenes is evident. The error of Diogenes lay in the fact that he omitted to notice that every man is both an honest man and a dishonest man. Diogenes looked for his honest man inside every crypt and cavern, but he never thought of looking inside the thief. And that is where the Founder of Christianity found the honest man; He found him on a gibbet and promised him Paradise. Just as Christianity looked for the honest man inside the thief, democracy looked for the wise man inside the fool. It encouraged the fool to be wise. We can call this thing sometimes optimism, sometimes equality; the nearest name for it is encouragement. It had its exaggerations -- failure to understand original sin, notions that education would make all men good, the childlike yet pedantic philosophies of human perfectibility. But the whole was full of faith in the infinity of human souls, which is in itself not only Christian but orthodox; and this we have lost amid the limitations of pessimistic science. Christianity said that any man could be a saint if he chose; democracy, that every man could be a citizen if he chose. The note of the last few decades in art and ethics has been that a man is stamped with an irrevocable psychology and is cramped for perpetuity in the prison of his skull.
-- Charles Dickens, GK Chesterton
Christ's Hospital was the boarding school that I attended from 11-18. (People wanting boarding school details for rpg settings or Harry Potter stories may turn me upside down and shake me till they fall out of my pockets later.) A main avenue ran through the school buildings, out from either side of the main quadrangle, and the boarding houses were spaced along it, four on each side of the quadrangle. There were also huge old linden trees planted along it, which had been there long enough that their roots left big creases and cracks in the pavement. In summer they'd be in full bloom, and the whole avenue smelt of them. In spring -- in spring there was always a day when you'd still be feeling as though it was winter, but then for some reason you'd look up, and the sky would be clear clear blue, and the fresh leaves on the trees would be clear clear green. It was a clear green. Fresh, springing, transparent in a way, as though it was a window on a brighter green. (Actually, the adjective "clear" was once used in the sense of "beautiful", I believe, which would certainly suit here.)
In my fourth year at Christ's Hospital, there was a heavy storm -- not a real hurricane, but a serious one, bad enough to bring down a lot of trees. (The ironic bit, in retrospect, is that the night before all the weather forecasters were mocking the idea of any possible storm. Ah hah hah hah, we've just had a question in from one of our viewers, but don't worry. Whoops.) The school authorities decided that it was time to do a thorough clearance, and removed most of the old linden trees, putting in new saplings instead. A sad change.
Though by my last year there, the saplings had grown to young trees, and the avenue was looking more the way it used to.
I will have to see what it looks like in another ten years or so.
---
We are able to answer the question, 'Why have we no great men?' We have no great men chiefly because we are always looking for them. We are connoisseurs of greatness, and connoisseurs can never be great; we are fastidious -- that is, we are small. When Diogenes went about with a lantern looking for an honest man, I am afraid he had very little time to be honest himself. And when anybody goes about on his hands and knees looking for a great man to worship, he is making sure that one man at any rate shall not be great. Now the error of Diogenes is evident. The error of Diogenes lay in the fact that he omitted to notice that every man is both an honest man and a dishonest man. Diogenes looked for his honest man inside every crypt and cavern, but he never thought of looking inside the thief. And that is where the Founder of Christianity found the honest man; He found him on a gibbet and promised him Paradise. Just as Christianity looked for the honest man inside the thief, democracy looked for the wise man inside the fool. It encouraged the fool to be wise. We can call this thing sometimes optimism, sometimes equality; the nearest name for it is encouragement. It had its exaggerations -- failure to understand original sin, notions that education would make all men good, the childlike yet pedantic philosophies of human perfectibility. But the whole was full of faith in the infinity of human souls, which is in itself not only Christian but orthodox; and this we have lost amid the limitations of pessimistic science. Christianity said that any man could be a saint if he chose; democracy, that every man could be a citizen if he chose. The note of the last few decades in art and ethics has been that a man is stamped with an irrevocable psychology and is cramped for perpetuity in the prison of his skull.
-- Charles Dickens, GK Chesterton
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Date: 2003-02-18 11:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-18 11:41 am (UTC)