The Time-Spirit had given its angels charge concerning these young
people, and, remote as they were from all the fiery centres of thought
and the dreaming schools of art, Zion Place, no less than the Rue de
Rivoli, took its thought of the newest and its beauty of the best.




CHAPTER VII


THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER

I have said that Coalchester was a very ignorant old town. I did not
mean to imply that there were no M.A.'s there. In fact, there were quite
a number. You may be sure that if spiritual and intellectual life had
its representatives, as we have seen, spiritual and intellectual death
had its representatives, too--by which I don't mean either to imply that
the M.A.'s were dead M.A.'s, dead and buried with Latin over them in the
old brassed and effigied church, which was so old and large that it was
hardly less conceited than a cathedral. Spiritual and intellectual death
in Coalchester, as elsewhere, was officially represented by the Literary
and Philosophical Society, which still unblushingly went on retaining
its adjectives, even in the face of its "Transactions," which seemed
mainly composed of treasurer's reports, with an occasional paper
on fossils.

Indeed the one spark of life in the pathetic old society was its real
interest in the antediluvian and prehistoric. For the life that was dead
it had a perfect passion, and it sometimes held conversaziones to gaze