s as the very central character of the Greek
race--the being born pure and human out of the brutal misery of the
past, and looking abroad, for the first time, with their children's
eyes, wonderingly open, on the strange and divine world.

77. Make some effort to remember, so far as may be possible to you,
either what you felt in yourselves when you were young, or what you have
observed in other children, of the action of thought and fancy. Children
are continually represented as living in an ideal world of their own. So
far as I have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child is
to live always in the tangible present, having little pleasure in
memory, and being utterly impatient and tormented by anticipation: weak
alike in reflection and forethought, but having an intense possession of
the actual present, down to the shortest moments and least objects of
it; possessing it, indeed, so intensely that the sweet childish days are
as long as twenty days will be; and setting all the faculties of heart
and imagination on little things, so as to be able to make anything out
of them he chooses. Confined to a little garden, he does not imagine
himself somewhere else, but makes a great garden out of that; possessed
of an acorn-cup, he will not despise it and throw it away, and covet a
golden one in its stead: it is the adult who does so. The child keeps
his acorn-cup as a treasure, and makes a golden one out of it in his
mind; so that the wondering grown-up person standing beside him is
always tempted to ask concerning his treasures, not, "What would you
have more than these?" but "What possibly can you see _in_ these?" for,
to the bystander, there is a ludicrous and incomprehensible
inconsistency between the child's words and the reality. The little
thing tells him gravely, holding up the acorn-cup, that "this is a
queen's crown, or a fairy's boat," and, with beautiful effrontery,
expects him to believe the same. But observe--the acorn-cup must be
_there_, and in his own hand. "Give it me;" then I will make more of it
for myself. That is the child's one word, always.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.]

78. It is also the one word of the Greek--"Give it me." Give me _any_
thing definite here in my sight, then I will make more of it.

[Illustration: PLATE V.--TOMB OF THE DOGES JACOPO AND LORENZO TIEPOLO.]

I cannot easily express to you how strange it seems to me that I am
obliged, here in Oxford, to take the position of an ap