For a long
time now he had been pledged to personal daring, to thought forced to
become supple and concentrated, to hard, practical planning, physical
hardship and danger. In the midst of this had begun to grow up a
criticism of all the enterprises upon which he was engaged. Scope--in
many respects the Jacobite character, generally taken, was amiable and
brave, but its prime exhibit was not scope! Somewhat narrow, somewhat
obsolete; Ian's mind now saw Jacobitism in that light. As he sat
without his rock fortress, in the shadow of birch-trees, with lower
hills and glens at his feet, he had a pale vision of Europe, of the
world. Countries and times showed themselves contiguous. "Causes,"
dynastic wars, political life, life in other molds and hues, appeared
in chords and sequences and strokes of the eye, rather than in the old
way of innumerable, vivid, but faintly connected points. "I begin to
see," thought Ian, "how things travel together, like with like!" His
body was rested, recovered, his mind invigorated. He had had with him
for long days the very elixir of solitude. Relations and associations
that before had been banked in ignorance came forth and looked at him.
"You surely have known us before, though you had forgotten that you
knew us!" He found that he was taking delight in these expansions of
meaning.
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