世界名著-ROSCOE.docVIP

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Annual most popular English classics, hope for your study help, support baidu, hope baidu library collections more and more good. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1819-20 THE SKETCH BOOK ROSCOE by Washington Irving ROSCOE - In the service of mankind to be A guardian god below; still to employ The minds brave ardor in heroic aims, Such as may raise us oer the grovelling herd, And make us shine for ever- that is life. THOMSON. ONE of the first places to which a stranger is taken in Liverpool is the Athenaeum. It is established on a liberal and judicious plan; it contains a good library, and spacious reading-room, and is the great literary resort of the place. Go there at what hour you may, you are sure to find it filled with grave-looking personages, deeply absorbed in the study of newspapers. As I was once visiting this haunt of the learned, my attention was attracted to a person just entering the room. He was advanced in life, tall, and of a form that might once have been commanding, but it was a little bowed by time- perhaps by care. He had a noble Roman style of countenance; a head that would have pleased a painter; and though some slight furrows on his brow showed that wasting thought had been busy there, yet his eye still beamed with the fire of a poetic soul. There was something in his whole appearance that indicated a being of a different order from the bustling race around him. I inquired his name, and was informed that it was Roscoe. I drew back with an involuntary feeling of veneration. This, then, was an author of celebrity; t