text:  We are afraid that he would soon have committed something very absurd--have broken from his moorings with a shout--or dispelled the sort of nightmare that was stifling him by some violent gesture perhaps by dealing a blow at that bust which stood there so placidly before him just as the poor youth did at the British Museum who threw a stone at the Portland vase to prove that he also was a man and had volition and was not to be looked into stone by the Gorgon of society