Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

ENGLISH CULTURE.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL.

BEFORE many years are passed, there will be in Great Britain and the United States of America, sixty, seventy, or eighty millions of free people. May we not hope that these kindred nations-each speaking the English language-each deriving its pedigree of liberty from a common ancestry-each inheriting the English Bible-each reading Shakspeare and Milton-each divided into many denominations of Christians, but each allowing complete liberty of worship-will unite in the glorious task of peaceful conquest and bloodless victory? At least let us indulge in this high hope. If we do not arrive at, or even approximate to, perfection, we may look at least to uninterrupted progress towards a far better social organization than any we have yet enjoyed. I have spoken to you of those times of civilization when either the Christian religion was unknown; or being known, it was contemned, cast aside, and neglected. Let us hope that there is a period arriving when we may see realized those beautiful and powerful words of a great poet:

"Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars

To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,

Is reason to the soul; and as on high,

Those rolling fires discover but the sky,

Not light us here, so reason's glimmering ray

Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,

But guide us upward to a better day.

And as those nightly tapers disappear

When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere,

So pale grows reason at religion's sight,

So dies and so dissolves in supernatural light."

To each one of us—to you, young men of the united kingdom more especially-belongs a portion of the noble task of speeding our country on her great and glorious way, by walking steadfastly in the full light of such truths as we already possess, and by hastening the noonday brightness of such as are only dawning. Let it not be the reproach of any one of us, that, born in a land where the laws acknowledge that thought and speech are free, we have yet ever lent the helping hand of custom, folly, or intolerance to extinguish one spark of that Divine flame which we call the soul, or ever turned away from a righteous and peaceable endeavor to loosen the fetters that still bind it throughout the world.

From "Lecture before the Young Men's Christian Association of London."

THE EGOTISTICAL TALKER.

J. B. OWEN.

THE egotist is an Alexander Selkirk without the solitude. The etymology of an egotist may be rendered thus: "One of those gluttonous parts of speech that gulp down every substantive in the social grammar into its personal pronoun, condensing all the tenses, moods, and voices of other people's verbs, into a first person singular of its own. Example: I myself saw it with my own eyes, and nobody else but me, I say.''

ܙܙ

He whose staple conversation is his own panegyric, forgets that everybody isn't as interested as himself in his alleged achievements. Society resents as a trespass upon its common rights, the inflated eulogy which seems to think no topic so attractive as itself; and retaliates by a reprisal couched in the familiar formula: "We would buy him at our price, and sell him at his own."

He has made a gross blunder somewhere (perhaps is always at it) who provokes such a "quotation." This vanity of “mihi quidem videtur" is sometimes, as with Cicero, associated with a genius too conscious of its own gifts to be sufficiently sensible of others. His inventions won't always bear testing. His great acquaintances, whose cards cover his table, thick as medals on the breast of Wellington, commemorative of so many social conquests, are not all genuine deposits of their owners. Eggs are not always laid in the nest where they are

hatched.

"I was to dine with the Admiral," said such a one, to a brother officer, as they met in the street; "but I've so many cards for to-night, I can't go."

"I received the same invitation," said his friend; "and I'll apologize for you."

"Don't trouble yourself; pray don't

"I must, if you don't come; for the admiral's invitation, you know, is like royalty's-a command."

"Don't mention my name."

[ocr errors]

I certainly must," said his friend, as they shook hands to separate. "I say," at length stammered out the hero of a hundred cards, "don't say a word about me; I-I had a hint to stay away."

"A hint; how so?"

"I wasn't invited."

"No!" said his friend, "not invited! Well, I said I had received the same invitation, for neither was I; but I wanted to see how it lay between us."

From "Lecture before the Young Men's Christian Association.”

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY.

W. E. CHANNING.

BEAUTY is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds in the numberless flowers of the spring. It waves in the branches of the trees and the green blades of grass. It haunts the depths of the earth and sea, and gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun, all overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple; and those men who are alive to it, cannot lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompassed with it on every side. Now this beauty is so precious, the enjoyments it gives are so refined and pure, so congenial with our tenderest and noble feelings, and so akin to worship, that it is painful to think of the multitude of men as living in the midst of it, and living almost as blind to it as if, instead of this fair earth and glorious sky, they were tenants of a dungeon. An infinite joy is lost to the world by the want of culture of this spiritual endowment. Suppose that I were to visit a cottage, and to see its walls lined with the choicest pictures of Raphael, and every spare nook filled with statues of the most exquisite workmanship, and that I were to learn that neither man, woman, nor child ever cast an eye at these miracles of art, how should I feel their privation; how should I want to open their eyes, and to help them to comprehend and feel the loveliness and grandeur which in vain courted their notice! But every husbandman is living in sight of the works of a diviner Artist; and how much would his existence be elevated, could he see the glory which shines forth in their forms, hues, proportions, and moral expression! I have spoten only of the beauty of nature, but how much of this mysterious charm is found in the elegant arts, and especially in literature? The best books have most beauty. The greatest truths are wronged if not linked with beauty, and they win their way most surely and deeply into the soul when arrayed in this their natural and fit attire. Now no man receives the true culture of a man, in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished; and I know of no condition in life from which it should be excluded. Of all luxuries this is the cheapest and most at hand; and it seems to me to be most important to those conditions, where coarse labor tends to give a grossness to the mind. From the diffusion of the sense of beauty in ancient Greece, and of the taste for music in modern Germany, we learn that the people at large may partake of refined gratifications, which have hitherto been thought to be necessarily restricted to a few.

From "Self-culture."

BOOKS.

W. E. CHANNING.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I No matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.

am.

From "Self-culture."

JUDICIAL, FORENSIC, AND PARLIAMENTARY.

IMPRESSMENT OF AMERICAN SAILORS.

HENRY CLAY.

IF Great Britain desires a mark, by which she can know her own subjects, let her give them an ear-mark. The colors that float from the mast-head should be the credentials of our seamen. There is no safety to us, and the gentlemen have shown it, but in the rule that all who sail under the flag (not being enemies), are protected by the flag. It is impossible that this country should ever abandon the gallant tars, who have won for us such splendid trophies. Let me suppose that the Genius of Columbia should visit one of them in his oppressor's prison, and attempt to reconcile him to his forlorn and wretched condition. She would say to him, in the language of gentlemen on the other side: "Great Britain intends you no harm; she did not mean to impress you, but one of her own subjects; having taken you by mistake, I will remonstrate, and try to prevail upon her, by peaceable means, to release you, but I cannot, my son, fight for you." If he did not consider this mere mockery, the poor tar would address her judgment and say, "You owe me, my country, protection; I owe you, in return, obedience. I am no British subject, I am a native of old Massachusetts, where live my aged father, my wife, my children. I have faithfully discharged my duty. Will you refuse to do yours?" Appealing to her passions, he would continue: "I lost this eye in fighting under Truxtun, with the Insurgente; I got this scar before Tripoli; I broke this leg on board the Constitution, when the Guerriere struck." If she remained still unmoved, he would break out, in the accents of mingled distress and despair :

Hard, hard is my fate! once I freedom enjoyed,

Was as happy as happy could be!

Oh! how hard is my fate, how galling these chains!

I will not imagine the dreadful catastrophe to which he would be driven by an abandonment of him to his oppressor. It will not be, it cannot be, that his country will refuse him protection.

From "Speech on New Army Bill."

« ForrigeFortsæt »