Part 14 (1/2)
”Things are of the snake”
The tier sit quietly in his study, and, to borrow Mr Cooke's words, ”As the agitation proceeded, and brave randeur, he gave a heartier assent to the outward methods adopted”
No woman could doubt the reverence of Ehts Convention” in 1855, he takes bold, and ould then have been considered soround in the controversy then and since dividing the community This is the way in which he expresses himself:
”I do not think it yet appears that women wish this equal share in public affairs But it is they and not we that are to detered of every barbarous remainder, every barbarous impediment to women Let the public donations for education be equally shared by them, let them enter a school as freely as a church, let theive their property as men do theirs;--and in a few years it will easily appear whether they wish a voice in overn them If you do refuse the to our Teutonic principle, No representation, no tax--The new movement is only a tide shared by the spirits of man and woman; and you may proceed in the faith that whatever the woman's heart is prompted to desire, the man's mind is simultaneously proh to have had for land Roman, Samuel hoar He spoke of him in Concord before his fellow-citizens, shortly after his death, in 1856 He afterwards prepared a sketch of Mr hoar for ”Putnaazine,” from which I take one prose sentence and the verse hich the sketch concluded:--
”He was a model of those forentleman of the old school, so called under an i away, but which, I suppose, is an optical illusion, as there are always a fewle verse I quote is coh for an Elizabethan monumental inscription
”With beams December planets dart His cold eye truth and conduct scanned; July was in his sunny heart, October in his liberal hand”
E one voluhly fresh and original book It is not a tourist's guide, not a detailed description of sights which tired the traveller in staring at thees in which they are recorded Shrewd observation there is indeed, but its strength is in broad generalization and epigrammatic characterizations They are not to be received as in any sense final; they are not like the verifiable facts of science; they are acious, more or less well founded opinions formed by a fair-minded, sharp-witted, kind-hearted, open-souled philosopher, whose presence made every one well-disposed towards him, and consequently left hilance at the table of contents will give an idea of the objects which Emerson proposed to himself in his tour, and which take up the principal portion of his record Only one _place_ is given as the heading of a chapter,--_Stonehenge_ The other eighteen chapters have general titles, _Land, Race, Ability, Manners_, and others of si us to the Pilgrim fathers of the British Aristocracy:--
”Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings These founders of the House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy and ferocious pirates They were all alike, they took everything they could carry; they burned, harried, violated, tortured, and killed, until everything English was brought to the verge of ruin
Such, however, is the illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent and dignifiedboast their descent from these filthy thieves, who showed a far juster conviction of their own oat, jackal, leopard, wolf, and snake, which they severally resembled”
The race preserves soorous health and last well into e
The old men are as red as roses, and still handsoood teeth are found all over the island”
English ”Manners” are characterized, according to Eor, independence ”Every one of these islanders is an island himself, safe, tranquil, incommunicable” They are positive,routine and conventional ways; loving truth and religion, to be sure, but inexorable on points of form
”They keep their old custo and mace, sceptre and crown A severe decoru are once for all distasteful They hate nonsense, sentih-flown expressions; they use a studied plainness”
”In an aristocratical country like England, not the Trial by Jury, but the dinner is the capital institution”
”They confide in each other,--English believes in English”--”They require the sah conviction, and reality in public men”
”As compared with the A people in this country are much more prone to melancholy”
Emerson's observation is in accordance with that of Cotton Mather nearly two hundred years ago
”_New England_, a country where splenetic Maladies are prevailing and pernicious, perhaps above any other, hath afforded numberless instances, of even pious people, who have contracted those _Melancholy Indispositions_, which have unhinged them from all service or comfort; yea, not a few persons have been hurried thereby to lay _Violent Hands_ upon theeration about the following portrait of the English, and the likeness will be snized by every stout Briton