Page images
PDF
EPUB

reach of the flatterer and the demagogue, and never to bestow them as rewards for mere party service; to bring to his aid in the other trusts of the government the soundest patriotism, the most elevated and various intellect, the most enlarged capacity, that his country affords; and, lest in seeking for such qualities his range of observation might be too circumscribed, I would have him to maintain such relations with all classes and portions of his countrymen that the scope of his selection might have no other limit than the welfare of the commonwealth.

Such is my idea of a virtuous, enlightened and patriotic chief magistrate fit to administer the government of a free and united people. Such a one it may be difficultperhaps impossible to find, though it is presumed no one will deny that it is desirable, and even a duty, to approach as near as possible to a perfect government and social happiness under it. The only question is how near it may be practicable for us to come, and all must admit that we shall approach the nearer as the efforts of the people and the government shall concur for that object.

Happily for our country, we have one illustrious example, who, it would seem, had been given to us by Providence as an ever-living oracle from whom we might in all future times refresh our minds with lessons of real wisdom and patriotism. Washington was the head of the nation, and not. of a party; and amid all the trials of his situation, critical and complex as it certainly was, and amid the labors of organizing and conducting a new government, arduous as they were beset, also with the most dangerous of all jealousies-he made and pre

served a united people, and finally retired from their service with greater character and more durable renown than he carried into it.

This country has produced no second Washington, and it may be feared it will be long before it will. Nevertheless, it ought to be the fervent prayer of every true patriot that that event may yet happen and that its advent may be hastened, and that until it shall please Providence to raise up such another we may constantly meditate upon his pure example, and that some one may yet be found who has so studied the model of that matchless patriot as to be able to preside over a united people.

LOUIS M'LANE.

OSSIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN.

[ocr errors]

THOU that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! Whence are thy beams, O Sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty: the stars hide themselves in the sky: the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave. But thou thyself movest alone who can be a companion of thy course?

The oaks of the mountains fall; the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven; but thou art for ever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy

course.

When the world is dark with tempests, when thunder rolls and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds and laughest at the storm. But to Ossian thou lookest in vain, for he beholds thy beams no more, whether thy yellow hairs flow on the eastern

PLINY'S LETTER TO TRAJAN CONCERNING THE CHRISTIANS.

35

clouds or thou tremblest at the gates of the have been brought before me. I have asked

west.

But thou art perhaps like me-for a season thy years will have an end; thou shalt sleep in the clouds, careless of the voice of the morning. Exult then, O Sun, in the strength of thy youth! Age is dark and unlovely it is like the glimmering light of the moon when it shines through broken clouds. The mist is on the hills; the blast of the north is on the plain; the traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey.

JAMES MACPHERSON.

PLINY'S LETTER TO THE EMPEROR TRAJAN CONCERNING THE CHRIS

TIANS.

IT

T is, sir, a rule which I prescribe to myself to consult you upon all difficult occasions. For who can better direct my doubts or instruct my ignorance? I have never been present at the resolutions taken concerning the Christians; therefore I know not for what causes or how far they may be objects of punishment, or to what degree our complaints may be carried on against them. Nor have I hesitated a little in considering whether the difference of ages should not make some variation in our procedures, or whether the weaker and the more robust should be equally punished. Are those who repent to be pardoned? or is it to no purpose to renounce Christianity, after having once professed it? Must they be punished for the name, although otherwise innocent? or is the name itself so flagitious as to be punishable?

In the mean time, I have pursued this method with those Christians who, as such,

them if they were Christians, and to those who have avowed the profession I have put the same question a second and a third time, and have enforced it by threats of punishment. When they have persevered, I have put my threats into execution. For I did not in the least doubt that, whatever their confession might be, their audacious behavior and immovable obstinacy required absolute punishment. Some who were infected. with the same kind of madness, but were Roman citizens, have been reserved by me to be sent to Rome.

Soon afterward the crime, as it often happens, by being pursued became more diffusive, and a variety of matters of fact were specified to me. An information without a name was put into my hands containing a list of many persons who deny that they are or ever were Christians; for, repeating the form of invocation after me, they called upon the gods and offered incense and made libations of your image, which upon this occasion I had ordered to be brought out with the statues of our deities; and they uttered imprecations against Christ, to which no true Christian, as they affirm, can be compelled by any punishment whatever. I thought it best, therefore, to release them.

Others of them, who were named to me by an informer, have said that they were Christians, and have immediately afterward denied it by confessing that they had been of that persuasion, but had now entirely renounced the error some three years, some more, and some even above twenty years. All these worshipped your image and the images of the gods, and they even vented imprecations against Christ. They affirmed

36

PLINY'S LETTER TO TRAJAN CONCERNING THE CHRISTIANS.

that the sum-total of their fault or of their error consisted in assembling upon a certain stated day before it was light to sing alternately among themselves hymns to Christ as to a god, binding themselves by oath not to be guilty of any wickedness, not to steal nor to rob, not to commit adultery, nor break their faith when plighted, nor to deny the deposits in their hands whenever called upon to restore them. These ceremonies performed, they usually departed, and came together again to take a repast, the meat of which was innocent and eaten promiscuously; but they had desisted from this custom since my edict, wherein, by your commands, I had prohibited all public assemblies.

From these circumstances I thought it more necessary to try to gain the truth, even by torture, from two women who were said to officiate at their worship. But I could discover only an obstinate kind of superstition carried to great excess. And therefore, postponing any resolution of my own, I have waited the result of your judgment. To me an affair of this sort seems worthy of your consideration, principally from the multitude involved in the danger. For many persons of all ages, of all degrees and of both sexes are already, and will be constantly, brought into danger by these accusations. Nor is this superstitious contagion confined only to the cities it spreads itself through the vil lages and the country. As yet, I think, it may be stopped and corrected. It is very certain that the temples, which were almost deserted, now begin to fill again, and the sacred rites, which have been a long time neglected, are again performed. The victims, which hitherto had few purchasers, are

now sold everywhere. From hence we may easily infer what numbers of people might be reclaimed if there was a proper allowance made for repentance.

TRAJAN'S REPLY.

You have exactly pursued the method which you ought, my Secundus, in examining the several causes of those persons who as Christians were brought before you. For in an affair of this general nature it is impossible to lay down any settled form. The Christians need not be sought after. If they are brought into your presence and convicted, they must be punished, but with this reservation that if any one of them has denied himself to be a Christian, and makes his assertion manifest by an invocation to our gods, although he may have been suspected before, his repentance must entitle him to a pardon. But anonymous informations ought not to have the least weight against any crime whatever. They would not only be of dangerous consequence, but are absolutely against the maxim of my government.

Translation of JOHN BOYLE (Earl of Cork).

PICTURES OF EVERY DAY.

ALL honor and reverence to the divine

beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women and children, in our gardens and in our houses; but let us love that other beauty, too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy. Paint us an angel, if you can, with a floating violet robe and a face paled by the celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna turning her mild face

upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not impose on us any æsthetic rules which shall banish from the regions of Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house, those rounded backs and stupid, weatherbeaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of the world, those homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their rough curs and their clusters of onions. In this world there are so many of these common, coarse people who have no picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of our religion and philosophy and frame lofty theories which only fit a world of extremes. Therefore let Art always remind us of them; therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to the faithful representing of commonplace things-men who see beauty in these commonplace things and delight in showing how kindly the light of heaven falls on them.

There are few prophets in the world, few sublimely-beautiful women, few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities; I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are picturesque lazzaroni or romantic criminals half so frequent as your common laborer who gets his own bread and eats it vulgarly, but creditably, with his own pocket-knife. It is more needful that I should

have a fibre of sympathy connecting me with that vulgar citizen who weighs out my sugar in a vilely-assorted cravat and waistcoat than with the handsomest rascal in red scarf and green feathers-more needful that my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me, or in the clergyman of my own parish, who is, perhaps, rather too corpulent and in other respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able novelist.

GEORGE ELIOT.

HEROISM OF THE HUNGARIAN
PEOPLE.

GENTLEMEN have said that it was I

who inspired the Hungarian people. I cannot accept the praise. No, it was not I who inspired the Hungarian people: it was the Hungarian people who inspired me. Whatever I thought, and still think-whatever I felt, and still feel-is but the pulsation of that heart which in the breast of my people beats. The glory of battle is for the historic leaders; theirs are the laurels of immortality. And yet in encountering the danger they knew that, alive or dead, their names would on the lips of the people for ever live. How different the fortune-how nobler, how purer, the heroism-of those children of the people who went forth freely to meet death in their country's cause, knowing that where they fell they would lie undistinguished and unknown, their names unhonored and unsung! Animated, neverthe

less, by the love of freedom and fatherland, they went forth calmly, singing their national anthems, till, rushing upon the bat teries whose cross-fire vomited upon them death and destruction, they took them without firing a shot, those who fell falling with the shout, "Hurrah for Hungary!" And so they died by thousands-the unnamed demigods. Such is the people of Hungary. Still it is said it is I who have inspired them. No-a thousand times no! It was they who have inspired me.

FA

LOUIS KOSSUTH.

FAMILY LIKENESS.

AMILY likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle and divides us by the subtle web of our brain-blends yearning and repulsion and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every moment. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the thoughts we despise; we see eyes-ah! so like our mother's-averted from us in cold alienation; and our last darling child startles us with the air and gestures of the sister we parted from in bitterness long years ago. The father to

whom we owe our best heritage-the mechanical instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the modelling hand-galls us and puts us to shame by his daily errors; the long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humors and irrational per

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »