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Untitled Article
He is mistaken in ever thinking it his duty to indulge either the one or the other . The taste of his country , like his own ( and no small portion of English taste too ) seems rather for poeticality than for poetry . He is a worshipper of Mrs Hemans , a most kind-hearted lady and accomplished verse-writer , who has produced a few genuine and noble lyrics ( the song of the Cid , for
instance ) amid many volumes of smoothness , sweetness , and exquisite prettiness , but whose intellectual orb of sight was scarcely purged to gaze on the " vision divine , " notwithstanding the Rev . Orville Dewey vouches for the fact on the strength of her having told him , while they were taking tea together , that she saw the banners in St Patrick ' s Cathedral wave to the sound of the anthem
and the organ at morning service . But peace to the memory of Felicia Hemans . We had little purpose of criticising her . And shame were it to name her in an ungentle spirit , whatever the occasion . When her entire literary character comes regularly before us , we shall not fail of justice to its real worth , nor shrink
from marking the unsubstantial claims with which it may sometimes have unwisely been invested . But she was not a subject for criticism ; and we would rather be strewing flowers upon her grave , " sweets to the sweet , " and chanting over it some of her own " songs of the affections . "
The reader ' s taste may differ from ours , and he shall judge for himself . The reflections of our new-world ' s-man on first finding himself in the material presence of antiquity , are a good specimen for the purpose , and not an unfavourable one . " We are sailing slowly up St George ' s Channel . It really almost requires an act of faith , to feel that in sixteen days we have reached the Old . World ; that yonder is the coast of Ireland , and there , on the right ,
is Snow don in Wales . As we move on silently , borne along by an invisible power , it seems as if this were a spectre ship ; and the surrounding objects , a dream . The stillness and mystery of expectation come over one ' s mind like a spell—for this , indeed , is the mighty gateway to the Old World , and the misty curtain before us is about to burst asunder ,
and to turn the visions of a whole previous life into reality ! If I were approaching the coast of Kamtschatka , or New Holland , it would be a different thing ; it would be comparatively a common-place occurrence ; but here is the birth-place of my language , of my mind ' s nurture—the world where my thoughts have lived , my father-land—and yet strange and mysterious as if it were the land of some pre-existent being I
" The Old World !—my childhood ' s dream—my boyhood ' s wonder—my youth ' s study—I have read of the wars of grim old kings and barons , as if they were the wars of titans and giants—but now it is reality ; for I see the very soil they trod . They come again over those hills and mountains—they fight again—they bleed , they die , they vanish from the earth . Yet other crowds come—the struggling generations pass before me ; and antiquity is a presence and a power . It has a " local habitation . " IiB clouded tabernacle is peopled with life . Who says that the earth i * cold and dead ? It is written all orer— - * it « whole broad surface
Untitled Article
908 Th * Old World and the Neu > .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1836, page 598, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2662/page/10/
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