C. W. Stoddard

“ A slight bend of the river, and Luxor with its obelisks, and columns, and statues of gods, and ruined temples, bursts upon the view. To the right are seen the Vocal Memnon, the palace and temples of the Pharaohs; while on every side, for miles and miles, stretches the broad plain that enshrines the dust of Thebes. We leave our Nile boat, and under the escort of an army of donkey-boys, pay a hurried visit to the Temple of Luxor. Time has cruelly played the vandal with it. Of all the grandeur of the once glorious edifice only a few pillars and scarred walls remain. ”

“ Can you ticket every passenger through to San Francisco—to Oakland—to Sacramento—even to Virginia City? Shall not the route be represented as well as the termini? And where our people travel, that is the highway of our thought. Will the trains be freighted only with merchandize, and shall we exchange nothing but goods? Will not our civilization gain by the subtle inflowing current of Eastern refinement, and shall we not, by the same channel, throw into Eastern exclusiveness something of our own breadth and liberality? ”

“ The idea that carbon is capable of being solidified into its purest form, the diamond, was always uppermost in his mind; and pondering on the fact that here was crystalized carbon—only simple carbon in its purest form—he continually asked himself, "Why cannot this familiar element be caught, prisoned, and solidified into the precious gem?" "Nature," he argued, "has but few secrets in her laboratory which are not penetrable to man; her processes are hidden, but may be discovered or imitated; and if we know that Nature makes a diamond by crystalizing carbon, why not follow in her footsteps?" ”

“ Among all the disappointments which showered upon the loyal people of America during the four years between the fall of Fort Sumter and the capture of Richmond, scarcely one was more unexpected than the circumstance that the public opinion of all of the world, sufficiently enlightened to be of consequence, was enlisted in behalf of the enemies of our country. And this, aggravated by the obvious fact that the nearer to ourselves in civilization and in consanguinity, the more pronounced was the judgment, the more decided the repugnance to our cause. ”

“ CONFUCIUS has already taken his place on our bookshelves, not very far from English philosophers; and who knows but ere long lesser lights from the land of Sinim may demand recognition in the broad arena of world-thought? Who does not recognize in the almost delirious activity of the nineteenth century, the supreme desire of the nations for "more light?" While we have put every land, every nation, under contribution for material good, we shall not fail to share their stores of wisdom and beauty, locked up in strange tongues though they be. It is our boast to be the teachers of the world ”

“ The autocrat of that land will not be long in learning that it is not safe to take the side of democracy, though it may appear to be in a remote quarter of the globe. Time will convince him, or his successors in power, that Maximilian and Mr. Jefferson Davis were alike fighting the battles of monarchy and of class rule, as well in America as in Europe, and all over the world. No noble lord of England failed for a moment to understand the issue, or will ever misunderstand it in the future, in whatever part of the world it may appear, or whatever form it may assume. ”

“ They recognized nothing like the marriage relation, every man attaching to himself as many women as he chose, and every woman as many men as her desires prompted. What was a brother or a sister no one knew; who was one's father he could not tell, and after a few years of age mothers could hardly designate their offspring. They were a nation having none but brutal ideas, and it is not strange that in their language is no expansion or elasticity, and no synonyms by which it is possible to express any delicate shade of thought. ”

“ Take a school of girls, where no fixed period is in prospect for the pupil to quit it; extend its sphere so that it may be a home for any spinsters choosing it; unite with it any and all means and machinery for employment, of which women are capable; make it in fact a university, with its resident fellows, its circles of doctorates; its laws and regulations neither so lax as to create confusion and impair its success, nor so severe as to hamper the material advantages of freedom; and the intellectual sphere of woman will be widened to an extent commensurable to the capital and labor expended. ”

“ The example of America is a constant warning, a continuous threat to all of this. There is seen a nation where there are no privileged classes, and where there is a complete defiance of the notion that some are born to rule, and others to submit; there the rich are content with the permission to enjoy that which they have, without arrogantly demanding further advantages because of the possession of wealth. The aristocracy of England find with alarm that the country is being
Americanized, and that unless a great struggle is made, its rule will pass away. ”

“ The triumph of the National cause in America has not given democracy the final victory, though the success of the rebellion would have turned the scale against it.
If ever an aristocracy deserved success in such a struggle, it is this one of England. The old system of France, before the Revolution swept it away, was steeped in sensuality and vice of every class nameable and unnameable. The aristocracy of Russia is charged with cruelty and corruption sufficient to exclude it from a place in modern civilization. ”

“ Ruins everywhere: at every curve and bend of the Nile; on every plain and rocky height; on the Delta and the desert; from the shores of the sounding sea to the cataracts. The spirit of the dead past haunts the mysterious river. It carries us back to the infancy of man. We are brought face to face with the people who built the Pyramids—who
founded Thebes and Memphis. ”

“ The ruling interest of England is aristocratic, while that in America is in direct conflict. While these rival interests direct the policy of the two nations, there will be between the people a conflict as irrepressible as that which will always continue between two systems so opposite.
England is beyond all countries upon the globe the paradise of the rich man. Millions toil by day and by night upon the earth, and beneath the earth, and upon the waters under the earth, that he may command every conceivable luxury. ”

“ But to call any belief which could prevail among such a people religion, is to give dignity and character to the common expression of a gigantic selfishness and slavish fear, with which was never allied anything noble or elevating, nor with whose existence was ever any sentiment or feeling of duty or obligation, of love or gratitude. They appealed to the gods that their enemies might be destroyed ”

“ For civilization, in modern phrase, is the structure of the people, representing the highest results of average modern culture. It answers any question concerning the capacity and reasonable hope and expectation of a people. The nation that has reached it asks no stranger's arm, for it is sustained by its own strength. We recognize the best results of the missionaries' work, but in the heartiest expression of their self-congratulations we can hear no syllable of trust in this people's self-sustenance. ”

“ The teaching of the nation has been in the native language, which, in itself, is of narrow and limited scope, which has never been the vehicle of any lofty ideas, into which no perfect translation can be made, and which has not and can never have the elasticity which must be characteristic of all languages used by peoples not altogether savage. The Bible and but a few religious and elementary works, translated from the English, compose the Hawaiian library. There is no literature, no books of science, of art, of travel, of philosophy, and can never be in that language. ”

“ The traveler is overwhelmed by their number and magnitude. The Pyramids of Gezeh are only types of a vast system of colossal remains stretching from Alexandria to Wady Halfa. The banks of the river are literally strewn for hundreds of miles with the debris of the civilization of the Pharaohs. The sides of the mountains are honeycombed with tombs; forests of obelisks glitter in the mellow sunlight; calm-eyed sphynxes greet the wanderer from a hundred storied sites; broken arches and crumbling columns crown innumerable eminences on the river's shores. ”

“ His wife looked on with simple wonder, but asked no questions and made no inju dicious remarks, though she did sometimes open her eyes with wonder when she saw her husband rush out to answer a sudden call, carrying a boiling retort or half-finished experiment in his hand. Believing her husband to be one of the wisest and best of men, she declared that the God of Nature would bring him out of all his maze of conjectures in triumph ”

“ We find our virtue resting upon a mental texture inherited from the early nations of Europe; but how much better than barbarian were our Saxon ancestors? Better, perhaps, than these cannibals and image-worshippers fifty years ago; but centuries have passed in the blooming and maturing of our civilization, which is not yet perfect; and the analogies of history afford us no hope of anything substantial or worthy coming from this people, till after centuries of contact with a superior race. ”

“ Wealth was not so much an object to him as the fame which he would secure by a scientific success that should electrify the world. He was willing that his friends, who had given him latterly the pecuniary assistance which he needed, should have the larger share of the profits that would arise from the success of his search after the great mystery; nay, more, he would by locking up the secret, when found, prevent the process from being common, or his own work from being so often repeated that the precious gem should be cheapened. ”

“ All discriminating authorship must have a limit which does not so much as suggest that the pocket is of more consequence than literary reputation.
On the whole, our local pride is gratified. The book is a monument of patient industry. We are not disappointed at meeting here and there a minor imperfection; but are rather surprised that so much has been done and done so well. What a suggestive record is this of the undeveloped wealth of the State! The germ of the great Commonwealth is outlined, and an inventory is taken of its marvelous resources. ”

“ As a people they are good-natured, amiable and docile to a remarkable degree, but are lazy and indolent, taking no interest in any matter of real public importance, and caring nothing for what is not absolutely personal. They have no pride in themselves as a nation, caring and thinking nothing of a possible future for the kingdom, with no ambition and no self-reliance. ”

“ He would indeed be a poor political economist, who would ask a demonstration of benefits to them and to us from bringing a people of unmatured capacities and a land of indefinite possibilities, with all its uncultivated fertility, into the fold of our nationality, and with them an unrestrained competition with our Saxon sinews, our straightest furrows and our proudest sheaves. Perhaps the commercial argument is the strongest with which to attack any prejudice against their annexation to our republic. It touches the Hawaiians as well as ourselves. ”

“ If they were left to weave the fine fabric of civilization from the native product alone, we should soon see how much easier "the descent to Avernus," than the ascent to any higher place, of which they have now no real conception. If they are sustained by their present religious support, they will doubtless hold their own place, such as it is, among the nations, for the limited period which, judging from the past, they are likely to remain a distinct people. ”

“ Imagine a space equal to that occupied by one-third of the city of San Francisco, all devoted to a single temple and its approaches; imagine two lines of colossal sphynxes extending half a mile from each of its four sides; imagine each of these lines terminating in immense towers; imagine endless groupes of sculptured gods and godesses, lining every avenue and approach; imagine colossii of pure marble and polished granite, guarding every gateway—obelisks shooting upwards into the blue sky, towers rising in every direction ”

“ Here, as in the preceding one, the walls and ceilings are covered with paintings and sculpture—the colors growing brighter and fresher as we advance. The artist inducts us to the mysteries of the nether world. Now the deceased king is ushered into the presence of Osiris, the "judge of the dead;"" now immense serpents, with human legs and celestial crowns on their heads, are receiving the homage of devoted worshippers; now troops of genii are flitting about the Elysian abodes; now owl and cat, and hawk and crocodile, and ape-headed gods are sitting in all the dignity of fullfledged divinities. ”