Various

“ Some men shudder as they look into a grave; and well they may, some of the world. But the heart is wrong which feels thus. Does the sight of land give pain to the shipwrecked? is the hope of freedom unwelcome at the dungeon? does the sound of waters please in the desert? does the thought of sleep annoy us when weary? does the hope of oblivion give pain when the heart aches? Why then should the thought of what is greater gain than all these come to our hearts, but to waken their holiest emotions? ”

“ If then the reason of brutes is the reason of man, how strong, how complete the analogy, and how natural the conclusion, that the mind of man too, with the decease of his body ceases to exist! Living therefore as the most intelligent of these animals do, in the midst of us, and seeming to think and reason every day as really as ourselves, reason itself seems to be constantly persuading us that our end is the same. Indeed, if man differs from the brute only in the degree of intellect which he possesses, it is almost demonstrably certain, that annihilation or immortality alike await us. ”

“ Yet it shall be written of all, who, either trusting to their native genius, or destitute of honorable ambition, flutter away their existence in mimicry of the tiny circlets of the silly fly, instead of pluming their wings and nerving their energies, for a bold, a steady, and a deathless flight. Youth gives its stamp to life, and life to immortality—time is a type of eternity. ”

“ The truth is, the principles now developing have their origin with society. For, all sound political principles have a common foundation—the rights of man. His selfishness, especially his thirst for sway, aided by ignorance, has kept through force and fraud the true principles of human government from being understood and adopted. Still the ancient kingdoms, the world-empires and all, though now in their tombs, left inscriptions on their head-stones of diamond worth to the science of government. ”

“ Watching and prayer ever better us. But by the grave of a loved one, there are still holier influences. We see them through the mirror of feeling. If they had faults, they have them no longer; and their virtues, we canonize them—they are relics—they are talismans which we lay on our hearts, and they are holier for the contact.
Earth’s thoughts come not to the grave’s side. The idle, the giddy and gay, they do not jest here—the song of triumph ceases, the unfinished quip dies on the lip that made it. ”

“ Shall the home-bred rustic, who thinks the middle of the sky directly above his head, and supposes that a walk of a day would bring his feet to the ‘blue concave,’ attempt to teach the life-long traveller the principles of society, and decide upon the manners and customs and wonders of the world? And yet it would be as reasonable to the full as the conduct of him, who, when his knowledge is confined to particulars, attempts to play the critic—a part, which, in its very nature, implies generalization of the widest kind. ”

“ Each gentle flower turns her fair face to the god of her idolatry, and, like a grateful bride, repays the warmth of his caresses with the perfume of her breath. It would seem as if the wing of relenting Time had dropt a freshening essence on his vassals, as he passed, and atoned, in the face of Nature and the hearts of her children, for the ravages of years. ”

“ They cannot perceive that the scope of all his principal plays is purely and symmetrically moral, or even religious—that they seldom violate the modesty of nature, though they may overstep the prudishness of an age when, ‘La pudeur s’est enfuie des cœurs, et s’est refugiée sur les lévres.’—Modesty has fled from the heart, and taken refuge on the lips. They cannot admire the overruling providence, by which his untutored genius, apparently so wild and uncontrollable, has been unerringly directed to conformity with truth and virtue. ”

“ It is the eve of the farewell exercises of the class, and the last meeting of the Coffee Club. Tristo had thrown gloom upon our spirits, by a mournful epitaph upon the pleasures and the duties, now buried in the past—but Pulito has reversed our feelings by a brilliant epithalamium, for our coming bridal day, on which we are to wed the world. So is it in life—we shed one tear over the past, and hasten on to catch the future. ”

“ The day will come when he, who has squandered his abilities, and perverted his passions, will ‘begin to be in want,’ when mortified pride and conscious inferiority will ‘bite like a serpent, and sting like an adder’—a day, when the busy idleness, the trifling engagements, and the languid excuses, which now lull all suspicion of an actual waste of time, will be forgotten, and nothing but the results will be visible. ”

“ Their bodies, neither chilled nor contracted by the long winters of the north, nor softened into lassitude and effeminacy by the tropical sun, but continually moving and breathing in the purest air, under the mildest and most brilliant of skies, whose loveliness was constantly exciting in the mind the most agreeable trains of thought, attained, in their fair proportions, to a harmonious keeping with the beauty around. ”

“ It is not however animated matter only which thus for a moment attracts, and then passes from our observation. In each individual of all this numberless multitude, we behold the glimmering of intelligence, and in some species it seems to fall but little below the uncultivated reason of man; nay more, in their architecture, in their fabrics, in their modes of subsistence and defence, many are known to rival the utmost stretch of human ingenuity. This intelligence also, and this ingenuity, vanishes from before us. ”

“ Apple. “To recall your attention, Tristo, to the subject from which we passed so suddenly to a more serious one, what think you of those who ‘wit-wanton it’ with things sacred, who at every breath break over the bounds of modesty, and outrage our sympathies with the true and the beautiful, for the sake of a momentary, and not unfrequently a shame-faced laugh?”
Tristo. “Such persons do themselves and others more injury than they think. Their incessant insults to all refinement and delicacy of feeling, if unresented and unguarded against, at length deaden and efface these sentiments. ”

“ Are the fields of Anatolia less rich than those of Greece, or her harbors less promising for commerce? or are the Greeks, scattered through those regions, who at least double the number of those in their father-land, less capable of moral improvement? Is the conclusion drawn from unfair premises, that the day of the deliverance of this country is near—that the angel of knowledge will again spread his wings over Anatolia, Palestine, Arabia, Egypt, her ancient home? ”

“ It is a lamentable fact—‘horresco referens’—that the old heathen, and the Greeks among them, did not prize very highly these interesting objects. It is true that the exquisite delicacy of female beauty, excited in their breasts a natural thrill of pleasure, and now and then a Sappho or an Aspasia by the united power of wit and loveliness threw a spell of enchantment around the wisest, and bravest, and proudest of their time. ”

“ Civilization, among all the changes it has effected in the character and habits of its subjects, has wrought none more remarkable than that in the condition of woman. In savage countries, the degraded slave of continual oppression—in barbarian nations, the dormant medium of sensual felicity—among the semi-civilized, the ignorant and secluded object of idol affection—it was reserved for the refinement of a purer age to reinstate her by the side, and in the heart of man. ”

“ But deficiency of taste and weakness of mind are not the sole causes of such conduct. The prompter of the whole is envy,—envy, the meanest passion of the human heart—the only one in which there [Pg 235] is not some shade of honor, some trace of nobility. Ambition may be laudable—hate become a virtue from the loathsomeness of its object—covetousness acquire dignity from the excellence of the thing coveted—but the baseness of envy is enhanced by the purity and splendor against which it is directed. ”

“ If thou art not interested in them, it is either because thou art not gifted with a love for the simple and the beautiful, or else because that simplicity and beauty have perished in the medium through which thou hast seen them. I am no man-worshipper, and, I hope, no nation-worshipper. Yet I love, admire, and venerate the Greeks ”

“ The cold airs of the morning send a vigorous life through the limbs, which the toils of yesterday exhausted; and a post-prandial siesta followed by a light repast “of meats and drinks, nature’s refreshment sweet,” prepares the mind for an evening of quiet thought, or rational enjoyment. ”

“ Pulito. “Very true, and I detest that squeamishness, which would refuse the praise of wit to any thing approaching to a pun, and sympathize most heartily with poor Apple for his many rebuffs. But nevertheless, Apple, ‘a joke’s prosperity lies in the ear of the hearer,’ Shakspeare says, and one should not complain if his pet witticisms are not received with applause and answered with laughter. If the jest is worthless, he deserves ridicule—if it does contain the essence of wit he has only himself to blame for giving it an utterance, where it could not be appreciated. ”

“ The government depended on extortion for its revenue—on physical force or a degrading imposture for obedience; neither of which, whatever may have been the case in other days, could be safely trusted, in the light which is breaking over the human family, and over the Turks as a part of it. The present Sultan found himself in the dilemma between reform on the one hand, in accomplishing which his throne, and perhaps his life would be jeopardized, and certain destruction on the other. In choosing the least of these evils, Greece, Egypt, and Palestine, were severed from his empire. ”

“ But now the principles of taste are sadly perverted, and this noble art, this sole distinctive mark of genius, has sought and found refuge only beneath the classic shades of College. It is truly sad to me, to think of leaving this last strong hold of wit and sentiment.”
Nescio. “Why, Apple, your grief bewilders your mind. You began with talking about punning, and ended with wit and sentiment. Where is the connection?”
Apple. “At least as close, Mr. Quod, as between your real and expressed opinion, when you speak so despitefully of this innocent and dignified amusement. ”

“ Pulito. “But idleness—idleness is the student’s bane. It is astounding how we throw away our time, and our best time—our spring-hour of life. Time is the medium of acquisition, and, losing that, we lose all. I am no Utopian in theory, nor visionary in practice: neither am I free from the follies I deplore. But the strides which might be made in our collegiate course, would be mighty and amazing.”
Nescio. “I agree with you. Every ordinary mind, by more judicious application, might accomplish double what it does. ”

“ Nor any where do we find that power of abstraction, by which, from evidences of design which are displayed among terrestrial and celestial objects, we are able to reason our way up to an Infinite Being whom we have neither seen nor heard. These are the characteristics of man, which render him an accountable being—give him a conscience, and stamp him with the impress of immortality. ”

“ The diffusion of sound political principles, and the rising of the Sun of Righteousness over these nations, seem as clearly heralded by these events, as is the coming of the material sun when morning is breaking in the east, the night-damps leaving the earth, the clouds decking themselves in gold and purple, and all nature waking for the duties of a new day. ”

“ They are beacon-lights for the modern statesman. Their wisdom and their folly, both aid him to discover the true rules for human government, which have been buried up and concealed by folly and passion since the days of the Patriarchs, from whom all civil authority had its rise. Added to this light of experience, collected by by-gone nations, are other influences of a physical nature. The application of the magnet to purposes of navigation, was one of those master thoughts, which, from its vast importance, we are almost tempted to regard as an idea of directly divine origin. ”

“ Tear from the fond mother her darling offspring, and plunge into its unprotected breast the glittering steel, and an agony unutterable will give her wings to fly to its rescue, and a thousand tongues to call for aid, or drive her to madness with despair. ”

“ That animals are immortal, however, it is impossible to believe; for if this may be predicated of one individual, it may be predicated of every species [Pg 243] in which animal life can be proved to exist. From the highest intelligence which exists among them, to the meanest insect that crawls in the dust, or the dullest inhabitant of a shell that clings to a rock, there is not a point where the line of separation can, with any degree of plausibility, be drawn, and we might almost extend the chain to the plant that shrinks from the touch, and the flower that follows the sun. ”

“ You underrate their intellect, that you may relieve their heart from the imputation of baseness. True, he who is always searching for faults, without paying any attention to beauties, affords strong grounds for the conclusion, that he has no perception of the latter, and in his own experience is conversant only with the former: and he who is ever detecting plagiarisms, and starting resemblances, gives reason for the suspicion, that his acquaintance with the fountains of these stolen waters, is not so purely accidental, or so honorably gotten, as he would have us imagine. ”

“ If instinct and passion are the only influences to which they are subject, we should reasonably suppose that their actions would be as invariable as the motives from which they originate. Had they never been subject to a higher order of beings, this would be found universally true. But that class of animals which we denominate domestic, and indeed almost all upon which the hand of man has laid its controlling influence, exhibit a species of action, which indicates a capability of improvement, and for which it would be impossible to account upon the principles which have been considered. ”