Ems

“ The same summer he became one of the principal masters in the Friedrichs-Gymnasium of Königsberg, where he assisted his colleague, the Germanist Friedrich Karl Köpke (1785–1865) with his edition of Rudolf von Ems’ Barlaam und Josaphat (1818) , and also assisted his friend in a contemplated edition of the works of Walther von der Vogelweide. ”

“ EMS, a river of Germany, rising on the south slope of the Teutoburger Wald, at an altitude of 358 ft., and flowing generally north-west and north through Westphalia and Hanover to the east side of the Dollart, immediately south of Emden. ”

“ LINGEN, a town in the Prussian province of Hanover, on the Ems canal, 43 m. N.N.W. of Münster by rail. Pop. 7500. It has iron foundries, machinery factories, railway workshops and a considerable trade in cattle, and among its other industries are weaving and malting and the manufacture of cloth. Lingen was the seat of a university from 1685 to 1819.
The county of Lingen, of which this town was the capital, was united in the middle ages with the county of Treklenburg. ”

“ As one who, brooding on love or running over business projects in his mind, walks briskly into a lamppost and comes back to the realities of life with a sense of jarring shock, Lord Emsworth started, blinked and returned to consciousness. ”

“ During the year and a half, perhaps, of his first visit he was entertained by one and another of the patrons of English learning, or by some of the English scholars themselves—for scholarship in England was taking on that character which it has ever since maintained, of being joined with wealth and station. This was a type of scholarship so far unfamiliar to Erasmus and it made its due impression upon him. He liked everything in England. He writes to Fisher:
"You will ask me how I like your England. ”

“ Erasmus said, [Pg 291] "Be good and all these evils will vanish." Quite true, but if all men were good there would be no need of institutions at all. The question was, whether the experiment had not been tried long enough, and that was the issue which Erasmus seems not to have grasped.
For the moment the discussion turned on the question of indulgences. On this subject Erasmus had made no utterance which could be understood as committing him on the theory as a whole. ”

“ The Duke of Wellington, who had the best right to say so, advises the French General Kellermann, that he may rely on the parole of an English officer. The English, of all classes, value themselves on this trait, as distinguishing them from the French, who, in the popular belief, are more polite than true. An Englishman understates, avoids the superlative, checks himself in compliments, alleging, that in the French language, one cannot speak without lying. ”

“ There is no cant in Germans, it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of suggestion,—the raw material of possible poems and histories. Nothing is wanting but a little shuffling, sorting, ligature, and cartilage. ”

“ A man who is always launching opinions must expect to be retorted on. And when these judgments were winged by epigram, and weighted by the name of Erasmus, who stood at the head of letters, a widespread exasperation was the consequence. Disraeli has not noticed Erasmus in his Quarrels of Authors, perhaps because Erasmus’s quarrels would require a volume to themselves. ”

“ In W. Walther, “Für Luther,” p. 215.
[1348] G. Kawerau (“Hieronymus Emser,” 1898, p. 2) remarks that it must be admitted of Emser, “that he was an honest curmudgeon, averse to all subterfuge and pretence, amazingly frank in his admissions concerning himself, and, in controversy, very rude. Only rarely do we see him departing from this frankness.” ”

“ And the mystic must be steadily told,—All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric,—universal signs, instead of these village symbols,—and we shall both be gainers. The history of hierarchies seems to show that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and was at last nothing but an excess of the organ of language. ”

“ When the great angry waves arise,
In long low lines against the skies,
And, with a sullen motion,
Dash themselves against the rocks,
Raising a cloud of foam, which mocks
Their sullenness—then falling, dies. ”

“ Filling the night with woe,
And wailing aloud to the merciless seas
The name of his sweet Heloise!
Whilst overhead
The convent windows gleamed as red
As the fiery eyes of the monks within,
Who with jovial din
Gave themselves up to all kinds of sin!
Ha! that is a convent! that is an abbey!
Over the doors,
None of your death-heads carved in wood,
None of your Saints looking pious and good,
None of your Patriarchs old and shabby! ”

“ How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!
⁠This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves
⁠Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves
⁠Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers,
And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers! ”

“ Passing downwards beneath that graceful bridge, which with a rare felicity seems to heighten, and not to impair, the effect of the scene, the river glides along between the rich wooded hills of a handsome demesne, and where, with the most consummate taste, every tint of foliage and every character of verdure has been cultivated to heighten the charm of the landscape. The spray-like larch, the wide-leaved sycamore, the solemn pine, the silver-trunked birch, all blending their various hues into one harmonious whole,—the very perfection of a woodland picture. ”

“ Know'st thou the land of the mountain and flood,
Where the pine of the forest for ages hath stood,
Where the eagle comes forth on the wings of the storm,
And her young ones are rock'd on the high Cairngor'm?
Know'st thou the land where the cold Celtic wave
Encircles the hills which its blue waters lave;
Where the virgins are pure as the gems of the sea,
And their spirits are light as their actions are free? ”

“ Here you trace one winding and creeping, by soft and subdued steps, through the labyrinth of sweet sounds; then another drops, with delicious trickling falls, from the highest compass to the level of the rest; then one seems at length to extricate itself; then another, in imitative successive cadences; they seem as silver threads that gradually unravel themselves, and then wind round the fine deep-toned bass which has scarcely swerved from its steady dignity during all their modulations, and filling up the magnificent diapason, burst into a swelling final cadence, which has no name upon earth. ”

“ He went head on at the other, and they fell, woven as one machine, just inside the German lines.
“Somehow I got back to our fellows; God knows I wish I hadn’t.
“Every man in our escadrille paid in his own way unconscious tribute to Esmè’s memory. We were awfully and justly proud of him,—it’s something to have died for France,—but for all of us the fun, the excitement, of the work had gone, been snuffed out. No one turned corkscrew somersaults, Esmè’s great stunt; no one did any of his special tricks any more, not even to show off before the new men. ”

“ Not so the sudden and immediate change, which seems rather like the stroke of some fell misfortune, converting the cheerful hours into dark, brooding melancholy. Tears may—they do—fall lightly on some; they creep with noiseless step, and youth and age glide softly into each other without any shock to awaken the thought that says, Adieu to this! ”

“ It was a fairy existence to live thus secluded in that lonely valley, where the flowers seemed to blossom for them alone; for them, the summer birds sang their roundelays, and the fair moon shed her pale light over hill and stream, with none to mark her splendour save themselves, Not these thoughts alone filled her mind. Already had she noticed the artless habits of the humble peasantry—their gratitude for the slightest services, their affectionate greetings, the touching beauty of their expressions, teeming with an imagery she never heard before. ”

“ That twilight of the year called spring, most delightful of all seasons, is scarcely known in Italy. Winter dies languidly away, and summer bursts forth at once, and in a few days the trees are clothed in full foliage, the tall grass is waving, and panting lizards sun themselves on the rocks over which so lately the mountain torrent was foaming. ”

“ Who is not being taught by Erasmus? In whom does not Erasmus reign?—I mean, of course, among those who have a true love of letters. For I am glad enough and I reckon it among the gifts of Christ, that there are many who do not approve of you. By this test I discern the gifts of a loving from those of an angry God, and I congratulate you that while you are most acceptable to all good men, you are equally disliked by those who would like to be thought the only great ones and the only ones to be accepted. ”

“ Whilst I have read of England, I have thought of New England. Whilst I have meditated in my solitary walks on the magnanimity of the English Bench and Senate, reaching out the benefit of the law to the most helpless citizen in her world-wide realm, I have found myself oppressed by other thoughts. As I have walked in the pastures and along the edge of woods, I could not keep my imagination on those agreeable figures, for other images that intruded on me. I could not see the great vision of the patriots and senators who have adopted the slave’s cause:—they turned their backs on me. ”

“ Erasmus, while eating and drinking enough for four, was entirely unconscious that he had become the object of general curiosity; when an aged man came up to him, took him by the hand, led him before the glass, and said to him—"Sir, you have no reflection; you are the devil or one of his people!" ”

“ Erasmus is almost completely transformed into an Englishman, with such distinguished consideration am I treated by very many others, but especially by my incomparable (unicus) Mæcenas, the archbishop of Canterbury,—patron not of me alone, but of all learned men, among whom I hold the lowest place, if indeed I hold any place at all. Eternal God! how happy, how productive, how ready is the talent of that man! What skill in unravelling the most weighty matters of business! what uncommon learning! ”

“ Again, at the universities, it is urged, that all goes to form what England values as the flower of its national life,—a well-educated gentleman. The German Huber, in describing to his countrymen the attributes of an English gentleman, frankly admits, that, "in Germany, we have nothing of the kind. A gentleman must possess a political character, an independent and public position, or, at least, the right of assuming it. ”

“ Elms, the second in command, is an Englishman who has plainly, by some peculiar arrangement of circumstances, been 'born out of his native country.' In speech, in manner, in the fifteen stone which he walks, in the square-built, clever cob which he rides, he is as conspicuously English as his name 'John Meadows Elms' would lead you to suppose. ”

“ That Erasmus whom you used to know is almost a good hunter, a horseman not the worst, and no slouch of a courtier; he knows how to salute more gracefully and smile more sweetly and all this with Minerva against him. How are my affairs? Well enough. If you are a wise man you will fly over here too. Why should a man with a nose like yours grow old in that Gallic dung-heap? ”

“ Never in my life was I less in concealment, never more openly before the eyes of all men. And meanwhile there were some among those babblers who wrote to Germany that Erasmus was somewhere in hiding,—which I never found out until I got here in [Pg 349] Basel. And again when the emperor was at Brussels with the king of Denmark, and Thomas, cardinal of York, was there as ambassador of the king of England, you know yourself, even if I had kept myself to your house, how much in hiding I should have been ”

“ Man seems a waif cast on the stream of time,
That bears him onward to the unknown shore;
That longed for, fearéd, dread, mysterious clime,
Toward which all hasten—to return no more.
Yet not so helpless is he as he seems,
Nor void of power to guide life's barque aright,
If Faith sits at the helm, and Hope's bright beams
Shine o'er the troubled waters when 'tis night,
Guiding and cheering like a beacon light,
Till peace is gained and life's cares gone like dreams. ”

“ Edmund went on. “My most ardent wishes are, that the fair Emma may reserve her heart and hand till a certain person, a friend of mine, is at liberty to solicit them; whose utmost ambition is, first to deserve, and then to obtain them.” ”

“ Unpitied, wrongly suspected, Esmé's heart broke as she tore at the locked door. If one could find the backward road—if the Great Powers would give us back the years, seeing as we see now. Lie and scream and bleed, little human, the way is always onward—there are no scissors to cut the false stitches we have made. ”

“ And I fear they lack a class of men of leisure, — in short, of gentlemen, — to give a tone of honor to the community. I am told that things are boasted of in the second class of society there, which, in England, — God knows, are done in England every day, — but would never be spoken of. In America I wish to know not how many churches or schools, but what newspapers? ”

“ At this point in Esmé's address the face of the national schoolmaster, a grey person, rather conceited in his own wisdom than wise in his own conceit, began to present—as a magic lantern presents pictures upon a sheet—various expressions, all of which partook of uneasiness and indignation. ”