Literary Essays (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Excerpt from Literary Essays

A yet worse feature, perhaps, because it stands in the way of reformation, is found in the dislike of stern recuperative theories generally, and the disposition to dilute truth and tone down the austere. The intellectuality of the nation has lost a great deal of its early fibre. In theology, men shrink from thorough statements and absolute punishments, as a weak nerve does from the north wind. In philosophy, even professed stu dents avoid all the deeper problems, and all the strict science. In poetry, those who read and relish Sopho.cles, Dante, and Milton, are greatly in the minority. And in art, the lofty abstract ideal has well-nigh vanished, so that in much that goes under this name, sense becomes still more sensuous, and flesh still more carnal.

The true course is to look these facts in the eye, and to act accordingly. In 1802, a great poet, English to the bone, and loving his country as he loved his own flesh, denominated Eng land a fen of stagnant waters, and invoked the stern shade of Milton to raise her up, and give her manners, virtue, free dom, power. The American Republic needs to-day a similar fidelity, and a similar affection, from all her true sons.

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