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Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing) 1,632 0 Browse Search
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight) 998 0 Browse Search
C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874. 232 0 Browse Search
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2 156 0 Browse Search
J. B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary 142 0 Browse Search
Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 1. (ed. Frank Moore) 138 0 Browse Search
Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States 134 0 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 1, Colonial and Revolutionary Literature: Early National Literature: Part I (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 130 0 Browse Search
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1 130 0 Browse Search
Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume I. 126 0 Browse Search
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Browsing named entities in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book. You can also browse the collection for Europe or search for Europe in all documents.

Your search returned 14 results in 6 document sections:

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, The New world and the New book (search)
s an equal right to the suffrage with the rich man, and more need, because he has fewer ways in which to protect himself. But it is not true, as even such acute European observers as M. Scherer and Sir Henry Maine assume, that democracy is but a form of government; for democracy has just as distinct a place in society, and, abovemate aim, but a strong national literature must come first. The new book must express the spirit of the New World. We need some repressing, no doubt, and every European newspaper is free to apply it; we listen with exemplary meekness to every little European lecturer who comes to enlighten us, in words of one syllable, as to whaEuropean lecturer who comes to enlighten us, in words of one syllable, as to what we knew very well before. We need something of repression, but much more of stimulus. So Spenser's Britomart, when she entered the enchanted hall, found above four doors in succession the inscription, Be bold! be bold! be bold! be bold! and only over the fifth door was the inscription, needful but wholly subordinate, Be n
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, II (search)
may come when not a line of current English poetry may remain except the four quatrains hung up in St. Margaret's Church and when the Matthew Arnold of Macaulay's imaginary New Zealand may find with surprise that Whittier and Lowell produced something more worthy of that accidental immortality than Browning or Tennyson. The time may come when a careful study of even the despised American newspapers may reveal them to have been in one respect nearer to a high civilization than any of their European compeers; since the leading American literary journals criticise their own contributors with the utmost freedom, while there does not seem to be a journal in London or Paris that even attempts that courageous candor. To dwell merely on the faults and follies of a nascent nation is idle; vitality is always hopeful. To complain that a nation's very strength carries with it plenty of follies and excesses is, as Joubert says, to ask for a breeze that shall have the attribute of not blowing;
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, III (search)
ivated gentlemen to those belonging to the same club. It is not until a man knows himself to be writing for a hundred thousand readers that he is compelled to work out his abstrusest thought into clearness, just as a sufficient pressure transforms opaque snow into pellucid ice. In our great American magazines, history and science have commonly undergone this process, and the reader may be gratified, not ashamed, at comprehending them. The best remedy for too profound a deference toward European literary work is to test the author on some ground with which we in America cannot help being familiar. It is this which makes a book of travels among us, or even a lecturing trip, so perilous for a foreign reputation; and among the few who can bear this test —as De Tocqueville, Von Holst, the Comte de Paris—it is singularly rare to find an Englishman. If the travellers have been thus unfortunate, how much more those who have risked themselves on cis-Atlantic themes without travelling. N
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, VI (search)
judgment of posterity? Consider the companion instances. Next to Uncle Tom's Cabin ranked for a season, doubtless, in European favor, that exceedingly commonplace novel The Lamplighter, whose very name is now almost forgotten at home. It is imposout, as Whitman. There are commonly two ways to eminent social success for an American in foreign society,—to be more European than Europeans themselves, or else to surpass all other Americans in some amusing peculiarity which foreigners suppose tall-accomplished Lowell whom we mourn. In other cases, as with Prescott and Motley, there was the mingled attraction of European manners and a European subject. But a simple and home-loving American, who writes upon the themes furnished by his own lity of treatment, and in style. If he had, like Motley, first gone abroad for a subject, and then for a residence, his European fame would have equalled Motley's. As it is, probably not a person present except our host will recognize his name. Whe
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, XXV (search)
tries that even we Americans stand up resolutely for our own land. I lived for some time with a returned fellow-countryman of very keen wit, who, after long residence in Europe, found nothing to please him at home. One day, meeting one of his European companions, I was asked, How is ——? Does he stand up for everything American, through thick and thin, as he used to do in Florence? Turning upon my neighbor with this unexpected supply of ammunition, I was met with the utmost frankness. He own and how? Manners, like morals, are an affair of evolution, and must often be a native product,—a wholly indigenous thing. This is the case, for instance, with the habitual American courtesy to women in travelling,—a thing unparalleled in any European country, and of which, even in this country, Howells finds his best type in the Californian. What comes nearest to it among the Latin races is the courtesy of the high-bred gentleman toward the lady who is his social equal, which is a wholly
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, XXVII (search)
be wished by us. Correspondence, i. 147. While trying to work away on his history Motley found himself absorbed not only in our great conflict, which made European politics seem pale and uninteresting, but in the extraordinary way in which it set at naught all European traditions. All European ideas are turned upside down European traditions. All European ideas are turned upside down by the mere statement of the proposition which is at the bottom of our war. Hitherto the sovereignty of the people has been heard in Europe, and smiled at as a fiction. . . . But now here comes rebellion against our idea of sovereignty, and fact on a large scale is illustrating our theoretic fiction. Ibid., II. 79. In the next European ideas are turned upside down by the mere statement of the proposition which is at the bottom of our war. Hitherto the sovereignty of the people has been heard in Europe, and smiled at as a fiction. . . . But now here comes rebellion against our idea of sovereignty, and fact on a large scale is illustrating our theoretic fiction. Ibid., II. 79. In the next letter he uses that fine phrase which illustrates so much in our early struggles and difficulties through that contest: It is not a military war, if such a contradiction can be used. It is a great political and moral revolution, and we are in the first stage of it. Correspondence, II. 82. This was the period of which the Engl