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Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1, chapter 18 (search)
y crime, and would have prevented every glory of history; that by it, James II. and Bonaparte were saints; under one sense, the Pilgrims were madmen, and under another, the Puritans did right to hang Quakers. But grant it. Suppose the Union means wealth, culture, happiness, and safety, man has no right to buy either by crime. Many years ago, on the floor of Congress, Kentucky and Tennessee both confessed that the dissolution of the Union was the dissolution of slavery. Last month, Senator Johnson of Tennessee said: If I were an Abolitionist, and wanted to accomplish the abolition of slavery in the Southern States, the first step I would take would be to break the bonds of this Union. I believe the continuance of slavery depends on the preservation of this Union, and a compliance with all the guaranties of the Constitution. In September last (at La Crosse), Mr. Seward himself said, What are they [the Southern States] in for but to have slavery saved for them by the Federal Unio
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1, chapter 19 (search)
cere our wish that this question should have a peaceful solution. If your idols — your Websters, Clays, Calhouns, Sewards, Adamses — had done their duty, so it would have been. Not ours the guilt of this storm, or of the future, however bloody. But I hesitate not to say, that I prefer an insurrection which frees the slave in ten years to slavery for a century. A slave I pity. A rebellious slave I respect. I say now, as I said ten years ago, I do not shrink from the toast with which Dr. Johnson flavored his Oxford Port, Success to the first insurrection of the blacks in Jamaica! I do not shrink from the sentiment of Southey, in a letter to Duppa: There are scenes of tremendous horror which I could smile at by Mercy's side. An insurrection which should make the negroes masters of the West Indies is one. I believe both these sentiments are dictated by the highest humanity. I know what anarchy is. I know what civil war is. I can imagine the scenes of blood through which a rebel
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, A plea for culture. (search)
A plea for culture. Theodore Parker somewhere says (borrowing the phrase from what Dr. Johnson said of Scotland) that in America every one gets a mouthful of education, but scarcely any one a full meal. It is the defect of some of our recent debates on this subject, that, instead of remedying the starvation, the reformers propose to deduct from the dinner. The disputants appear to agree in the assumption that an average Senior Sophister is a plethoric monster of learning, and that something must be done to take him down. For this end, some plan to remove his Greek and Latin, others his German, others again his mathematics,--all assuming it as a thing not to be tolerated, that one small head should carry all he knows. Yet surely it needs but little actual observation of our college boys, in their more unguarded moments,--at the annual regatta, for instance, or among the young ladies on Class Day,--to mitigate these fears. The Class Orator does not always impress us with an
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Literature as an art. (search)
rved this saying, added, that he himself had lived long before making the discovery that wit was truth. A final condition of literary art is thoroughness, which must be shown both in the preparation and in the revision of one's work. The most brilliant mind needs a large accumulated capital of facts and images, before it can safely enter on its business. Addison, before beginning the Spectator, had accumulated three folio volumes of notes. The greater part of an author's time, said Dr. Johnson, is spent in reading in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book. Unhappily, with these riches comes the chance of being crushed by them, of which the agreeable Roman Catholic writer, Digby, is a striking recent example. There is no satisfaction in being told, as Charles Lamb told Godwin, that you have read more books that are not worth reading than any other man ; nor in being described, as was Southey by Shelley, as a talking album, filled with long extract
interesting child, as Miss Amy had reluctantly described her, so different from this graceful Adelaide. This romantic name was a rapid assumption of the softhearted Miss Amy's, but, once suggested, it was as thoroughly fixed as if a dozen baptismal fonts had written it in water. Madam Delia was sustained, up to the time of Gerty's going, by a sense of self-sacrifice. But this emotion, like other strong stimulants, has its reactions. That remorse for a crime committed in vain, which Dr. Johnson thought the acutest of human emotions, is hardly more depressing than to discover that we have got beyond our depth in virtue, and are in water where we really cannot quite swim,--and this was the good woman's position. During her whole wandering though blameless life,--in her girlish days, when she charmed snakes at Meddibemps, or through her brief time of service as plain Car'line Prouty at the Biddeford mills, or when she ran away from her step-mother and took refuge among the Indians
Cambridge sketches (ed. Estelle M. H. Merrill), The river Charles. (search)
ld records, and the river rippled on, unashamed of its name. The name and nothing more was the bequest of Captain Smith to the stream. The first event of its witnessing that nearly concerns us was the semi-military picnic, as Colonel Higginson aptly calls it, two hundred and sixty-five years ago, when an exploring party came hither, seeking a place for a fortified town which should be the seat of government. Deputy-governor Dudley was the ruling spirit in the choice of this place, and Johnson describes the plan in such quaint words as these: At this time, those who were in place of civil government, having some additional pillars to underprop the building, began to think of a place of more safety in the eyes of man than the two frontier towns of Boston and Charlestown were, for the habitation of such as the Lord had prepared to govern this pilgrim people. Wherefore they rather made choice to enter further among the Indians than hazard the fury of malignant adversaries who in a
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies, 1861. (search)
battery, however, receiving marching orders, he preferred to remain until the campaign should be completed. If he had yielded to cupidity, or even commendable self-interest, he might have saved his life; scorning such personal advantage, he sacrificed his life willingly in his country's holy cause. So much greater was his desire to serve his country where he was most needed than to secure preferment. A pleasant incident occurred to Sergeant Fenton while in the hospital at Baltimore. Mrs. Johnson, one of those angels of mercy whose visits to our hospitals always brought cheerfulness and hope to the inmates, inquired if there were any Massachusetts soldiers at the hospital. She was told that there was one named Fenton. She remembered that this was the name of the person who had signed the resolutions passed by the Cambridge High School at the sudden death of her son, the former principal of that school. She sought him out, and found in him the same Fenton who had been the first
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies, Biographical Index. (search)
aj.-Gen., I. 14; II. 140. Humphreys, C. A., Chaplain, II. 116, 117;, 159, 329. Huney, John, I. 95. Hunter, David, Maj.-Gen., I. 296, 373;. Hutchinson Family, I. 41. I. Irving, Washington, I. 307. J. Jackson, Charles, I. 395; II. 453. Jackson, P. T., I. 275, 395;II. 457. Jackson, T. J., Maj.-Gen. (Rebel service), I. 146, 159;, 263, 264; II. 168,169, 257, 421. James, G. W., II. 462, 464;. James, W., II. 357. Jefferson, Thomas (President U. S.), I. 90. Johnson, Mrs., II. 236. Johnston, J. E., Maj.-Gen. (Rebel service), I. 213. Jones, Corporal, II. 311. Jordan, Laura P., I. 116. K. Kearney, Philip, Maj.-Gen., I. 142,143; II. 400, 401;, 420, 421. Kedgie, Dr., I. 391. Kershon, Mr., I. 205. Keyes, E. D., Maj.-Gen., I. 213, 214;, 422. Kilby, Mr., I. 163. Kilpatrick, J., Maj.-Gen., 361, 416. Kimball, Daniel, Rev., I. 40,180. Kimball, J. W., Col., I. 444, 445;. Kinsley, L. J. D., I. 263. Kirby, Mr., I. 154. K
James Russell Lowell, Among my books, Spenser (search)
y retouched it. The verses quoted show a firmer hand than is generally seen in it, and we are safe in assuming that they were added after his visit to England. Dr. Johnson epigrammatized Spenser's indictment into There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail, but I think it loses in Whose body is sere, whose branches broke, Whose naked arms stretch unto the fire. It is one of those verses that Joseph Warton would have liked in secret, that Dr. Johnson would have proved to be untranslatable into reasonable prose, and which the imagination welcomes at once without caring whether it be exactly conformable to barnever have had the varied majesty of Milton's blank-verse. But Dr. Warton should have remembered (what he too often forgets in his own verses) that, in spite of Dr. Johnson's dictum, poetry is not prose, and that verse only loses its advantage over the latter by invading its province. As where Dr. Warton himself says:— How near
James Russell Lowell, Among my books, Wordsworth. (search)
ems to me rather that the earliest influence traceable in him is that of Goldsmith, and later of Cowper, and it is, perhaps, some slight indication of its having already begun that his first volume of Descriptive Sketches (1793) was put forth by Johnson, who was Cowper's publisher. By and by the powerful impress of Burns is seen both in the topics of his verse and the form of his expression. But whatever their ultimate effect upon his style, certain it is that his juvenile poems were clothed nd dry; Few months of life he has in store, As he to you will tell, For still, the more he works, the more Do his weak ankles swell,— which are not only prose, but bad prose, and moreover guilty of the same fault for which Wordsworth condemned Dr. Johnson's famous parody on the ballad-style,—that their matter is contemptible. The sonorousness of conviction with which Wordsworth sometimes gives utterance to commonplaces of thought and trivialities of sentiment has a ludicrous effect on the prof