Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers: Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With The Freethinkers."Bradlaugh, Charles
Religion
Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers: Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With The Freethinkers."
Bradlaugh, Charles
Rationalists -- Biography
Rochester; while for abstruse learning he was superior to many of the
most learned theologians. Daintily brave and skilfully alive to the
requirements of friends and foes, he passed through life in the gilded
barge of pleasure, and ended it sailing through a cloud where he
foundered. But the darkness which enveloped his history is now charged
with that sympathetic power which draws the young to his grave, and
compels the gloomiest to shed a tear over his unhappy fate.
At the close of August, in 1693, a few friends met near the grave of
Blount, to join in their last respects to their lost friend. Foremost
amongst them was Charles Gildon, who so soon repented of the part he
had taken in the "Oracles of Reason," but never forgot the kindness he
experienced from Blount. He lived long enough for Pope to be revenged on
his apostacy, by inserting his name in his great satire. At the time we
speak he was mournful and deeply grieved at the loss he had sustained;
near him was Harvey Wilwood, whose bold demeanor and sorrowful
countenance told of heart-struck grief, for of the few able to
appreciate the genius of Blount, he was one of the earliest and most
devoted in his friendship. Now we see the noble Lord, whom Blount always
addressed as "the most ingenious Strephon;" along with him there is the
pretty Anne Rogers, with Savage, and Major Arkwright; we look in vain
for Eliza Tyr-rel; they talk slowly over him that is no more; they
recount to themselves the intellectual achievements, and the brilliant
hours they have spent in the past; and while they speak so kindly, and
think so deeply, they kneel on the hallowed spot, but not to pray;
some of them pledge their enmity against Christian laws and Christian
priests, and they executed it. During this time, the calm radiance of
the lunar light shines on the church of Ridge, illumining those ghostly
tablets of white marble, where the forefathers of Blount lie entombed.
The baronial arms are emblazoned on the wall; heraldic pomp is keeping
watch over the mouldering bones of the now-levelled great. Anne Rogers
weeps wildly for Eliza and Eleanora. Those metaphysical disquisitions
which have exalted woman to so high a nature, that devotion to esthetics
which woman should always cultivate, not as a household slave, but
as one of equal rights with man, and his leader in everything which
concerns taste, elegance, and modesty; such gifts in no ordinary degree
had Anne Rogers--and often in dialectic subtlety had she mastered her
relative, who stood by her side, and given tokens of her admiration of
Blount's philosophy and conduct. "Strephon" was passionately attached
to his confidant and friend, and could not give so calm an expression
to his loss. He wept wildly, for he had lost one who tempered his rebuke
with a kind word, and pointed out that Epicurean path which leads to
enjoyment without excess: to pleasure, without a reaction. It was a
memorable meeting. While the remembrance of past deeds of love lighted
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