Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 2, August 1850Various
General
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 2, August 1850
Various
Literature -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals
Throughout the pamphlet the author wantons in dogmatism and
impertinence, and has an especial love for a phrase representing the
British people as “twenty-seven millions mostly fools.” The United
States comes in as usual for a rap. The rumor is, that we are indebted
for all Carlyle’s sarcasms against our people to the American tourists
who have bored him; persons whom he always treated with roughness, but
whom he now receives with almost savage insolence. We have heard a story
of an American lady, who visited him—under the impression that he was a
great philanthropist, and immediately opened the conversation with some
remarks in favor of the abolition of slavery. He growled out a bitter
rejoinder, in which he took strong grounds in favor of that institution,
and denounced all abolitionists as sentimental fools and flunkies. The
lady, irritated and surprised, hit instantly on the true woman’s method,
the _argumentum ad hominum_, and put the startling question, “How, Mr.
Carlyle, should you like to be a slave?” He dilated his person to its
full dimensions, and in his broad Scotch brogue exclaimed, “Well, I
should be glad to be a great bull-necked nigger, and have somebody to
take care of me!” We must confess to a sympathy with his wish, as far as
it relates to somebody’s taking care of him, we think good might be done
to his head in an asylum.
There is, however, an allusion in the pamphlet to our Congress, which is
not without its wisdom just at this time, and which may be safely
commended to the attention of those honorable members who consume time
and money, precious to the public, in speeches which rarely rise in
thought to the level of party newspaper leaders, and which, in style,
are often below the rhetoric of romances in yellow covers. He says,
“Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of all countries can do
without governing—every man being at least able to live, and move off
into the wilderness, let Congress jargon as it will—can such a form of
so-called ‘Government’ continue for any length of time to torment men
with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is not there. For
America, _as the citizens well know_, is an ‘unparalelled country’—with
mud soil enough, and fierce sun enough in the Mississippi valley alone
to grow Indian corn for the extant Posterity of Adam at this time; what
other country ever stood in such a case? ‘Speeches to Bunkum,’ and a
constitutional battle of the Kilkenny cats, which in other countries are
becoming tragical and unendurable, may there still fall under the
comical category.”
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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