Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VII, December 1850, Vol. IIVarious
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VII, December 1850, Vol. II
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
If you converse in a drawing-room, in a public carriage, at a public
dinner table, even in the street, with men of the different classes in
England; if you take care to be present, as I did, at places where
persons of the most advanced opinions meet and speak; if you read the
journals, those safety-valves of public opinion, you must remain struck
with the extreme mildness of men's minds and hearts, with the temperance
of ideas, the moderation of what is desired, the prudence of the Liberal
Opposition, the tenderness evinced toward a conciliation of all
classes, the justice which all classes of the English population render
to each other, the readiness of all to co-operate, each according to his
means and disposition, in advancing the general good--the employment,
comfort, instruction, and morality of the people--in a word, a mild and
serene air is breathed in place of the tempest blast which then raged in
every breast. The equilibrium is re-established in the national
atmosphere. One feels and says to one's self, "This people can come to
an understanding with itself. It can live, last, prosper, and improve
for a long time in this way. Had I my residence on this soil, I should
not any longer tremble for my hearth."
I except, it must be understood, from this very general character of
harmony and reconciliation, two classes of men whom nothing ever
satisfies--the demagogues and the extreme aristocrats--two tyrannies
which can not content themselves with any liberty, because they
eternally desire to subjugate the people--the one by the intolerance of
the rabble, the other by the intolerance of the little number. The
newspapers of the inexorable aristocracy, and of the ungovernable
radicalism, are the only ones that still contrast by their bitterness
with the general mildness of opinions in Great Britain. But some clubs
of Chartists, rendered fanatical by sophistry, and some clubs of
diplomatists, rendered fanatical by pride, only serve the better to show
the calm and reason which are more and more prevailing in the other
parts of the nation. The one make speeches to the emptiness of places
where the people are invited to meet, and the others pay by the line for
calumnies and invective against France and against the present age. No
one listens, and no one reads. The people work on. The intelligent
Tories lament Sir Robert Peel, and accept the inheritance of his
Conservative doctrines by means of progress.
It appears that a superhuman hand carried away during that sleep of
twenty years, all the venom which racked the social body of this
country. If a Radical procession is announced, as on the 10th of April,
250,000 citizens, of all opinions, appear in the streets of London as
special constables, and preserve the public peace against these phantoms
of another time. Such is the present appearance of the public mind in
England to a stranger.
[From the Ladies' Companion.]
THE HAUNTS OF GENIUS. GRAY, BURKE, MILTON, DRYDEN, AND POPE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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