Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850.Various
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850.
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
The influencer of his country and of his species was a young man, the
creature of another's predetermination, sheltered and weather-fended
from all the elements of experience; a young man, whose feet had never
wandered; whose very eye had never turned to the right or to the left;
whose whole track had been as curveless as the motion of a fascinated
reptile! It was a young man, whose heart was solitary, because he had
existed always amidst objects of futurity, and whose imagination, too,
was unpopulous, because those objects of hope, to which his habitual
wishes had transferred, and as it were _projected_, his existence, were
all familiar and long established objects! A plant sown and reared in a
hot-house, for whom the very air that surrounded him, had been regulated
by the thermometer of previous purpose; to whom the light of nature had
penetrated only through glasses and covers; who had had the sun without
the breeze; whom no storm had shaken; on whom no rain had pattered; on
whom the dews of heaven had not fallen! A being, who had had no feelings
connected with man or nature, no spontaneous impulses, no unbiased and
desultory studies, no genuine science, nothing that constitutes
individuality in intellect, nothing that teaches brotherhood in
affection! Such was the man--such, and so denaturalized the spirit--on
whose wisdom and philanthropy the lives and living enjoyments of so many
millions of human beings were made unavoidably dependent. From this time
a real enlargement of mind became almost impossible. Pre-occupations,
intrigue, the undue passion and anxiety with which all facts must be
surveyed; the crowd and confusion of those facts, none of them seen, but
all communicated, and by that very circumstance, and by the necessity of
perpetually classifying them, transmuted into words and generalities;
pride, flattery, irritation, artificial power; these, and circumstances
resembling these, necessarily render the heights of office barren
heights, which command, indeed, a vast and extensive prospect, but
attract so many clouds and vapors, that most often all prospect is
precluded. Still, however, Mr. Pitt's situation, however inauspicious
for his real being, was favorable to his fame. He heaped period on
period; persuaded himself and the nation, that extemporaneous
arrangement of sentences was eloquence; and that eloquence implied
wisdom. His father's struggles for freedom, and his own attempts, gave
him an almost unexampled popularity; and his office necessarily
associated with his name all the great events, that happened during his
administration. There were not, however, wanting men, who saw through
this delusion; and refusing to attribute the industry, integrity, and
enterprising spirit of our merchants, the agricultural improvements of
our land-holders, the great inventions of our manufacturers, or the
valor and skillfulness of our sailors to the merits of a minister, they
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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