The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Religion
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
"I envy not the moralist who could treat disdainfully of Chivalry. It
was a marvellous principle, that which could make of plighted faith a
law to the most lawless, of protection to weakness a pride to the most
ferocious. While the Church taught that personal duty consisted in
scourgings and fastings, and social duty in the slaughter of Moslems and
burning of Jews, Chivalry roused up a man to reverence himself through
his own courage and truth, and to treat the weakest of his
fellow-creatures with generosity and courtesy.... Recurring to its true
character, the Law of Honor, when duly enlarged and rectified, becomes
highly valuable. We perceive, that, amid all its imperfections and
aberrations, it has been the truest voice of intuition, amid the
lamentations of the believer in 'total depravity,' and the bargaining of
the expediency-seeking experimentalist. While the one represented Virtue
as a Nun and the other as a Shop-woman, the Law of Honor drew her as a
Queen,--faulty, perhaps, but free-born and royal. Much service has this
law done to the world; it has made popular modes of thinking and acting
far nobler than those inculcated from many a pulpit; and the result is
patent, that many a 'publican and sinner,' many an opera-frequenting,
betting, gambling man of the world, is a far safer person with whom to
transact business than the Pharisee who talks most feelingly of the
'frailties of our fallen nature.'"--pp. 267-270.
The learning shown in the book, though not astonishing, like Sir William
Hamilton's, is sufficient and always at the author's service. The text
throughout, and especially the notes on Causation, Predestination,
Original Sin, and Necessary Truths, will amply support our opinion. But
better than either learning or logic is that noble and devout spirit
pervading every page, and convincing the reader, that, whether the
system advanced be true or false, it is the result of a genuine
experience, and the guide of a pure and generous life.
The volume is neatly printed, but lacks an index sadly, and shows some
errors resulting from the distance between the author and the
proof-reader. Such is the misuse of the words "woof" and "warp" on page
56; evidently a slip of the pen, since the same terms are correctly used
elsewhere in the volume.
_Memoirs of the Empress Catharine II._ Written by herself. With a
Preface by A. HERZEN. Translated from the French. New York: D. Appleton
& Co. 12mo. pp. 309.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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