The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
of our reverence was undermined, the whole structure came down. They who
showed themselves so morally weak cannot maintain even the intellectual
or aesthetic superiority which they have assumed. Henceforth their blame
or praise is not what it was hitherto. When a man rails at my country,
it is little that he rails at me. If they have called the master of the
house Beelzebub, they of his household would as soon be called little
flies as anything else.
(As a matter of fact, I don't suppose my little venture has ever been
heard of across the ocean. You think it is very presumptuous in me ever
to have thought of it; but I did not think of it. I was only afraid of
it. Suppose the British Quarterly has not vision microscopic enough to
discern you; you like to know how you would feel in a certain
contingency, even if it should never happen. Besides, so many strange
things arise every day, that incongruity seems to have lost its force.
Nothing surprises. Cause and effect are continually dissolving
partnership. Merit and reward do not hunt in couples. If the Tycoon
should send a deputation requesting me to come over at once and settle
matters between himself and his Daimios, I should simply tell him that I
had not the time, but I should not be surprised.)
But if we only did reverence England as once we reverenced her, this is
what I would say:--"Upon my country do not visit my sins. Upon my
country's fame let me fasten no blot. Wherever I am wrong, inelegant,
inaccurate, provincial, visit all your reprobation upon me,--
'Me, me: adsum, qui feci; in me convertite ferrum,
O Angli! mea fraus omnis,'--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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