The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
one occasion of the review on Thursday afternoon, that I was called upon
to recite early, and, commencing with the portion of the week's study
which came next, I went on repeating word for word and paragraph after
paragraph, and finally, not being stopped by our pleased tutor,[E] page
after page, till I finally went through in that way the greater part of
the eleven recitations of the week. The celebrated passage on the Memory
happened to be included. A portion of it, after the lapse of forty-seven
years, remains in my recollection as distinctly as it did the day after
I learned it. I refer to the passage beginning, 'Thus the ideas, as well
as children, of our youth often die before us; and our minds represent
to us those tombs to which we are approaching, where, though the brass
and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the
imagery moulders away.'
"I may observe, that, beautiful as is this language beyond anything else
in the work of Locke, it will not stand the test of criticism. There is
no resemblance between what befalls the ideas and the children of our
youth; and supposing there were such a resemblance, there is not the
slightest analogy between the premature decease of the ideas and the
children of our youth and the disappearance of monumental inscriptions
and imagery from the brass and marble of tombs. But I feel ashamed of
this attempt to pick flaws in this beautiful passage."
But I must not dwell on these reminiscences. I am tempted to refer any
reader interested in his work in the education of the people to an
article on that subject in the seventh volume of Mr. Barnard's "Journal
of Education."
I once heard him say that the mental faculty which had been of most use
to him and had given him most pleasure was his facility in acquiring
language. He said this on occasion of a visit to a county prison, where
they had taken him to the cell of a person whom no one could understand.
I think he had been called a Greek; but he proved to be an Italian. Mr.
Everett was then Governor of the Commonwealth, and this was an official
visit. It was a pretty illustration of republican institutions, that
this poor prisoner in his solitude should first hear his own language
from the chief magistrate. Mr. Everett addressed him first in the
language of his supposed country,--I think in Greek,--and changed to
Italian, when the prisoner spoke to him. He spoke French, German,
Italian, and the Romaic with ease. He read the whole Hebrew Testament in
his youth, and in Germany made considerable progress in Arabic; but I do
not think that he kept up his Oriental languages in later years. He was
fond of exercising himself in the other languages named, and almost
always had some stated correspondence on his hands in each of them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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