The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
I have no means of knowing whether the morality of the court and the
upper classes at Paris is what it is commonly reported to be; though,
assuredly, if the performances of Therese are truly described to us,
strange things must go on in the highest circles. Historical experience
would be at fault, if a military despotism, with a political religion,
did not produce moral effects in Paris somewhat analogous to those which
it produced in Rome. The fashionable literature of the Empire, which can
scarcely fail to reflect pretty accurately the moral state of the
fashionable world, is not merely loose in principle, (as literature
might possibly be in a period of transition between a narrower and an
ampler moral code,) but utterly vile and loathsome; it seeks the
materials of sensation novels from the charnel-house as well as from the
brothel.
At Dieppe, my last point, I visited that very picturesque as well as
memorable ruin, the Chateau d'Arques. It is a monument of the great
victory gained near it by the Huguenots under Henri IV. over the League.
This and the other Huguenot victories, alas! proved bootless; and it is
melancholy to visit the fields where they were won. By a series of
calamities, the party was in the end erased from history; and scarcely a
trace of its existence remains in the religious or political condition
of Roman Catholic and Imperial France. It has left some noble names, and
the memory of some noble deeds, which no doubt work upon national
character to a certain extent; but this is all.
There was nothing in the fashionable watering-place of Dieppe to tempt
my stay; and I turned from the Chateau d'Arques to embark for the land
where, in spite of our political reaction and the efforts of the
priest-party in our Church, the principles for which the field of Arques
was fought and won have still a home.
AUNT JUDY.
A soft white bosom, kissed by lips and fondled by fingers pure as
itself!
Back through the tender twilight of my one dim dream of a sinless
childhood I catch that accusing glimpse of my mother--and myself. And as
I stand here on this shapeless cairn of remorses, which, after forty
years, I have piled upon my butchered and buried promise, that child
turns from "the cup of his life and couch of his rest," to look upon me
wondering, pitying.
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