The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, October 1879Various
History
The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, October 1879
Various
Arts -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals
This view may appear somewhat contradictory to the one expressed when
dealing with the subject of Emigration; but really it is not so. The
leaving behind the special spot of earth where one drew one's first
breath, played as a boy, saw his first sweetheart, and grew up to
manhood, the parting from old friends and long-familiar objects, may
and does entail a severe struggle, and inflict many a bitter pang; but
it is unavoidable, and so must be submitted to. It is otherwise with
home ideas, habits, modes of thought, literature. These will serve to
mitigate the poignancy of separation from one's native land, will
intertwine themselves more closely round one's affections by reason of
that very separation, and be the means of causing miniature Englands to
arise in far-off regions, and in various degrees of latitude and
longitude. While releasing as cheerfully as may be what we _must_ let
go, let us hug more closely still that which we _can_ retain.
To return: In a well-equipped Free Library no standard British author
should be conspicuous by his absence. The poets, from Chaucer and Gower
to Tennyson and Browning; the dramatists, from Marlowe and Shakspeare to
W. S. Gilbert and Tom Taylor; the _modern_ historians, from Hume and
Gibbon to Froude and Freeman; the modern theologians, from Hooker and
Jeremy Taylor to Canon Farrar and the Dean of Westminster; the modern
essayists, from the projectors of the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ to the
contributors to the current Reviews and Magazines; the philosophers, the
leaders in all departments of science, should be there; the best writers
of prose fiction, also, from Fielding and Goldsmith to Trollope and
George Eliot, should be well represented. The most profound and the most
volatile will alike find sufficient to occupy their attention here for
some time. The "Anglican paddock" (to misapply a now well-known term)
will afford plenty of grazing ground to cattle of moderate appetites for
a considerable period; and when it is exhausted, why, then, there are
toothsome grasses in endless profusion to be cropped over the boundary
fence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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