The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864: Devoted to Literature and National PolicyVarious
Religion
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864: Devoted to Literature and National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
Believe not that such complaints are inventions: the facts are known to
everybody who will look upon them. They are no slanderous stories, but
occurrences renewed with every morning, taking place under all
circumstances and with every transaction patent to the world. They were
appreciated and described in Prussia, and even in Austria verified, not
long before the last campaign. Under such circumstances, what must be
thought of the discoveries and conclusions of writers who assert that
'the Polish nation is a mere chimera'? As no individual, mighty as he
may be, can by a blasphemous word suppress the existence of the Eternal
Father, so neither passion nor love, favor nor animosity, interest nor
purpose of the most talented or ambitious, can erase at pleasure a
nationality which has a history of over a thousand years of existence, a
nationality proved by the last hundred years of incessant struggle for
independence with three giants. This nation has marked its boundaries
with graveyards toward the Dniester, Dnieper, Niemen, and Dwina, where
rest the beaten hordes of Batu or Nogays. Can the record be erased of
the power that broke the sword of the Osmanlis, and was it a _chimera_
that preserved Western Europe from such sights as Polowce and
Pietschiniegs, etc.? You may perhaps to-day designate as a _chimera_ the
Vienna saved in 1683, that very Vienna which in 1815 first conceived the
idea of sowing the seeds of distrust between Galicians and
Lodomerians--an idea soon after adopted, perfected, and publicly
propagated by Rossians, who applied the practice to Lithuanians,
Volhynians, Podolans, Polans, Radymicians, etc.--an idea now held in the
fierce grasp of Muraview, Anienkow, and probably at no very distant
period to be recalled to the mind of the originator.
The gentleman's knowledge of Russians (the true name is Rossians, the
other being assumed to effect a certain purpose in Western Europe),
Prussians, and Austrians, to the exclusion of Poles, proves only that
his geographic and ethnographic researches in Poland went no farther
than those of the 'reliable gentleman' who described the Bunker Hill
monument under President Lafayette.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account