The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844: Volume 23, Number 5 — John Shaqi
The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844: Volume 23, Number 5Various
History
The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844: Volume 23, Number 5
Various
Periodicals
What are the conquests and expeditions of the whole corporation of
captains, from Walter the Pennyless to Napoleon Bonaparte, compared with
these 'moveable types' of Johannes Faust? Truly, it is a mortifying thing
for your conqueror to reflect, how perishable is the metal which he
hammers with such violence; how the kind earth will soon shroud up his
bloody foot-prints; and all which he achieved and skilfully piled
together, will be but like his own 'canvass city' of a camp; this evening
loud with life, to-morrow all struck and vanished, 'a few earth-pits and
heaps of straw!' For here, as always, it continues true, that the deepest
force is the stillest; that, as in the fable, the mild shining of the sun
shall accomplish what the fierce blustering of the tempest has in vain
essayed. Above all, it is ever to be kept in mind, that not by material
but by mental power, are men and their actions governed. How noiseless is
thought! No rolling of drums, no tramp of squadrons or immeasurable tumult
of baggage-wagons, attends its movements; in what obscure and sequestered
places may the head be meditating which is one day to be crowned with more
than imperial authority; for kings and emperors will be among its
ministering servants; it will rule not over, but _in_ all heads, and with
these, its solitary combinations of ideas, as with magic formulas, bend
the world to its will! The time may come, when Napoleon himself will be
better known for his laws than for his battles; and the victory of
Waterloo prove less momentous than the opening of the first mechanic's
institute.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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