Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Part 22

=_154._= LITERARY EXCELLENCE OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

The translation of the Bible, in the reign of James I., is the most remarkable and interesting event in the history of translations....

The great excellence of the translation is due to six considerations.

_First_, it was made under a very solemn sense of the important duty devolved on those who were thus selected. Hence arose that prevailing air of dignity, gravity, simplicity, which is so conspicuous.

_Secondly_, the translators came to the task looking to the _thoughts_, not to the _style_. Their object was not that of all other translators, to imitate and rival the beauty of _style_. Their sole object was to render faithfully, and in a plain, appropriate style, the _thoughts_ of the sacred writers. Hence they became _thoroughly imbued with the spirit_ of the original, and gave an incomparably better version of the Hebrew and Greek Testaments than any or all of them together could have done of any cla.s.sic. Had each of them left us translations of some cla.s.sic, I hesitate not to say they would not now have been found in any library but as mere curiosities. _Thirdly_, the number of persons employed contributed very much to prevent any _personal_ style from prevailing, and gave to the whole an air of plain, simple uniformity.

_Fourthly_, the era was providential in one important view. As the translation was made before all the bitterness of sectarian spirit distracted the English Protestant church, it was executed far less with a view to party differences than could have been the case at any time afterwards. _Fifthly_, fortunately the only great religious difference that could have affected it was the dispute with the Catholic church, and, as to that, all Protestants were agreed in England on every important point. _Sixthly_, the English language was then at the happiest stage of its progress, with all the strength, simplicity, and.

clearness of the elder literature, whilst, at the same time, it was free from the cant of the age of Charles I. and Cromwell, from the vulgarity and levity of that of Charles II., and from the artificial character of that of Anne.

Such a translation is an ill.u.s.trious monument of the age, the nation, the language. It is, properly speaking, less a translation than an original, having most of the merit of the _former_ as to _style_, and all the merit of the _latter_ as to _thought_. It is the n.o.blest, best, most finished cla.s.sic of the English tongue.

[Footnote 47: A native of South Carolina, distinguished in the law and in literature.]

=_Henry C. Carey, 1793-._= (Manual, p. 504.)

From "Principles of Social Science."

=_155._= AGRICULTURE AS A SCIENCE.

That agriculture may become a science, it is indispensable that man always repay to the great bank from which he has drawn his food, the debt he thereby has contracted. The earth, as has been already said, gives nothing, but is ready to lend everything; and when the debts are punctually repaid, each successive loan is made on a larger scale; but when the debtor fails in punctuality, his credit declines, and the loans are gradually diminished, until at length he is turned out from house and home. No truth in the whole range of science is more readily susceptible of proof than that the community which limits itself to the exportation of raw produce must end by the exportation of men, and those men the slaves of nature, even when not actually bought and sold by their fellow men.

... With the growth of commerce, the necessity for moving commodities back, and forth steadily declines, with constant improvement in the machinery of transportation, and diminution in the risk of losses of the kind that are covered by insurance against dangers of the sea, or those of fire. The treasures of the earth then become developed, and stone and iron take the place of wood in all constructions, while the exchanges between the miner of coal and of iron--of the man who quarries the granite, and him who raises the food--rapidly increase in quant.i.ty, and diminish the necessity for resorting to the distant market.

=_Edmund Ruffin, 1793-1863._=

From "An Essay on Calcarcous Manures."

=_156._= IMPROVEMENT OF ACID SOILS.

Nearly all the woodland now remaining in lower Virginia, and also much of the land which has long been arable, is rendered unproductive by acidity; and successive generations have toiled on such land, almost without remuneration, and without suspecting that their worst virgin land was then richer than their manured lots appeared to be. The cultivator of such soil, who knows not its peculiar disease, has no other prospect than a gradual decrease of his always scanty crops. But if the evil is once understood, and the means of its removal are within his reach, he has reason to rejoice that his soil was so const.i.tuted as to be preserved from the effects of the improvidence of his forefathers, who would have worn out any land not almost indestructible. The presence of acid, by restraining the productive powers of the soil, has, in a great measure, saved it from exhaustion; and after a course of cropping, which would have utterly ruined soils much better const.i.tuted, the powers of our acid land remain not greatly impaired, though dormant, and ready to be called into action by merely being relieved of its acid quality. A few crops will reduce a new acid field to so low a rate of product, that it scarcely will pay for its cultivation; but no great change is afterwards caused, by continuing scourging tillage and grazing, for fifty years longer. Thus our acid soils have two remarkable and opposite qualities,--both proceeding from the same cause; they can neither be enriched by manure, nor impoverished by cultivation, to any great extent. Qualities so remarkable deserve all our powers of investigation; yet their very frequency seems to have caused them to be overlooked; and our writers on agriculture have continued to urge those who seek improvement, to apply precepts drawn from English authors, to soils which are totally different from all those for which their instructions were intended.

=_Francis Wayland, 1796-1865._= (Manual, pp. 487, 502, 504.)

From "The Limitations of Human Responsibility."

=_157._= SUPERIORITY OF THE MORAL SENTIMENTS.

It is a common remark, that, whenever it has been thought necessary to arouse the mind of man to enterprises of great pith and moment, the appeal has always been made to his moral sentiments. Hence, among the most ancient nations, it was the invariable custom to accompany the declaration of war with religious ceremonies; and if, in later times, this custom has become somewhat less usual, the change itself, in a more remarkable manner, ill.u.s.trates the tendency of our nature.... But let victory declare for the a.s.sailed, let the invader become the invaded, let it become necessary to stimulate men to put forth the highest effort of human daring, and the sacred names of conscience, of duty to family, to country, and to G.o.d, are universally invoked, and the Supreme Being is urgently appealed to, to succor the cause of a sinking commonwealth.

It is, perhaps, worth while to remark, in pa.s.sing, that this consciousness of right is a source of power which belongs specially to the oppressed, and which, other things being equal, will always insure to them the victory; and, when other things are not equal, it is frequently sufficient, of itself, to outweigh a vast preponderance of physical force. It is, moreover, efficient in proportion to the purity of the moral principle of a people. We hence perceive the elements of superiority which, by the const.i.tution of our nature, have been bestowed upon virtue.

Another ill.u.s.tration of the power of the moral principle, is seen in the sentiments with which we contemplate the character of confessors, martyrs, and men of every age, who have sacrificed every thing else for the sake of adherence to righteousness. The highest glory of human nature is to love right better than life, and to obey the dictates of conscience at every conceivable hazard. Even falsehood, when sealed with blood, acquires not unfrequently, for a time, an irrepressible power.

Truth, when uttered from the stake, or on the scaffold, becomes absolutely irresistible. We admire Plato, surrounded by listening princes, and vieing with them in oriental magnificence; but we venerate Socrates in his dungeon, patiently suffering death for holding forth the truth; and the dictates of our own bosoms spontaneously a.s.sign to him the highest place among the uninspired teachers of wisdom. Or, to turn to more awful examples, the foundations of the Christian religion were laid in blood. The Captain of our salvation "was obedient unto death, the death of the cross." The martyrdoms of the early age of the church gave to the world examples of the love of right, of which it had never before conceived even the possibility, and thus set on foot a moral reformation, which is destined to work in the character of man a universal transformation.

=_Horace Mann, 1796-1859._= (Manual, p. 532.)

From "Lectures on various Subjects."

=_158._= THOUGHTS FOR A YOUNG MAN.

In this country most young men are poor. Time is the rock from which they are to hew out their fortunes; and health, enterprise, and integrity, the instruments with which to do it. For this, diligence in business, abstinence from pleasures, privation even, of everything that does not endanger health, are to be joyfully welcomed and borne. When we look around us, and see how much of the wickedness of the world springs from poverty, it seems to sanctify all honest efforts for the acquisition of an independence; but when an independence is acquired, then comes the moral crisis, then comes an Ithuriel test, which shows whether a man is higher than a common man, or lower than a common reptile. In the duty of acc.u.mulation--and I call it a _duty_, in the most strict and literal signification of that word--all below a competence is most valuable, and its acquisition most laudable; but all above a fortune is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to him who ama.s.ses it; for it is a voluntary continuance in the harness of a beast of burden, when the soul should enfranchise and lift itself up into a higher region of pursuits and pleasures. It is a persistence in the work of providing goods for the body after the body has already been provided for; and it is a denial of the higher demands of the soul, after the time has arrived, and the means are possessed, of fulfilling those demands....

Because the lower service was once necessary, and has, therefore, been performed, it is a mighty wrong, when, without being longer necessary, it usurps the sacred rights of the higher.

=_Orestes A. Brownson, 1800-._= (Manual, p. 480.)

From "New Views."

=_159._= THE DUTY OF PROGRESS.

Progress is the end for which man was made. To this end it is his duty to direct all his enquiries, all his systems of religion and philosophy, all his inst.i.tutions of politics and society, all the productions of his genius and taste, in one word, all the modes of his activity. This is his duty. Hitherto, he has performed it but blindly, without knowing, and without admitting it. Humanity has but to-day, as it were, risen to self-consciousness, to a perception of its own capacity, to a glimpse of its inconceivably grand and holy destiny. Heretofore it has failed to recognize clearly its duty. It has advanced, but not designedly, not with foresight; it has done it instinctively, by the aid of the invisible but safe-guiding hand of its Father. Without knowing what it did, it has condemned progress while it was progressing. It has stoned the prophets and reformers, even while it was itself reforming and uttering glorious prophecies of its future condition. But the time has now come for humanity to understand itself, to accept the law imposed upon it for its own good, to foresee its end, and march with intention steadily towards it. Its future religion is the religion of progress.

The true priests are those who can quicken in mankind a desire for progress, and urge them forward in the direction of the true, the good, the perfect.

From "The Convert."

=_160._= POLITICS OF CATHOLIC EUROPE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY DESPOTIC.

In France, Spain, Portugal, and a large part of Italy, all through the seventeenth century, the youth were trained in the maxim, The prince is the State, and his pleasure is law. Bossuet, in his politics, did only faithfully express the political sentiments and convictions of his age, shared by the great body of Catholics as well as of non-Catholics.

Rational liberty had few defenders, and they were exiled, like Fenelon, from the court. The politics of Philip II. of Spain, of Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louis XIV. in France, which were the politics of Catholic Europe, hardly opposed, except by the popes, through the greater part of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth centuries, tended directly to enslave the people, and to restrict the freedom, and efficiency of the church. Had either Philip, or, after him, Louis, succeeded, by linking the Catholic cause to his personal ambition, in realizing his dream of universal monarchy, Europe would most likely have been plunged into a political and social condition as unenviable as that into which old Asia has been plunged for these four hundred years; and it may well be believed that it was Providence that raised and directed the tempest that scattered the Grand Armada, and that gave victory to the arms of Eugene and Marlborough.

=_Theodore Dwight Woolsey, 1801-._=

From his "Introduction to the Study of International Law."

=_161._= IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY.

From all that has been said it has become apparent that the study of international law is important, as an index of civilization, and not to the student of law only, but to the student of history. In our land, especially, it is important, on more than one account, that this science should do its share in enlightening educated minds. One reason for this lies in the new inducements which we, as a people, have to swerve from national rect.i.tude. Formerly our interests threw us on the side of unrestricted commerce, which is the side towards which justice inclines, and we lived far within our borders with scarcely the power to injure or be injured, except on the ocean. Now we are running into the crimes to which strong nations are liable. Our diplomatists unblushingly moot the question of taking foreign territory by force if it cannot be purchased; our executive prevents piratical expeditions against the lands of neighboring States as feebly and slowly as if it connived at them; we pick quarrels to gain conquests; and at length, after more than half a century of public condemnation of the slave-trade, after being the first to brand it as piracy, we hear the revival of the trade advocated as a right, as a necessity. Is it not desirable that the sense of justice, which seems fading out of the national mind before views of political expediency or destiny, should be deepened and made fast by that study which frowns on national crimes?

And, again, every educated person ought to become acquainted with national law, because he is a responsible member of the body politic; because there is danger that party views will make our doctrine in this science fluctuating, unless it is upheld by large numbers of intelligent persons; and because the executive, if not controlled, will be tempted to a.s.sume the province of interpreting international law for us. As it regards the latter point it may be said, that while Congress has power to define offences against the laws of nations, and thus, if any public power, to p.r.o.nounce authoritatively what the law of nations is, the executive through the Secretary of State, in practice, gives the lead in all international questions. In this way the Monroe doctrine appeared; in this way most other positions have been advanced; and perhaps this could not be otherwise. But we ought to remember that the supreme executives in Europe have ama.s.sed power by having diplomatic relations in their hands, that thus the nation may become involved in war against its will, and that the prevention of evils must lie, if there be any, with the men who have been educated in the principles of international justice.

I close this treatise here, hoping that it may be of some use to my native land, and to young men who may need a guide in the science of which it treats.