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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, A plea for culture. (search)
A plea for culture. Theodore Parker somewhere says (borrowing the phrase from what Dr. Johnson said of Scotland) that in America every one gets a mouthful of education, but scarcely any one a full meal. It is the defect of some of our recent debates on this subject, that, instead of remedying the starvation, the reformers propose to deduct from the dinner. The disputants appear to agree in the assumption that an average Senior Sophister is a plethoric monster of learning, and that something must be done to take him down. For this end, some plan to remove his Greek and Latin, others his German, others again his mathematics,--all assuming it as a thing not to be tolerated, that one small head should carry all he knows. Yet surely it needs but little actual observation of our college boys, in their more unguarded moments,--at the annual regatta, for instance, or among the young ladies on Class Day,--to mitigate these fears. The Class Orator does not always impress us with any
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, A letter to a young contributor. (search)
nnot rival. Political freedom makes every man an individual; a vast industrial activity makes every man an inventor, not merely of labor-saving machines, but of labor-saving words; universal schooling popularizes all thought and sharpens the edge of all language. We unconsciously demand of our writers the same dash and the same accuracy that we demand in railroading or dry-goods jobbing. The mixture of nationalities is constantly coining and exchanging new felicities of dialect: Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Africa, are present everywhere with their various contributions of wit and shrewdness, thought and geniality; in New York and elsewhere one finds whole thoroughfares of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal; on our Western railways there are placards printed in Swedish; even China is creeping in. The colonies of England are too far and too provincial to have had much reflex influence on her literature, but how our phraseology is already amplified by our relations with Spanish America! T
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Ought women to learn the alphabet? (search)
other interests also, added spheres, not necessarily alien from these; larger knowledge, larger action also; duties, responsibilities, anxieties, dangers, all the aliment that history has given to its heroes. Not home less, but humanity more. When the high-born English lady in the Crimean hospital, ordered to a post of almost certain death, only raised her hands to heaven, and said, Thank God! she did not renounce her true position as woman: she claimed it. When the queen of James I. of Scotland, already immortalized by him in stately verse, won a higher immortality by welcoming to her fair bosom the dagger aimed at his; when the Countess of Buchan hung confined in her iron cage, outside Berwick Castle, in penalty for crowning Robert the Bruce; when the stainless soul of Joan of Arc met God, like Moses, in a burning flame,--these things were as they should be. Man must not monopolize these privileges of peril, birthright of great souls. Serenades and compliments must not replace t
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, A charge with Prince Rupert. (search)
each other. Arms, costume, features, phrases, manners, were as yet common to both sides. On the battle-field, spies could pass undetected from one army to the other. At Edgehill, Chalgrove, and even Naseby, men and standards were captured and rescued, through the impossibility of distinguishing between the forces. An orange scarf, or a piece of white paper, was the most reliable designation. True, there was nothing in the Parliamentary army so gorgeous as Sir John Suckling's troop in Scotland, with their white doublets and scarlet hats and plumes; though that bright company substituted the white feather for the red one, in 1639, and rallied no more. Yet even the Puritans came to battle in attire which would have seemed preposterously gaudy to the plain men of our own Revolution. The London regiment of Hollis wore red, in imitation of the royal colors, adopted to make wounds less conspicuous. Lord Say's regiment wore blue, in imitation of the Covenanters, who took it from Numb
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, The Puritan minister. (search)
how few years are required to make a usage seem ancestral, or to revive it after long neglect. Who now remembers that our progenitors for more than a century disused religious services on both these solemn occasions? Magistrates alone could perform the marriage ceremony; though it was thought to be carrying the monopoly quite too far, when Governor Bellingham, in 1641, officiated at his own. Prayer was absolutely forbidden at funerals, as was done also by Calvin at Geneva, by John Knox in Scotland, by the English Puritans in the Westminster Assembly, and by the French Huguenots. The bell might ring, the friends might walk, two and two, to the grave; but there must be no prayer uttered. The secret was, that the traditions of the English and Romish Churches must be systematically set aside. Doctor, said King James to a Puritan divine, do you go barefoot because the Papists wear shoes and stockings? Even the origin of the frequent New England habit of. eating salt fish on Saturday