Initial Studies in American Letters |
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Page 9
... England , " said Hawthorne , was then in a state incomparably more picturesque than at present . " But to a contemporary that old New England of the seventeenth century doubtless seemed any thing but pict- uresque , filled with grim ...
... England , " said Hawthorne , was then in a state incomparably more picturesque than at present . " But to a contemporary that old New England of the seventeenth century doubtless seemed any thing but pict- uresque , filled with grim ...
Page 10
Henry Augustin Beers. of disturbance from England . The wrangles between the royal governors and the House of Burgesses in the Old Do- minion , and the theological squabbles in New England , which fill our colonial records , are petty ...
Henry Augustin Beers. of disturbance from England . The wrangles between the royal governors and the House of Burgesses in the Old Do- minion , and the theological squabbles in New England , which fill our colonial records , are petty ...
Page 12
... England , says Lowell , were the " two great distributing centers of the English race . " The men who colonized the country between the Capes of Virginia were not drawn , to any large extent , from the literary or bookish classes in the ...
... England , says Lowell , were the " two great distributing centers of the English race . " The men who colonized the country between the Capes of Virginia were not drawn , to any large extent , from the literary or bookish classes in the ...
Page 13
... England . In such a state of so- ciety schools were necessarily few , and popular education did not exist . Sir William Berkeley , who was the royal gover- nor of the colony from 1641 to 1677 , said , in 1670 , " I thank God there are ...
... England . In such a state of so- ciety schools were necessarily few , and popular education did not exist . Sir William Berkeley , who was the royal gover- nor of the colony from 1641 to 1677 , said , in 1670 , " I thank God there are ...
Page 14
... England and the so - called " Cavaliers " of Virginia , that while the former founded and supported Harvard College in 1636 , and Yale in 1701 , of their own motion and at their own expense , William and Mary received its endowment from ...
... England and the so - called " Cavaliers " of Virginia , that while the former founded and supported Harvard College in 1636 , and Yale in 1701 , of their own motion and at their own expense , William and Mary received its endowment from ...
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Popular passages
Page 13 - I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years. For learning has brought disobedience and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both"!
Page 251 - TO HELEN. Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome.
Page 248 - I saw him once before, As he passed by the door, And again The pavement stones resound, As he totters o'er the ground With his cane. They say that in his prime, Ere the pruning-knife of Time Cut him down, Not a better man was found By the Crier on his round Through the town. But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said, "They are gone.
Page 110 - The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity: Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew : The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Page 147 - I am in earnest. I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch. AND I WILL BE HEARD.
Page 232 - Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood ? Alas ! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.
Page 235 - Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and...
Page 233 - To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone, — nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings, The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre.
Page 248 - Oh, better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale!
Page 154 - The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.