“I was taught never to speak of it,” said the girl, blushing. “It is a question in which we dare not act, as we are told by our minister.”
“For G—d’s sake!” cried the old gentleman; “let us not have bobolition. Those blackguards are already stirring up the country in every direction, and will not be satisfied until they will have produced a separation of the Union. I think Dr. Channing had better turn his wits to something else.”
“But what induced him to preach against General Jackson?” demanded I.
“Because General Jackson was very nigh involving the country in a war with France, and Dr. Channing is opposed to war, on account of its wickedness. It completely obscures ‘moral grandeur,’ and sets a high premium on the lower qualities of the mind, such as courage, patriotism, and the like. He is in general opposed to ‘military greatness,’ and is just as severe on Napoleon, Nelson, Wellington, and Jackson, as Pope was upon women; only he is not quite so satirical,” observed the old gentleman. “He thinks those men will have ‘a very low standing’ in the other world. Isn’t it so, my child?”
“Precisely so, father; Dr. Channing always speaks of Napoleon as of ‘the miscalled great man.’”
“Then the French were right in calling him le PETIT caporal.”
“Why, the doctor calls Napoleon only a third-rate man!”
“Then, I assure you, he has been sinking the bathos in a professional manner. Such a speech might have been piquant some twenty-five or thirty years ago at a nobleman’s table; but no one can venture on it now without betraying the most profound ignorance of history, and the most ridiculous conceit at the same time. None but great men do great things; the saying and writing them is left to inferior minds, and often to mere scribblers. Napoleon tamed the revolution, he changed its corrosive nature; which alone ought to have entitled him to the respect of the Tories.”
“It is the misfortune of our people,” continued the old gentleman, “that they cram everything under the head of morality. Morality is the cant and crack word of the place. If you go to our fashionable churches, you will hear the fashionable clergyman preach ‘morality;’ if you visit a private gentleman’s house, he is sure to entertain you with ‘morality;’ if you attend a public meeting, the ‘moral’ speaker will address his ‘moral’ fellow-citizens on the subject of ‘public morals;’ if you listen to the partisan harangues of our professional politicians, they will conjure the people ‘in the name of morality’ to outvote the profligate antagonist faction, &c. Morality seems to be the great lever of society; the difficulty only consists in finding its fulcrum.”
“I believe Dr. Channing is very popular in England,” observed one of the visiters.