It must be so,—Plato, thou reasonest well!
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
’Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
’Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.
Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought.
“Cato,” Act V. Sc. I.—Joseph Addison.
Joseph Addison, a famous English essayist and poet, was born at Milston, Wiltshire, May 1, 1672, and died in London, June 17, 1719. He wrote 41 original papers in the “Tattler,” and 34 with Steele; 274 in the “Spectator,” 24 to a revived “Spectator,” and 2 to Steele’s “Lover.” His other works include: “Letters from Italy” (a poem), “The Campaign” (a poem), “Fair Rosamond” (an opera), “Remarks on Several Parts of Italy,” and “Cato” (a tragedy).
As an orator, Webster has been compared in simplicity to Demosthenes and in profundity to Burke.
“Daniel Webster; History of the United States,”—James Ford Rhodes.
James Ford Rhodes, a distinguished American historian, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, May 1, 1848. He is best known by his noted work in two volumes, “History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850.” His other works include, “Historical Essays,” “Lectures on the American Civil War Delivered at Oxford,” “History of the Civil War,” “History of the United States from Hayes to McKinley,” etc.
All power appears only in transition. Permanent power is stuff.
—Novalis.
Novalis, the nom de plume of Friedrich Von Hardenburg, a noted German philosopher and mystic, was born in Saxony, May 2, 1772, and died, 1801. Among his writings are: “Hymns to the Night,” “Disciples at Sais,” and “Heinrich von Ofterdingen.”
The people of Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, like all other Christian people at that time and later,—at least, with extremely rare individual exceptions,—believed in the reality of a hideous crime called witchcraft. They thought they had Scripture for that belief, and they knew they had law for it, explicit and abundant; and with them law and Scripture were absolute authorities for the regulation of opinion and of conduct.