Library
This evening I have re-read some Volney, that old French scholar and traveler; this analysis strikes me forcibly:
Man in his blindness has riveted his own chains, and surrendered himself forever, without defense, to the sport of his ignorance and passions. To dissolve such fatal chains, a miraculous concurrence of happy circumstances would be necessary: a whole nation, cured of the delirium of superstition, must be inaccessible to the impulse of fanaticism...this people should be courageous and prudent...
Sound advice for these times! When are we prudent? What, beside the passage of time, years of peace, will evolve prudence? Is war a kind of superstition? I have thought so. Certainly it is a delirium.
I see the Library has a copy of Volney’s Travels in Syria and Egypt. I have asked for a copy.
Evening
In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it.
The Anns and the boys with their Bibles.