The taste manifested by our Transcendental poets, is to be treated “reverentially,” beyond doubt, as one of Mr. Emerson’s friends suggests—for the fact is, it is Taste on her death-bed—Taste kicking in articulo mortis.
27.
I should not say, of Taglioni, exactly that she dances, but that she laughs with her arms and legs, and that if she takes vengeance on her present oppressors, she will be amply justified by the lex Talionis.
28.
The world is infested, just now, by a new sect of philosophers, who have not yet suspected themselves of forming a sect, and who, consequently, have adopted no name. They are the Believers in every thing Odd. Their High Priest in the East, is Charles Fourier—in the West, Horace Greely; and high priests they are to some purpose. The only common bond among the sect, is Credulity:—let us call it Insanity at once, and be done with it. Ask any one of them why he believes this or that, and, if he be conscientious, (ignorant people usually are,) he will make you very much such a reply as Talleyrand made when asked why he believed in the Bible. “I believe in it first,” said he, “because I am Bishop of Autun; and, secondly, because I know nothing about it at all.” What these philosophers call “argument,” is a way they have “de nier ce qui est et d’expliquer ce qui n’est pas.”[[2]]
29.
The goddess Laverna, who is a head without a body, could not do better, perhaps, than make advances to “La Jeune France,” which, for some years to come at least, must otherwise remain a body without a head.
30.
Mr. A—— is frequently spoken of as “one of our most industrious writers;” and, in fact, when we consider how much he has written, we perceive, at once, that he must have been industrious, or he could never (like an honest woman as he is) have so thoroughly succeeded in keeping himself from being “talked about.”
31.