[WHY THE PUTKAMMER CASTLE WAS DESTROYED.]
[THE RHYME OF THE MASTER'S MATE.]
[THE VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE IN LIBRARIES.]
[LETTER TO A YOUNG HOUSEKEEPER.]
[THE PEACE AUTUMN.]
[DOCTOR JOHNS.]
[RODOLPHE TÖPFFER,]
[THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.]
[JEREMY BENTHAM.]
[A FAREWELL TO AGASSIZ.]
[THE FORGE.]
[THE PROGRESS OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.]
[THE FIELD OF GETTYSBURG.]
[ALEXANDER HAMILTON.]
[REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.]
[RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS.]
WHY THE PUTKAMMER CASTLE WAS DESTROYED.
There is a test of truth in popular creeds and in human opinions generally which is prominently put forward by Herbert Spencer, and has been more or less distinctly stated by other writers, long before our time,—a very searching and trustworthy test.
It is, in substance, this:—Whatever doctrine or opinion has received, throughout a long succession of centuries, the common assent of mankind, may be properly set down as being, if not absolutely true in its usually received form, yet founded on truth, and having, at least, a great, undeniable verity that underlies it.
If, however, there be conflicting details as to any doctrine, varying in form according to the sect or the nation that entertains it, then the test is to be received as affirming the grand underlying truth, but not as proving any of the conflicting varieties of investment in which particular sects or nations may have chosen to clothe it.
Thus of the world's belief in the reality of another life, and in the doctrine of future reward and punishment.
In some form or other, such a faith has existed in every age and among almost every people. Charon and his boat might be the means of conveyance. Or the believer, dying in battle for the creed of the Faithful, might expect to wake up in a celestial harem peopled with Houris. Or the belief might embody the matchless horrors painted by Dante; his dolorous city with the terrible inscription over its entrance-gate: "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate."
Again, the conception might be of a long unconscious interval after death, succeeded at last by a resuscitation; or it might be of another world, the supplement and immediate continuation of this, into which Death, herald, not destroyer, ushers us even while human friends are yet closing our eyes and composing our limbs. It might be of the Paradise in which, on the very day of the crucifixion, the penitent thief was to meet the Saviour of mankind; or it might be of that Heaven, yet increate or unpeopled, seen by some in long, distant perspective, shadowed forth in such lines as these:—
"That man, when laid in lonesome grave,
Shall sleep in Death's dark gloom,
Until the eternal morning wake
The slumbers of the tomb."