Was it so? We know that it was not. We know that it was the abuse, not the use, of these things which was condemned, and that the denunciation of error is a very different thing from the extermination of that error’s victims. We know this, and the world too knew it, but it suited the purpose of the world to say otherwise, and to raise against us the cry of intolerance, fanaticism. Well, be it so; but who fashioned the languages in which that cry is raised, who taught the world the meaning of such words as intolerance and fanaticism, who led the way to the contrivance without which the liberty of the press could not exist?
Our civilization, it is true, is of a different order from that now in fashion. It is a civilization which has no need of iron ships and monster armies; it can subdue and humanize by other methods than the bullet and the shell. It tolerates all and any customs that do not strike at morality; it can adapt itself to any nation, and make itself all things to all men. It does not pin its faith to the color of the skin, the fashion of a garment, or any social conventionality; it does not supersede individuality, either personal or national, but engrafts itself upon it and makes it serve a higher purpose. It does not address itself exclusively to one branch of human development, but cultivates them all, each in its turn, making them subservient at last to the spiritual interests of the soul.
[TO A FRIEND.]
If ever, lady, any word of mine,
Spoken in sorrow, came to thy own heart
With any sense of comfort or of peace,
My sorrow that before was half divine
Becomes a joy! and I would never part
With its remembrance. Why should sorrow cease
That makes one happy? I would rather twine
Roses than cypress round a grief so dear;
And I could set as in an emerald shrine
That sadness in my soul for evermore.
How gladly would I live that evening o’er
Thinking of thee! Not vain, amid the scenes
Of that proud park, my mood was, from the shore
Watching the slow state of those ermined queens.
[GRAPES AND THORNS.]
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”