Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state MILTON. AT THE TOMB OF NAPOLEON A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleona magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity -and gazed upon the sarcophagus of black Egyptian marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon-I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris-I saw him at the head of the army of Italy I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his hand-I saw him in Egypt in the shadow of the Pyramids—I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo-at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster-driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris-clutched like a wild beastbanished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had made-of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky-with my children upon my knees and their arms about me. I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as Napoleon the Great. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. CHAPTER VII LOGICAL DETAILS As the word "logical" comes from a Greek word meaning "word," logical details are chiefly a matter of word relations and word meanings. The following considerations are any or all of them likely to be pertinent to an understanding of a passage before it can be intelligently interpreted: I. MEANING OF WORDS (a) Unusual Words. It is only a platitude that one should use the dictionary on all words that need defining. Yet strange to say a painfully large number of our graduates of the fourth-grade reading class will bowl merrily and blithely along over word after word, the meaning of which they do not even suspect. It seems to be quite the thing in the grades for the teacher to excuse the readers if they merely get somewhere near the right pronunciation of the word, no matter whether its meaning is even guessed. The listener can tell easily enough whether or not the reader knows what the words mean. Know the meaning of all words in the following bits of literature: But at the same time he was a pedant, ostentatious, of superficial literary attainments, a wretched poetaster, a dupe of the insipid adulation of godless foreign wits, who flattered him to his face and ridiculed him behind his back. EDWARD EVERETT. The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman has, with such spirit and decency, charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny, but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience. Whether youth can be imputed to any man as a reproach, I will not, sir, assume the province of determining; but surely age may become justly contemptible, if the opportunities which it brings have passed away without improvement, and vice appears to prevail when the passions have subsided. LORD CHATHAM. There and there only, in barbarous archipelagoes, as yet untrodden by civilized man, the name of Washington is unknown. EDWARD EVERETT: The Character of Washington. Egeus. Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung With faining voice verses of faining love, And stolen the impression of her fantasy With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits, SHAKESPEARE: Midsummer Night's Dream. A poor Working Mammonism getting itself strangled in the partridge nets of an unworking Dilettantism, and bellowing dreadfully, and already black in the face, is purely a disastrous spectacle. But a midas-eared Mammonism, which indeed at bottom all pure Mammonisms are, what better can you expect? CARLYLE. I cannot concur in a blind and servile address, which approves, and endeavors to sanctify, the monstrous measures which have heaped disgrace and misfortune upon us. This, my Lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment! It is not a time for adulation. The smoothness of flattery cannot now avail-cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. LORD CHATHAM. A BIRTHDAY My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water'd shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit; That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these, Raise me a dais of silk and down; CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI. MOONRISE And now, as the night was senescent POE: Ulalume. Who is he who arraigns the gentlemen on this side of the House with causing, by their inflammatory speeches, the misfortunes of their country? The accusation comes from one whose inflammatory harangues have led the Nation, step by step, in that inhuman, unfeeling system of blood and massacre. What was the consequence of the sanguinary measures recommended in those bloody, inflammatory speeches? CHARLES J. Fox: The American War. Should the Administration surrender this territory and the advantages it secures to America, the historian of the future will write it down as one of the most pusillanimous Administrations that ever had control of national events. Shall we eternally take counsel with our fears? Shall we play the rôle of opportunists in politics? Shall we act the part of politicians on issues of such tremendous consequence? JOSEPH C. SIBLEY: For Expansion. Then he compared the drunken mob that shot him down to the Revolutionary sires, who spurned overboard that hated tea taxed by British usurpation; thus glorifying a mob of assassins by likening their atrocities to the patriotic exploits of the men of '76, and thus dragging them down to the depths of infamy along with bandits and brigands. Who was this railing brawler vilifying the Revolutionary dead by herding them with murderers? THEODORE DWIGHT WELD: An Incident in the Life of Wendell Phillips. Lorenzo. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night Sit, Jessica. Look, how the floor of heaven SHAKESPEARE: The Merchant of Venice. Where, then, sir, is this war, which on every side is pregnant with such horrors, to be carried? Where is it to stop? One campaign is successful to you; another to them; and in this way, animated by the vindictive passions of revenge, hatred, and rancor, which are infinitely more subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess—there was no opinion that he did not promulgate. In the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the Crescent; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before the Cross; and with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the crown and the tribune, he reared the throne of his despotism. CHARLES PHILLIPS: Napoleon Bonaparte. Oh, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings. SHAKESPEARE: Hamlet. Not for the Puritan, in his reserved and haughty consciousness of supernal relations, is the dainty sumptuousness of color, the symmetric grace of molded marbles, the rhythmic reach and stately height of noble architecture, the pathos and mystery of music. RICHARD SALTER STORRS: The Puritan Spirit. Now rage began to possess the multitude. Dust rose from beneath the stamping feet and filled the amphitheatre. In the midst of the shouts were heard cries: "Ahenobarbus! matricide! incendiary!" HENRY K. SIENKIEWICZ: The Rescue of Lygia |