قراءة كتاب Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December 1852
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Review of New Books
Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.
PAINTED BY F. ROCHARD ENG’D BY EZEKIEL TEEL
THE FAIREST FLOWER.
Engraved Expressly for Graham’s Magazine
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS ON HER WAY TO EXECUTION.
THE INUNDATION.
GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XLI. PHILADELPHIA, December, 1852. No. 6.
“PALE CONCLUDING WINTER.”
With howling fury Winter makes his bound
Upon us, freezing Nature at a look.
He dashes out the sweet and dreamy hues
Of Indian Summer, so that where the eye
The golden softness and the purple haze
Beheld at noon, at sunset sees the mist
Darken around the landscape, and the ear,
Nestling upon its pillow, hears the sleet
Ticking against the casement, whilst within
The silvery cracking of the kindling coal
Keeps merry chime. The morning rises up,
And lo! the dazzling picture! Every tree
Seems carved from steel, the silent hills are helm’d,
And the broad fields have breastplates. Over all
The sunshine flashes in a keen white blaze
Of splendor, searing eyesight. Go abroad!
The branches yield crisp cracklings, now and then
Sending a shower of rattling diamonds down
On the mailed earth, as freshens the light wind.
The hemlock is a stooping bower of ice,
And the oak seems as though a fairy’s wand
Had, the past night, transformed its skeleton frame
To a rich structure, trembling o’er with tints
Of rainbow beauty. . . . . . . A. B. Street.
———
BY AN AMATEUR ARTIST.
———
With regard to the antiquity and origin of this most beautiful and most important of the early Christian arts—most important, because to it can be traced directly the invention of typography, as it now exists, bringing knowledge and truth within the reach of all who desire to attain them—there has been much difference and dispute among the literati. After the second restoration of letters—I mean after the dull and dreary interregnum between the era of the Stuarts and the Georgian era of literature, dating from the commencement of the present century—there seems to have arisen a strange habit of referring every thing, the origin of which was not distinctly known, to eras the most remote. Not to be able to say such a discovery was made by such a learned German or Venetian, by such a celebrated Gaul or Briton, in such a town, in such a year, of such a century, was sufficient cause for the drivelers of the time—the best scholars of whom knew, like Shakspeare, little Latin and less Greek, assuming, nevertheless, the possession of the deepest classic lore—to assert point-blank that it was made by such a wonderful Chinese philosopher during the reign of Wu-wang, emperor of China, or such a remarkable Egyptian sage, in the reign of Tathrak or Amenophis; or, that it was in common use in the days of Pericles, or perhaps even of the later Roman emperors.
The general knowledge of the classic languages was then so rare even among the authors of those days, that the dictum of any dunce who grossly misconstrued a Greek or Latin text, or of any rogue, who chose to forge one in support of his theory—in those days a matter of daily occurrence—was, so far from being questioned, detected, refuted, and exposed, as would now be the case, within a week of its publication, quoted and requoted by successive schools of dunces, until it was received as a truth, and sent down as a grave authority to future generations.
Though no author of this day, thanks to the number and acumen of the literary and critical journals—we do not mean newspapers, which promulgate, not correct falsehoods—could originate a blunder, much less a forgery, with a possibility of escaping detection; still, careless and hasty compilers following what they deem authorities, without themselves referring to the original authority cited, are constantly reproducing falsehood, promulgating it, and giving to it weight as truth, when nothing is more averse from their intention than to do so.
In nothing is this more the case than in the very class of works in which of all others accuracy and truth are most requisite—are, indeed, indispensable—we mean what are now called juvenile books, school-books for the use of the young. These works are, unfortunately, rarely or never composed by men of science, men of historical knowledge, men of high general information, or literary standing, although—embracing, as they pretend to do, the whole range of human knowledge from astronomy and the direct sciences, through universal history to political economy, physical and moral philosophy, and philology—they, above all beside, should be the work of men of unerring accuracy in the statement of facts. Since it is easier to teach three new ideas to a mind unimpressed, than to eradicate from it one preconceived opinion, false or true.
It is enough to say in this connection, that out of all the modern “histories for the young” we have ever seen—and we have seen scores, if not hundreds—we never read six successive pages which did not contain either a disgraceful blunder as to fact, or a more disgraceful perversion of facts to meet popular prejudices or popular passions.
