United States or Montserrat ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Wonders of Heaven, and wonders of earth, and I don't see how they would be apt to ruin and break down anybody's morals a-contemplatin' 'em not if they wuz sound when they begun.
In page 95 he says: "It is a marvelous fact, worthy of record, that in the whole history of the church, from the nineteenth century to the first, no solitary example can be adduced to show that any Pope or General Council ever revoked a decree of faith or morals enacted by any preceding pontiff or council.
He has some old stories still of his own seeing to confirm what he says, and makes them better in the telling; yet is not troublesome neither with the same tale again, but remembers with them how oft he has told them. His old sayings and morals seem proper to his beard; and the poetry of Cato does well out of his mouth, and he speaks it as if he were the author.
But in the two pieces, Aesop in the City, and Aesop at Court, the fables which are tacked to every important scene are drowned in diffuse morals; besides, they are quite distinct from the dialogue, instead of being interwoven with it, like the fable of Menenius Agrippa in Shakespeare; and modern manners do not suit with this childish mode of instruction.
All these may seem to be wide reasons for objecting to Melissa's pity for Sir Gavial Mantrap on the ground of his good morals; but their connection will not be obscure to any one who has taken pains to observe the links uniting the scattered signs of our social development.
Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals, with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors. Nor is this all.
I shall not pretend to point out all the shades of difference in these several schools; though that in which I had myself been taught, was necessarily the most in conformity with my own tastes. There were minor shades to be found in the same school; Guert and myself belonging to different classes. His morals were of the Dutch class; while mine more properly belonged to the English.
The opinion, I know, which has been long entertained of Hedge Schoolmasters, was, and still is, unfavorable; but the character of these worthy and eccentric persons has been misunderstood, for the stigma attached to their want of knowledge should have rather been applied to their want of morals, because, on this latter point, were they principally indefensible.
Crimes which cannot be named were common, and the streets of Rome were the constant scene of robbery, assault, and assassination. The morals of women were as depraved as those of men, and there was no public amusement so immoral or so cruel as not to be countenanced by their presence. In this period of moral dearth, the fountains of genius and literature were dried up.
Something is wrong with the house, with my pens which will not write, with my books which have the air of dry bones in a charnel-house, with the MS. of my History of Renaissance Morals, which stands on the writing-table like a dusty monument to the futility of human endeavour. Something is wrong with me.
Word Of The Day