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For it implies a too low estimate of what is fresh and strong and of real merit in the independent life of the nation. Colonists need a little more of the philosophic and common-sense spirit which can look upon deficiencies and crudities merely as phases in the natural evolution of society in a new land. This is what Mrs. Praed has endeavoured to teach in some of her stories.
A man whose culture is far beyond that of the mouthing politicians at home and whose statesmanship is not to be compared to the ignorant crudities of the pigmies who strut and fret on the English party stage this man spends great part of a lifetime in ruling and fighting; he gives every force of a great intellect and will to his labours, and he achieves definite and beneficent practical results; yet his name is never mentioned in England, and any vulgar vestryman would probably outweigh him in the eyes of the populace.
Those who are familiar with the general philosophical spirit of the present age, as represented by writers otherwise so different as Littre and Sainte-Beuve, will best appreciate the power and originality of these speculations. Coming in the last century, amid the crudities of deism, they made a well-defined epoch.
You may sometimes see in modern picture galleries an attempt to combine the story from which proceeds the nourishing flame of Christianity with the crudities and the shameful ugliness of our decline. Thus, with others, a picture of our Lord and Mary Magdalen; all the figures except that of our Lord were dressed in the modern way.
The flickering light glinted over the walls. At first I did not heed what it revealed; then I saw it glow and fade over some early efforts of my own, frame-less crudities, to which Mammy had fallen heir. They had become old masters! What centuries ranged themselves between the birth of those pictures and now!
Lambert backed off a little, for the way of the range had indeed become his way in that year of his apprenticeship, and its crudities were over him painfully. When off what he considered a respectful distance he put on his hat, turning a look at her as if to further assure her that his invasion of her premises was not a trespass.
In mentioning these examples specially I do not mean to imply that there are no similar crudities and popular fallacies upon the other political side. I mention them because they constitute a very special and arresting feature of the situation. I mean this, that there were always Radical revolutionists; but now there are Tory revolutionists also. The modern Conservative no longer conserves.
Indeed, it would almost seem that a renascence of American art is at hand. The country has emerged from the crudities of its first years, and from the mediocre conventionality of its middle period, without having lost the freshness and enthusiasm conducive to high achievement. Its face is toward the sunrise.
Mahomet speaks to great masses of men, in the coarse dialect adapted to such; a dialect filled with inconsistencies, crudities, follies: on the great masses alone can he act, and there with good and with evil strangely blended. Dante speaks to the noble, the pure and great, in all times and places. Neither does he grow obsolete, as the other does.
"Bread," says he, "dear brothers, is the staff of life, in which bread is contained inclusive the quintessence of beef, mutton, veal, venison, partridge, plum-pudding, and custard, and to render all complete, there is intermingled a due quantity of water, whose crudities are also corrected by yeast or barm, through which means it becomes a wholesome fermented liquor, diffused through the mass of the bread."
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