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Let us take some illustrations from Sidney Lanier's Poem Outlines, a posthumously published collection of some of his sketches for poems, "jotted in pencil on the backs of envelopes, on the margins of musical programmes, or little torn scraps of paper." "The United States in two hundred years has made Emerson out of a witch-burner." This is polished, graphic prose.
Peasant, voter, and dunce of this century are no doubt wiser than the churl, burgher, and blockhead of the twelfth. But the gentleman, statesman, and scholar of the present age are at least quite as favourable a contrast to the alchemist, witch-burner, and baron of old. As the progress of enlightenment has done hitherto, so will it ever do.
Making a scapegoat of the foreigner for those conditions because he will not buy our wheat, or use a metal that we have an overplus of, places us side by side with the witch-burner of old. We are just as ignorant in one way, as he was in another. At his door who has been writing on this subject does the blame of this universal ignorance of it belong.
Peasant, voter, and dunce of this century are no doubt wiser than the churl, burgher, and blockhead of the twelfth. But the gentleman, statesman, and scholar of the present age are at least quite as favourable a contrast to the alchemist, witch-burner, and baron of old. As the progress of enlightenment has done hitherto, so will it ever do.
"Longfellow!" he said, at last, "Phoebus, what a name!" adding affectedly, "yet it seems to me, on reflection, I have heard it before. He is a Yankee, of course! Now, do you earnestly believe a native of New England, by descent a legitimate witch-burner, you know, can be any thing better than a poll-parrot in the poetical line?" "Have we not proof to the contrary, Major Favraud?" "What proof?
It is only just, however, to say that this was a precept more honoured in the breach than the observance. The long-lipped, witch-burner would draw blood with his knuckles; but he drew the line at the sword.
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