list, no coarse
Realist, but a man whose eye reads the heavens while his
feet step firmly on the ground, and his hands are strong and
dexterous in the use of human instruments. A man, religious,
virtuous, and--sagacious; a man of universal sympathies, but
self-possessed; a man who knows the region of emotion, though
he is not its slave; a man to whom this world is no mere
spectacle or fleeting shadow, but a great, solemn game, to be
played with good heed, for its stakes are of eternal value,
yet who, if his own play be true, heeds not what he loses by
the falsehood of others. A man who lives from the past, yet
knows that its honey can but moderately avail him; whose
comprehensive eye scans the present, neither infatuated by its
golden lures nor chilled by its many ventures; who possesses
prescience, as the wise man must, but not so far as to be
driven mad to-day by the gift which discerns to-morrow. When
there is such a man for America, the thought which urges her
on will be expressed."
"From what I have quoted, a _general_ conception of the prose style
of the authoress may be gathered. Her manner, however, is infinitely
varied. It is always forcible--but I am not sure that it is always
anything else, unless I say picturesque. It rather indicates than
evinces scholarship. Perhaps only the scholastic, or, more properly,
those accustomed to look narrowly at the structure of phrases, would
be willing to acquit her of ignorance of grammar--would be willing
to attribute her slovenliness to disregard of the shell in anxiety
for the kernel; or to waywardness, or to affectation, or to blind
reverence to Carlyle--would be able to detect, in her strange and
continual inaccuracies, a capacity for the accurate.
"'I cannot sympathize with such an apprehension; the spectacle
is _capable to_ swallow _up_ all such objects."
"It is fearful, too, to know, as you look, that whatever has
been swallowed by the cataract, is _like_ to rise suddenly to
light."
"I took our _mutual_ friends to see her."
"It was always obvious that they had nothing in common
_between them_."
"The Indian cannot be looked at truly _except_ by a poetic
eye."
"McKenny's Tour to the Lakes gives some facts not to be met
_with_ elsewhere."
"There is that mixture of culture and rudeness in the aspect
of things _as_ gives a feeli
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