d
certainly no keener things have been said against war in general than
are to be found in this book.

With our own peace-at-any-price party, no one has less sympathy than I;
and this leads me to urge on all English readers to bear in mind, that
the "Biglow Papers" were written for a New England audience, by a New
Englander, and must be judged from a New England point of view. The
citizen of a huge young mammoth country, divided by a whole ocean from
the nearest enemy that it could fear, assailable only on the vivid
sense of the absurdity of the whole. "And Gallio cared for none of these
things," is another touch of quiet humour, which at once brings out the
ludicrous aspect of the punishment of the Jewish agitators by means of
the very tumults which they raised.

I take it, therefore, that the exhibition of humour, in the pursuit, and
as an aid for the attainment of a noble Christian purpose, is a means of
action not only sanctioned by the very constitution of our natures (in
which God has implanted so deeply the sense of the ludicrous, surely not
that we might root it out) but, by the very example of Holy Writ. The
humour exhibited may be different in degree and in quality; the skies of
Syria are not those of Germany, or of Spain, of England, whether old or
new. But the gift in itself is a pure and precious one, if lawfully and
rightfully used.

Military braggadocio, political and literary humbug, and slave-holding,
are the three great butts at which Hosea Biglow and Parson Wilbur shoot,
at point-blank range, and with shafts drawn well to the ear. The fringe
of its seaboard (itself consisting chiefly of unapproachable swamp or
barren sand wastes), surrounded by weak neighbours or thin wandering
hordes, only too easy to bully, to subdue, to eat up; from which bands
of pirates, under the name of liberators, swarm forth year after year,
almost unchecked, to neighbouring lands, and to which if defeated they
only return to be caressed and applauded by their congeners; where the
getting up of war-fevers forms part of the stock in trade of too many of
the leading politicians; where in particular the grasping at new
territories for slave labour, by means however foul, has become the
special and avowed policy of the slavery party; the citizen of such a
country has a right to tell his countrymen that--

'T'aint your eppyletts an' feathers
Make the thing a grain more right;
'T'aint afollerin' your bell-wethers