"
I am not sure but the same analogy is to be applied, in cases,
often seen, where, with an extra development and acuteness of the
intellectual faculties, there is a mark'd absence of the spiritual,
affectional, and sometimes, though more rarely, the highest esthetic
and moral elements of cognition.
LACKS AND WANTS YET
Of most foreign countries, small or large, from the remotest times
known, down to our own, each has contributed after its kind, directly
or indirectly, at least one great undying song, to help vitalize and
increase the valor, wisdom, and elegance of humanity, from the points
of view attain'd by it up to date. The stupendous epics of India, the
holy Bible itself, the Homeric canticles, the Nibelungen, the Cid
Campeador, the Inferno, Shakspere's dramas of the passions and of the
feudal lords, Burns's songs, Goethe's in Germany, Tennyson's poems
in England, Victor Hugo's in France, and many more, are the widely
various yet integral signs or land-marks, (in certain respects the
highest set up by the human mind and soul, beyond science, invention,
political amelioration, &c.,) narrating in subtlest, best ways, the
long, long routes of history, and giving identity to the stages
arrived at by aggregate humanity, and the conclusions assumed in
its progressive and varied civilizations.... Where is America's
art-rendering, in any thing like the spirit worthy of herself and
the modern, to these characteristic immortal monuments? So far, our
Democratic society, (estimating its various strata, in the mass, as
one,) possesses nothing--nor have we contributed any characteristic
music, the finest tie of nationality--to make up for that glowing,
blood-throbbing, religious, social, emotional, artistic, indefinable,
indescribably beautiful charm and hold which fused the separate
parts of the old feudal societies together, in their wonderful
interpenetration, in Europe and Asia, of love, belief, and loyalty,
running one way like a living weft--and picturesque responsibility,
duty, and blessedness, running like a warp the other way.
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