The River Falls journal. (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1857-1861, 1858-02-10

but must we needs initiate them in wick
edness? He who will forsake Destlemo-
na and pattern after Iago, he who will
leave Copperfeld and follow after Steer
forth, is a bad egg. He may as well go
to ruin Que way is another. Y on could
not save him, and he would not pay for
the saving if you could. That is most
false and pernieious philosophy which
wo lid train up child TO virtue by hi
ding fire m him all vice; which would make
him good by removing all knowledge of
evil; which would cram down his passive
nature the prccepts Of morality, until he
is forced into moral dyspepsia, and dy-
ed in the wool with a disgusting self con
ceit of piety. Perhaps in the whole range
of humanity there is not man better en-
titled to give an opinion on this subject
than Milton, for he stood upon the high
eliminating point of worldly wisdom,
and spiritual faith. Hear what he says
"Good and Evil, in the field of this
world, grow up together almost insep-
! erably and the knowledge of Good is so
| interviewed and interviewer with the know
ledge of Evil, and in SO many cunning re-
semblances hardly to be discerned, that
those confused seeds which were imposed
on Psyche as an incessant labor to Gull
out and sort assunder, were not more in
termixed. As, therefore, the state of man
now is, what wisdom can there be to
choose, what confluence to forbear, with
out the knowledge of Evil? He that can
apprehend and consider Vice with all her
habits and seeming pleasures and yet alb
stain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer
tnat which is truly better, he is the true
way-faring Christian. cannot praise
fugitive and clustered virtue, that never
sallies out and sees her adversary that
which is but younging in the contem-
plation of Evil, and knows not the ut
most that vice promises to her followers,
and rejects it, is but blank Virtue, not
pure.-Since, therefore, the knowledge
and survey of Vice is in this world so nee
essarv to the constituting of human Vir-
tue, and the scanning of Error to the con-
firmation of Truth, how can we more
safely and with less danger scout into the
regions Of Sin and Falsity, than by real
ing all manner of Tractates, and hearing
all manner of reasons"
tlNNHx- IL
contrary to the manner of God and of
| Nature. by abridging or scanting those
means which Books, freely permitted, are
both to the trial of Virtue and the cxer-
else of TRUTH %
We come now to consideration Of
the last class of romances, those which
present to us the artists conception of
noble men, and fair and lovely women.
Such books we believe to be noble, eleva-
ting and inspiring in their Influences
What we and the world need is not to
be told of duty, but to be inspired to do
it. The trouble is not in our intellect
but in our inclination:
1--WE see the right, but still the wrong pursue"
We need more earnest aspirations af-
ties nobleness and truth-a stronger in
spiration to well-doing. This need is
supplied in romance. Can man read
the brief history of the life and death of
Desdemona without having his soul filled
with holy "awe of womanhood 81
Can woman read it without being made
more sweet and winning in manner and
more pure and womanly in thought and
life? Docs not the student of Hamlet be-
come more of a man by reason of that
study? Read "David Coppcrfeld," and
you will be made more loving and chart
table in your judgment by the history of
"iittle Envy" VIII not Stecrtorth warn
You Of the danger, the shame and sin of
yielding to impure desires! will you not
be made better by the earnestness and
honesty Of Peggoty, and the sorrowful
love of Ham? will not the remembrance
of Agnes Wakefield dwell with thought
of love in your memory, making it al
most impossible for you to sin while it
is there? Read Hawthorne's "Scaret
Letter" and see if ever aftcrward YOU will
dare be guilty of falsehood. Read Coz
pers ''Leather Stocking Tales and see
if Natty Bumpo does not make more of
man of you. Who ever heard of any
ones being injured by such characters
as Florence in "Donlbey and Son" and
Eva in "Uncle Toms Cabin?"
But the skeptical will say all these are
mere fictions, have not, and never had an
existence We assert most stoutIy they
are realities. Every character we have
named, and such men as Jack Falstaff,
Joe Bagstock, Uncle Tom and the like,
are as real facts as Washington, Bonaparte
or Cromwell.
To be sure man must have some fam
cy, or poetical facts do not exist to him,
for the same reason that colors do not ex-
list to the blind man, he cannot see them.
But the want of sight does not prove the
non-existence of the fact. The fact is.
there are two kinds of truth, truth of cir
cumstance, and truth of feeling, and 50