Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1859-04-30

"Tsdiss have ladies. vhIms said onzy Aun, when she
dragged her cloak In the gutter"
"The dog gets into the mill under Of the ass"
ale that spares vice wrongs virtue"
If there be one class of men in the world
which is interested in magnfying the sins
of others, there is another, hardly less nU-
merous, hent upon making the sins of 9th
ers respectable. Out of this disposition
and policy spring many of the celebrations
of the birthdays of meu whose lives have
successfully associated splendid genius with
ungovernable passions, great intellectual
achievements with detestable vices, and ad-
mirable works with weak or wicked lives.
So far has this been carried that there ex-
lists, more or less definite, in the public
mind, the impression that great genius and
low morals are generally found together,
aud that, in some way the former justi6es,
and in some instances, even glorifes, the
latter. A drunken physician is supposed
to he very much better than any other ply
sician, "if you can only catch him when he
is SOBER" and it is imagined that there is
somewhere mysterious but very fruitful
connection between the disposition to sot-
tishneSs and skill in the treatment of dis
ease
believe it is universally conceded that
"the Man Christ Jesus" lived q purer life
than any other man, sympathized with the
lowly as no other man ever sympathized
did more for the comfort and the elevation
Of the humble and the wretched than any
other, impressed himself upon the civiliza-
tion of the world beyond all predecessors
and successors, and revealed religion
which, over-arching all the Celebrations of
human philosophy, imparts to them what
ever Of significance they possess, and holds
in itself alone the power of regenerating
humanity but, outside of the church,
there are none who, of their own motion,
meet to celebrate his birthday. | have
never heard of the celebration of the birth
day Of John Milton, the great bard who
sat in darkness, and evolved his more than
mortal dreams, and who, graphing with
immortal themes, wrested from them i'm
mortality for himself and the language in
which he wrote. see no tributes paid by
the world to the memory Of Montgomery.
never had the opportunity of drinking q
toast to the gentle Christian, Cowper, or
filling bumper to Isaac Watts, whose
lyric muse has given wing to more hearts
burdened with praise and surcharged with
aspiration than that of any other man since
the sweet singer of Israel. / have never
had all invitation to dinner given to the
memory of Howard, whose life was one of
Humanity'S most touching poems or at
tended supper in honor of Martin Luther
| find the great Of the world-who were
good in their greatness aud great in their
goOdness-pretty generally let alone by the
men who are accustomed TO express their
obligations 10 those who have been preem-
inent in government, literature and art,
while the memory of men whose weakness
called for an extra cloak Of pity, and whose
vices made sight drafts on all the ready
charity in the market, were toasted to the
echo.
No great man who has scandalized his
age by his personal vices, or done violence
to the avowed principles of his public life
by great apostacy, can fall without draw
ing to his funeral all the apostates around
him-men clinging to him by the sympathy
of vice and falsehood, and using that SYM
pathy as platform which shall elevate
them into responsibility which his genius
won for him. Even the name of Tom
Paine is annually summoned into the con-
genial atmosphere of the banquet-hall to
make respectable by its power and fire an
in6delity and libertinism which stink in the
nostrilS of Christian nation, aud which
otherwise would suffocate themselves 10
their own efluvia. Everybody knows how
it is with the memory of Burns. 1t cannot
uo hn faH bof
BILE every year to celebrate his memory,
through sympathy with the Steaming whis-
ky which he loved so we'll, than with the
aroma of bis genius. Poor Burns p they
exclaim ''what pity he drank !" "Gift-
ed Burus Child of Nature Let us for
give him that his gifts were not dedicated
to the promotion of the purity which hal
lows the names Of mother, sister and wife |"
"Sad dog, that Burns True, he loved
wine and women but then didn't he suf-
fer for it 1? Let US compassionate him.
He wasn't so much to blame, after ALL The
only wonder is how a man with the tremen-
dous fireworks he had in him did not blow
up with the first fash Of a woman's eyes
that smote him." And thus the carrion
crows bewsil the dead sheep, and then eat
them. Thus with cloaks covered with the
mud of the gutter they flock together to
contemplate the mud that prosttuted ge-
MUS has gathered upon its garments, and
foster their selEcomplacency by eharitably
transmitting its sins into whms. Thus the
dogs endeaVor to get into. the mill under
cover of the ass.
One of the most mischieVous and falla-
cious Of the current notions of an easily
erring world conceive to be that which
makes the possession of great gifts, and
the achievement of great works, an Offset
to, or an apology for, indulgence in vices
which compromise individual ahd social pu-
rity, and outbreaks of passion that come
within the cOgnizance of the police. l be-
lieve that | respect all there is TO be re-
spected in the memory, of Burns but he
was weak-in many respects vicious
and in most respects miserable-man.--
He was the slave Of debasing appetite.
and though. at brief intervals, be surrend-
cred himself to the higher and purer inspl-
rations that AOated down to him from heaV-
en-, he loved to put them aside, and envelop
fss -. - faf