The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1867-04-03
On Being Sent

What, then, in the just and noble mean
ing, is sentiment? 1t is the backwater of
mighty feeling. 1t is what is left behind
by the high tides of the great primitive
emotions. 1t is the memory of passion.
1t is the ingrained eoloring Of thought.
TO discharge thought Of that coloring is
impossible; but good many people who
abuse sentimentalism seem as if they
would like to do just that impossible thing.
Thus, they have cold sneer ready for us
if we speak OF the sacredness Of life, the
majesty Of human nature, the beauty Of a
mothers love, or the innocence Of child
hood. Thus, Jeremy Bentham, mention
ing that Constantine forbade the branding
of criminals on the face, because it was a
violation of the law of nature to dis6gare
the majesty of the human countenance, ex-
claims, with disgust. "The majesty Of the
face of a scoundFelw Blu. Bentham mis-
took and 80 do other writer's of his school.
If there was no majesty" of which a
scoundrel was capable, then there was
nothing to make it worth our while to dis
cipline him. If there was, it was our duty
to do nothing to create or to increase any
degree Of incapacity on his part, or anybody
else's part. You shall not, said the He
brew code, give more than forty blows in
punishment, "lest thy brother seem vile
unto thee" And here is a short passage,
not uninstructiye, from another tale by
Mary WolIstonecraft Goodwin -" After a
violent debauch. he would 1t his beard
grow, and the sadness that reigned in the
house | shall never forget: he was asbam-
ed to meet even the eyes of his children.
This is so contrary to the nature OF things
that it gave me exquisite pain; used at
those times to show him extreme respect. I"
An amusing idea, is it not, to show eek
IRENE respect to wrong-doer! to show
all the more, because of his wrongdoing,
our grief that an unseen majesty should he
wronged As amusing as the idea OF a
child, for example, who has never been adj
dressed with an overbearing word, whose
body has never been touched, or even ap-
preached, except with respectful tender
ness But I must not allow passing il
lustration to carry me out of the direct line
of what was saying. There is no guidance
to anything but death, decay and rotten
ness, for either individuals or nations, IN
thought which pretends to have discharged
itself Of the coloring matter OF sentiment.
If once we have really ceased to hear the
murmur of the infinite, beautiful ocean in
the shell, we soon fling the shell away, and
it is trodden under foot of men. There is
not an act of our lives-no, not one-into
which it is not the interest of every human
being to import as much as possible of that
diffused sense of terror, mystery, beauty,
and tenderness, which is the nature of true
sentiment. To suppose that this difused
sense of whatever makes our little lives
worth while, implies any mean finching
from pain--our own, or that of others-it
is great mistake. The Aristotelian vir-
tue Of tragedy assuredly contemplated moth
ing so weak. 1t is well known, as a matter
of fact, that the highest tragedy, deeply as
it moves one, does not move to tears
which is always relief, sometimes posi-
tive pleasure. What Englishman, or En-
glishwoman, cries at " Lear" at Macbeth >
or at Hamlet?" When did the reading or
representation of them ever enfeeble for ac-
ton or dispose to anything that was bad ?
The rule by the observance OF which art, in
all its kinds, must escape false sentiment,
will present itself in another essay. For
this time, it will be enough to say that SEN
timent is the difused sense which makes it
possible for art to address US at all and
that morality, or civil polity, without art
| Implied, at least, as possible and desilable)
must as inevitably tend to corruption as
art without morality; or either, or all,
without religion. In other words, we can
not Danish sentiment from the atmosphere
Of any reign of human life [Argosy,