Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1873-03-01
TIIR Lost Ants.

have been somewhat criticised, year
after year, for this endeayor to open up
the claims of old times. / have been
charged with repeating useless fables
with no foundation. To-day, take the
mere subject OF glass. This material,
Pliny says, was discovered by accident |;
that some sailors, landing on the eastern
coast of SPAN, took their cooking uten.
sils and supported them on the sand by
the stones that they found in the neigh.
borhood they had kindled ,heir fire,
cooked their fish, finished their meal and
removed the apparatus, and glass was
found to have resulted from the inter
and sea-sand, vitriied by the heal. -
Well l have been a dozen times criti-
cised by number of wise men, in news
papers, who have said that this was a
very idle tale, that there meyer was sui-
produce vitrication-glass making. l
happened two years ago, to meet on the
prailies of Missouri Prot. Shepherd, who
started from Yale College, and, like a
genuine Yankee, brings up anywhere
where there is anything 30 do. l
happened to mention this criticism to
him. SWELL" says he ga little practical
life would have freed men from that
doubt" Said be /: "We stopped last
year in Mexico TO cook some venison.
We got down from our saddles and put
the cooking apparatus on stones we found
there, made our fire with the wood we
got there, resembling ebony, and when
we removed the apparatus there was
pure silver gotten out of the embers by
the intense heat of that almost iron
wood. "Now," said he, shat heat was
greater than any necessary to vitriiy the
materials OF glass" Why not suppose
that Pliny's sailors had lighted on some
exceedingly hot wood. May it not be
as possible as in this case F?
So ladies, and gentlemen, with grow
ing habit of distrust OF large share of
tins modern and exceedingly scientific
criticism of ancient records, think we
have been betraying our own ignorance
and that frequently, vixen the statement
does not look on the face of it to be ex-
actly accurate, little investigation be-
low the surface will show that it rests
on real truth. Take for instance, the
English proverb, which was often quoted
in my college days. We used to think
how little logic the common people had
and when we wanted to illustrate this in
the school-room, it was what was called
"non-sequitur"-the effect did not
come from the cause named. We always
quoted the English proverb: "Ten-
lerdeu's steeple is the cause of Goodwin
Sands" We said "How ignorant
population But when we went deeper
into the history we found that the prov
erb was not meant for logic but meant
for sarcasm. One of the bishops had
$4,000 pounds given to him to build
breakwater to save the Goodwin Sands
from the adv ancing sea, but the good
bishop-being one of the kind of bishops
which Mr.. Frcude describes in his lee
ture that the world would be batter if
Providence would remove them from, it
instead of building breakwater to keep
out the sea simply built a steeple aud
this proverb was sartistic and not logic
al, that "Tenterden's steeple was the
cause of the Goodwin Sands"
When you contemplate the motive,
there was the closest and most welded
logic in The proyerb. So think large
share of our criticism of old legends
and old statements will be found in the
end to be the ignorance that overleaps
its own saddle and falls on the other
side.
MASTER ARTISTS INIMITABLE.
Well my first illustration ought to be
this material, glass but, before l pro-
ceed to talk of these Lost Aarts | ought
in fairness to make an exception, and it
is the conception or conceit which lies
here. Over a very large section of liter
ature there is a single contradiction to
this sweltering conceit that there are GER
tain lines in which the modern are ill sat
ished with themselves and contented to
acknowledge that they ought fairly 10
| sit down at the feet of their predeces-
| sors.
The poetry painting, sculpture, archi.
lecture, the drama, aud almost every
thing in words of any form that relates
to beauty with regard to that whole
sweep, the modern world, gilds it wi h
it's admiration of the beautiful. Take
the very phrases that we use. The ar
list says he wishes to go TO Rome. "For
what :" "To study the masters" Well
all the masters .haye been IN their graves
several hundred years. We are all pu
pills. You tell the poet, Sir, that line
of yonr's would remind one of Homer,
and he is crazy. Stand in front of q
painting, in tie hearing OF the artist, and
compare its cOloring 10 that of Titan ol
Rapael, and he remembers you forever
remember once standing in front of 4
bit of. marble carved by Powers, Yer
monter, who had a matchless, instinct
i've love of art and perception OF beauty.
/ said 10 an Italian standing with me
swell, now, that seem to me to be per-
fection." The answer was "To be
perfection," Struggling his shoulders
"Why, Sir, that reminds you of Phid
las :" as if TO remind you of that Greek
was greater comment than to be per
/ lection.
i ALL MEN BORROWERS.
/ Well, now the very choicest of.phrasel
betrays a confession of iuferiority, and
H you see it again creeps out in the amount
i we borrow. Take the whole range O.
imaginative literature and We are all
wholesale borrowers. In every mattel
that relates to invention-to use, oi
beauty, or form we are borrowers. Yot
may glance around the turniture OF thu
palaces in Europe, and may gather al
IseeA H.. - hakf