Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-09-16
TEE GOTH AND THE aoMAN.

Died July, 1889 Dir. Msrsh's principal works are
| Lectures ON the English language" QSsD ''ori
! gin ard History OF the English Language" (lSe2)
Man aud Nature Qs6i', reissued in 1874 With
| additions, as The Earth SIS Modified by Human
Action. Mr.. Marsh's pathological studies were ex
tensiVe; he annotated a repriut OF '' we5gewood':
| Etymoogy,' besides making other Contributions &
| lexiccgraphy,l
| | shall do my audience the Justice ia
suppose that they are to well instructed to
be the slaves Of that antiqua.ed and vulgar
| pref adice which makes Gothicism and bar.
barlsm synonymous. The Cloths, the com.
mon ancestors of the inhabitants of north
western Earope, are the noklest branch Of
the Caucasian race. We are their chill.
dreD. l. was the spirit of the Goth ths.
guided the Msyfioger across the trackless
| OCEAN the blood OF the Goth that flowed
at Bankers Hill.
Nor were the Goths the savage and
destructive devastators that popular er.
ror has made them. They indeed over.
threw the dominion OF Rome, but they
renovated her people; they prostrated
her corrupt government. bnt they respected
her monuments and Theodore the Goth
not only spread bus protected many a
precious memorial, which Italian rspacity
and mOnkish superstition have since annihi
lated. The old lanentation, Quod non
fecer1nt JHrbari .tecere Ba6erini, contains
world of truth, and mad not Rome's own
sons been her spoilers, she might have
shone at this day in all the splendor Of hel
Aug1stan age.
| England is Gothic by birth, Roman by
adoption. Whatever she has of true moral
grandeur, of higher intellectual power, she
owes to the Gothic mother; while her
grasping ambition, her material energies,
her spirit of exclusive selfshness, are que
to the Roman nurse.
The Goth ia characterized by the reason,
the Roman by the understanding the one
by imagination, the other by fancy the
former sspires to the spiritual, the latter i:
| prone to the seusuous. The Gothic spirit
produced Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton
the Roman an Arkwright a Brindley and
Locke. II was Roman that gathered
up the Goals on which st. Lawrence had
! been bfoiled Goth who, when fellow
disciple of the great Swiss reformer had
rescued his masters heart from the enemy,
on the field where the martyr fell, snatched
that heart from its preseryer. and hurled
| 1t, yet almost palpitating with life, into
the waters OF torrent, lest some new
superstition should spring from the relics
of Zgingli.
Rome. it is said, thrice conquered the
world by her arms, by her literature and
art, by her religion. But Rome was essen
TALLY nation of robbers. Her territory
was acquired by unjust violence. She
| plundered Greece of the choicest produc.
tions OF the pencil and the cSisel, and her
own best literature and highest art are but
imperfect copies of the masterpieces of the
creative genius of the Greek. She not only
sacked the temples, but removed to the
imperial city the altars, and adopted the
gods OF the nations she conquered. Tibe-
nus even prepared niche for the Christian
Saviour among the heather idols in the
Pantheon, and when Constantine made
Christianity the religion of the state, he
sanctioned the corfuptions which Rome
had engrafted upon it, and handed it down
to his successors, contaminated with the
accumulated superstitions of the whole
heathen world.
The Goth has thrice broken her seepter.
The Goth dispelled the charm that made
her arms invincible. The Goth overthrow
her idolatrous altar, and the Goth is now
surprising her proudest works in literature
and art.
The cardinal distinction between these
conflicting elements, as exemplifed in
literature and art, government and religion,
may be thus stated. The Roman mistakes
the means for the end, and subordinates
the principle to the form. The Goth,
valuing the means only as they con-
tribute to the advancement Of the end,
looks beneath the form, and seeks the in
dwelling, life-giving principle, of which he
holds the form to be but the outward ex-
preston. With the Goth, the idea of life
Is involved in the conception of truth, and
though he recognizes life as an immutable
principle, yet her perceives that its forms
| of expression, of action, of suffering. are
infinitely diversified, agreeing, however.
in this, that all its manifestations are
characterized by development, motion,
progress. To him truth is symbolized
by the phenomena of organic life.
The living plant or animal, that has
| ceased TO grow, has already begun to die.
Living truth, therefore, though immutable
In essence, he regards as active, progressive
IN its manifestations and he rejects
truths which have lost their vitality, forms
divorced from their spirituality, symbols
which have ceased to be expressive. With
the Goth, all truth is an ver.Iiving prin-
ciple, whenca should spring the outward
expression, Huctuating, varying, according
10 the circumstances which call it forth ;
with the Roman, its organic life is petri.
he'd, frozen into inflexible forms, inert. To
the one 1t Sis a perennial fountain, living
stream, which murmurs and flows and
winds ." at its own sweet will, refreshing
all llte within the sphere Of its influence,
and perpetually receiving new accessions
from springs that are fed by tbs showers
OF heaven, as it hastens onward to that
unfathomable ocean of divine knowledge.
which is both its primeval source and
its ultimate limit. To the other il
is current CONCEALED to ice by the
rigor of winter, chilling alike the landscape
and the spectator, or pool, that stagnates.
putrlties, breeds In countless swarms of
winged errors.
In literature and art the Goth pursues
the Development of a principle, the e5.
preston of thought, the realization of an
ideal the Roman seeks to fix the stten.
tioa, and excite the admiration, of the
critic or the spectator, by the material and
sensuous beauties of his art.
Thus, in poetry, the Roman aims at
smoothness of versifcstion, harmonious
selection and arrangement of words, and
brilliancy of imagery the Goth strives5to
give utterapce to thoughts that breathe,
in words that burn"
In plastic and pictorial art, the Roman
attracts the spectator by the grace and the
voluptuous beauty OF the external form,
the harmony of ooloring, the fitness and
proportion of the accessories, the excel.
lenee OF keeping the Goth regards these
but as auxiliaries, and subordinstes or even
sacrifices them all to the expression OF the
thought OF passion, which dictates the &C.
ton represented.
The Goth holds that government springs
from the people, is instituted for their be-
hoof. and is limited to the particular OBJ
iscts for which it was originally es
tahlished; that the legislature ia but an
organ for the solemn expression of the
deliberate will of the nation. that the
coercive power OF the executive ex-
l. -