The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844

The Knickerbocker, or
New-York Monthly
by Various

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Title: The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844
Volume 23, Number 4
Author: Various
Editor: Lewis Gaylord Clark
Release Date: March 17, 2007 [EBook #20845]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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T H E K N I C K E R B O C K E R.
VOL. XXIII. APRIL, 1844. NO. 4.

A PILGRIMAGE TO PENSHURST.
BY C. A. ALEXANDER.
One of the admirers of Goëthe, commenting on his characteristic
excellencies, has remarked that he is the most suggestive of writers.
Were we to seek an epithet by which to describe the architectural
remains and historical monuments of England, with reference to their
impression on the mind of an observer, perhaps no better could offer
itself than that which has been thus applied to the works of the great
German. In the property of awakening reflection by bringing before the
mind that series of events whose connection with the progress of
modern civilization has been most direct and influential, and of
recalling names which, to the American at least, sound like household
words, they stand unrivalled. Our manners, our customs, our national
constitution itself, may be said to have grown up beneath the shelter of
these venerable structures, whose associations ally them in a manner
scarcely less striking with those wider developments of social and
political reason in which we believe the welfare of our species to be
involved. Who is there, that, standing within 'the great hall of William
Rufus,' can forget how often it has been the theatre of those mighty
conflicts, in which, however slowly and reluctantly, error and prejudice
have been compelled to relax their hold on the human mind? Dr.
Johnson has spoken to us, in his usual stately phrase, of patriotism
re-invigorated and of piety warmed amid the scenes of Marathon and
Iona; but where is the Marathon which appeals to us so forcibly as the
field consecrated by the blood of a Hamden or a Falkland? and where
the Iona which is so eloquent with recollections as the walls which
have echoed to the voices of a Ridley and a Barrow?
It is true indeed, that the recollections of many other lands, as

associated with their monuments, lay much stronger hold upon the
imagination than those of England. Of the former we might say that
there was about them more of the element of poetry; of the latter, that
they furnish an ampler share of materials for reflection. One great
moral, 'the comprehensive text of the Hebrew preacher,' the invariable
'vanity of vanities,' is alike inscribed upon all the vestiges of human
greatness. For the rest, a serene and touching beauty lingers around and
hallows every relic which attests the hand of Phidias, or marks the
country of Pericles and Epaminondas. No lapse of time, no process of
decay, will ever wholly exorcise that spirit of stateliness and command
which sits enthroned amid the ruins of the 'Eternal City,' as her own
Marius once sate amid the ruins of a rival capital. But in all that regards
a common standard of opinions, institutions and interests, and in the
facility of reasoning as respects these, from the experience and practice
of one time and people to those of another, we cannot but feel that a
vast gulf has interposed between our own age and that which is
commemorated by the monuments of Greece and Rome. The venerable
genius of antiquity, seated among crumbling arches and broken
columns, has but little to say to us respecting those questions which
most deeply agitate and unceasingly perplex the busy and the thinking
part of mankind at the present day. No response are we to expect from
that quarter, concerning our bank-laws and our corn-laws; our systems
of credit and of commerce; our endless disquisitions on the balance of
power and of parties, on the rights of suffrage and of conscience. While
we reserve to the theorist the privilege of adorning his theme by
allusions to the polity of Lycurgus and Numa, we are sensible that the
practical statesman who trusts himself to such examples will be
constantly liable to be deluded by false parallels and imperfect
analogies. A voice, like that which is said to have startled the mariner
of old on the coasts of