Lectures to young men; on various important subjects
Henry Ward Beecher
Paperback
(RareBooksClub.com, May 10, 2012)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 Excerpt: ...would be shocking in our day; but so would be the domestic manners of that age. The same actions may in one age be a sign of corruption, and be perfectly innocent in another. No one is shocked that in a pioneer-cabin one room serves for a parlor, a kitchen, and a bedroom for the whole family and for promiscuous guests. Should fastidiousness revolt at this as vulgar, the vulgarity must be accredited to the fastidiousness, and not to the custom. Yet it would be inexcusable in a refined metropolis, and everywhere the moment it ceases to be necessary. But nothing in these remarks must apologize for language or deed which indicates an impure heart. No age, no custom, may plead extenuation for essential lust; and no sound mind can refrain from commendation of the master dramatist of the world, when he learns that, in writing for a most licentious age, he rose above it so far as to become something like a model to it of a more virtuous way. Shakespeare left the dramatical literature immeasurably purer than it came to him. Bulwer has made the English novel literature more vile than he found it. The one was a reformer, the other an implacable corrupter. We respect and admire the one (while we mark his faults) because he withstood his age; and we despise with utter loathing the other, whose specific gravity of wickedness sunk him below the level of his own age. With a moderate caution, Shakespeare may be safely put into the hands of the young. I regard the admission of Bulwer as a crime against the first principles of virtue. In all the cases which I have considered, you will remark a greater indulgence to that impurity which breaks out on the surface, than to that which lurks in the blood and destroys the constitution. It is the curse of our literature that it is tr...