ul books of our fathers of old.
(33) It is not generally known that Stonewall Jackson practiced
astrology. Col. J. W. Revere in "Keel and Saddle" (Boston, 1872)
tells of meeting Jackson in 1852 on a Mississippi steamer and
talking with him on the subject. Some months later, Revere
received a letter from Jackson enclosing his (Revere's)
horoscope. There was a "culmination of the malign aspect during
the first days of May, 1863--both will be exposed to a common
danger at the time indicated." At the battle of
Chancellorsville, May 9, 1863, Revere saw Jackson mortally
wounded!
James J. Walsh of New York has written a book of extraordinary interest
called "The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries." I have not the necessary
knowledge to say whether he has made out his case or not for art and for
literature. There was certainly a great awakening and, inspired by high
ideals, men turned with a true instinct to the belief that there was
more in life than could be got out of barren scholastic studies. With
many of the strong men of the period one feels the keenest mental
sympathy. Grosseteste, the great Clerk of Lincoln, as a scholar, a
teacher and a reformer, represents a type of mind that could grow
only in fruitful soil. Roger Bacon may be called the first of
the moderns--certainly the first to appreciate the extraordinary
possibilities which lay in a free and untrammelled study of nature.
A century which could produce men capable of building the Gothic
cathedrals may well be called one of the great epochs in history, and
the age that produced Dante is a golden one in literature. Humanity has
been the richer for St. Francis; and Abelard, Albertus and Aquinas form
a trio not easy to match, in their special departments, either before or
after. But in science, and particularly in medicine, and in the advance
of an outlook upon nature, the thirteenth century did not help man very
much. Roger Bacon was "a voice crying in the wilderness," and not one of
the men I have picked out as specially typical of the period instituted
any new departure either in practice or in science. They were servile
followers, when not of the Greeks, of the Arabians. This is attested by
the barrenness of the century and a half that followed. One would have
thought that the stimulus given by Mundinus to the study of anatomy
would have borne fruit, but little was done in science during the two
and a half c
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