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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 Devoted to Literature and National Policy Author: Various Release Date: August 19, 2009 [EBook #29736] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, APRIL 1863 *** Produced by Joshua Hutchinson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections) THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY: DEVOTED TO LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY. VOL. III.--APRIL, 1863.--No. IV. THE WONDERS OF WORDS. Every nation has its legend of a 'golden age'--when all was young and fresh and fair--'_comme les couleurs primitives de la nature_'--even before the existence of this gaunt shadow of Sorrow--_the shadow of ourselves_--that ever stalks in company with us;--an epoch of Saturnian rule, when gods held sweet converse with men, and man primeval bounded with all the elasticity of god-given juvenility: ('Ah! remember, This--all this--was in the olden Time long ago.') And even now, in spite of our atheism and our apathism, amid all the overwhelming world-influences of this great 'living Present'--the ghost of the dead Past will come rushing back upon us with its solemn voices and its infinite wailings of pity: but soft and faint it comes; for the wild jarrings of the Now almost prevent us from hearing its still, small voices. It 'Is but a _dim-remembered_ story Of the old time entombed.' Besides, what is History but the story of the bygone? The elegy, too, comes to us as the last lamenting, sadly solemn swan-song of that glorious golden time. And, indeed, are not all poesies but various notes of that mighty diapason of Thought and Feeling, that has, through the ages, been singing itself in jubilee and wail? So it is in the individual--(for is not the individual ever the rudimental, formula-like expression of that awful problem which nations and humanity itself are slowly and
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