第43章

It revolves on cannon-balls, so easily that a single hand can move it, and thus the opening may be turned towards any point of the compass.As the telescope can be raised or depressed so as to be directed to any elevation from the horizon to the zenith, and turned around the entire circle with the dome, it can be pointed to any part of the heavens.But as the star or other celestial object is always apparently moving, in consequence of the real rotatory movement of the earth, the telescope is made to follow it automatically by an ingenious clock-work arrangement.No place, short of the temple of the living God, can be more solemn.The jars of the restless life around it do not disturb the serene intelligence of the half-reasoning apparatus.Nothing can stir the massive pier but the shocks that shake the solid earth itself.When an earthquake thrills the planet, the massive turret shudders with the shuddering rocks on which it rests, but it pays no heed to the wildest tempest, and while the heavens are convulsed and shut from the eye of the far-seeing instrument it waits without a tremor for the blue sky to come back.

It is the type of the true and steadfast man of the Roman poet, whose soul remains unmoved while the firmament cracks and tumbles about him.It is the material image of the Christian; his heart resting on the Rock of Ages, his eye fixed on the brighter world above.

I did not say all this while we were looking round among these wonders, quite new to many of us.People don't talk in straight-off sentences like that.They stumble and stop, or get interrupted, change a word, begin again, miss connections of verbs and nouns, and so on, till they blunder out their meaning.But I did let fall a word or two, showing the impression the celestial laboratory produced upon me.I rather think I must own to the "Rock of Ages" comparison.

Thereupon the "Man of Letters," so called, took his pipe from his mouth, and said that he did n't go in "for sentiment and that sort of thing.Gush was played out."The Member of the Haouse, who, as I think, is not wanting in that homely good sense which one often finds in plain people from the huckleberry districts, but who evidently supposes the last speaker to be what he calls "a tahlented mahn," looked a little puzzled.My remark seemed natural and harmless enough to him, I suppose, but Ihad been distinctly snubbed, and the Member of the Haouse thought Imust defend myself, as is customary in the deliberative body to which he belongs, when one gentleman accuses another gentleman of mental weakness or obliquity.I could not make up my mind to oblige him at that moment by showing fight.I suppose that would have pleased my assailant, as I don't think he has a great deal to lose, and might have made a little capital out of me if he could have got a laugh out of the Member or either of the dummies,--I beg their pardon again, Imean the two undemonstrative boarders.But I will tell you, Beloved, just what I think about this matter.

We poets, you know, are much given to indulging in sentiment, which is a mode of consciousness at a discount just now with the new generation of analysts who are throwing everything into their crucibles.Now we must not claim too much for sentiment.It does not go a great way in deciding questions of arithmetic, or algebra, or geometry.Two and two will undoubtedly make four, irrespective of the emotions or other idiosyncrasies of the calculator; and the three angles of a triangle insist on being equal to two right angles, in the face of the most impassioned rhetoric or the most inspired verse.

But inasmuch as religion and law and the whole social order of civilized society, to say nothing of literature and art, are so founded on and pervaded by sentiment that they would all go to pieces without it, it is a word not to be used too lightly in passing judgment, as if it were an element to be thrown out or treated with small consideration.Reason may be the lever, but sentiment gives you the fulcrum and the place to stand on if you want to move the world.Even "sentimentality," which is sentiment overdone, is better than that affectation of superiority to human weakness which is only tolerable as one of the stage properties of full-blown dandyism, and is, at best, but half-blown cynicism; which participle and noun you can translate, if you happen to remember the derivation of the last of them, by a single familiar word.There is a great deal of false sentiment in the world, as there is of bad logic and erroneous doctrine; but--it is very much less disagreeable to hear a young poet overdo his emotions, or even deceive himself about them, than to hear a caustic-epithet flinger repeating such words as "sentimentality"and "entusymusy,"--one of the least admirable of Lord Byron's bequests to our language,--for the purpose of ridiculing him into silence.An overdressed woman is not so pleasing as she might be, but at any rate she is better than the oil of vitriol squirter, whose profession it is to teach young ladies to avoid vanity by spoiling their showy silks and satins.