There are but two more returns to truth and justice necessary,--the
Inquisition and the Witch-Trials. These restored, we may safely
congratulate ourselves on having regained the ground on which our race
stood before the Reformation, that untoward event, whence all the
mischief dates that has befallen man in the shape of human rights,
liberty, and other deplorable things, as lately a grave writer--not a
Catholic, nor a Jew either--gravely assured us. Gentle readers, let us
not be impatient. Progress has been of late so rapid, that many of you,
it is to be hoped, will yet have an opportunity of hailing the return of
those two noble institutions, _pro majore gloria Dei_, for which they
always existed, as long as chill and misty skepticism did not extinguish
their glowing poetry. Ah! happy times! poetic age! when there existed
not only "words that burn," but also laws that burned!
In the mean time, it may not be inappropriate to commence the
consideration of a topic somewhat farther removed from us, but which,
according to our humble opinion, ought not to remain wholly beyond the
limits of a candid, liberal, and unprejudiced examination,--we mean the
important question, Whether the choicest of all substances, the most
delicate of all muscular texture, that substance of which kings,
philosophers, policemen, and supporters of crinoline are fashioned
by the plastic hand of Nature, ought forever to be excluded from the
reproductive process of wasted energy and proportionably consumed
nervous and cerebral fibre.
Pages:
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262