Lectures Delivered in America in 1874

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Charles Kingsley. Lectures Delivered in America in 1874

LECTURE I. WESTMINSTER ABBEY

LECTURE II. THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE

LECTURE III. THE FIRST DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

LECTURE IV. THE SERVANT OF THE LORD

LECTURE V. ANCIENT CIVILISATION

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Reverence for age, at least so it has long seemed to me, reverence for age, I say, is a fair test of the vigour of youth; and, conversely, insolence toward the old and the past, whether in individuals or in nations, is a sign rather of weakness than of strength.  And the cause, I think, is this.  The rich and strong young natures, which feel themselves capable of original thought and work, have a corresponding respect for those who, in the generations gone by, have thought and worked as they hope to do hereafter.  And this temper, understand me, so far from being servile, or even merely conservative, usually accompanies true independence of spirit.  The young athlete, like the young race-horse, does not despise, but emulate, his sire; even though the old victor be long past his prime.  The young soldier admires the old general; the young midshipman the old admiral, just in proportion as he himself is likely to be a daring and able officer hereafter.  The son, when grown to man’s estate, may say to his father, I look on you still with all respect and admiration.  I have learnt, and desire always, to learn from you.  But you must be to me now, not a dictator, but an example.  You became what you are by following your own line; and you must let me rival you, and do you honour, by following mine.

This, I believe, is true of nations as well as of individuals.  I do not hesitate to say that, paradoxical as it may seem, the most original races—those who have succeeded best and left their stamp most broadly and permanently on the human race—have also been the most teachable, provided they were allowed to learn in their own way and to adapt to their own purposes any higher ancient civilisation with which they came in contact.  What more striking instances of this truth—for truth it is—than the reverence of the free Republican Greek for the old despotic civilisation of Egypt? and of the free Norseman, our own ancestor, for the old and equally despotic civilisation of Rome?

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And in the corresponding aisle upon the north, in a like tomb—which the voice of the English people demanded from the son of Mary Stuart—lies even a sadder figure still—poor Queen Elizabeth.  To her indeed, in her last days, Vanity of vanities—all was vanity.  Tyrone’s rebellion killed her.  ‘This fruit have I of all my labours which I have taken under the sun’—and with a whole book of Ecclesiastes written on her mighty heart, the old crowned lioness of England coiled herself up in her lair, refused food, and died, and took her place henceforth opposite to her ‘dear cousin’ whom she really tried to save from herself—who would have slain her if she could, and whom she had at last, in obedience to the voice of the people of England, to slay against her will.  They have made up that quarrel now.

Ay, and that tomb is the sacred symbol of a reconciliation even more pathetic and more strange.  Elizabeth lies—seemingly by her own desire—in the same vault as her own sister, Mary Tudor.  ‘Bloody Mary,’ now, no more.  James the First, who had no love for either of them, has placed at the head of the monument ‘two lines,’ as has been well said, ‘full of a far deeper feeling than we should naturally have ascribed to him’—

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