ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
Munster Village. Lady Mary Hamilton
Читать онлайн.Название Munster Village
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4064066139414
Автор произведения Lady Mary Hamilton
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
Lady Frances was far from being alarmed at the great expenses of her undertakings. She thought her large fortune, and her nephew's long minority, as it put it in her power, could not be better employed than in works of national magnificence. The power and wealth of ancient Greece were most seen and admired in the splendor of the temples, and other sublime structures of Pericles. He boasted, that every art would be exerted, every hand employed, every citizen in the pay of the state, and the city, not only beautified, but maintained by itself. The sums Lady Frances expended in bringing these plans to perfection, diffused riches and plenty among the people, and has already doubled the estate. She has a fine collection of pictures.—The only way to raise a genius for painting, is to give encouragement: historical painters get so little by their profession, that we have very few. This Lady Frances made her particular object, to afford our youth ready access to good pictures: till these be multiplied in Great Britain, we shall never have the reputation of producing a good painter. If we expect to rival the Italian, the Flemish, or even the French school, our artists must have before their eyes the finished works of the greatest masters. It is a pity, that when an ingenious gentleman[7] last winter submitted to the parliament, as worthy of their attention, some considerations that might tend to the encouragement of useful knowledge, and the advancement in this kingdom of the arts and sciences, he did not with his usual intelligence, represent the bad consequences of the duty laid on pictures imported into Great Britain: Were the bad effects of this represented to our legislature, it is impossible but it must be amended. This gentleman took notice in his speech, that a remarkable opportunity of improving the national taste in painting, which was lately lost, he hoped would now be recovered. The incomparable Sir Joshua Reynolds, and some other great painters, who do honor to our country, generously offered to adorn the cathedral of St. Paul's (a glorious monument of the magnificence of our ancestors) with some of their most valuable works: but the proposition was rejected by the late Bishop of London[8], though he flatters himself it will be renewed, and accepted by the gentleman at present in that fee[9], who is not only a man of solid piety, but of the soundest learning, and of exquisite classical taste. The great art of human life is not to eradicate the passions, but to adopt the proper objects of them: if mankind cannot think so abstractedly as a pure effort of unmixed reason implies, I presume it follows, that some degree of passion is warrantable in devotion. While we are in our present imperfect and embodied state, it will be found necessary to call in externals to our aid, for the proper discharge of religious worship. Even among those who in their private devotions are most sincere, external acts and ceremonies, when properly conducted, become real assistances; because the connection between the body and soul, between the senses and the imagination, between the passions and the reason of mankind, is so strong and mutual, that they uniformly act and re-act upon one another, and mutually raise the soul to new and higher degrees of fervor.
This was so much Lady Frances's opinion, that she had some fine pieces of painting in her chapel, which is also a very fine new building; the architecture and paintings do honor to the artists—She made it a rule to be constant in her attendance at church. Public acknowledgments of the goodness of God, and application for his blessings, contribute to give a whole community suitable apprehensions of him: and these, if it was her duty to entertain, it was equally her duty to propagate; both as the regard she paid the divine excellencies was expressed, and as the same advantage that she received from such apprehensions, was received by all whom they affected in the same manner.
She had not the smallest degree of superstition, having too much good sense to imagine the Deity can be persuaded to recede from the settled laws of the universe, and the immutability of his nature. But she knows the perfections of God are a ground and sufficient reason for prayer, and that it is both an act and a means of virtue.[10] She had a mind free from prejudice, adorned with knowledge, and filled with the best principles; a noble firmness in showing these principles, and in maintaining them; in short, every talent joined to the most amiable modesty. She was advised to call her elegant village by the name of Athens; but this she declined, naming it Munster Village: but she justly thought it deserved it; with this difference, that the inhabitants are too well informed to give into such gross superstitions, and so easily suffer themselves to be imposed upon by astrologers, divines, soothsayers, and many other sorts of conjurers, as the Grecians did.
They excelled in arts; their laws were wise; they had brought everything to perfection that makes life easy and agreeable: but they took little pains in the speculative sciences, geometry, astronomy, and physics. The anatomy of plants and animals, the knowledge of minerals and meteors, the shape of the earth, the course of the stars, and the whole system of the world, were still mysteries to them.
The Chaldeans and Egyptians, who knew something of them, kept it a great secret and never spoke of them but in riddles; so that until Alexander's time, and the reign of the Macedonians, they had made no great progress in such learning as might cure them of superstition. An immoderate love of the study of astrology, was a weakness which characterized also the fifteenth century. In the age of Lewis XIV, the court was infatuated with the notion of judicial astrology: many of the princes, through a superstitious pride, supposed that nature, to distinguish them, had writ their destiny in the stars. Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, father to the Duchess of Burgundy, had an astrologer always with him, even after his abdication. The same weakness which gave credit to the absurd chimera, judicial astrology, also occasioned the belief of sorcery and witchcraft; courts of justice composed of magistrates, who ought to have had more sense than the vulgar, were employed in trying persons accused of witchcraft.—Latest posterity must hear with astonishment that the Madame d'Ancre was burnt at the Gréve as a sorceress. This unfortunate woman, when questioned by counsellor Courtin concerning the kind of sorcery she had used to influence the will of Mary de Medecis, having answered, She had used that power only which great souls always have over weak minds; this sensible reply served only to precipitate the decree of her death[11].
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.