For example, when a member of the club
publishes a book, one of the fraternity has a footing in the
_Edinburgh_, another in the _Quarterly_, a third in _Fraser_, and a
fourth in _Blackwood_, and so the new work is well introduced. Both
Tennyson and Thackeray, it is said, got well taken notice of in this
way by their comrades. But there was no plan at the bottom of
it--nothing to constitute them a name. The Apostles were always
inveighing against cant--always affecting much earnestness, and a
hearty dislike of formalism, which rendered them far from popular with
the _high_ and _dry_ in literature, politics, or religion. They were
eyed with terror by the conservatives as something foreign--German,
radical, altogether monstrous. But, in reality, their objects were
literary--not religious; and religion only entered into their
discussions as it must into those of all serious and philosophic men.
Upon the whole, our young American was much pleased with Cambridge,
and much benefited during his residence there. Genial himself, he
found Englishmen the same; and though he had his eyes open, while in
this country, and never forgot that he was an American, he writes with
great impartiality, which raises the value of his intense enthusiasm
for the English and English life. After five years' residence, he took
leave of his friends in a series of substantial dinners, that there
might be a pleasant memory of the transatlantic in their mouths.
Pages:
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92