No More Learning

The nearest of the fixed stars is inconceivably distant from the earth,
and they are probably proportionably distant from each other. By a
calculation of the velocity of light, Sirius is supposed to be at least
54,224,000,000,000 miles from the earth. (See Nicholson's
"Encyclopedia", article Light. ) That which appears only like a thin and
silvery cloud streaking the heaven is in effect composed of innumerable
clusters of suns, each shining with its own light, and illuminating
numbers of planets that revolve around them. Millions and millions of
suns are ranged around us, all attended by innumerable worlds, yet calm,
regular, and harmonious, all keeping the paths of immutable necessity.

4. 178, 179:--

These are the hired bravos who defend
The tyrant's throne.

To employ murder as a means of justice is an idea which a man of an
enlightened mind will not dwell upon with pleasure. To march forth in
rank and file, and all the pomp of streamers and trumpets, for the
purpose of shooting at our fellow-men as a mark; to inflict upon them
all the variety of wound and anguish; to leave them weltering in their
blood; to wander over the field of desolation, and count the number of
the dying and the dead,--are employments which in thesis we may maintain
to be necessary, but which no good man will contemplate with gratulation
and delight. A battle we suppose is won:--thus truth is established,
thus the cause of justice is confirmed! It surely requires no common
sagacity to discern the connexion between this immense heap of
calamities and the assertion of truth or the maintenance of justice.

'Kings, and ministers of state, the real authors of the calamity, sit
unmolested in their cabinet, while those against whom the fury of the
storm is directed are, for the most part, persons who have been
trepanned into the service, or who are dragged unwillingly from their
peaceful homes into the field of battle. A soldier is a man whose
business it is to kill those who never offended him, and who are the
innocent martyrs of other men's iniquities. Whatever may become of the
abstract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems impossible
that the soldier should not be a depraved and unnatural being.

To these more serious and momentous considerations it may be proper to
add a recollection of the ridiculousness of the military character.
Its
first constituent is obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of
men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably
teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and sell-consequence: he
is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to
strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know
cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the
right or the left, but as he is moved by his exhibitor. '--Godwin's
"Enquirer", Essay 5.

I will here subjoin a little poem, so strongly expressive of my
abhorrence of despotism and falsehood, that I fear lest it never again
may be depictured so vividly. This opportunity is perhaps the only one
that ever will occur of rescuing it from oblivion.

FALSEHOOD AND VICE.

A DIALOGUE.

Whilst monarchs laughed upon their thrones
To hear a famished nation's groans,
And hugged the wealth wrung from the woe
That makes its eyes and veins o'erflow,--
Those thrones, high built upon the heaps
Of bones where frenzied Famine sleeps,
Where Slavery wields her scourge of iron,
Red with mankind's unheeded gore,
And War's mad fiends the scene environ,
Mingling with shrieks a drunken roar,
There Vice and Falsehood took their stand,
High raised above the unhappy land.

FALSEHOOD:
Brother! arise from the dainty fare,
Which thousands have toiled and bled to bestow;
A finer feast for thy hungry ear
Is the news that I bring of human woe.

VICE:
And, secret one, what hast thou done,
To compare, in thy tumid pride, with me?
I, whose career, through the blasted year,
Has been tracked by despair and agony.

FALSEHOOD:
What have I done! --I have torn the robe
From baby Truth's unsheltered form,
And round the desolated globe
Borne safely the bewildering charm:
My tyrant-slaves to a dungeon-floor
Have bound the fearless innocent,
And streams of fertilizing gore
Flow from her bosom's hideous rent,
Which this unfailing dagger gave. . .
I dread that blood!