ROSCOE.

THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW 作者：华盛顿·欧文投票推荐加入书签留言反馈

百度搜索 THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW 天涯 或 THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.

----In the serviankind to be

 A guardian god below; still to employ

 The minds brave ardor in heroic aims,

 Such as may raise us oer the grovelling herd,

 And make us shine for ever--that is life.

 THOMSON.

 ONE of the ?rst places to which a stranger is taken in Liverpool is the Athenaeum. It is established on a liberal and judicious plan; it tains a good library, and spacious reading-room, and is the great literary resort of the place. Go there at what hour you may, you are sure to ?nd it ?lled with grave-looking personages, deeply absorbed iudy of neers.

 As I was once visiting this haunt of the learned, my attention was attracted to a person just entering the room. He was advanced in life, tall, and of a form that might once have been anding, but it was a little bowed by time--perhaps by care.

 He had a noble Roman style of tenance; a a head that would have pleased a painter; and though some slight furrows on his brow showed that wasting thought had been busy there, yet his eye beamed with the ?re of a poetic soul. There was something in his whole appearahat indicated a being of a different order from the bustling race round him.

 I inquired his name, and was informed that it was ROSCOE. I drew back with a<cite>９9ｌiｂ?</cite>n involuntary feeling of veion.

 This, then, was an author of celebrity; this was one of those men whose voices have gone forth to the ends of the earth; with whose minds I have uned even in the solitudes of America.

 Aced, as we are in our try, to know European writers only by their works, we ot ceive of them, as of other men, engrossed by trivial or sordid pursuits, and jostling with the crowd of inds in the dusty paths of life. They pass before our imaginations like superior beings, radiant with the emanations of their genius, and surrounded by a halo of literary glory.

 To ?nd, therefore, the elegant historian of the Medici mingling among the busy sons of traf?c, at ?rst shocked my poetical ideas; but it is from the very circumstances and situation in which he has been placed, that Mr. Roscoe derives his highest claims to admiration. It is iing to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage, and w their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear legitimate dulo maturity; and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her ce produs. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and so?99lｉb?me be choked, by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation.

 Such has been the case with Mr. Roscoe. Born in a place apparently ungenial to the growth of literary talent--in the very market-place of trade; without fortune, family es, or patronage; self-prompted, self-sustained, and almost self-taught, he has quered every obstacle, achieved his way to eminence, and, having bee one of the ors of the nation, has turhe whole force of his talents and in?ueo advand embellish his native town.

 Indeed, it is this last trait in his character which has given him the greatest i in my eyes, and induced me particularly to point him out to my trymen. Emi as are his literary merits, he is but one among the many distinguished authors of this intellectual nation. They, however, in general, live but for their own fame, or their own pleasures. Their private history presents no lesson to the world, or, perhaps, a humiliating one of human frailty or insistency. At best, they are proo steal away from the bustle and onplace of busy existeo indulge in the sel?shness of lettered eas; and to revel in ses of mental, but exclusive enjoyment.

 Mr. Roscoe, on the trary, has claimed none of the accorded privileges of talent. He has shut himself up in no garden of thought, nor elysium of fancy; but has gone forth into the highways and thhfares of life, he has planted bowers by the wayside, for the refreshment of the pilgrim and the sojourner, and has opened pure fountains, where the lab man may turn aside from the dust a of the day, and drink of the living streams of knowledge. There is a "daily beauty in his life," on which mankind may meditate, and grow better. It exhibits no lofty and almost useless, because inimitable, example of excellence; but presents a picture of active, yet simple and imitable virtues, which are within every mans reach, but which, unfortunately, are not exercised by many, or this world would be a paradise.

 But his private life is peculiarly worthy the attention of the citizens of our young and busy try, where literature and the elegant arts must grow up side by side with the coarser plants of daily y; and must depend for their culture, not on the exclusive devotion of time ah; nor the quiing rays of titled patronage; but on hours and seasons snatched from the purest of worldly is, by intelligent and public-spirited individuals.

 He has shown how much may be done for a pla hours of leisure by one master-spirit, and how pletely it give its own impress to surrounding objects. Like his own Lorenzo de Medici, on whom he seems to have ?xed his eye, as on a pure model of antiquity, he has interwoven the history of his life with the history of his native town, and has made the foundations of his fame the mos of his virtues. Wherever you go, in Liverpool, you perceive traces of his footsteps in all that is elegant and liberal. He found the tide of wealth ?owing merely in the els of traf?c; he has diverted from it invigorating rills to refresh the garden of literature. By his own example and staions, he has effected that union of erd the intellectual pursuits, so eloquently reended in one of his latest writings;* and has practically proved how beautifully they may be brought to harmonize, and to be each other. The noble institutions for literary and sti?c purposes, which re?ect such credit on Liverpool, and are giving su impulse to the publid, have mostly been inated, and have all been effectively promoted, by Mr. Roscoe; and when we sider the rapidly increasing opulend magnitude of that town, which promises to vie in ercial importah the metropolis, it will be perceived that in awakening an ambition of mental improvement among its inhabitants, he has effected a great beo the cause of British literature.

 * Address on the opening of the Liverpool Institution.

 In America, we know Mr. Roscoe only as the author; in Liverpool he is spoken of as the banker; and I was told of his having been unfortunate in business. I could not pity him, as I heard some rich men do. I sidered him far above the reach of pity. Those who live only for the world, and in the world, may be cast down by the frowns of adversity; but a man like Roscoe is not to be overe by the reverses of fortuhey do but drive him in upon the resources of his own mind, to the superior society of his own thoughts; which the best of me sometimes to , and to roam abroad in search of less worthy associates.

 He is indepe of the world around him. He lives with antiquity, and with posterity: with antiquity, in the sweet union of studious retirement; and with posterity, in the generous aspirings after future renown. The solitude of such a mind is its state of highest enjoyment. It is then visited by those elevated meditations which are the proper aliment of noble souls, and are, like manna, sent from heaven, in the wilderness of this world.

 While my feelings were yet alive on the subject, it was my fortuo light on further trar. Roscoe. I was riding out with a gentleman, to view the environs of Liverpool, wheurned off, through a gate, into some ored grounds. After riding a short distance, we came to a spaansion of freestone, built in the Gre style. It was not in the purest style, yet it had an air of elegance, and the situation was delightful. A ?ne lawn sloped away from it, studded with clumps of trees, so disposed as to break a soft fertile try into a variety of landscapes. The Mersey was seen winding a broad quiet sheet of water through an expanse of green meadow land, while the Welsh mountains, blended with clouds, aing into distance, bordered the horizon.

 This was Roscoes favorite residence during the days of his prosperity. It had been the seat of elegant hospitality and literary retirement. The house was now silent aed. I saw the windows of the study, which looked out upon the soft sery I have mentiohe windows were closed--the library was gone.

 Two or three ill-favored beings were l about the place, whom my fancy pictured into retainers of the law. It was like visiting some classic fountain, that had once welled its pure waters in a sacred shade, but ?nding it dry and dusty, with the lizard and the toad brooding over the shattered marbles.

 I inquired after the fate of Mr. Roscoes library, which had sisted of scard fn books, from many of which he had drawerials for his Ita></a>lian histories. It had passed uhe hammer of the aueer, and was dispersed about the try. The good people of the viity thronged liked wreckers to get some part of the noble vessel that had been driven on shore. Did such a se admit of ludicrous associations, we might imagine something whimsical in this strange irruption in the regions of learning. Pigmies rummaging the armory of a giant, and tending for the possession of ons which they could not wield. We might picture to ourselves some knot of speculators, debating with calculating brow over the quaint binding and illuminated margin of an obsolete author; of the air of intense, but baf?ed sagacity, with whie successful purchaser attempted to dive into the black-letter bargain he had secured.

 It is a beautiful i iory of Mr. Rosisfortunes, and one which ot fail to ihe studious mind, that the parting with his books seems to have touched upon his te feelings, and to have been the only circumstahat could provoke the notice of his muse. The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, panions of pure thoughts and i hours bee in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value. When friends grow cold, and the verse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and onplace, these only tihe unaltered tenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship whiever deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.

 I do not wish to sure; but, surely, if the people of Liverpool had been properly sensible of what was due to Mr. Roscoe and themselves, his library would never have been sold. Good worldly reasons may, doubtless, be given for the circumstance, which it would be dif?cult to bat with others that might seem merely fanciful; but it certainly appears to me su opportunity as seldom occurs, of cheering a noble mind struggling under misfortunes by one of the most delicate, but most expressive tokens of public sympathy. It is dif?cult, however, to estimate a man of genius properly who is daily before our eyes. He bees mingled and founded with other men. His great qualities lose their y; we bee too familiar with the aterials whi the babbr></abbr>sis even of the loftiest character. Some of Mr.

 Roscoes townsmen may regard him merely as a man of business; others, as a politi; all ?nd him engaged like themselves in ordinary occupations, and surpassed, perhaps, by themselves on some points of worldly wisdom. Even that amiable and uious simplicity of character, which gives the nameless grace to real excellence, may cause him to be undervalued by some coarse minds, who do not know that true worth is always void of glare and pretension. But the man of letters, who speaks of Liverpool, speaks of it as the residence of Roscoe.--The intelligent traveller who visits it inquires where Roscoe is to be seen. He is the literary landmark of the place, indig its existeo the distant scholar.--He is like Pompeys n at Alexandria, t alone in classic dignity.

 The following so, addressed by Mr. Roscoe to his books, on parting with them, has already been alluded to. If anything <cite></cite> add effect to the pure feeling and elevated thought here displayed, it is the vi, that the who leis no effusion of fancy, but a faithful transcript from the writers heart.

 TO MY BOOKS.

 As one who, destined from his friends to part,

 Regrets his loss, but hopes again erewhile

 To share their verse and enjoy their smile,

 And tempers as he may af?is dart;

 Thus, loved associates, chiefs of elder art,

 Teachers of wisdom, who could once beguile

 My tedious hours, and lighteoil,

 I nn you; nor with fainti;

 For pass a few short years, or days, or hours,

 And happier seasons may their dawn unfold,

 And all your sacred fellowship restore:

 When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers.

 Mind shall with mind direunion hold,

 And kindred spirits meet to part no more.

百度搜索 THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW 天涯 或 THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.