Each
man can interpret another's experience only by his own.
We read
that Newton discovered the law of gravitation, but how many who
have heard of his famous discovery have recognized the same truth
that he did? It may be not one. The revelation which was then
made to him has not been superseded by the revelation made to any
successor.
We see the _planet_ fall,
And that is all.
In a review of Sir James Clark Ross's Antarctic Voyage of
Discovery, there is a passage which shows how far a body of men
are commonly impressed by an object of sublimity, and which is
also a good instance of the step from the sublime to the
ridiculous. After describing the discovery of the Antarctic
Continent, at first seen a hundred miles distant over fields of
ice, - stupendous ranges of mountains from seven and eight to
twelve and fourteen thousand feet high, covered with eternal snow
and ice, in solitary and inaccessible grandeur, at one time the
weather being beautifully clear, and the sun shining on the icy
landscape; a continent whose islands only are accessible, and
these exhibited "not the smallest trace of vegetation," only in a
few places the rocks protruding through their icy covering, to
convince the beholder that land formed the nucleus, and that it
was not an iceberg; - the practical British reviewer proceeds
thus, sticking to his last, "On the 22d of January, afternoon,
the Expedition made the latitude of 74 degrees 20' and by 7h
P.M., having ground (ground!
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