Niebuhr afterwards says, in speaking of Rome, “I am sickened here of art, as I should be of sweetmeats instead of bread.” So it _must_ be where art is separated wholly from morals.
He speaks of the “wretched superstition,” and the “utter incapacity for piety” in the people of the Roman States.
Superstition and the want of piety go together; and the combination is not peculiar to the Italians, nor to the Roman Catholic faith.
In speaking of the education of his son, he deprecates the learning by rote of hymns. “To a happy child, hymns deploring the misery of human life are without meaning.” (And worse.) “So likewise to a good child are those expressing self-accusation and contrition.” (He might have added, and self-applause.)
I am quite sure, from my own experience of children who have been allowed to learn penitential psalms and hymns, that they think of wickedness as a sort of thing which gives them self-importance.
“Only what the mind takes in willingly can it assimilate with itself, and make its own, part of its life.”
A truism of the greatest value in education; but who thinks of it when cramming children’s minds with all sorts of distasteful heterogeneous things?
“When reflection has become too one-sided and too domineering over a deeply feeling heart, it is apt to lead us into errors in our treatment of others.”
And all that follows—very wise! for the want of this reflection leaves us stranded and wrecked through feeling and perception merely.
Very curious and interesting, as a trait of character and feeling, is the passage in which he represents himself, in the dangerous confinement of his second wife, as praying to his first wife for succour. “In my terrible anxiety,” he says, “I prayed most earnestly, and entreated my Milly, too, for help. I comforted Gretchen by telling her that Milly would send help. When she was at the worst, she sighed out, ‘Ah, cannot your Amelia send me a blessing?’”
This is curious from a Protestant and a philosopher. It shows that there may be something nearly allied to our common nature in the Roman Catholic invocation to the saints, and to the souls of the dead.
Niebuhr, speaking of a lady (Madame von der Recke, I think,—the “Elise” of Goethe) who had patronised him, says, “I will receive roses and myrtles from female hands, but no laurels.”
