英文名著精选阅读：《红字》第二十二章（上）_英美文化

英文名著精选阅读：《红字》第二十二章（上）

And yet the men of civil eminence, who came immediately behind the military escort, were better worth a thoughtful observer's eye. Even in outward demeanour, they showed a stamp of majesty that made the warrior's haughtystride look vulgar, if not absurd. It was an age when what we call talent had far less consideration than now, but the massive materials which produce stability and dignity of character a great deal more. The people possessed, by hereditary right, the quality of reverence; which, in their descendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller proportion, and with a vastly diminished force, in the selection and estimate of public men. The change may be for good or ill, and is partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day, the English settler on these rude shores- having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful rank behind, while still the faculty and necessity of reverence were strong in him- bestowed it on the white hair and venerablebrow of age; on long-tried integrity; on solid wisdom and sad-coloured experience; on endowmentsof that grave and weighty order which gives the idea of permanence, and comes under the general definition of respectability. These primitive statesmen, therefore- Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham, and their compeers- who were elevated to power by the early choice of the people, seem to have been not often brilliant, but distinguished by a ponderoussobriety, rather than activity of intellect. They had fortitude and self-reliance, and, in time of difficulty or peril, stood up for the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide. The traits of character here indicated were well represented in the square cast of countenanceand large physical development of the new colonial magistrates. So far as a demeanour of natural authority was concerned, the mother country need not have been ashamed to see these foremost men of an actual democracy adopted into the House of Peers, or made the Privy Council of the sovereign.