Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 101.djvu/122

110 "The British Government oppressing the Britons is the great 'red dragon' of the Revelation, as it is shown by the national arms and by the British legend of St George and the Dragon. The splendid career of the new people is borrowed from the persecuted woman's poetical history, her dress—'clothed with the sun.' The stars said to be in the national banner are only the crown of twelve stars on the poetic being's head; the perils of the pilgrims in the Mayflower are only the woman's flight on the wings of a great eagle. The war between the two countries is only the 'practical application' of the flood which the dragon cast out against the woman, &c." So with the story of the Declaration of Independence: The congress was held at a mythical town, whose very name is suspicious—Philadelphia—i. e. brotherly love. "The date is suspicious; it was the fourth day of the fourth month (reckoning from April, as it is probable the Heraclidæ and Scandinavians, possible that the aboriginal Americans, and certain that the Hebrews did). Now four was a sacred number with the Americans; the president was chosen for four years; there were four departments of affairs; four divisions of political power, namely—the people, the congress, the executive, and the judiciary, &c. Besides, which is still more incredible, three of the presidents, two of whom, it is alleged, signed the declaration, died on the fourth of July, and the two latter exactly fifty years after they had signed it, and about the same hour of the day. The year also is suspicious; 1776 is but an ingenious combination of the sacred number, four, which is repeated three times, and then multiplied by itself to produce the date; thus, 444×4=1776, Q.E.D. Now dividing the first (444) by the second (4), we have Unity thrice repeated (111). This is a manifest symbol of the national oneness (likewise represented in the motto è pluribus unum), and of the national religion, of which the Triniform Monad, or 'Trinity in Unity,' and 'Unity in Trinity,' is the well-known sign .… Besides, Hualteperah, the great historian of Mexico, a neighbouring state, never mentions this document; and farther still, if this declaration had been made, and accepted by the whole nation, as it is pretended, then we cannot account for the fact, that the fundamental maxim of that paper, namely, the soul's equality to itself,—'all men are born free and equal'—was perpetually lost sight of, and a large portion of the people kept in slavery; still later, petitions,—supported by this fundamental article,—for the abolition of slavery were rejected by Congress with unexampled contempt, when, if the history is not mythical, slavery never had a legal existence after 1776, &c., &c."

This telling travestie (if that can be travestie which is not caricature) of the Mythists, with the "occasional" side-thrust at the "peculiar institution," affords a favourable illustration of Mr. Parker's quality, when he is in his better moods. His cleverness, his ardour, his power, though distorted and strained, his eloquence, though eccentric and extravagant, and wearisome by its laboured hyperbolisms,—there is no denying. You might detach passages from his rhetorical efforts (such as the "Discourse on Religion," "Atheism, Theism, and the Popular Theology," and his contributions to the Dial and other transcendental prints) so kindling to the heart and fancy, so rightfully conceived and so forcibly expressed, that a Jeremy Taylor might have endorsed