Crayon Sketches Author:William Cox General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1833 Original Publisher: Conner and Cooke Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you ca... more »n select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: BULWER AND WALTER SCOTT. This is the age of discoveries -- of wonderful and astounding discoveries. A spirit of fermentation and free inquiry has got abroad, and put that restless little animal man into a state of preternatural disquietude, insomuch that he has adopted for the sober rule of his conduct Shakspeare's hiber- nicism, " We will strive with impossibilities, Yea, get the better of them!" and he lightly projects schemes and broaches doctrines that would have made the hair stand on end upon the heads of his respectable ancestors. The world never saw such times. Science and quackery have become so intermixed, that worthy though obtuse people are puzzled to discover the difference, and hence spring those two large parties -- the innovators and the anti-innovators -- that keep society fermenting like a barrel of ale at midsummer. In the eyes of the former, nothing is good but what is new; they are for turning the poor old world topsy-turvy, for shaking religion, poetry, law, learning and common sense out of it, and governing it hereafter by steam, mathematics, and a sublime code of morals calculated for use when the era of human perfectibility commences. The anti-innovation faction are ridiculous in another way : they are good fat sort of people, full of beef, beer, and prejudice, who are continually " perplexed with fear of change ;" who think that time and custom sanctify all things, and that whatever has been, ought to be. Their ranks are headed by grave, solemn old owls, who shut their eyes to the light in a very owlish manner, while the recruits of t...« less