(Notes appeared inT he Crayon (luring the year 1856. The l...)
Notes appeared inT he Crayon (luring the year 1856. The larger part of this volume, however, is now published for the first time. I am well aware that a traveller is likely often to draw false inferences from what he sees and hears, especially in a country whose people are of a different race and whose institutions are of a different character from those of his own. This has led me to be sparing in my deductions from my personal observation and experience. But there are certain principles in religion and in government of universal application; and how far these principles are adopted or rejected in any special state is a subject upon which an intelligent man is bound to form and at liberty to express a distinct opinion.
(As a nation we have so neglected the profession of war, w...)
As a nation we have so neglected the profession of war, we have been so busy in the pursuits of peace, we have regarded ourselves as so safe against the dangers of foreign invasion and of civil discord, that the true military spirit has become almost extinct among us, and its place has been occupied by a false Spirit of security, indifference, and boast fulness. We have been growing rich and weak, at the same time. We have thought to buy immunity from war; we have paid heavy prices for quiet; and at length we find that the bargain was a fraud, and that the peace we have purchased by base' Compromise and cowardly concession was but a hollow and treacherous truce. Happy for us that the delusion has not lasted too long, and that now, when the truth is discovered, and the call comes to us to arms, we are ready to seize them, though we be little prepared to age them.
William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job with Descriptive Letterpress and Sketch of the Artist’s Life and Work
(William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmake...)
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry has led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". Although he lived in London his entire life except for three years spent in Felpham he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself"
Historical Studies of Church Building in the Middle Ages: Venice, Siena, Florence - Kindle edition by Charles Eliot Norton, Digital Text Publishing Co.. Arts & Photography Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
(Historical Studies of Church Building in the Middle Ages:...)
Historical Studies of Church Building in the Middle Ages: Venice, Siena, Florence. Written by Charles Eliot Norton (November 16, 1827 – October 21, 1908) a leading American author, and published in New York in 1902. This is very a informative book about the building of Italy's magnificent churches.
The Correspondence of John Ruskin and Charles Eliot Norton
(John Ruskin first met Charles Eliot Norton in 1855. Norto...)
John Ruskin first met Charles Eliot Norton in 1855. Norton was the American counterpart of a man of letters. With a common distaste for the industrial and scientific directions of modern civilisation, the two men became intimate correspondents and the letters they exchanged until shortly before Ruskin's death in 1900 reflect and express, often more vividly than his own public prose, the spiritual, amatory, artistic, and cultural preoccupations of Ruskin's life. The revelations were so candid that Norton, as one of Ruskin's literary executors, burned many of the letters, altered a number of others in his Letters of John Ruskin to Charles Eliot Norton of 1904, and sought to efface his side of the correspondence almost entirely. In this 1987 volume, Dr Ousby and Dr Bradley present a far more complete and accurate record of the exchanges, which comprise 333 from Ruskin to Norton and 63 in return.
Charles Eliot Norton was an American editor, writer, and art history educator. He went on to become a noted social critic and Art historian.
Background
Ethnicity:
Norton descended from a long line of New Englanders from as far back as 1634.
Charles Eliot Norton was born on November 16, 1827, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Professor Andrews and Catherine (Eliot) Norton.
Education
In 1846, Norton graduated from Harvard University.
Norton began working for the family import company. His work brought him to Madras, Calcutta, Bombay, North Africa, Italy, and France. Upon his return to the United States in 1851, he engaged himself in a number of social causes, such as housing for the poor and public education. In 1853, he anonymously published a treatment on some of his concerns in the book Considerations on Some Recent Social Theories.
Norton left the business world when his father died in 1855 and turned his attention to travel and literature. He wrote several articles on his travels, reviews, and other essays for periodicals. That same year, Norton left with his mother and sisters for a two-year journey through Europe. When he returned to the United States in 1857, Norton turned his attention toward literature. After James Russell Lowell founded the Atlantic Monthly, Norton began contributing essays and reviews on art, scholarship, and the Civil War.
In 1863, Norton became a co-editor, with Lowell, of the North American Review, the oldest quarterly magazine in the United States. Norton also helped found the Nation in 1865, to which he contributed articles and essays for the remainder of his life. Harvard University appointed Norton as a fine arts history professor in 1875, and he taught there for twenty-five years. Although he expressed some reservations about his ability to handle the job at his age, his students were thankful for his guidance.
After Norton's retirement from teaching in 1898, Norton held seminars on Dante as a professor emeritus and continued writing articles on his work. Harvard University celebrated Norton’s eightieth birthday by publishing tributes by his friends, former students, and colleagues. He died at his home, surrounded by his family, on October 21, 1908.
The Nation proposed to promote democracy and champion the rights of slaves and labor in the American South, to examine national political, legal, and economic concerns in a less biased fashion than most newspapers of the time, and to provide a venue for literary and artistic criticism. Norton feared that the nation’s obsession with obtaining wealth placed it in moral peril; as always, he felt that more study of art and literature could remedy this malady.
Views
Heedless of medieval Italy’s political and religious context, Norton concluded that its art and architecture proved its moral superiority. He recorded these thoughts in Notes of a Travel and Study in Italy (1859) and Historical Studies of Church Building in the Middle Ages: Venice, Siena, Florence (1880).
Membership
Norton was a member of the Saturday Club, Dante Society of America and Phi Beta Kappa.
Personality
Norton went on the trip to Europe in 1868, with his wife, children, mother and two sisters. But the pleasures of this trip were marred by the illness of his wife during the winter of 1872 in Dresden. His wife died after the birth of their third son. Norton mourned her death in England, where he delivered a series of lectures in Cambridge and met several important artists and writers. The family returned to Massachusetts in 1873.
Norton was especially fond of Dante Alighieri, and helped found the Dante Society of America in 1881.
Quotes from others about the person
“Norton's own essays, whether on current topics, the classics, or recent scholarship, reveal his keen powers of analysis, prodigious scholarship, and thoughtful cast of mind.” Norton also a great talent for making friends, according to Xiques, and once told James Russell Lowell, “If you see to the inscription over my grave, you need only say, ‘He had good friends whom he loved.’” - Donez Xiques
“Despite the fact that Norton wrote about an astonishing variety of subjects, he rarely lost sight of his conviction that his duty lay toward the aesthetic and ethical instruction of his countrymen." - Donez Xiques
Interests
Writers
Dante Alighieri
Connections
In 1862, Norton married Susan Ridley Sedgwick, daughter of Theodore Sedgwick III and Sara Morgan Ashburner. They were the parents of six children.
Father:
Professor Andrews Norton
Mother:
Catherine (Eliot) Norton
Spouse:
Susan Ridley Sedgwick
Friend:
Elizabeth Gaskell
References
The Letters of Henry Adams
Henry Adams’s letters are one of the vital chronicles of the life of the mind in America. A perceptive analyst of people, events, and ideas, Adams recorded, with brilliance and wit, sixty years of enormous change at home and abroad.
DLB 1: The American Renaissance in New England
This award-winning series is dedicated to making literature and its creators better understood and more accessible to students and interested readers, while satisfying the standards of teachers and scholars.