February 1858
In This Issue
Explore the February 1858 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
The Great Failure
“Living in a world in which days of golden and delusive dreams are rapidly succeeded by nights of monstrous nightmares and miseries, society loses its grasp upon the realities of life, and goes staggering blindly on towards a fatal degeneracy and dissolution.”
Review of the Kansas Usurpation
“It was scarcely opened, before it became, as might have been expected, the battleground for the opposing civilizations of the Union, to renew and fight out their long quarrel upon. From every quarter of the land settlers rushed thither, to take part in the wager of battle.”
The Busts of Goethe and Schiller
The Librarian's Story
Daylight and Moonlight
Something About Pictures
Cretins and Idiots: What Has Been and What Can Be Done for Them
Amours De Voyage
My Aquarium
The Queen of the Red Chessmen
Daybreak
Tea
The Old Burying-Ground
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table: Every Man His Own Boswell
Béranger
A Tiffin of Paragraphs
The Relief of Lucknow
New England Ministers
Sonnet
Art: The British Gallery in New York
History of the Republic of the United States of America, as Traced in the Writings of Alexander Hamilton and His Contemporaries
Parthenia: Or the Last Days of Paganism
The Life of Michael Angelo Buonarotti, With Translations of Many of His Poems and Letters. Also Memoirs of Savonarola, Raphael, and Victoria Colonna











