NUMBER TWO.
The application of names to places is often a matter of mere fancy, without a semblance of appropriateness. The belligerent little State of Rhode-Island, for example, bears no more likeness to the Isle of Rhodes, from which it takes its name, than does a West Indian war-club to the queue of a Chinese mandarin. The Bay State is no more the State possessing a bay, than are half the sea-board States in the Union; nor has Connecticut any more claim to the river which enriches her meadows, nor Vermont to the greensward of her hills, than has Massachusetts to the one, or Western Virginia to the other. Far more mal-apropos, however, than all we have mentioned, is the application of palmetto to the chivalrous land of nullification, since neither on upland nor lowland, rice field nor cotton-field, saving only the dwarf specimens upon the sand-banks of Sullivan's Island, is that fantastic tree of the tropics to be found any where within the State. In truth, as a general thing, there is neither character nor cleverness in the application of names to places; and he who should form his notions of the different sections of our country from the appellations they have received, would be much in the condition of Bossuet's student of history, who had taken for his text-books Gulliver's Voyages and Rabelais's Pantagruel.
There is, however, one notable exception to the general fact. New-Hampshire is rightly and truly designated the Granite State. Not only in the bare sides of her stupendous mountains, and the broad bases of her rugged hills, does she partake largely of this firm conglomerate, but in her people also she seems to have compounded no small share of the hard material. Stern, unbending, indomitable, with physical frames like the gnarled oak, and characters rough as the huge boulders upon her soil, New-Hampshire may boast a race of men unequalled for energy and endurance by any other in the world. It would seem as if the old Saxon legend, which makes Tor, the war-god, hew the first man, with hammer and chisel, out of a block of stone, and give him life with a flash of lightning, were fully verified in these hardy sons of the mountains; for they are almost literally men of granite, with electric spirits. It has been my fortune, in a not uneventful life, to have travelled over many portions of the world's surface, and to have seen much of human manners and character; and I can truly say that I have always returned to the barren soil of New-Hampshire with a higher respect and a warmer love for the rude virtues of her sons; and it is now my firm belief, should the day ever come, which may Heaven avert! when dissensions will rend asunder that great charter of our freedom, the Constitution, that Liberty, like the bird we have chosen for her emblem, scared from her resting-place in the capitol, would find her last and secure home among the dwellers on the hill-sides of the Granite State.
This is not equally true, however, of every portion of New-Hampshire. Along the southern borders of her territory the spindle and shuttle have introduced a race who are strangers to the simple virtues of her husbandmen; so that even they, tempted by the lucre of gain, have sadly fallen from the primitive plainness which was once their most enviable characteristic. Neither upon the rich intervales of the Connecticut, where wealth comes unattended by her handmaid labor, will you find the true specimens of her stalwart yeomanry. It is in the distant up-country only, among the townships far removed from the bustle of the manufactory and the crowd of the market-place, that the rough husbandmen of the hard soil, the sterling democracy of our degenerate age, are to be sought and known. There they dwell, the honest country-folk of by-gone days, undisturbed by the changes which time brings over other portions of the world, contented lords of the heritage of their fathers.
Whether it is to be attributed to some peculiarities of climate or of soil, or to some one of those other thousand influences which are ever operating upon the physical frame, it is certain that the maximum of bodily size and human life, over a considerable portion of the Granite State, is at a higher standard than in any other part of our country. It is capable of being demonstrated by the student of history, that more of pure, unadulterated Saxon blood runs in the veins of the backwoodsmen of New-Hampshire, than in any other class of our people; but whether this has any thing to do with the fact we have stated, cannot of course be determined. That fact, however, is established beyond a doubt; and he who would see a peasantry of sturdier frames and greater age than is to be found elsewhere in the whole world, may find them scattered over the rough soil and along the narrow valleys of the White Mountains. Six feet in height, and one hundred and sixty pounds in weight, make elsewhere a man above the customary standard; but in New-Hampshire scores of young men, from six feet two inches to six feet five, and weighing a hundred and ninety pounds, never deem themselves above the ordinary size. I have in my mind's eye at this moment ten young men, who would weigh two hundred pounds, without a single ounce of surplus flesh, and I doubt not thousands over the State could be found to match them in every way.
The portion of the State of which this is peculiarly true, lies north of the Winnepisseogee lake. It is a country of all others most uninviting to the farmer, and one wonders what could have tempted its first settlers to have selected it as a home. Huge rocks, tumbled from the mountains, lie thickly scattered over the tillage-ground and pastures; ledges, bare or covered with dark green moss, run for miles often through farms and homesteads; precipitous banks and abrupt precipices swell and break over the whole landscape; and the entire country is ploughed with deep ravines, and barren with a scanty soil, beyond what any description can convey. To the lover of nature, indeed, it is a country full of beauty. Those old hills, black with forests of Norway pine, lying like the sleeping guardians of the beautiful lake by their side; and those rustic cottages, scattered along the narrow valley which the retreating waters have left between themselves and the mountains; and finer than all, the numerous water-falls that leap and dash and gurgle onward over scaur and precipice and wooded cliff toward the Winnepisseogee, which seems waiting like some gentle mother to welcome her joyous children to her bosom; are well worth the journey of many a long mile to the scenery-loving tourist. But the people are poor. Toiling from year to year with unceasing industry, they gain from the hard soil a bare livelihood, from youth to old age. Happy indeed in their poverty; contented, unaspiring, and satisfied if the last days of December shall find them no poorer than they commenced the year, and the produce of the farm has proved sufficient to pay the tax of poll and parsonage, and yield a sufficiency for the winter's store.
The features of the country strike the eye accustomed to a more dense population as singularly unique. One may travel those roads, winding through the mountain passes and along the high palisades, for days, and see neither village nor hamlet, nothing indeed but the low, unpainted houses, sometimes prettily covered with jessamine and ivy, but more often bare of all taste or adornment, saving the solitary lilac-trees which stand in the corners of the court-yards, or the old scented thorn-bushes by the side of the door. Looking down sometimes from an elevation he has gained, they seem to the traveller, those cottages, like martins' nests, dotting the curving shores of some beautiful bay; and again from some deep ravine, they appear like fairy domicils, perched high on the cliffs and ramparts of the mountains. Interspersed in every few miles are the district school-houses and the parish churches, the one almost invariably standing upon the fork of two or more roads, and the other crowning the summit of the highest hill attainable by horse and vehicle. And then the country tavern, whose long shed and sanded hall give surety to the stranger and his beast of a comfortable noon-tide baiting; or, in the more solitary townships, where the places of entertainment are few and far between, the quiet nook by the forest road-side, where the dipper hangs beside the overflowing water-trough, and the guide-board measures out the long miles between him and his evening resting-place; each and all objects of pleasant recollection to the traveller, as he muses upon his journeyings in after life.
The effect of a mountain atmosphere upon the health and spirits of mankind has long been known to the medical faculty, and has been treated of by its most distinguished writers. Its equal tendency to the extension of human life, however, naturally as it seems to follow from the other, has been entirely overlooked. And yet this is as capable of satisfactory demonstration as any fact connected with the animal economy. Nor is this the only fact of interest in regard to this subject, which presents itself to the attentive and accurate observer. It is also capable of proof, that up to a certain distance from the equator, the length of life increases in a steady ratio with the degrees of latitude. In some recent statistics which have been carefully taken, and which upon their completion will be given to the world, it has been ascertained that the average length of human life is thirteen per cent. greater in the mountain districts of New-Hampshire than it is upon the sea-board country of Massachusetts or Maine; fourteen per cent. greater than in New-York or Pennsylvania; seventeen per cent. greater than in Virginia; and twenty-two per cent. greater than in any State south of the parallel of thirty-five degrees. There are indeed other causes to be taken into the account, to which we cannot now refer, which are every where recognized as having an important influence upon the physique, if not indeed upon the morale, of the human race. But entirely aside from these, the principle of an increasing age directly following a diminishing temperature, can be most satisfactorily shown; so that the rough mountaineer of New-Hampshire has as much right to calculate upon the good old age of eighty-six, as has the lordly planter of the Sea Islands to the premature decrepitude of three-score.
This extreme old age to which the agriculturalists of New-Hampshire attain, is perceptible to the most casual observer. Over the whole country we have described, evidences of the truth of this force themselves upon his attention, wherever he goes. The old man of seventy-five years still mows his swath in the summer, and bends his sickle in the autumn, with the elastic vigor of the prime of manhood. The barn rings with the heavy strokes of the flail, swung in alternate succession by the veteran and his grandson. The cozy couple, who could tell you stories of their own experience in revolutionary days, ride each Sabbath morning side by side upon the pillioned saddle to the house of God. The simple head-stones in the church-yard also, though they may often record the premature decay of some bright blossom of the social circle, more frequently point out the resting-places of those who were gathered to their graves like the shock of corn that cometh in in its season. In the town of Moultonborough, for example, where the population scarcely reaches to thirteen hundred souls, no less than forty-four persons have died since 1833, whose average ages were ninety-eight years. Of these forty-four, twenty-six had exceeded a century, and the youngest of the band was cut off at the premature age of eighty-seven. 'Think of that, Master Brook!' But the oldest of the group, he who was for many years the banner-veteran of our worthies, and whose memory, we opine, will still be foremost for many years to come; he, our hearty Scotchman, whose monument rises by the church-yard gate, he, unshrinking, undismayed, stood erect under the accumulated weight of six score and seven full-told years!
Brave old Donald McNaughton! thrice honored be thy memory! Year after year didst thou live on in the very greenness of decrepitude; and though old Time filched one by one the glories of thy manhood, it mattered little, so long as listeners would come to thy long stories of the feats of daring at Louisburg and the Plains of Abraham! Thou type of graceful covetousness, thou realization of penurious modesty, it irks me to think that thou, at the last, malgré thy unwearied care and long delay, shouldst have been forced to pass the Lethean stream in leaky Stygian wherry! But Death took thee unawares; and he whom thou hadst so long defied, impatient of the delay, and distrusting perchance his skill to meet thee in open day, stole upon thee in thy midnight slumbers, and carried thee, a poor forked shape, unresisting because unconscious, to the pale kingdom.
The history of Donald McNaughton's life would be replete with worldly wisdom. Commencing life a 'puir bairn,' to use his own phrase, though at the time to which he alluded he must well-nigh have completed his fiftieth year, by unremitted industry and careful economy he amassed a fortune, remarkable in a new and unproductive country. Up to his one hundredth year he labored daily in the field, and his best workmen could seldom surpass him in the amount of labor. Even at that age it was not the decrepitude of years but of an accidental injury, which laid the old man by, and to the very day of his confinement, which preceded his death but a single week, he personally superintended all the business of his homestead. At the distant market-town in the coldest winter weather; at the polls on every day of election through the 'sleety dribble' and miry roads of earliest spring; at church and funeral, auction-sale and country gathering, he was ever the foremost man. Indeed in all matters, whether of state or church, public or private, he prided himself upon his superior sagacity; and not without reason. Shrewd, careful, far-sighted, firm in the tenacity with which he held, and cool in the manner with which he expressed, his opinions, he retained over three generations the undisputed sway of a superior man.
The secret of the great age to which he attained was in contravention of all the principles of dietetics. No man was ever more imprudent in his diet, or in his exposure to the weather. He was, however, habitually cheerful; a consequence rather than a cause of his continued healthfulness; and no war-worn hero ever better loved, by the fireside of the wintry night, or under the summer shade of his broad roof-tree, 'to count his scars, and tell what deeds were done,' than did old Scotch Donald. How well I remember the lighting up of his bright hazle eye as he would commence in his broad highland accent some tale of flood or field; and how readily we boys would quit the game of cricket or marbles, to listen to a story of the wars by old 'Gran'fth McNaughton!'
Nor was it in narrative alone that the old man excelled. No man better loved a ready joke, and no man better turned one, than did he. I remember a pedler one day riding up to his door, the poor beast he bestrode being ladened from shoulder to haunch with the variety of wares which he had to dispose of. Greatly to our surprise, old Donald met him at the door with a most cheerful greeting, for we well knew that pedlers were his utter abomination, and, offering him a chair, inquired what he had to sell. 'Oh, every thing, Sir; every thing,' replied he of the packs; 'ribbons, silks, calicoes, combs, thimbles, needles, scissors, gloves, belts, sewing-silk—every thing, Sir, every thing! What will you have?' 'Got any grind-stones?' asked the old man. 'Oh, no Sir, I came a horse-back.' 'Ah, I thought you came a foot!' was the reply, uttered in a tone and manner that sent the poor hawker out at the door with a speed that no maledictions could have effected.
For many years Mr. McNaughton was the only justice of the peace in the town where he resided; and a history of the cases which came before him, and of his decisions thereupon, would furnish a new chapter in civil jurisprudence amusing enough. Whatever may have been the landmarks in law which influenced those decisions, it is certain that they generally gave satisfaction, and were considered by the parties in dispute as final beyond resort. Nothing gave the old man more satisfaction in his judicial capacity than to puzzle the lawyer, for we had but one in the county in those days, by the decisions he pronounced, and his frequent reply to the objections urged. 'So ye dinna ken my reasons, ye say, Mr. Bartlett, for the decision I mad' to-day? Weel, weel, I ken them mysel', an' that's a' sufficient in the law, nae doubt!' became almost proverbial in the mouths of the people. I remember two men being brought before him upon a charge of stealing the poultry of a poor widow, who lived in the outskirts of the parish, for whose conviction, Esquire Bartlett, from some personal pique, had made extraordinary efforts. The men had been taken the night previous about ten o'clock, one in bed and asleep, the other sitting up by his kitchen fire. There was but little evidence of their guilt, and the advocate had to make the most of every circumstance, in order to show a semblance of justice in binding the men over for appearance at a higher tribunal. Of course the situation in which each was found was strongly insisted upon as a proof of guilt; and while one was awake at the dead of night, stung by remorse for his crimes beyond the power of sleep to quiet, the other was shown to be even more deep in iniquity, by the utter indifference he manifested in going to sleep upon his pillow, after the perpetration of the horrible deed. Without perceiving the inconsistency of the two parts of his argument, the lawyer rested his case, and waited for the decision, which the old justice was not slow in giving. Calling the two culprits before his chair, he arose and said: 'I dinna ken what lawyer Bartlett would ha'e a mon do, at ten o'clock at night. Gin he sits up by his fire, he is a rogue for sure; an' gin he gang to bed, he is nae honest mon! Here, you John Wilkins, you may gang free this time, only never let me hear you sitting up ayont ten at night again; and you, Sam Wilkins, you may gang free too, gin you promise ne'er to shut your e'en till eleven o'clock, whenever you rob a hen-roost!'
Although Donald McNaughton was the oldest man in the town, yet there was not after all that visible contrast between him and his associates, which a stranger would have expected. At that day, the minister who sat above him in the pulpit, and who, though he did not preach, still deemed himself able to do so, and the deacon who administered the sacramental ordinance, were both nearly a century in age. Of the former, one of that staunch little band of clergymen, who, from the time the constitution was accepted up to the close of the administration of Jefferson, stood manfully on the democratic side, and lived, and preached, and prayed for the people's rights, we have many anecdotes to relate at another time. If any man ever deserved a record in the hearts of freemen, it was he, the faithful pastor, the unswerving champion of the truth; and though it is a long time since
'His labors all were done,
And the work he loved the best,'
yet it is fitting to call up from the past the spirits of those who won for us the liberty we enjoy.
But the Deacon, good old Deacon Richardson, was in political sentiment, as in every thing else, the very antipodes of the minister. He too, however, was a veteran of the war of the Revolution; and the stories he told, though not equal in interest to the old Scotchman's, were yet not without their merit. Of his years, the Deacon was the most agile person I ever saw; and up to the age of ninety-four, would mount his horse, and ride over hill and dale to church or tavern, with the speed of a reckless plough-boy. Indeed he had a physical frame which seemed never to feel the effects of old age; one of those lean, tough, shrivelled bodies that wilt early, but decay late, and which, however seared by increasing winters, still cling to life, like the last leaf to the tree. At fifty years the good Deacon looked as old, and felt as old, as he did forty years after. Through Saratoga, and Monmouth, and Breed's Hill encounters, he had escaped unscathed; and but for the untoward fall of the last forest-tree he ever chopped, there was no reason apparent why he might not have lived through another century. Cheerful, merry, and frolicksome as a lamb at midsummer, the dapper little centenarian would frisk about among the matrons and spinsters at our country parties, like the licensed beau of a boarding-school. But with all his partialities for the sex, the Deacon was never married. Why this was so, no one could ever tell, unless, from a habit of stuttering, which nearly overcame him when he was embarrassed, he found it difficult to get out words enough for a proposal. And yet there were those among our lone damsels, who, one would have thought, would have eked out the sentence when it was once fairly begun, for the solitude of no man had ever more commiseration from the gentler sex than did his.
Speaking of the Deacon's stuttering habit of talking, reminds me of a reply he made to some brethren of the church, who had been deputed to converse with him upon his known disaffection to a new clergyman, whom the parish were about to settle. The real objection which he had to the minister was never known, but the avowed one was the inferior mental endowments which the sermons he had preached showed him possessed of. This he urged upon the committee from the church, and this they in turn combated and denied. At last, finding the Deacon's objections to be indomitable, beyond the hope of removing, one of the brethren said: 'Well, Deacon Richardson, let us grant you all that you say, still I think you are wrong. We must not expect a man of first-rate abilities in our little congregation. We must be content with one of moderate talents. You know the Bible says, that 'one star differeth from another star in glory.'
'Humph!' replied the Deacon, 'I sh-sh-shouldn't care if you would give us a st-st-star, but we do-do-don't want a lightning-bug!' The minister was settled over the flock, however, and the old man lived to overcome all his objections, despite his naturally obstinate disposition.
Although Deacon Richardson was possessed of many excellent traits of character, he was by nature rather inclined to an eager grasping after wealth, a disposition which his solitary state greatly confirmed and increased. For the last twenty years of his life the attainment of wealth seemed to be his ruling passion, and he went on, adding farm to farm, and mortgage to mortgage, until it began to be feared that he would live to gain possession of all the property in town. Apropos to this: I remember that a Methodist clergyman, who had spent the night at my father's house, addressed a little boy, (who happened to be passing while he was performing his ablutions at the 'sink' by the door,) and received his answers somewhat in this wise, greatly to the amusement of all within hearing:
Minister. Little boy, what is your name?
Boy. John, Sir.
Minister. John what?
Boy. John Berry, Sir.
Minister. Don't you think it is time for you to be thinking about your soul, my boy?
Boy. Sir?
Minister. Don't you think it is best for you to be making preparation for a future state? Is it not time for you to be thinking about another world?
Boy. Yes, Sir; I think it is time, for father says Deacon Richardson's going to have all there is in this world!
But the Deacon has long gone to his last home, and far be it from us to recall his foibles, 'or draw his frailties from their dread abode.' He did many a kindly act, and the blessing of the fatherless rested upon his head.
But we have wandered from our subject, and it is too late to resume it now. We believe there is much in that sterling democracy of New-Hampshire, much of real gold, though it lack the guinea's stamp, which has never been revealed to the world. Not only can all that we have claimed for the physique of those hardy yeoman be incontestably proven, but it can be shown with equal clearness, that in intellectual endowments and moral qualities they are seldom equalled and never surpassed. And if, in some simple sketches of these people and their progenitors, we can illustrate a page in our national history which is yet unwritten; if we can impress upon our own age the worth of those who lived before us, not for themselves alone, but to achieve our independence; if we can show what they were who framed the charter of our freedom, and what they would be now in the agitations of this hurrying age, what they did and what they would have us do, our 'chronicles' will not have been written in vain.
[SUNDAY AT PLYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS.]
BY REV. WILLIAM B. TAPPAN.
'Tis good for us to rest to-day,
And keep the precept well;
'Tis good in village church to pray,
At warning of the bell.
'Tis good in fair and noble towns,
By brilliant thousands trod,
Or where the forests wear their crowns,
To stay and worship God.
'Tis is good upon the bounding seas
To pray with soul and lip;
God sees the sailor on his knees,
Aboard the merchant ship.
And here, where our forefathers sleep,
Who crossed of yore the waves,
'Tis good the Sabbath day to keep
Among their ancient graves.
'Tis good to dwell where they have dwelt;
'Tis good a while to stay
And pray at altars where they knelt,
As they were wont to pray.
Though from our rites the thoughtful eye
May wander where are seen
The tokens of the dead that lie
In ranks of summer green:
Who, while we wait upon the Lord,
That blessings may distil,
For us, their sons, keep watch and ward
On yonder silent hill:
We (as did they) in pilgrimage
Lean on these Sabbath hours;
Theirs, in each past eventful stage,
O present God, be ours!
[THE TOP OF NEW-YORK.]
BY S. W. MANSFIELD.
Three frosts in succession; and now, with extra flannels, a day that was omitted last summer is dropped down here by mistake; and nerves that were braced up to a fine tone collapse to a broken fiddle. Men rush at the soda-shops, looking daggers at each other, and women go careless of corsets, and showing their natural color. Coal falls off again; ice-creams go up; Niblo has another 'crack night;' the beggars are happy, and so am I.
Do you remember your first julep? The gradual mounting to the brain, like the rush of joy to a sick heart that takes it doubtingly; the quick grouping and glancing of thought from your ideality; the uncorking of fancies bottled in your teens; and at last a sudden ballooning of the whole head, that brings out the stars, and the heavens opening, with angels passing to and fro, (Broadway always, after a julep,) and you forget the dun of the morning, and the girl that jilted you last night out of a week's passion. You forget her as such, but you remember, rather you repeat, the heart-flutterings of the first night; the hand gently withdrawn of the second; the delicious half-embrace (interrupted) of the third; and the fourth, body, soul, and lips, all melting innocently together, with pulses and Fahrenheit mounting the hundred! If after that she gave you the kiss coyly at the door, with ears up like an antelope's, and said it was very naughty, you remember that her dress was too airy to be disarranged; and ah! she's only timing you a little; and so God bless her forever!
Not that such things happen; never. But the julep makes you think so. Well, do you remember the charming confusion of that first julep; its beautiful bewilderment; (I premise, of course, that it surprised an unbrandied stomach;) and would you like to repeat the sensation, without breaking your late pledge? 'Juleps be hang'd!' says you. Very well, you are in trouble to-day. Your wife made you get up first, and the world rolls the wrong way with you; the sun rose in the west, you say. Exactly so. It rose to me, no'th-west and a point off, only yesterday. (Lobster salad for supper; ten devils and a young one for bed-fellows, and the universe knock'd into a cocked hat; saw it myself; every star went past my window; took an observation in the morning: sun in the north-west; the needle running round like a kitten after its tail, and the earth bound to the north star! Fact! Nobody knew it but me; but it's all right now.) Well, the sun rose in the west; your children teething, perhaps, and the nurse has a child of her own, just arrived; and you think it probable that your wife has eloped with her cousin, who urged you to marry her. Are any of these things so?—or, worst of all imaginings, have you breakfasted badly? Then, Sir, Come up to the top of New-York!
If you have strained your eyes, looking up, half a life-time, take the stair-case, the easiest way in the world of getting up in it, and look down, or overlook, as you like. We have a cream left, and a dash of curacoa that colors better than strawberries. Come up, Sir, and open your lungs to the original element; quick! or you'll be carried away with the rush. A dam across Broadway for half an hour would gather a Waterloo army.
Well, here you are; sit down, Sir, and don't shout, or you will have a park-full looking at you, and probably an alarm of fire. Let the people pass. We have been through the play, and found that the farce in real life is the only tragedy. Keep your heart fresh, my young boy, and away from shilling seductions. Pass on, children; we can't 'make believe' sufficiently to-day, and will just overlook you a little. Fix your eye, Sir, upon that baboon coming out of a flue, till your nerves steady a little, and think what a sweep of mind he must have after the confinement of a chimney. You observe, the world is neither before us nor behind, for we are atop of it. How the eye blunders about amid the sea of house-tops, and what variety of chimney architecture not meant for the eye! Now and then a spire points up, like the stray pines of a southern barren, and outside are the tops of the shipping, hedging in the city like bayonets. Farther on, the white sails dash about in all directions, sweeping past each other with the untouched precision of a street-walker, bowing gallantly with a touch of the beaver. The steam-ferries cross with the straight-forward bearing of a militaire, as though they took no pleasure whatever in the goings-on; and here and there, with sails all out, top-gallantly, a tall ship moves among the crowd, with the emphasis of royalty.
Rather airy, up here! The cream of those small seas in the harbor has cooled the breeze for us, and the light over all, unless the sun-spots have grown since, is the unmixed original of the first day. The groaning of the streets comes up softened occasionally with a shout, or merry laugh, like a mocking-bird's in a menagerie; and overhead, a few clouds float about, idle to all appearances, yet each one is doing its errand of the morning, with a perfection far beyond your particular range. Some are rolling over and over in the sunshine; some just touching and parting, like women with dresses too large to salute; and in the upper heavens, a few long fellows, like ships upon the sea, are scudding in an entirely different direction. Just as you are up or down in the world, Sir, will the wind carry you.
Having looked about us, you may laugh or be sad, as you please. I advise neither; but there below us is the material, from the smile to the tear, and thousands of hearts now leaping to one or the other. Some perhaps at this moment making their first exclamation in the world, to large points of admiration from the just-made mother; and some dropping a last broken word upon the bounds of another world. Between these points are the variety of interjections, the oh! ah! pish! pah! hurra! and Hallelujah! that make up human life.
There has been a lull for a while; and now New-York has dined, and the soft pattering of feet tells us that beauty is thronging down the pavé, to settle the dinner, and the pleasures of the evening.
Has your brain cooled? Take that glass, and tell me if the archangel Gabriel has unsexed and fallen—into Broadway. How elate that motion, as though she were walking on a mountain-top, and as the whole world were beneath her, but not too far for her to be a part, and the glory of it! Beauty and grace go with her, like sunshine playing on a fountain. One who has just passed is sunning his heart in the delusion that she looked at him. Poor fool! Her thoughts are not promenading. Some things in this world are rather riddlesome—rather. You would not say that sorrow had touched her heart, and that passions are coiled there like serpents sucking her very life-blood; some half-dead with gorging, and some casting their coats for new life and vigor. Lost? As the star that is falling, which nothing but the hand of God can stay! Follow her home, and as the street-look is laid aside with her scarf, how sad that face! Calm and still, with now and then a faint smile flashing over it; but sheet-lightning, my dear Sir, for with her the storm had passed. The flash shows the cloud, to be sure; and to-morrow's sun may nurse it into more thunder; but these are unpleasant reflections. We should not have looked down.
There comes another, whose heaven is in another part of the universe, separate entirely. She needs study, like an old painting; but even with that, you never would know her, unless you were of the same Heaven. Her sweet voice would be like any other, with a difference that you would wonder at, but never understand.
And now the up-towns have gone up again, and night comes on, with the stars out in the upper heavens, and the lights as stars below. Between two heavens will not do, when either can be reached.
'Ride up—Broad-w-a-y!' The boy has music in him. Good night to the Top of New-York!
Julian.
[THE BIRTH-DAY.]
Another year is added to thy life,
And it hath left its impress; we can see
The change that one short year hath worked in thee;
In thy full eye, with deeper meanings rife,
And in thy form—a scarce expanded flower,
Just blushing into perfectness. Thy words,
The mingled melody of warbling birds,
Express maturer thoughts and deeper power,
And they too mark the change. O! may the day
That prompts these simple lines, ne'er bring the truth
That hearts like thine, in changing from their youth,
Can change in their affections; that I may
Keep it as now, from other days apart,
Shrined like a second Sabbath in my heart!
R. S. Chilton.
New-York, July, 1843.
[THE EXILE'S SONG.]
I have sat in chambers rich and high,
When the haughtiest brow was smoothed in smiles,
When kindness warmed proud Beauty's eye,
And Art displayed its softest wiles;
But the forest wild was my delight,
At dawning gray and gathering night;
More joy had I in my leafy hall,
Than in fretted roof and storied wall.
I have knelt at the incense-shrine of Praise,
When a thousand voices chanted deep,
When the organ pealed, and the torches' blaze
Saw some in triumph, some to weep;
But higher rites have I partaken,
When Heaven with the tempest's wing was shaken,
When the forest blazed, and the lightning's dart
Quailed all but the wandering exile's heart.
In climes of softer air I've been,
And sat in bowers when the rose was blown,
When the leaf was yet in its freshest green,
And with one to love till then unknown;
But deeper raptures I have felt,
When by her rocky couch I knelt,
Who crossed for me the stormy main,
Content in one fond heart to reign.
A. M.
[THE ELEMENTS OF A RELIGIOUS CHARACTER.]
'BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM.'
What are the elements and traits of a religious character? What combinations of virtue and excellence, of principle and attainment, enter into and form a character which answers to our conception of religion? We think we can recognize and judge of such a character when it appears before us as the result of a process, and therefore our first thought is, that it would be easy to describe such a character. We know and can respect such a character when we see it, and therefore we might say it could not be difficult to tell how it is to be formed, and of what elements and traits it must be composed.
But indeed it is not easy to describe a religious character, nor to tell, on the moment, the combination and proportion of its virtues, nor to analyze its parts. It is not easy, because character is of itself a wonderful and a mysterious creation; its springs are hidden, its processes are secret, its foundation and development do not admit of close observation, and the power with which it impresses us is rather realized than understood. And then the religious elements of a character only increase the difficulty of exhibiting its construction and its power. And then again there has grown up such a difference of estimate, such a variance in opinion among men, as to what religion is, what it enjoins, what it allows, what it approves, that we may indeed number it among the acknowledged impossibilities, to portray the ideal of a religious character to the satisfaction of any large number of persons. What different models are held up for our imitation! As we trace back the burthened history of two thousand years, we perceive that very different traits have been insisted on, and various excellences required. Stress has been laid upon one or another virtue; illustrious homage has been offered in different generations to characters quite in contrast with each other. Indeed, the civilized world now reveres alike some departed worthies as joined in the communion of saints, who if on earth together would have mutually denied each other's claims to any measure of regard.
Call up from their graves the departed worthies of their own day, the robed and transfigured memorials of distant times; let the long line of the revered dead pass in imagination before you, and as they pass, read their titles. The difference between a smile and a tear, between martyrdom and a triumph, between a smile of joy and a pang of agony, between a feast and a fast, is not greater than the difference in model and standard of character in those whom we agree in calling religious men. The saint from the dreary caverns of Africa leads the line. His bones start from his attenuated skin; even the skin is worn away from his knees by frequent prayer; his body is wasted by fasting, watching, and scourging: he has been the companion of beasts, the prey of vermin; he has seen it may be for half a century no human face or form. There was the standard of a religious character for him, and for his age. Next in the line is the monk; renouncing what is good, and commanding what is wicked; possessing the virtues of a cloister, and the fancied holiness which has made itself necessary to supply the place of real holiness. And then the monk was accounted worthy. But with his well-kept vows, and the well-worn record of his prayers, the monk retires into shadow with the saint, and a saint of a different aspect fills the eye. He comes as a dignitary of the church, bowed down with gold and jewels; with armies at his command, and holiness for his title. His garments are suffused with the odor of incense; millions fall prostrate and do reverence even to his feet with a kiss. He is anointed in life, and canonized at death. He lived in a gorgeous palace, he sleeps in a costly shrine. But while the pilgrim is on his way to that shrine, another ideal of the religious character passes before the mind; and then there appears before the eye one who is called a pious and godly man. He is the Puritan of ancient days. He comes with sad and austere looks, yet with a kind and tender heart, only we do not see the heart, because he wishes to be known by the face, which his close-cut hair brings into full view. A laugh to him is mockery; luxury is but a feasting of the adversary of souls; amusement is impiety; outward ceremonial is blasphemy. The offices of religion in one perpetual round, cases of conscience, large and little volumes of dry divinity, and rigid family government, are the sacrifices which he offers to God. He leaves his home that he may thus worship. He raises his psalm of deliverance in the wilderness, and at death he rests beside the roots of a forest-tree in a grave not without a memorial. And he was the religious character of his day. And as the shades of the departed fall back into mystery, we find ourselves surrounded by groups of the living, who arrange themselves under the different standards which they recognize for the religious character.
These standards might fitly be inscribed with the mottoes, 'Morality, Ordinances, Faith;' for from the one or the other of these titles come the different models for the religious character. Practical goodness, cheerful, kind and ready sympathy for the suffering, uprightness in dealing, blamelessness in example, these constitute the highest religious character for some. The observance of seasons or rites, the literal fulfilment of the terms of ordinances, is the great essential for the completeness of religious character to others. Then justification by faith, an embrace of doctrinal formularies, a fixed and constant and unresisting submission to a covenant which suspends mercy, is the standard for others. These are the prevailing standards of a religious character now. Of course, if they exist, they are in some quarters insisted upon, and the differences must constantly appear in the various estimates formed by religious persons. These diverse standards have likewise been chosen in the light of experience, of long experience, and in full view of all those ancient models which we have contemplated.
Now from this survey of the strange contrasts presented to us, as exhibiting the ideal of a religious character in different places and generations, and among us now, we might at first judge that there was in reality no true standard, but that it was all a matter of fancy, combined somewhat with the aspects and emergencies of society; that a religious character was no fixed, well-ascertained, and established existence. Yet, after all, this standard has been by no means so diverse as it would seem. For a deeper search proves to us, that the same qualities of heart have been seeking for expression by the most widely different manifestations. Change the skin and drop the body with its worn knees, its sordid or its golden robes, its rigid features, or its gay smiles, and the elements of Christian excellence, if they exist, will appear the same in all, divested of the local peculiarities of age and generation. Indeed, true Christian goodness, excellence of character, is like the water, the emblem of renewal and grace; water, as diffused over the earth, differing every where by elevation and clime. Here it is frozen into mountains of ice, there it issues as boiling vapor from the earth; it is scanty and brackish in the desert, profuse and clear in the green woods; here it is borne along in torrents; there it trickles in dancing rills; here it is buried in deep wells, there it oozes from full fountains; every where it is different, but every where it is water, and every where it is the element of life. Such is goodness, true excellence of character every where, apart from the peculiarities of age and clime.
Now by all this we are helped in discerning the elements of a religious character. The common consent of men amounts to little more than an allowance that a religious character must be formed out of a common character by two processes; the one a process of denial, the other a process of culture. And this indeed is the key to our whole subject, the solution of the great question which we have proposed, as to the standard of a religious character. There is an element of denial, and an element of culture, in a religious character; that is, a human character is made religious by renouncing something, and by attaining something. A religious character is to be formed out of a common character with some new materials; it is to part with something of its earthly organization; something of passion, weakness, and low desire, and to endue itself with something of heavenly grace and essence; turned from darkness unto light, from the power of Satan unto God.
Self-denial and culture, renunciation and attainment, are the two great processes by which a religious character is to be formed, and which, when applied, decide its elements. Yet there is a work which precedes and accompanies these processes, and that work is discipline; discipline, the agency which forms a religious character. The first essential then in a religious character is, that it be the subject of discipline; of discipline varying in the intensity of its struggles; in the difficulty, the amount, the protraction of its efforts, according to the natural differences of individuals, but always discipline; self-knowledge and self-control, strong in its formed purpose, resolute in pursuing it. A religious character was never of spontaneous growth, nor acquired unconsciously. It is known to the heart through all its stages. It is based upon spiritual convictions; it crosses many natural wishes; it embraces prospects which lie beyond the grave. These are elements of thought, of action, of life, which never come by chance, or by mere good influences around an individual. They vary in degree and strength in individuals, but are conscious possessions to all who share them. Self-discipline is a work which summons all our faculties, purposes, knowledge, resolutions, and efforts; it has its weary hours; its seasons for starting anew with quickened strength and zeal.
The prominent feature of a religious character is, that it has been the subject of discipline; that it is itself the result of discipline; has been wrought upon, formed, and established by discipline. In such a character we expect that every element shall declare effort and principle. The man or the woman, called religious, must bear about them the proof that they are what they are, as the result of an intention. We expect to see in a religious character distinctions and differences which we do not look for in the common standard of character. Nor only this; we expect also that these differences should appear as the results of a good purpose well-endeavored; a foundation, a life, a growth, consecrated by high intentions to the highest uses and for the highest aims. This is a truth which cannot be too strongly urged or insisted upon. A religious character ought to strike every one as the result of conscious effort; a work begun and in progress; a diamond in the process of being polished in the only way in which it may be polished, by other diamonds. Discipline, visible in its intention and work, this is the first of all essentials. This discipline will be strongly marked by two processes, a process of self-denial, and a process of culture; of renunciation and attainment. Of the fruits of these processes a religious character must largely partake; yet it is scarcely possible to describe in particulars the entire operation as it appears in the result.
The long and almost uniform opinion of men is right in judging that a religious character should present evidence of self-denial and self-restraint; should have renounced something of pleasure and desire; should have mortified some affections, and wrestled with some infirmities. Of the measure of this denial, each honest conscience must judge for itself. The great end of it, the sole reason for its necessity in an individual character is, that the law of the spiritual life may be obeyed, by the right exercise of the highest faculties and aims of the human heart. All indulgence inconsistent with this consecration is sin, and must be restrained. Yet who can decide the measure of this indulgence or restraint for another? A large ecclesiastical body has lately decided that dancing is inconsistent with a religious character. Whether this opinion is true or false, can be decided only by each individual for himself; by his own knowledge whether this or that amusement makes him frivolous and trifling, or whether it is only a momentary relaxation, enjoyed and then forgotten.
Now it is evident that the Almighty does not need nor require at our hands any self-denial or restraint of any kind, considered by itself, independently of its uses. Self-denial is of value only because of its influence on the character. So that we must ask ourselves what is the reason for self-denial in any given case, what is the nature of it, what the degree of it, what the result of it? Then shall we learn that in a religious character there has been a struggle between the lower and the higher nature, and that in all the parts and stages of that struggle, passion and sense have been denied; and denied for what? Not for a sour or morbid sanctimoniousness, but for the sake of a calm and meditative rest of the spirit, that unseen realities, and spiritual convictions, and noble purposes, and heavenly hopes, may have power over the character.
And as to the second process, of which a religious character is to show the visible results, the process of culture: this may appear in many traits, and graces, and actions, so as to distinguish a religious character from a common character. The elements of that culture are affections and duties, motives and convictions. The same strife between the higher and the lower nature which is begun in self-denial, is pursued in spiritual culture. The heart searcheth after the means of improvement and progress: and they are found near to us; in the lowly duties of common life, in the opportunities of a day, in the necessity which our uniform experience presents, for acting from principle if we would act aright. Self-culture, in all its highest and most comprehensive processes, is the condition by which Christian elements of character are to be acquired. Of course, virtues and graces, tastes and affections, are to be valued and preferred in proportion to their relative excellence. Piety and love, which express the applications of the two great commandments, are to be cherished, cultivated, and manifested. He who is truly and earnestly pursuing these two processes of renunciation and attainment, will acquire through his own experience a better knowledge of the elements of a Christian character than any creed or covenant can teach him. The opposing systems, the controverted dogmas, the various usages and ceremonies of Christian sects, will have but little importance for him; and he will feel that there are two parties which he is to satisfy—God and his own soul.