If the mental experience of a doctor naturally leads to philosophy, the moral tends to make him a philanthropist. He is familiar with all the ills that flesh is heir to. The mystery of birth, the solemnity of death, the anxiety of disease, the devotion of faith, the agony of despair, are phases of life daily open to his view; and their contemplation, if there is in his nature a particle either of reflection or sensibility, must lead to a sense of human brotherhood, excite the impulse of benevolence, and awaken the spirit of humanity. Warren’s Diary of a Physician gives us an inkling of what varieties of human experience are exposed to his gaze. Vigils at the couch of genius and beauty, full of the stern romance of reality, or imbued with tenderness and inspiration, are recorded in his heart. He is admitted into sanctums where no other feet but those of kindred enter. He becomes the inevitable auditor and spectator where no other stranger looks or listens. Human nature, stripped of its conventionalities, lies exposed before him; the secrets of conscience, the aspirations of intellect, the devotedness of love, all that exalts and all that debases the soul, he beholds in the hour of weakness, solitude, or dismay; and hard and unthinking must he be if such lessons make no enduring impression, and excite no comprehensive sympathies.
‘The corner-stone of health,’ says a German writer, ‘is to maintain our individuality intact;’ and while the hygienic reformer has lessened the bills of mortality, personal culture has emancipated society from much of the ignorant dependence and insalubrious habits of less enlightened times.
HOLIDAYS.
‘And here I must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition and doing away with altogether of those consolatory interstices and sprinklings of freedom through the four seasons—the red-letter days, now become to all intents and purposes dead-letter days.’—Charles Lamb.
hile we accord a certain historical or ethical significance to our holidays, we also feel their casual tenure, their want of recreative rest, of enjoyable spirit, and of cordial popular estimation; and are irresistibly prompted to discuss their claims as one of the neglected elements of our national life. It is an anomalous fact in our civilization that we have no one holiday, the observance of which is unanimous. It is an exceptional trait in our nationality that its sentiment finds no annual occasion when the hearts of the people thrill with an identical emotion, absorbing in patriotic instinct and mutual reminiscence all personal interests and local prejudices. It is an unfortunate circumstance that no American festival, absolutely consecrated and universally acknowledged, hallows the calendar to the imagination of our people. Anniversaries enough, we boast, of historical importance, but they are casually observed; events of glorious memory crowd our brief annals, but they are not consciously identified with recurring periods; universal celebrities are included in the roll of our country’s benefactors; but the dates of their birth, services, and decease, form no saints’ days for the Republic. How often in the crises of sectional passion does the moral necessity of a common shrine, a national feast, a place, a time, or a memory sacred to fraternal sympathies of general observance, appal the patriotic heart with regret, or warm it with desire! How much of sectional misunderstanding, hatred, and barbarism culminating in a base and savage mutiny, will the future historian trace in the last analysis to the absence of a common sentiment and occasion of mutual pleasure and faith. Were such a nucleus for popular enthusiasm, such a goal for a nation’s pilgrimage, such a day for reciprocal gratulation our own—a time when the oath of fealty could be renewed at the same altar, the voice of encouragement be echoed from every section of the Union, the memory of what has been, the appreciation of what is, and the hope of what may be, simultaneously felt,—what a bond of union, a motive to forbearance, and a pledge of nationality would be secured! Were there not in us sentiments as well as appetites, reflection as well as passion, humanity might rest content with such ‘note of time’ as is marked on a sun-dial or in the almanac; but constituted as we are, a profound and universal instinct prompts observances wherewith faith, hope, and memory may keep register of the fleeting hours and months. In accordance with this instinct, periodical sacrifice, song, prayer, and banquet, in all countries and ages, have inscribed with heartfelt ceremony the shadowy lapse of being. Without law or art, the savage thus identifies his consciousness with the seasons and their transition; anniversaries typifying vicissitude; the wheel of custom stops awhile; events, convictions, reminiscences, and aspirations are personified in the calendar; and that reason which ‘looks before and after’ asserts itself under every guise, from the barbarian rite to the Christian festival, and begets the holiday as an institution natural to man. If the ballads of a people are the essence of its history, holidays are, on similar grounds, the free utterance of its character; and, as such, of great interest to the philosopher, and fraught with endearing associations to the philanthropist.