Burke's musical periods lamented the departure of the "age of chivalry." Would that one gifted as he may revive the waning existence of the social and domestic virtues, and inspire my young countrymen with an ambition too lofty in its aspirations to permit the sacrifice of mental and moral powers, of natural affections, and immortal aspirations, upon the altars of Mammon!—shrines now yearly receiving from our country a holocaust of sacrifices, to which battle-fields are as naught in comparison.
But to return from this unpremeditated digression. Natural tastes and individual circumstances must, to a considerable extent, determine the relaxations and amusements most conducive to enjoyment and health.
You will scarcely need to be told that persons of sedentary habits, and especially those devoted to literary occupations, should make exercise in the open air a daily recreation, and that it will best subserve the purposes of pleasure and health when united with the advantages arising from cheerful companionship.
Hence the superiority of walking, riding, driving, boating, and sporting in its various forms, to all in-door exercises and amusements—and especially to those tending rather to tax the brain than exercise the body—for those whose mental powers are most taxed by their avocations.
On the other hand, there are those to whom the lighter investigations of literature and science afford the most appropriate relief from the toils of business.
Permit me, however, to enter my protest against the belief that a change from the labors and duties of city life to the close sleeping-rooms, the artificiality and excitement of a fashionable watering-place affords a proper and healthful relief to a weary body and an overwrought brain. Life at a watering-place is no more an equivalent for the pure air, the simple habits, the wholesome food, the repose of mind and heart, afforded by unadulterated country life, than immersion in a bathing-tub is a satisfactory substitute for swimming in a living stream, or a contemplation of the most exquisite picture of rural scenes, for a glorious canter amid green fields and over breezy hills! Nor will dancing half the night in heated rooms, late suppers, bowling-alleys and billiards, not to speak of still more objectionable indulgences, restore these devotees to study or business to their city-homes re-invigorated for renewed action, as will the least laborious employments of the farmer, the "sportive toil" of the naturalist, the varied enjoyments of the traveller amid the wonders of our vast primeval forests, or of the voyager who explores the attractions of our unrivalled chain of inland lakes. People who do their thinking by proxy, and regulate their enjoyments by the on dit of the fashionable world, yearly spend money enough at some crowded resort of the beau monde (heaven save the mark!) to enable them to make the tour of Europe, or buy a pretty villa and grounds in the country, or do some deed "twice blessed," in that "it blesseth him that gives and him that takes." In Scotland, in England, in the North of Europe generally, men and women whose social position necessarily involves refinement of habits and education, go, in little congenial parties, into the mountains and among the lakes, visit spots renowned in song and story, collect specimens of the wonders of nature, "camp out," as they say at the West, eat simply, dress rationally—in short, really rusticate, in happy independence alike of the thraldom of fashion and the supremacy of convention. Thus in the Old World, among the learned, the accomplished, the high-born. Here in Young America—let the sallow cheek, the attenuated limbs, the dull eye and blasé air of the youthful scions of many a noble old Revolutionary stock, attest only too truly, a treasonous slavery to the most arbitrary and remorseless of tyrants! Would that they may serve, at least, as beacons to warn you, seasonably, against adding yourselves to the denizens of haunts where
"Unwieldly wealth, and cumbrous pomp repose;
And every want to luxury allied,
And every pang that folly pays to pride!"
I would that all my young countrymen might have looked upon the last hours of my revered friend, John Quincy Adams, and thus learned the impressive lessons taught by that solemn scene; lessons that—to use his own appropriate language—
——"bid us seize the moments as they pass,
Snatch the retrieveless sun-beam as it flies,
Nor lose one sand of life's revolving glass—
Aspiring still, with energy sublime,
By virtuous deeds to give Eternity to Time!"[5]