There is not on this side of the Atlantic—we dare our glove upon it—a more devout believer than ourselves in the worship of the Muses and Graces, both for itself, and its importance no less to the moral than to the intellectual life of a nation. Perhaps there is not one who has so deep a feeling, or so many suggestions ready, in the fulness of time, to be hazarded on the subject.
But in order to such worship, what standard is there as to admission to the service? Talents of gold, or Delphian talents? fashion or elegance? "standing" or the power to move gracefully from one position to another?
Our nobleman did not hesitate; the handle to his door bell was not of gold, but mother-of-pearl, pure and prismatic.
If he did not go into the alleys to pick up the poor, they were not excluded, if qualified by intrinsic qualities to adorn the scene. Neither were wealth or fashion a cause of exclusion, more than of admission. All depended on the person; yet he did not seek his guests among the slaves of fashion, for he knew that persons highly endowed rarely had patience with the frivolities of that class, but retired, and left it to be peopled mostly by weak and plebeian natures. Yet all depended on the individual. Was the person fair, noble, wise, brilliant, or even only youthfully innocent and gay, or venerable in a good old age, he or she was welcome. Still, as simplicity of character and some qualification positively good, healthy, and natural, was requisite for admission, we must say the company was select. Our nobleman and his family had weeded their "circle" carefully, year by year.
Some valued acquaintances they had made in ball-rooms and boudoirs, and kept; but far more had been made through the daily wants of life, and shoemakers, seamstresses, and graziers mingled happily with artists and statesmen, to the benefit of both. (N.B.—None used the poisonous weed, in or out of our domestic temple.)
I cannot tell you what infinite good our nobleman and his family were doing by creation of this true social centre, where the legitimate aristocracy of the land assembled, not to be dazzled by expensive furniture, (our nobleman bought what was good in texture and beautiful in form, but not because it was expensive,) not to be feasted on rare wines and highly-seasoned dainties, though they found simple refreshments well prepared, as indeed it was a matter of duty and conscience in that house that the least office should be well fulfilled, but to enjoy the generous confluence of mind with mind and heart with heart, the pastimes that are not waste-times of taste and inventive fancy, the cordial union of beings from all points and places in noble human sympathy. New York was beginning to be truly American, or rather Columbian, and money stood for something in the records of history. It had brought opportunity to genius and aid to virtue. But just at this moment, the jostling showed me that I had reached the corner of Wall Street. I looked earnestly at the omnibuses discharging their eager freight, as if I hoped to see my merchant. "Perhaps he has gone to the post office to take out letters from his friends in Utopia," thought I. "Please give me a penny," screamed a half-starved ragged little street-sweep, and the fancied cradle of the American Utopia receded, or rather proceeded, fifty years, at least, into the future.
THE POOR MAN.
An Ideal Sketch.
THE foregoing sketch of the Rich Man, seems to require this companion-piece; and we shall make the attempt, though the subject is far more difficult than the former was.
In the first place, we must state what we mean by a poor man, for it is a term of wide range in its relative applications. A painstaking artisan, trained to self-denial, and a strict adaptation, not of his means to his wants, but of his wants to his means, finds himself rich and grateful, if some unexpected fortune enables him to give his wife a new gown, his children cheap holiday joys, and his starving neighbor a decent meal; while George IV., when heir apparent to the throne of Great Britain, considered himself driven by the pressure of poverty to become a debtor, a beggar, a swindler, and, by the aid of perjury, the husband of two wives at the same time, neither of whom he treated well. Since poverty is made an excuse for such depravity in conduct, it would be well to mark the limits within which self-control and resistance to temptation may be expected.
When he of the olden time prayed, "Give me neither poverty nor riches," we presume he meant that proportion of means to the average wants of a human being which secures freedom from pecuniary cares, freedom of motion, and a moderate enjoyment of the common blessings offered by earth, air, water, the natural relations, and the subjects for thought which every day presents. We shall certainly not look above this point for our poor man. A prince may be poor, if he has not means to relieve the sufferings of his subjects, or secure to them needed benefits. Or he may make himself so, just as a well-paid laborer by drinking brings poverty to his roof. So may the prince, by the mental gin of horse-racing or gambling, grow a beggar. But we shall not consider these cases.