THE STREET; A COLLOQUIAL LECTURE. ARE you fain, James, to divert yourself a little, after the fashion of Democritus, "Qui videbat curas necnon et gaudia vulgi ?" Fancy then, when next you stand or stroll listlessly in Broadway or Washington-street-fancy every man that passes you to be Milton's Adam, and every woman-"Daughter of God and man, accomplished Eve”— "His fair, large front, and eye sublime declared "Grace was in all her steps, Heaven in her eye, How large a portion of our handsome people, (so called,) our ugly, and our common, will the comparison sink in a moment to one dead level of ridiculous meanness in aspect and deportment ? The degeneracy is peculiar to the only race of animals that has been left free to play the fool. In all others, instinct (“instinct is a great matter," James) has preserved God's whole handiwork, unless thwarted or bedevilled by human domestication. Did you ever see a wild creature that was not perfect? The exception is, with them, any considerable departure from nature or perfection; with us, any considerable approach to it. Habit alone, by slow and painful wear, reconciles us to the sight. When you were a child, James, did not every stranger's face look amusingly or alarmingly ugly? And since, are you not always disappointed, (is not every imaginative youth?) in the first view of a man, or the picture of a man, whom you have admired? Nay, so wide and universal is the departure of the Actual from the Ideal, that all but artists and studious lovers of art, shrinkavowedly or otherwise-from the embodiment of this Ideal, in Gre. cian marble, or on the Italian canvass, as from something unnatural! Now, what is the Ideal, but the first and only model of the Actual? What is Art, but recurrence to that model: or the restoration of Nature, wrought by imagination; her vindicator and faithful child? Yet were the Belvidere Apollo to become incarnate and don clothes, you would no sooner think, James, of shaking hands with him as a brother mortal, than with any of the composite nondescripts depicted by the saint of Patmos ! Does not this give us a startling yet ludicrous glimpse of the interval through which man has slidden and sunk? of the degene. rate meanness of his thoughts and business? of the sordidness of our civilization? The mere revolution of his crooked thoughts, enter. tainment of his prone fancies, subjection to his petty cares, and doing of his petty deeds, have not only so debased his "fair large front, and eye sublime," that it retains scarcely a trace of God's hand or likeness; but so intimately dimmed his mind's eye and numbed his heart, that he knows not "the evil change," nor recog nizes as human the perfection of his original mould! Not an unnatural mood, or practice, or day's life, I suppose, on the part of any man, or any of his ancestors, but has left its mark on him. Heavy drudgery—irksomeness of sedentary confinementfoul air for breath-intemperance, filth, and consequent infections-confinement of attention, and so of sympathy and knowledge to a few objects the incessant pressure of abject distresses and servile fears-neglect and decay of all spiritual powers that can be spared from the daily toil for bread or gain--these miseries, which have been the actual, and many of which seem to be inevitable, ingredients of modern civilization-these are the causes, (operating and combin ing endlessly through successive generations,) of which we see the accumulated mischiefs in the puny composition and vulgar looks of the multitude that throngs the street. How infinitely diversified are the whimpers and whines, the mum. blings and lispings, the gutturals and nasals, that issue from their ill-formed and worse-used mouths, as an apology for articulate words! What varieties of meanness, of sluggishness, of spleen, of conceit, of fatuity, of lewdness, are expressed or suggested in their features, gestures, and deportment. And yet, James, we presume to think that nature, "Os homini sublime dedit, cœlumque tueri !" 66 Man has been defined "a reasoning animal," "a weeping animal," a laughing animal," and "a two-legged creature without feathers;" but much more emphatically may he be distinguished from all other earthly races as an ugly animal. If old grandam Earth pursue her weary circuit till Saturn resumes his golden sway, men may once more come to know them. selves for something other than mere blocks and links in a great labour-saving machine. From being a piece, James, every one will aspire to become a whole; to recover the strict integrity, which distinguishes an absolute man from the mere fractional part of a com. THE GHOSTLY DRIVER. munity. The division of labour will no longer be deemed the all-in. all of social wisdom, nor gain-getting the one thing needful. But, taught wise simplicity, at length, by all earthly experience, and purified (haply, so purified!) by the fiery ordeal of measureless pains and shames, through which the race will have passed from the beginning, each man will devotedly take in hand, for ever, the great work of redeeming, developing, and enjoying himself. Throwing away his conceited appetites, and chastening his natural ones, he will reduce the daily application, requisite to satisfy them, to the compass of a few hours. The natural leisure, thus re-asserted to his own free use, he will employ in those wholesome exercises and under those wholesome influences, which infuse health, strength, and sensi. bility through the whole being. He will be what all primitive and grand people have been, and what every body should persist to be, despite any business let, a denizen of nature, familiar with each expression of her radiant face, tenderly alive to every throb of her allbountiful bosom. In the sweet sunshine of the sky and of serene contemplation, every gentle, every generous sympathy will be ripened; the mean, the partial, the perverse, will be rejected from his regenerate nature, and he will stand forth, "in native honour clad." COSMO. THE GHOSTLY DRIVER. BY GRACE GRAFTON. THE dreary face of the snow-clad earth Had been touched by winter's hand, And the piping winds from the ice-bound North The drifting snow before the blast Curled with a rustling sound, When the tramp, as of horses coming fast, Was heard on the frozen ground. The rattling wheels in the moonshine bright Glitter as past they fly. Speed ye! ye travellers, by day and night, 'Tis the mail-stage hurries by. And colder and ruder the night set in As the steeds moved bravely on, And every muffled man within Now wished his journey done. clothes, you would no sooner think, James, of shaking hands with him as a brother mortal, than with any of the composite nondescripts depicted by the saint of Patmos ! Does not this give us a startling yet ludicrous glimpse of the interval through which man has slidden and sunk? of the degenerate meanness of his thoughts and business? of the sordidness of our civilization? The mere revolution of his crooked thoughts, entertainment of his prone fancies, subjection to his petty cares, and doing of his petty deeds, have not only so debased his "fair large front, and eye sublime," that it retains scarcely a trace of God's hand or likeness; but so intimately dimmed his mind's eye and numbed his heart, that he knows not "the evil change," nor recog. nizes as human the perfection of his original mould! Not an unnatural mood, or practice, or day's life, I suppose, on the part of any man, or any of his ancestors, but has left its mark on him. Heavy drudgery-irksomeness of sedentary confinementfoul air for breath-intemperance, filth, and consequent infectionsconfinement of attention, and so of sympathy and knowledge to a few objects the incessant pressure of abject distresses and servile fears-neglect and decay of all spiritual powers that can be spared from the daily toil for bread or gain--these miseries, which have been the actual, and many of which seem to be inevitable, ingredients of modern civilization-these are the causes, (operating and combin ing endlessly through successive generations,) of which we see the accumulated mischiefs in the puny composition and vulgar looks of the multitude that throngs the street. How infinitely diversified are the whimpers and whines, the mum. blings and lispings, the gutturals and nasals, that issue from their ill-formed and worse-used mouths, as an apology for articulate words! What varieties of meanness, of sluggishness, of spleen, of conceit, of fatuity, of lewdness, are expressed or suggested in their features, gestures, and deportment. And yet, James, we presume to think that nature, "Os homini sublime dedit, cœlumque tueri !" Man has been defined "a reasoning animal," "a weeping animal," "a laughing animal," and "a two-legged creature without feathers;" but much more emphatically may he be distinguished from all other earthly races as an ugly animal. If old grandam Earth pursue her weary circuit till Saturn resumes his golden sway, men may once more come to know them. selves for something other than mere blocks and links in a great labour-saving machine. From being a piece, James, every one will aspire to become a whole; to recover the strict integrity, which distinguishes an absolute man from the mere fractional part of a com munity. The division of labour will no longer be deemed the all-inall of social wisdom, nor gain-getting the one thing needful. But, taught wise simplicity, at length, by all earthly experience, and puri. fied (haply, so purified!) by the fiery ordeal of measureless pains and shames, through which the race will have passed from the beginning, each man will devotedly take in hand, for ever, the great work of redeeming, developing, and enjoying himself. Throwing away his conceited appetites, and chastening his natural ones, he will reduce the daily application, requisite to satisfy them, to the compass of a few hours. The natural leisure, thus re-asserted to his own free use, he will employ in those wholesome exercises and under those wholesome influences, which infuse health, strength, and sensibility through the whole being. He will be what all primitive and grand people have been, and what every body should persist to be, despite any business let, a denizen of nature, familiar with each expression of her radiant face, tenderly alive to every throb of her allbountiful bosom. In the sweet sunshine of the sky and of serene contemplation, every gentle, every generous sympathy will be ripen. ed; the mean, the partial, the perverse, will be rejected from his regenerate nature, and he will stand forth, "in native honour clad." COSMO. THE GHOSTLY DRIVER. BY GRACE GRAFTON, THE dreary face of the snow-clad earth Had been touched by winter's hand, And the piping winds from the ice-bound North The drifting snow before the blast Curled with a rustling sound, When the tramp, as of horses coming fast, Was heard on the frozen ground. The rattling wheels in the moonshine bright Speed ye! ye travellers, by day and night, And colder and ruder the night set in As the steeds moved bravely on, And every muffled man within Now wished his journey done. |