In every community there _must_ be pleasures, relaxations, and means
of agreeable excitement; and if innocent ones are not furnished,
resort will be had to criminal. Man was made to enjoy as well as to
labour; and the state of society should be adapted to this principle
of human nature. France, especially before the revolution, has been
represented as a singularly temperate country; a fact to be explained,
at least in part, by the constitutional cheerfulness of that people,
and by the prevalence of simple and innocent gratifications, especially
among the peasantry. Men drink to excess very often to shake off
depression, or to satisfy the restless thirst for agreeable excitement,
and those motives are excluded in a cheerful community. A gloomy
state of society, in which there are few innocent recreations, may be
expected to abound in drunkenness, if opportunities are afforded. The
savage drinks to excess because his hours of sobriety are dull and
unvaried; because, in losing the consciousness of his condition and his
existence, he loses little which he wishes to retain. The labouring
classes are most exposed to intemperance, because they have at
present few other pleasurable excitements. A man who, after toil, has
resources of blameless recreation, is less tempted than other men to
seek self-oblivion. He has too many of the pleasures of a man to take
up with those of a brute. Thus the encouragement of simple, innocent
enjoyments, is an important means of temperance.
These remarks show the importance of encouraging the efforts which
have commenced among us, for spreading the accomplishment of music
through our whole community. It is now proposed that this shall be made
a regular branch in our schools; and every friend of the people must
wish success to the experiment. I am not now called to speak of all the
good influences of music, particularly of the strength which it may and
ought to give to the religious sentiment, and to all pure and generous
emotions. Regarded merely as a refined pleasure, it has a favourable
bearing on public morals. Let taste and skill in this beautiful art be
spread among us, and every family will have a new resource. Home will
gain a new attraction. Social intercourse will be more cheerful, and an
innocent public amusement will be furnished to the community. Public
amusements, bringing multitudes together to kindle with one emotion,
to share the same innocent joy, have a humanizing influence; and among
these bonds of society perhaps no one produces so much unmixed good
as music. What a fulness of enjoyment has our Creator placed within
our reach, by surrounding us with an atmosphere which may be shaped
into sweet sounds! And yet this goodness is almost lost upon us,
through want of culture of the organ by which this provision is to be
enjoyed.--_Dr Channing's Address on Temperance._
CHURCHYARDS.--Formerly (says Captain Grose) few persons chose to be
buried on the north side of a church; the original reason was this: in
the times when the Roman Catholic religion prevailed, it was customary,
on seeing the tombstone or grave of a friend or acquaintance, to put
up a prayer for their soul, which was held to be very efficacious.
As the common entrance into most churches was either at the west end
or on the south side of the church, persons buried on the north side
escaped the notice of their friends, and thereby lost the benefit of
their prayers. This becoming a kind of refuse spot, only very poor,
or persons guilty of some offence, were buried there: persons who,
actuated by lunacy, had destroyed themselves, were buried on this side,
and sometimes out of the east and west directions of the other graves.
This is said to be alluded to in Hamlet, where he bids the grave-digger
cut Ophelia's grave straight. The same was observed with respect to
persons who were executed. Observe the yew-tree; in many churchyards
they are of a prodigious size. Some have supposed that yew-trees were
planted in churchyards in order to supply the parish with bow staves,
but more probably it was from the yew being an evergreen, and conveying
an allusion to the immortality of the soul, and therefore considered as
a funereal plant. This reason is likewise given for the use of rosemary
and rue; but, probably, these were carried to prevent any infection
from the open grave on a near approach to the coffin.
ROMANTIC MARRIAGE.--William, the second Viscount Ashbrook, when very
young, and residing with his family in the county of Kilkenny, was
captivated with the beauty of an Irish peasant girl, named Elizabeth
Ridge, who was in the habit of punting a ferry-boat across a stream
in the vicinity of Castle Durrow. The love-sick youth took every
opportunity of enjoying the society of the fascinating water-nymph,
but carefully concealed his passion from his parents. He held at that
time an ensign's commission in a regiment which was quartered in the
neighbourhood, but he was as yet too young to think of matrimony; nor
was the object of his love either old enough, or sufficiently educated,
to become his wife. She had been reared among the Irish peasants,
had been unused to shoes or stockings, was scarcely acquainted with
the English language, and was wholly uninformed in matters of the
world; yet the young ensign fancied, that, notwithstanding these
disadvantages, he could perceive in her an aptitude of mind, and
soundness of intellect, united with great sweetness of temper, in
addition to her personal attractions. Under these circumstances, he
conceived the romantic idea of placing her under the superintendence
of some respectable female, capable of rendering her, through the
influence of education, a suitable associate. The lovely ferry-girl was
accordingly removed to the house of a lady, where our hero, who had
meantime been promoted to the rank of captain, occasionally visited
her, and marked from time to time, with all the enthusiasm of a
romantic lover, her rapid progress in various polite accomplishments.
Elizabeth Ridge remained in this situation for three years, when the
lapse of time, as well as some domestic occurrences, enabled Captain
Flower, in 1766, to reap the reward of his constancy and honourable
conduct. And thus the blushing daughter of the Emerald Isle became
ultimately the Viscountess Ashbrook, and lady of that castle beneath
whose walls her early charms had, like the rays of the rising sun,
beamed for a time unnoticed, only to become more effulgent and more
admired. By the Viscount she had several sons and daughters; among
the former, the present Viscount; among the latter, the mother of the
present Lady Wetherell.
The Irish in the reign of Queen Elizabeth are represented by many as
_quite_ ignorant and barbarous. Read the letters of their chiefs to
the Spaniards in the _Pacata Hibernia_, and judge for yourself.--_Dr
Browne, F.T.C.D._
IRISH VOLUBILITY.--A conversation with a young Irishman, of good
natural abilities (and among no race of men are those abilities more
general), is like a forest walk; in which, while you are delighted
with the healthy fresh air and the green unbroken turf, you must
stop at every twentieth step to extricate yourself from a briar. You
acknowledge that you have been amused, but that you rest willingly, and
that you would rather not take the same walk on the morrow.--_Landor._
No man is free from fear; he is not who says he never feels it; _he
fears_ to be thought a coward; and, whether we tremble before a sword
or a supposition, it is alike fear!
The power of enjoying the harmless and reasonable pleasures of life is
not only essential to a man's happiness, but an indication of several
valuable qualities, both of the heart and the head, which can hardly
exist without it.
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