"This day, no man thinks He has business at his house."
KING HENRY VIII.
The warm weather, which was always a little behind that of the lower
counties, had now set in among the mountains, and the season had
advanced into the first week in July. "Independence Day," as the
fourth of that month is termed by the Americans, arrived; and the
wits of Templeton were taxed, as usual, in order that the festival
might be celebrated with the customary intellectual and moral treat.
The morning commenced with a parade of the two or three uniformed
companies of the vicinity, much gingerbread and spruce-beer were
consumed in the streets, no light potations of whiskey were swallowed
in the groceries, and a great variety of drinks, some of which bore
very ambitious names, shared the same fate in the taverns.
Mademoiselle Viefville had been told that this was the great American
_fête_; the festival of the nation; and she appeared that morning in
gay ribands, and with her bright, animated face, covered with smiles
for the occasion. To her surprise, however, no one seemed to respond
to her feelings; and as the party rose from the breakfast-table, she
took an opportunity to ask an explanation of Eve, in a little
'aside.'
"_Est-ce que je me suis trompée, ma chere_?" demanded the lively
Frenchwoman. "Is not this _la célébration de votre indépendance_?"
"You are not mistaken, my dear Mademoiselle Viefville, and great
preparations are made to do it honour. I understand there is to be a
military parade, an oration, a dinner, and fire-works."
"_Monsieur votre père----?_"
"_Monsieur mon père_ is not much given to rejoicings, and he takes
this annual joy, much as a valetudinarian takes his morning draught."
"_Et Monsieur Jean Effingham----?_"
"Is always a philosopher; you are to expect no antics from him."
"_Mais ces jeunes gens, Monsieur Bragg, Monsieur Dodge, et Monsieur
Powis, même!_"
"_Se réjouissent en Américains._ I presume you are aware that Mr.
Powis has declared himself to be an American?"
Mademoiselle Viefville looked towards the streets, along which divers
tall, sombre-looking countrymen, with faces more lugubrious than
those of the mutes of a funeral, were sauntering, with a desperate
air of enjoyment; and she shrugged her shoulders, as she muttered to
herself, "_que ces Americains sont drôles!_"
At a later hour, however, Eve surprised her father, and indeed most
of the Americans of the party, by proposing that the ladies should
walk out into the street, and witness the fête.
"My child, this is a strange proposition to come from a young lady of
twenty," said her father.
"Why strange, dear sir?--We always mingled in the village fêtes in
Europe."
"_Certainement_" cried the delighted Mademoiselle Viefville; "_c'est
de rigueur, même_"
"And it is _de rigueur_, here, Mademoiselle, for young ladies to keep
out of them," put in John Effingham. "I should be very sorry to see
either of you three ladies in the streets of Templeton to-day."
Why so, cousin Jack? Have we any thing to fear from the rudeness of
our countrymen? I have always understood, on the contrary, that in no
other part of the world is woman so uniformly treated with respect
and kindness, as in this very republic of ours; and yet, by all these
ominous faces, I perceive that it will not do for her to trust
herself in the streets of a village on a _festa_"
"You are not altogether wrong, in what you now say, Miss Effingham,
nor are you wholly right. Woman, as a whole, is well treated in
America; and yet it will not do for a _lady_ to mingle in scenes like
these, as ladies may and do mingle with them in Europe."
"I have heard this difference accounted for," said Paul Powis, "by
the fact that women have no legal rank in this country. In those
nations where the station of a lady is protected by legal ordinances,
it is said she may descend with impunity; but, in this, where all are
equal before the law, so many misunderstand the real merits of their
position, that she is obliged to keep aloof from any collisions with
those who might be disposed to mistake their own claims."
"But I wish for no collisions, no associations, Mr. Powis, but simply
to pass through the streets, with my cousin and Mademoiselle
Viefville, to enjoy the sight of the rustic sports, as one would do
in France, or Italy, or even in republican Switzerland, if you insist
on a republican example."
"Rustic sports!" repeated Aristabulus with a frightened look--"the
people will not bear to hear their sports called rustic, Miss
Effingham."
"Surely, sir,"--Eve never spoke to Mr. Bragg, now, without using a
repelling politeness--"surely, sir, the people of these mountains
will hardly pretend that their sports are those of a capital."
"I merely mean, ma'am, that the _term_ would be monstrously
unpopular; nor do I see why the sports in a city"--Aristabulus was
much too peculiar in his notions, to call any place that had a mayor
and aldermen a town,--"should not be just as rustic as those of a
village. The contrary supposition violates the principle of
equality."
"And do _you_ decide against us, dear sir?" Eve added looking at Mr.
Effingham.
"Without stopping to examine causes, my child. I shall say that I
think you had better all remain at home."
"_Voilà, Mademoiselle Viefville, une fête Americaine!"_
A shrug of the shoulders was the significant reply.
"Nay, my daughter, you are not entirely excluded from the
festivities; all gallantry has not quite deserted the land."
"A young lady shall walk _alone_ with a young gentleman--shall ride
alone with him--shall drive out alone with him--shall not move
_without_ him, _dans le monde, mais_, she shall not walk in the
crowd, to look at _une fête avec son père!_" exclaimed Mademoiselle
Viefville, in her imperfect English. "_Je désespère vraiment_, to
understand some _habitudes Americaines!_"
"Well, Mademoiselle, that you may not think us altogether barbarians,
you shall, at least, have the benefit of the oration."
"You may well call it _the_ oration, Ned; for, I believe one, or,
certainly one skeleton, has served some thousand orators annually,
any time these sixty years."
"Of this skeleton, then, the ladies shall have the benefit. The
procession is about to form, I hear; and by getting ready
immediately, we shall be just in time to obtain good seats."
Mademoiselle Viefville was delighted; for, after trying the theatres,
the churches, sundry balls, the opera, and all the admirable gaieties
of New-York, she had reluctantly come to the conclusion that America
was a very good country _pour s'ennuyer_, and for very little else;
but here was the promise of a novelty. The ladies completed their
preparations, and, accordingly, attended by all the gentlemen, made
their appearance in the assembly, at the appointed hour.
The orator, who, as usual, was a lawyer, was already in possession of
the pulpit, for one of the village churches had been selected as the
scene of the ceremonies. He was a young man, who had recently been
called to the bar, it being as much in rule for the legal tyro to
take off the wire-edge of his wit in a Fourth of July oration, as it
was formerly for a Mousquetaire to prove his spirit in a duel. The
academy which, formerly, was a servant of all work to the public,
being equally used for education, balls, preaching, town-meetings,
and caucuses, had shared the fate of most American edifices in wood,
having lived its hour and been burned; and the collection of people,
whom we have formerly had occasion to describe, appeared to have also
vanished from the earth, for nothing could be less alike in exterior,
at least, than those who had assembled under the ministry of Mr.
Grant, and their successors, who were now collected to listen to the
wisdom of Mr. Writ. Such a thing as a coat of two generations was no
longer to be seen; the latest fashion, or what was thought to be the
latest fashion, being as rigidly respected by the young farmer, or
the young mechanic, as by the more admitted bucks, the law student,
and the village shop-boy. All the red cloaks had long since been laid
aside to give place to imitation merino shawls, or, in cases of
unusual moderation and sobriety, to mantles of silk. As Eve glanced
her eye around her, she perceived Tuscan hats, bonnets of gay colours
and flowers, and dresses of French chintzes, where fifty years ago
would have been seen even men's woollen hats, and homely English
calicoes. It is true that the change among the men was not quite as
striking, for their attire admits of less variety; but the black
stock had superseded the check handkerchief and the bandanna; gloves
had taken the places of mittens; and the coarse and clownish shoe of
"cow-hide" was supplanted by the calf-skin boot.
"Where are your peasants, your rustics, your milk and dairy
maids--_the people_, in short"--whispered Sir George Templemore to
Mrs. Bloomfield, as they took their seats; "or is this occasion
thought to be too intellectual for them, and the present assembly
composed only of the _élite_?"
"These _are_ the people, and a pretty fair sample, too, of their
appearance and deportment. Most of these men are what you in England
would call operatives, and the women are their wives, daughters, and
sisters."
The baronet said nothing at the moment, but he sat looking around him
with a curious eye for some time, when he again addressed his
companion.
"I see the truth of what you say, as regards the men, for a critical
eye can discover the proofs of their occupations; but, surely, you
must be mistaken as respects your own sex; there is too much delicacy
of form and feature for the class you mean."
"Nevertheless, I have said naught but truth."
"But look at the hands and the feet, dear Mrs. Bloomfield. Those are
French gloves, too, or I am mistaken."
"I will not positively affirm that the French gloves actually belong
to the dairy-maids, though I have known even this prodigy; but, rely
on it, you see here the proper female counterparts of the men, and
singularly delicate and pretty females are they, for persons of their
class. This is what you call democratic coarseness and vulgarity,
Miss Effingham tells me, in England."
Sir George smiled, but, as what it is the fashion of me country to
call 'the exercises,' just then began, he made no other answer.
These exercises commenced with instrumental music, certainly the
weakest side of American civilization. That of the occasion of which
we write, had three essential faults, all of which are sufficiently
general to be termed characteristic, in a national point of view. In
the first place, the instruments themselves were bad; in the next
place, they were assorted without any regard to harmony; and, in the
last place, their owners did not know how to use them. As in certain
American _cities_--the word is well applied here--she is esteemed the
greatest belle who can contrive to utter her nursery sentiments in
the loudest voice, so in Templeton, was he considered the ablest
musician who could give the greatest _éclat_ to a false note. In a
word, clamour was the one thing needful, and as regards time, that
great regulator of all harmonies, Paul Powis whispered to the captain
that the air they had just been listening to, resembled what the
sailors call a 'round robin;' or a particular mode of signing
complaints practised by seamen, in which the nicest observer cannot
tell which is the beginning, or which the end.
It required all the Parisian breeding of Mademoiselle Viefville to
preserve her gravity during this overture, though she kept her bright
animated, French-looking eyes, roaming over the assembly, with an air
of delight that, as Mr. Bragg would say, made her very popular. No
one else in the party from the Wigwam, Captain Truck excepted, dared
look up, but each kept his or her eyes riveted on the floor, as if in
silent enjoyment of the harmonies. As for the honest old seaman,
there was as much melody in the howling of a gale to his
unsophisticated ears, as in any thing else, and he saw no difference
between this feat of the Templeton band and the sighings of old
Boreas; and, to say the truth, our nautical critic was not so much
out of the way.
Of the oration it is scarcely necessary to say much, for if human
nature is the same in all ages, and under all circumstances, so is a
fourth of July oration. There were the usual allusions to Greece and
Rome, between the republics of which and that of this country there
exists some such affinity as is to be found between a horse-chestnut
and a chestnut-horse; or that, of mere words: and a long catalogue of
national glories that might very well have sufficed for all the
republics, both of antiquity and of our own time. But when the orator
came to speak of the American character, and particularly of the
intelligence of the nation, he was most felicitous, and made the
largest investments in popularity. According to his account of the
matter, no other people possessed a tithe of the knowledge, or a
hundredth part of the honesty and virtue of the very community he was
addressing; and after labouring for ten minutes to convince his
hearers that they already knew every thing, he wasted several more in
trying to persuade them to undertake further acquisitions of the same
nature.
"How much better all this might be made," said Paul Powis, as the
party returned towards the Wigwam, when the 'exercises' were ended,
"by substituting a little plain instruction on the real nature and
obligations of the institutions, for so much unmeaning rhapsody.
Nothing has struck me with more surprise and pain, than to find how
far, or it might be better to say, how high, ignorance reaches on
such subjects, and how few men, in a country where all depends on the
institutions, have clear notions concerning their own condition."
"Certainly this is not the opinion we usually entertain of
ourselves," observed John Effingham. "And yet it ought to be. I am
far from underrating the ordinary information of the country, which,
as an average information, is superior to that of almost every other
people; nor am I one of those who, according to the popular European
notion, fancy the Americans less gifted than common in intellect;
there can be but one truth in any thing, however, and it falls to the
lot of very few, any where, to master it. The Americans, moreover,
are a people of facts and practices, paying but little attention to
principles, and giving themselves the very minimum of time for
investigations that lie beyond the reach of the common mind; and it
follows that they know little of that which does not present itself
in their every-day transactions. As regards the practice of the
institutions, it is regulated here, as elsewhere, by party, and party
is never an honest or a disinterested expounder."
"Are you, then, more than in the common dilemma," asked Sir George,
"or worse off than your neighbours?"
"We are worse off than our neighbours for the simple reason that it
is the intention of the American system, which has been deliberately
framed, and which is moreover the result of a bargain, to carry out
its theory in practice; whereas, in countries where the institutions
are the results of time and accidents, _improvement_ is only obtained
by _innovations_. Party invariably assails and weakens power. When
power is the possession of a few, the many gain by party; but when
power is the legal right of the many, the few gain by party. Now, as
party has no ally as strong as ignorance and prejudice, a right
understanding of the principles of a government is of far more
importance in a popular government, than in any other. In place of
the eternal eulogies on facts, that one hears on all public occasions
in this country, I would substitute some plain and clear expositions
of principles; or, indeed, I might say, of facts as they are
connected with principles."
"_Mais, la musique, Monsieur_," interrupted Mademoiselle Viefville,
in a way so droll as to raise a general smile, "_qu'en pensez-vous?_"
"That it is music, my dear Mademoiselle, in neither fact nor
principle."
"It only proves that a people can be free, Mademoiselle," observed
Mrs. Bloomfield, "and enjoy fourth of July orations, without having
very correct notions of harmony or time. But do our rejoicings end
here, Miss Effingham?"
"Not at all--there is still something in reserve for the day, and all
who honour it. I am told the evening, which promises to be
sufficiently sombre, is to terminate with a fête that is peculiar to
Templeton, and which is called 'The Fun of Fire.'"
"It is an ominous name, and ought to be a brilliant ceremony."
As this was uttered, the whole party entered the Wigwam.
"The Fun of Fire" took place, as a matter of course, at a later hour.
When night had set in, every body appeared in the main street of the
village, a part of which, from its width and form, was particularly
adapted to the sports of the evening. The females were mostly at the
windows, or on such elevated stands as favoured their view, and the
party from the Wigwam occupied a large balcony that topped the piazza
of one of the principal inns of the place.
The sports of the night commenced with rockets, of which a few, that
did as much credit to the climate as to the state of the pyrotechnics
of the village, were thrown up, as soon as the darkness had become
sufficiently dense to lend them brilliancy. Then followed wheels,
crackers and serpents, all of the most primitive kind, if, indeed,
there be any thing primitive in such amusements. The "Fun of Fire"
was to close the rejoicings, and it was certainly worth all the other
sports of that day, united, the gingerbread and spruce beer included.
A blazing ball cast from a shop-door, was the signal for the
commencement of the Fun. It was merely a ball of rope-yarn, or of
some other similar material, saturated with turpentine, and it burned
with a bright, fierce flame until consumed. As the first of these
fiery meteors sailed into the street, a common shout from the boys,
apprentices, and young men, proclaimed that the fun was at hand. It
was followed by several more, and in a few minutes the entire area
was gleaming with glancing light. The whole of the amusement
consisted in tossing the fire-balls with boldness, and in avoiding
them with dexterity, something like competition soon entering into
the business of the scene.
The effect was singularly beautiful. Groups of dark objects became
suddenly illuminated, and here a portion of the throng might be seen
beneath a brightness like that produced by a bonfire, while all the
back-ground of persons and faces were gliding about in a darkness
that almost swallowed up a human figure. Suddenly all this would be
changed; the brightness would pass away, and a ball alighting in a
spot that had seemed abandoned to gloom, it would be found peopled
with merry countenances, and active forms. The constant changes from
brightness to deep darkness, with all the varying gleams of light and
shadow, made the beauty of the scene, which soon extorted admiration
from all in the balcony."
"_Mais, c'est charmant_!" exclaimed Mademoiselle Vielville, who was
enchanted at discovering something like gaiety and pleasure among the
"_tristes Amêricains_," and who had never even suspected them of
being capable of so much apparent enjoyment.
"These are the prettiest village sports I have ever witnessed," said
Eve, "though a little dangerous, one would think. There is something
refreshing, as the magazine writers term it, to find one of these
miniature towns of ours condescending to be gay and happy in a
village fashion. If I were to bring my strongest objection to
American country life, it would be its ambitious desire to ape the
towns, converting the ease and _abandon_ of a village, into the
formality and stiffness that render children in the clothes of grown
people so absurdly ludicrous."
"What!" exclaimed John Effingham; "do you fancy it possible to reduce
a free-man so low, as to deprive him of his stilts! No, no, young
lady; you are now in a country where if you have two rows of flounces
on your frock, your maid will make it a point to have three, by way
of maintaining the equilibrium. This is the noble ambition of
liberty."
"Annette's foible is a love of flounces, cousin Jack, and you have
drawn that image from your eye, instead of your imagination. It is a
French, as well as an American ambition, if ambition it be."
"Let it be drawn whence it may, it is true. Have you not remarked,
Sir George Templemore, that the Americans will not even bear the
ascendency of a capital? Formerly, Philadelphia, then the largest
town in the country, was the political capital; but it was too much
for any one community to enjoy the united consideration that belongs
to extent and politics; and so the honest public went to work to make
a capital, that should have nothing else in its favour, but the naked
fact that it was the seat of government, and I think it will be
generally allowed, that they have succeeded to admiration. I fancy
Mr. Dodge will admit that it would be quite intolerable, that country
should not be town, and town country."
"This is a land of equal rights, Mr. John Effingham, and I confess
that I see no claims that New-York possesses, which does not equally
belong to Templeton."
"Do you hold, sir," inquired Captain Truck, "that a ship is a brig,
and a brig a ship."
"The case is different; Templeton _is_ a town, is it not, Mr. John
Effingham?"
"_A_ town, Mr. Dodge, but not town. The difference is essential."
"I do not see it, sir. Now, New-York, to my notion is not a _town_,
but a _city_."
"Ah! This is the critical acumen of the editor! But you should be
indulgent, Mr. Dodge, to us laymen, who pick up our phrases by merely
wandering about the world; or in the nursery perhaps, while you, of
the favoured few, by living in the condensation of a province, obtain
a precision and accuracy to which we can lay no claim."
The darkness prevented the editor of the Active Inquirer from
detecting the general smile, and he remained in happy ignorance of
the feeling that produced it. To say the truth, not the smallest of
the besetting vices of Mr. Dodge had their foundation in a provincial
education, and in provincial notions; the invariable tendency of both
being to persuade their subject that he is always right, while all
opposed to him in opinion are wrong. That well-known line of Pope, in
which the poet asks, "what can we reason, but from what we know?"
contains the principle of half our foibles and faults, and perhaps
explains fully that proportion of those of Mr. Dodge, to say nothing
of those of no small number of his countrymen. There are limits to
the knowledge, and tastes, and habits of every man, and, as each is
regulated by the opportunities of the individual, it follows of
necessity, that no one can have a standard much above his own
experience. That an isolated and remote people should be a provincial
people, or, in other words, a people of narrow and peculiar practices
and opinions, is as unavoidable as that study should make a scholar;
though in the case of America, the great motive for surprise is to be
found in the fact that causes so very obvious should produce so
little effect. When compared with the bulk of other nations, the
Americans, though so remote and insulated, are scarcely provincial,
for it is only when the highest standard of this nation is compared
with the highest standard of other nations, that we detect the great
deficiency that actually exists. That a moral foundation so broad
should uphold a moral superstructure so narrow, is owing to the
circumstance that the popular sentiment rules, and as every thing is
referred to a body of judges that, in the nature of things, must be
of very limited and superficial attainments, it cannot be a matter of
wonder to the reflecting, that the decision shares in the qualities
of the tribunal. In America, the gross mistake has been made of
supposing, that, because the mass rules in a political sense, it has
a right to be listened to and obeyed in all other matters, a
practical deduction that can only lead, under the most favourable
exercise of power, to a very humble mediocrity. It is to be hoped,
that time, and a greater concentration of taste, liberality, and
knowledge than can well distinguish a young and scattered population,
will repair this evil, and that our children will reap the harvest of
the broad fields of intelligence that have been sowed by ourselves.
In the mean time, the present generation must endure that which
cannot easily be cured; and, among its other evils, it will have to
submit to a great deal of very questionable information, not a few
false principles, and an unpleasant degree of intolerant and narrow
bigotry, that are propagated by such apostles of liberty and learning
as Steadfast Dodge, Esquire.
We have written in vain, if it now be necessary to point out a
multitude of things in which that professed instructor and Mentor of
the public, the editor of the Active Inquirer, had made a false
estimate of himself, as well as of his fellow-creatures. That such a
man should be ignorant, is to be expected, as he had never been
instructed; that he was self-sufficient was owing to his ignorance,
which oftener induces vanity than modesty; that he was intolerant and
bigoted, follows as a legitimate effect of his provincial and
contracted habits; that he was a hypocrite, came from his homage of
the people; and that one thus constituted, should be permitted,
periodically, to pour out his vapidity, folly, malice, envy, and
ignorance, on his fellow-creatures, in the columns of a newspaper,
was owing to a state of society in which the truth of the wholesome
adage "that what is every man's business is nobody's business," is
exemplified not only daily, but hourly, in a hundred other interests
of equal magnitude, as well as to a capital mistake, that leads the
community to fancy that whatever is done in their time, is done for
their good.
As the "Fun of Fire" had, by this time, exhibited most of its
beauties, the party belonging to the Wigwam left the balcony, and,
the evening proving mild, they walked into the grounds of the
building, where they naturally broke into groups, conversing on the
incidents of the day, or of such other matters as came uppermost.
Occasionally, gleams of light were thrown across them from a fire-
ball; or a rocket's starry train was still seen drawn in the air,
resembling the wake of a ship at night, as it wades through the
ocean.