us to recall his foibles, 'or draw his frailties from their dread
abode.' He did many a kindly act, and the blessing of the fatherless
rested upon his head.
But we have wandered from our subject, and it is too late to
resume it now. We believe there is much in that sterling democracy
of New-Hampshire, much of real gold, though it lack the guinea's
stamp, which has never been revealed to the world. Not only can all
that we have claimed for the _physique_ of those hardy yeoman be
incontestably proven, but it can be shown with equal clearness,
that in intellectual endowments and moral qualities they are seldom
equalled and never surpassed. And if, in some simple sketches of
these people and their progenitors, we can illustrate a page in our
national history which is yet unwritten; if we can impress upon our
own age the worth of those who lived before us, not for themselves
alone, but to achieve our independence; if we can show what they
were who framed the charter of our freedom, and what they would be
now in the agitations of this hurrying age, what they did and what
they would have us do, our 'chronicles' will not have been written
in vain.
SUNDAY AT PLYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS.
BY REV. WILLIAM B. TAPPAN.
'TIS good for us to rest to-day,
And keep the precept well;
'Tis good in village church to pray,
At warning of the bell.
'Tis good in fair and noble towns,
By brilliant thousands trod,
Or where the forests wear their crowns,
To stay and worship GOD.
'Tis is good upon the bounding seas
To pray with soul and lip;
God sees the sailor on his knees,
Aboard the merchant ship.
And _here_, where our forefathers sleep,
Who crossed of yore the waves,
'Tis good the Sabbath day to keep
Among their ancient graves.
'Tis good to dwell where they have dwelt;
'Tis good a while to stay
And pray at altars where they knelt,
As they were wont to pray.
Though from our rites the thoughtful eye
May wander where are seen
The tokens of the dead that lie
In ranks of summer green:
Who, while we wait upon the LORD,
That blessings may distil,
For us, their sons, keep watch and ward
On yonder silent hill:
We (as did they) in pilgrimage
Lean on these Sabbath hours;
Theirs, in each past eventful stage,
O present GOD, be ours!
THE TOP OF NEW-YORK.
BY S. W. MANSFIELD.
THREE frosts in succession; and now, with extra flannels, a day that
was omitted last summer is dropped down here by mistake; and nerves
that were braced up to a fine tone collapse to a broken fiddle. Men
rush at the soda-shops, looking daggers at each other, and women go
careless of corsets, and showing their natural color. Coal falls
off again; ice-creams go up; NIBLO has another 'crack night;' the
beggars are happy, and so am I.
Do you remember your first julep? The gradual mounting to the brain,
like the rush of joy to a sick heart that takes it doubtingly; the
quick grouping and glancing of thought from your ideality; the
uncorking of fancies bottled in your teens; and at last a sudden
ballooning of the whole head, that brings out the stars, and the
heavens opening, with angels passing to and fro, (Broadway always,
after a julep,) and you forget the dun of the morning, and the girl
that jilted you last night out of a week's passion. You forget her
as such, but you remember, rather you repeat, the heart-flutterings
of the first night; the hand gently withdrawn of the second; the
delicious half-embrace (interrupted) of the third; and the fourth,
body, soul, and lips, all melting innocently together, with pulses
and Fahrenheit mounting the hundred! If after that she gave you the
kiss coyly at the door, with ears up like an antelope's, and said
it was very naughty, you remember that her dress was too airy to
be disarranged; and ah! she's only timing you a little; and so God
bless her forever!
Not that such things happen; never. But the julep makes you think
so. Well, do you remember the charming confusion of that first
julep; its beautiful bewilderment; (I premise, of course, that it
surprised an unbrandied stomach;) and would you like to repeat the
sensation, without breaking your late pledge? 'Juleps be hang'd!'
says you. Very well, you are in trouble to-day. Your wife made you
get up first, and the world rolls the wrong way with you; the sun
rose in the west, you say. Exactly so. It rose to me, no'th-west
and a point off, only yesterday. (Lobster salad for supper; ten
devils and a young one for bed-fellows, and the universe knock'd
into a cocked hat; saw it myself; every star went past my window;
took an observation in the morning: sun in the north-west; the
needle running round like a kitten after its tail, and the earth
bound to the north star! Fact! Nobody knew it but me; but it's all
right now.) Well, the sun rose in the west; your children teething,
perhaps, and the nurse has a child of her own, just arrived; and you
think it probable that your wife has eloped with her cousin, who
urged you to marry her. Are any of these things so?--or, worst of
all imaginings, have you _breakfasted badly_? Then, Sir, _Come up to
the top of New-York_!
If you have strained your eyes, looking up, half a life-time, take
the stair-case, the easiest way in the world of getting up in it,
and look down, or overlook, as you like. We have a cream left, and a
dash of curacoa that colors better than strawberries. Come up, Sir,
and open your lungs to the original element; quick! or you'll be
carried away with the rush. A dam across Broadway for half an hour
would gather a Waterloo army.
Well, here you are; sit down, Sir, and don't shout, or you will have
a park-full looking at you, and probably an alarm of fire. Let the
people pass. We have been through the play, and found that the farce
in real life is the only tragedy. Keep your heart fresh, my young
boy, and away from shilling seductions. Pass on, children; we can't
'make believe' sufficiently to-day, and will just overlook you a
little. Fix your eye, Sir, upon that baboon coming out of a flue,
till your nerves steady a little, and think what a sweep of mind
he must have after the confinement of a chimney. You observe, the
world is neither before us nor behind, for we are atop of it. How
the eye blunders about amid the sea of house-tops, and what variety
of chimney architecture not meant for the eye! Now and then a spire
points up, like the stray pines of a southern barren, and outside
are the tops of the shipping, hedging in the city like bayonets.
Farther on, the white sails dash about in all directions, sweeping
past each other with the untouched precision of a street-walker,
bowing gallantly with a touch of the beaver. The steam-ferries cross
with the straight-forward bearing of a militaire, as though they
took no pleasure whatever in the goings-on; and here and there, with
sails all out, top-gallantly, a tall ship moves among the crowd,
with the emphasis of royalty.
Rather airy, up here! The cream of those small seas in the harbor
has cooled the breeze for us, and the light over all, unless the
sun-spots have grown since, is the unmixed original of the first
day. The groaning of the streets comes up softened occasionally with
a shout, or merry laugh, like a mocking-bird's in a menagerie; and
overhead, a few clouds float about, idle to all appearances, yet
each one is doing its errand of the morning, with a perfection far
beyond your particular range. Some are rolling over and over in the
sunshine; some just touching and parting, like women with dresses
too large to salute; and in the upper heavens, a few long fellows,
like ships upon the sea, are scudding in an entirely different
direction. Just as you are up or down in the world, Sir, will the
wind carry you.
Having looked about us, you may laugh or be sad, as you please. I
advise neither; but there below us is the material, from the smile
to the tear, and thousands of hearts now leaping to one or the
other. Some perhaps at this moment making their first exclamation in
the world, to large points of admiration from the just-made mother;
and some dropping a last broken word upon the bounds of another
world. Between these points are the variety of interjections, the
oh! ah! pish! pah! hurra! and Hallelujah! that make up human life.
There has been a lull for a while; and now New-York has dined, and
the soft pattering of feet tells us that beauty is thronging down
the pavé, to settle the dinner, and the pleasures of the evening.
Has your brain cooled? Take that glass, and tell me if the archangel
Gabriel has unsexed and fallen--into Broadway. How elate that
motion, as though she were walking on a mountain-top, and as the
whole world were beneath her, but not too far for her to be a part,
and the glory of it! Beauty and grace go with her, like sunshine
playing on a fountain. One who has just passed is sunning his
heart in the delusion that she looked at _him_. Poor fool! Her
thoughts are not promenading. Some things in this world are rather
riddlesome--rather. You would not say that sorrow had touched her
heart, and that passions are coiled there like serpents sucking her
very life-blood; some half-dead with gorging, and some casting their
coats for new life and vigor. Lost? As the star that is falling,
which nothing but the hand of God can stay! Follow her home, and as
the street-look is laid aside with her scarf, how sad that face!
Calm and still, with now and then a faint smile flashing over it;
but sheet-lightning, my dear Sir, for with her the storm had passed.
The flash shows the cloud, to be sure; and to-morrow's sun may nurse
it into more thunder; but these are unpleasant reflections. We
should not have looked down.
There comes another, whose heaven is in another part of the
universe, separate entirely. She needs study, like an old painting;
but even with that, you never would know her, unless you were of
the same Heaven. Her sweet voice would be like any other, with a
difference that you would wonder at, but never understand.
And now the up-towns have gone up again, and night comes on, with
the stars out in the upper heavens, and the lights as stars below.
Between two heavens will not do, when either can be reached.
'Ride _up_--Broad-w-a-y!' The boy has music in him. Good night to
the Top of New-York!
JULIAN.
THE BIRTH-DAY.
ANOTHER year is added to thy life,
And it hath left its impress; we can see
The change that one short year hath worked in thee;
In thy full eye, with deeper meanings rife,
And in thy form--a scarce expanded flower,
Just blushing into perfectness. Thy words,
The mingled melody of warbling birds,
Express maturer thoughts and deeper power,
And they too mark the change. O! may the day
That prompts these simple lines, ne'er bring the truth
That hearts like thine, in changing from their youth,
Can change in their affections; that I may
Keep it as now, from other days apart,
Shrined like a second Sabbath in my heart!
R. S. CHILTON.
_New-York, July, 1843._
THE EXILE'S SONG.
I HAVE sat in chambers rich and high,
When the haughtiest brow was smoothed in smiles,
When kindness warmed proud Beauty's eye,
And Art displayed its softest wiles;
But the forest wild was my delight,
At dawning gray and gathering night;
More joy had I in my leafy hall,
Than in fretted roof and storied wall.
I have knelt at the incense-shrine of Praise,
When a thousand voices chanted deep,
When the organ pealed, and the torches' blaze
Saw some in triumph, some to weep;
But higher rites have I partaken,
When Heaven with the tempest's wing was shaken,
When the forest blazed, and the lightning's dart
Quailed all but the wandering exile's heart.
In climes of softer air I've been,
And sat in bowers when the rose was blown,
When the leaf was yet in its freshest green,
And with one to love till then unknown;
But deeper raptures I have felt,
When by her rocky couch I knelt,
Who crossed for me the stormy main,
Content in one fond heart to reign.
A. M.
THE ELEMENTS OF A RELIGIOUS CHARACTER.
'BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM.'
WHAT are the elements and traits of a religious character? What
combinations of virtue and excellence, of principle and attainment,
enter into and form a character which answers to our conception of
religion? We think we can recognize and judge of such a character
when it appears before us as the result of a process, and therefore
our first thought is, that it would be easy to describe such a
character. We know and can respect such a character when we see it,
and therefore we might say it could not be difficult to tell how it
is to be formed, and of what elements and traits it must be composed.
But indeed it is not easy to describe a religious character, nor to
tell, on the moment, the combination and proportion of its virtues,
nor to analyze its parts. It is not easy, because character is
of itself a wonderful and a mysterious creation; its springs are
hidden, its processes are secret, its foundation and development
do not admit of close observation, and the power with which it
impresses us is rather realized than understood. And then the
religious elements of a character only increase the difficulty of
exhibiting its construction and its power. And then again there
has grown up such a difference of estimate, such a variance in
opinion among men, as to what religion is, what it enjoins, what it
allows, what it approves, that we may indeed number it among the
acknowledged impossibilities, to portray the ideal of a religious
character to the satisfaction of any large number of persons. What
different models are held up for our imitation! As we trace back
the burthened history of two thousand years, we perceive that very
different traits have been insisted on, and various excellences
required. Stress has been laid upon one or another virtue;
illustrious homage has been offered in different generations to
characters quite in contrast with each other. Indeed, the civilized
world now reveres alike some departed worthies as joined in the
communion of saints, who if on earth together would have mutually
denied each other's claims to any measure of regard.
Call up from their graves the departed worthies of their own day,
the robed and transfigured memorials of distant times; let the long
line of the revered dead pass in imagination before you, and as
they pass, read their titles. The difference between a smile and a
tear, between martyrdom and a triumph, between a smile of joy and
a pang of agony, between a feast and a fast, is not greater than
the difference in model and standard of character in those whom we
agree in calling religious men. The saint from the dreary caverns
of Africa leads the line. His bones start from his attenuated skin;
even the skin is worn away from his knees by frequent prayer; his
body is wasted by fasting, watching, and scourging: he has been the
companion of beasts, the prey of vermin; he has seen it may be for
half a century no human face or form. There was the standard of a
religious character for him, and for his age. Next in the line is
the monk; renouncing what is good, and commanding what is wicked;
possessing the virtues of a cloister, and the fancied holiness which
has made itself necessary to supply the place of real holiness. And
then the monk was accounted worthy. But with his well-kept vows, and
the well-worn record of his prayers, the monk retires into shadow
with the saint, and a saint of a different aspect fills the eye. He
comes as a dignitary of the church, bowed down with gold and jewels;
with armies at his command, and holiness for his title. His garments
are suffused with the odor of incense; millions fall prostrate and
do reverence even to his feet with a kiss. He is anointed in life,
and canonized at death. He lived in a gorgeous palace, he sleeps in
a costly shrine. But while the pilgrim is on his way to that shrine,
another ideal of the religious character passes before the mind;
and then there appears before the eye one who is called a pious and
godly man. He is the Puritan of ancient days. He comes with sad and
austere looks, yet with a kind and tender heart, only we do not see
the heart, because he wishes to be known by the face, which his
close-cut hair brings into full view. A laugh to him is mockery;
luxury is but a feasting of the adversary of souls; amusement is
impiety; outward ceremonial is blasphemy. The offices of religion in
one perpetual round, cases of conscience, large and little volumes
of dry divinity, and rigid family government, are the sacrifices
which he offers to God. He leaves his home that he may thus worship.
He raises his psalm of deliverance in the wilderness, and at death
he rests beside the roots of a forest-tree in a grave not without a
memorial. And he was the religious character of his day. And as the
shades of the departed fall back into mystery, we find ourselves
surrounded by groups of the living, who arrange themselves under the
different standards which they recognize for the religious character.
These standards might fitly be inscribed with the mottoes,
'Morality, Ordinances, Faith;' for from the one or the other of
these titles come the different models for the religious character.
Practical goodness, cheerful, kind and ready sympathy for the
suffering, uprightness in dealing, blamelessness in example, these
constitute the highest religious character for some. The observance
of seasons or rites, the literal fulfilment of the terms of
ordinances, is the great essential for the completeness of religious
character to others. Then justification by faith, an embrace
of doctrinal formularies, a fixed and constant and unresisting
submission to a covenant which suspends mercy, is the standard for
others. These are the prevailing standards of a religious character
now. Of course, if they exist, they are in some quarters insisted
upon, and the differences must constantly appear in the various
estimates formed by religious persons. These diverse standards
have likewise been chosen in the light of experience, of long
experience, and in full view of all those ancient models which we
have contemplated.
Now from this survey of the strange contrasts presented to us, as
exhibiting the ideal of a religious character in different places
and generations, and among us now, we might at first judge that
there was in reality no true standard, but that it was all a matter
of fancy, combined somewhat with the aspects and emergencies of
society; that a religious character was no fixed, well-ascertained,
and established existence. Yet, after all, this standard has been
by no means so diverse as it would seem. For a deeper search proves
to us, that the same qualities of heart have been seeking for
expression by the most widely different manifestations. Change the
skin and drop the body with its worn knees, its sordid or its golden
robes, its rigid features, or its gay smiles, and the elements of
Christian excellence, if they exist, will appear the same in all,
divested of the local peculiarities of age and generation. Indeed,
true Christian goodness, excellence of character, is like the water,
the emblem of renewal and grace; water, as diffused over the earth,
differing every where by elevation and clime. Here it is frozen into
mountains of ice, there it issues as boiling vapor from the earth;
it is scanty and brackish in the desert, profuse and clear in the
green woods; here it is borne along in torrents; there it trickles
in dancing rills; here it is buried in deep wells, there it oozes
from full fountains; every where it is different, but every where
it is water, and every where it is the element of life. Such is
goodness, true excellence of character every where, apart from the
peculiarities of age and clime.
Now by all this we are helped in discerning the elements of a
religious character. The common consent of men amounts to little
more than an allowance that a religious character must be formed
out of a common character by two processes; the one a process of
denial, the other a process of culture. And this indeed is the key
to our whole subject, the solution of the great question which
we have proposed, as to the standard of a religious character.
There is an element of denial, and an element of culture, in a
religious character; that is, a human character is made religious
by renouncing something, and by attaining something. A religious
character is to be formed out of a common character with some new
materials; it is to part with something of its earthly organization;
something of passion, weakness, and low desire, and to endue itself
with something of heavenly grace and essence; turned from darkness
unto light, from the power of Satan unto God.
Self-denial and culture, renunciation and attainment, are the two
great processes by which a religious character is to be formed,
and which, when applied, decide its elements. Yet there is a work
which precedes and accompanies these processes, and that work
is discipline; discipline, the agency which forms a religious
character. The first essential then in a religious character is,
that it be the subject of discipline; of discipline varying in the
intensity of its struggles; in the difficulty, the amount, the
protraction of its efforts, according to the natural differences
of individuals, but always discipline; self-knowledge and
self-control, strong in its formed purpose, resolute in pursuing it.
A religious character was never of spontaneous growth, nor acquired
unconsciously. It is known to the heart through all its stages. It
is based upon spiritual convictions; it crosses many natural wishes;
it embraces prospects which lie beyond the grave. These are elements
of thought, of action, of life, which never come by chance, or by
mere good influences around an individual. They vary in degree
and strength in individuals, but are conscious possessions to all
who share them. Self-discipline is a work which summons all our
faculties, purposes, knowledge, resolutions, and efforts; it has its
weary hours; its seasons for starting anew with quickened strength
and zeal.
The prominent feature of a religious character is, that it has
been the subject of discipline; that it is itself the result of
discipline; has been wrought upon, formed, and established by
discipline. In such a character we expect that every element
shall declare effort and principle. The man or the woman, called
religious, must bear about them the proof that they are what they
are, as the result of an intention. We expect to see in a religious
character distinctions and differences which we do not look for in
the common standard of character. Nor only this; we expect also that
these differences should appear as the results of a good purpose
well-endeavored; a foundation, a life, a growth, consecrated by
high intentions to the highest uses and for the highest aims. This
is a truth which cannot be too strongly urged or insisted upon.
A religious character ought to strike every one as the result
of conscious effort; a work begun and in progress; a diamond in
the process of being polished in the only way in which it may be
polished, by other diamonds. Discipline, visible in its intention
and work, this is the first of all essentials. This discipline will
be strongly marked by two processes, a process of self-denial, and a
process of culture; of renunciation and attainment. Of the fruits of
these processes a religious character must largely partake; yet it
is scarcely possible to describe in particulars the entire operation
as it appears in the result.