The Massachusetts spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1821-1823, 1821-09-19
From the :" Idle .Nan," published in N, York. ]
DOMES1TCK LEE.

0, friendly to the best pursuits of man
Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace
Domestick life. Copper.
II is but for a short part of life that
the world is a wonder and delight to US,
when its events are so many causes of
Joy and admiration. Tie mist of morn
ing soon breaks into little wreaths, and
is lost in the air; and the objects which
it drest in new beauties, are found to be
things of our common notice. 1t passes
off from the earth, and the fairy sea is
swallowed up, and the green islands,
scattered far and wide over it, are again
turned into tall trees and mountain brush
wood
In early life we are forever giving
objects the hue that best pleases us,
shaping and charging them as suits
our imagination. But the time comes
when we must look upon the unsightly
without changing it; and when the
hardness of reality makes US feel that
there are things not to be moulded to
our fancies. Men and their actions
were figured to our minds in extremes.
Giants and dwarfs peopled the world,
and filled it with deeds of heroick yir-
tue and desperate vice. All that we
looked forward to kept our spirits alive,
and our imagination found food for our
desires. At one time we were vain
glorious at our victories over magniti-
cent crimes; at another, bearing up
firmly against oppression with the hon
est and tried.
We come, at length, into the world
and find men too busy about their own
affairs to make those of another their
concern, and too careful of themselves
to go a fitting for another's right. Even
the bad have mixture in their charac-
Ter which takes away its poetick effect,
and we at last settle down in the dull
conviction that we are never to meet
with entire and splendid virtue, or I'M
mixed vice. With this sudden check up
on our feelings, we may live in the
world disappointed and estranged from
it, or become, like others, cold and
wise, putting on timidity for caution,
and sel6shness for prudence seeing the
wrong, yet afraid 10 condemn it; guard
ed in our speech, and slow in conduct:
Or, shaking ourselves loose of this n.y.
pocrisy Of life, we may let go with it the
virtues it mimicks and, despising the
solemn onset and formalites of society,
may break through its restraints, and
set decencies at defiance: Or, too wise
| to be vicious, and too knowing to be
moved, we may look with complacent
unconcern upon the errours of the
world forbearing TO shake the faith of
the religious, because it has its social
uses, or to point out the fallacies of
moral codes, because they serve the
same end
The virtuous tendencies Of our
youth might in this way run to vice, and
our early feelings grow cold were there
not in us affections of quieter nature,
resting on objects simple and near at
hand, receiving from one being more
delight than from thousand, and kin
ding light within US, making one spot
a perpetual brightness, and secretly
/ cheering US through life These affec-
tons are our domestick attachments,
which are refreshed every morning,
and grow daily under agentle and kind
ly warmth, making companionship for
what is lonely, leaving it all the distinct
ness and intenseness OF our highest SOL
itary joys. We may bring to our homes
all the hopes and expectations which
| shot up wild and disorderly in our young
imaginatiens, and, leaving them their
SAVIOUR and bright hues, may sort each
! with its kind, and hedge them round
with the close and binding growth of
family attachments. 1t is true, that this
reality has narrower range and an
evener surface than the ideal. Yet
| there is a rest, and an assured and vir-
tuous gladness in it, which make an har-
monious union of our feelings and fancies.
Women have been called angels, in
love-tales and sonnets, till we have al
most learned TO think of angels as little
better than women. Yet man who
knows woman thoroughly, and loves
her truly, (and there are women who
may be both SO known and loved will
| find, after few years, that his relish
for the grosser pleasures has lessened,
and that he has grown into fondness
for the intellectual and refined, without
an effort, and almost unawares. He has
been led on TO virtue through his
nloacuroe Tho doliUhfe of TIA QUO