Herald of the times. [volume] (Newport, R.I.) 1830-1846, 1834-07-31
[From the London Magazine
Better DAYS.

Better Days are like Hebrew Verbs,
they have no present tense they are of
the past or future only. "All that's bright
must fade" says Tom Moore. Very
likely; and SO must all that's not bright.
To hear some people talk, you would
imagine that there was no month in the
year, except November, and that the
leaves had nothing else to do, than to
fall off the trees. And, to refer again to
Tom Moore's song, about the " stars
that shine and Iall, " one might suppose
that by this time, all the stars in Heav-
en- had been blown out, like so many
iarthing candles in show-booth at Bar
tlemy fair; and as for flowers and leaves,
!. II they 90 away, it is only to make way
for new ones. There are as many stars
in Heaven, as ever there were in the
memory OF man, and as many flowers on
earth, too. 1t is all very well now and
then to have bit of a grunt or a growl,
or a grumble, or d lamentation but one
mend-laut is worth ten 6nd-iauts, all
the world over 1t is all right enough,
when the barometer Of the purse is low;
when the stomach is out of order; to say
that things are not as they used to be;
and / would not for the world deprive
an honest man Of the pleasure of fgrumb-
ling it is an Eng glishman's birlh-righ -
But l don't like to see a matter Of feel
ing, made matter Of history and philo-
sophie verify; let US have our growl, and
have done with it. But some croakers
remind one Of the boy who said his grand
mother went up stairs nineteen times a
day, and never came down again Or,
to seek for another resemblance, they
may be likened to the Irish grave-digger,
who was seen one night looking about
the church-yard, with lantern in his
hand. "What have you lost, Pat?'-
ooh, have lost my lantern" "You
have your lantern in your hand" ooh,
but this is lantern l've found il is not
lantern | have lost" Thus it is with
men in general: they think more of the
lantern they have lost, than Of the Ian
tern they have found. 1t is true, indeed
that things are not what they were with
} any Of US. Grea: changes have taker
place, and more daily taking place but
there are greater changes in our feel.
ings and apprehensions, than there are
in the external world, or in the genera
frame of society. What great change
must have taken place between the time
of the siege of Troy a1d the days Of Ho
msr; tor the poet speaks of Ajax pelling
the Greeks with stones of such bigness
that ten or dozen men of the dcgene
rate days in which Homer lived could
not lift such one. Ever since his time
) things have been growing worse ant
r worse, so that now, dare say, the hu
man race, compared to what it was dur
ing the siege Of Troy, is not much NOR,
than noble army ofgna:s. Nothing il
as 1t was; the people grow worse ano
worse, generation after generation, ant
the inhabitants ofthe earth become NOR,
and more altenuated, till at length there
will be nothing left Of them--they viii
, become gradually invisible. The SUI
does not shine so brightly as it used to
= and the seasons-every body says they
g e are changed. There is great deal o
= = truth IN thls--there is no denying it. =
But lhe worst OF the matter is, that ther,
: Is too much truth in il =. The evidenc,
OF the mutation of the seasons from you'll
: to manhood is so surpe REDUNDANT, that
! by proving too much, it pro.us nothing
Between the years l74O and 1850
. Horace Walpole wrote some letter
. which have since been printed and pub
lIshed. l have not copy now on ham
% to refer to; but distinctly remenbe
II reading in them a lamentalon on IN
change OF the seasons. The write
81 complains that on Midsummer day he
writing by the fire-sIde and he pettish
9 ly says, eve have now no summer j
IT this country, but what we get from New
castle;" and presently after he adds ,tbs
Z It was not so when he was young. No,
Think when Horace Walpole was young
% Dean Swift was old; and yet the Dea
&c makes the same complaint. Still NOR
curiously, the poet Cowper, writing abo,
forty years alter Horace Walpole, make
the same complaint, lamenting that ne
10 ther winters nor summers were such a
Is they used to be. Those who are no,
ID living, who were children when Gown,
ri complained that the summers were n,
,e 50 hot, nor the winters so cold as the
Us used to be, do now make the same con
= plant as he did then.
III In the year 1918, the summer was r,
p marhably fine and dry, and all the pc,
y pie began to cry out on the beauty
'e what they called an old fashioned sur
mer. To be sure i. was an old iashions