Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1852-12-25
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.
CHRISTMAS.

IAAlSo 1HiS.
In order to form just estimation of the charaC
ter of any particular people, says Mr.. Joseph Strut
in his "Sports and Pastimes Of the People of Eng
lane" it is absolutely necessary to investigate th
amusements most generally prevalent among them
Person used to say that single Athenian newspa
per would be worth all the Commentaries on Arts
tophanes, revealing to us as it would the laily di
versions and social habits Of the Attic metropolis
The games and pastimes of country afford US, il
fact, measuring unit by which we can gauge the
whole civilization and social development of the
people. 1t was a favorite saving of Bacon's that
from one portion of human knowledge you can infer
all the rest and that one fact involves all other
facts and such indeed is the nice adjustment of old
Father Times loom and shuttles that the web he
weaves is always uniform in its tissue As in his
tory, which Shelley calls s'the web of human
things" so in Nature there is this same correlation
between the great and the small in her vast frame,
which enables to trace and infer the one from
knowledge Of the other; insomuch that the capil-
larry attraction which draws from the earth the mos-
ture that supports vegetable life and which diuses
the quickenng sap through the furthest branch and
the topmost twig is just great as it is, and no
greater in order to overcome the force of gravita-
ton in the earth. The old Platonic dogma which
taught the eimmanence of All in Each" is true in
the highest ar the widest sense. To speak la
Emerson, eFeE thing IN nae3Te and in,hktory sub
tends the SAND angle, 50 ina given one of its sides,
we can then define the entre)fgure. In plain Eng
lish and todescaad from general to the particular
given the amuseents Of people, we furnish
luton of the entirc status of that people, almost
exactly as Agassz deneate the entire structure
and aquatic habits of fish, given one Of his scales
You can best understand the Grecians at the Olym-
pie games and the Theatre of Bacchus: the Ro-
mans In the Campus Martius, along the Via Sacra
on holyday Triumph, and, at later PERIOD in the
bloody arena of gladiatorial combatants; the very
cage and body" of medieval Europe is best scan
ned at jousts and tournaments and courts of love-
The history of the English race, as our readers
know, derives some of its most pictorial pages from
the sports and pastimes which have characterized its
various epochs. In the earliest times of which we
are informed, we find our crude forefathers' espe-
cally addicted to the cratic of huntynge," to which
was subsequently added the sport of hawking Sin
Thomas More, who wrote in the reign of Henry
VIII describes it being the chief delight Of
hood, seven unto his daye,"
To hunt and hawke to noursh up and fede
The greyhounde to the course and the hawke tn fight
And to bestryde good and lusty stede.
Archery, we need not say, was an art in which thu
English excelled all their rivals, and how effectv,
of war is sufficiently attested by the victory of Ores
sy. Much information as to the recreations of oul
ancestors during the 18th century may be culled
from the quaint old pages of Burton in his g Anato
my of Melancholy" Ringing, bowling, shooting
playing with keel-pins, tronks, colts pitching Of
bars, hurting, wrestling, leaping running fencing
mastering, swimming, playing with MASTERS, foils
footballs, balowns, running at the qunain, and the
like, he describes as the common recreations oil
country folks: "rding of great horses, running al
rings, tits and tournaments, horseraces, and wild
goose chases," he considers disports of greater
men, which though good in themselves yet many
gentlemen by such means do gallop quite out o
their fortunes" Dancing, singing, masking, mum
ming, and stage plays, he thinks, are reasonable
recrcatons, if in season, as are May-games, wakes
and Whitson-ales, if not at unreasonable hours ,
Let the common people, he concludes, "freely feast
sing, dance, have puppet shows, hobby-horses, ia
bers, and crowds let them play at ball and bar
ley-brakes let them have TESTERS masks gladiators
tumblers, and jugglers, lest the people do wors
than attend them" The disuse Of such entertain
ments, he fears, would result in the general preys
lence of melancholy in $50 foggie an island a
Great Britain.
If the sports and pastimes Of nation afford us
cew to the discovery of Its native genius and ira
ditional history, the absence or disappearance o
There are others among us than the mere anti
quarian who look with regret upon the decay o
those numerous ancestral observances which ono,
obtained in "merrie England" At the risk o.
being deemed as fusty and mculdy as the little par
son Of Bracebridge Hall, we must candidly avow
that even the old supersttons of our Supplemented
forefathers have often for higher interest and
deeper import than we have found in the philo
sophie truth which in this boastful 10Th century
we have lived to learn" Fauns and sylphs anC
household spres the elves and the fairies, OberoI
and Queen NAB, "liye no longer in the faith o
reason !" the charming race, as Schiller says, ha
emigrated Even in Chaucer's time, when the earl
twilight Of our midday had just begun to dawn, W
find the elves disappearing from each sunny hill an
grassy vale. 1t is his " Wife of Bath" who thu
ignores their existence In her day
In old dayes Of the King Artour
OF which that Bretons spoken greet honour,
All was this lond fulfilled Of faerie;
The Elf-Quene with hir jolie companie
Daunsed full oft in many creme mede;
This was the old opinion, as 1 rede
spoke Of many hundred yeres agoe,
But now can no man see non elves mo.
For now the CRETE charlie and prayers
OF limitours and other holy freres
That serchen every ond and every streme,
As thk as notes In the sunne- beme-
This maketh that there ben faeries:
For there as won't 10 walken was an elfe,
Where walketh now the lmitour himself.
But if the tiny divinities Of the Fairy Mytholog
have been thus exercised by the "grete charlie an
prayers" Of the holy orders belonging to the ne,
religion the Progress" has left still further benin