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

What wonder that its hoary traditions should b
secuted when 9 Young America" is progressing
towards its " manifest destiny" in the Brobdignag
gian steps off "young giant" and With break
neck speed that never pauses to look hck? In al
j age Of fast men" and faster childrenw we must no
look for the contempatve virtues Of oar sand-stil
grandsires. Theirs was the age of household chart
ties and unsophisticated sentiment The genia
currents of the soul had not vet been taught to flow
in the artificial channels of fashionable caste, mol
had warm emotions been thrust int, the patent
freezers Of convention. Society among them had
its individual traits and peculiarites is diosyncra
sizes, if you please; put nowadays it has been
| stretched on Procrustes' bed, or, b change the
figure been reduced to the gregarious equality that
obtains in a hogshead of black-eycd pas.
| We have said that the festive hoIprs once rem
dered to Christmas have been impaired by eeogra-
phical discovery and overgrown by scientific pur-
suits. We wish to make clear the csnnexion be-
tween this effect and its causes and, firstly, we
maintain that geographical explorations have weak
ened the popular faith in the harmless myths con-
nected with this festival. Man is ever iadisposed
to bring his ideal creations within the BALE and
precincts of his own senses. He ascribes b them a
residence and origin in scenes remote from human
observation. Mark how the mythical element ex-
pands in the old Homeric Odyssey, as Ulysses wan
ucio III Ills oulWdiu-ucuuu NOJdAc anu IuT-
ther from his island home and how it entirely dis
appears on his "homeward-bound' as he approaches
the shores Of Ithaca. Poetic yertimiltude requires
that the divinities of the fable-vorld should make
their home in some secluded haunt, where the foot
of man has never trodden they fly before he pro-
gress Of civilization and forsake the hill aid dale
the forest and the mead, "payed fountain and the
rushy brook" where man has come with the axe
and the ploughshare And thus it is that the old
English elves and woodland sprites have been star
tied from their fairy land and thus, too, have the
antique superstitions connected with what may Be
called the Christian mythology become as effete as
the Eleusinian mysteries Shall we lament this |?
Perhaps we ought not; but the question arises why
has Imagination been given to man if it is not a
faculty to be exercised? And if it is to be exer-
csed hoU is it to be exercised in youth the only De-
Rod in which it is vigorous, buoyant and opucnt?
| Scientific study and discovery have still mon
powerfully fastened the eclipse Of the popular
faith in the holyday duties and weakened the
popular observance Of the holyday rites The
study Of science has conduced to this result, be-
cause it engenders in the minds of votaries a
disrelish for every thing that cannot be weighed,
measured, and utilized. Scientific discovery has
tended in the same direction because it has driven
the Imagination from its own ground, by evoking,
as with magic wand, the wonderful realities which
have transcribed its highest flights. Science has
scattered from her apron richer treasures and more
wondrous products than fancy ever DRAINED of in
the cornucopia of Fortune. We have all read Of
the sweetsinging canary that pinned away and died
because the mockingbird by initiative strains, ex-
celled its native melody; even so it would seem as
if Imagination dropped in despair at the rivalry Of
Science, which, like the rod of Moses, has swallowed
up the incantations with which once it charmed
the nations. If Puck, in I" NIidsummeFs Night
Dream of Shakspeares dreaming, could only
promise impatient Oberon to
| Put girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes,
our Morse would now contract to I" do the jdb +" in
less time than the glibbes tongue could abbrviate
that synonym for quickness the name of Mr. Robin
son, called Jack tfor short" To show the old pa
triarch " in the land of Uz F" the imbecility of hu
man power in his day, the question was put to him,
"Cans't thou send lightnings that they go and say
unto thee, here are we? ?" There are a thousand
telegraph operators in country and in our day
who could with all truth and reverence answer Yes
The life of the moderns is, in fact passed in the
midst Of world that would be visionary if it were
not real amidst things as strange says Nacauay
as any that are described in the ARABIAN Tales,
or in those romances on which the curate and the
barber of Don Quixote's village performed so crue
an auto-da-te; amidst buildings more SUMPTION.
than the palace of Aladdin; fountains more won
derful than the golden water of Parizade; convey
ances more rapid than the hippogryph of Ruggiero
arms more formidable than the lance Of Astolfo
remedies more eficacious than the balsam of Fera
bras Thus has it come to pass that fact has out
stripped fancy, and Imagination, tired of the race
contents herself with picking up the golden ball.
that Science has dropped by the way as she presses
onwards and still EDWARDS.
If the scientific wonders of Watt, an Arkwright
Fulton, and Morse have thus transcended thu
entertainments of a Merlin and Michael Scott, Of
the widest imaginings of later romance why it may
be asked cannot the miracles of science afford tn,
desired pabuum for the nurture and inauguration o
the Imagination Simply for the reason we reply
that these miracles soon cease to be miraculous
They are the wonders of day, and from their very
nature lack that essential element Of mystery il
which the poetic fancy delights to embathe itself
There is nothing occult in the products of science
so that, while they strike the imagination by thei
grandeur and their beauty, they yet leave it NJ
room in which to play. Every thing is fixed, de
terminate, and patent so that, after all, it is thu
practical reason which science has expanded until i
has oyerlapped what was before deemed the peculia
province and domain of the "vision and the facult,
divine" 1t the task of imagination to body forth
!" the form of things unknown !" it is the task o
science to leave nothing unknown that is movable
the one acts most powerfully in the twilight of civi
lization, the other in its full midday beam the on
is conversant with the IDEAL the other with the real
the one moves in a sphere above this terrene dust
bin" the other gores to be child of the earth anc
a vassal Of man.
Thus, while this age of power-looms, magnets
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