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


hast bro't in pack Of practical fanatics, VIZ ig
norants, atheists, papists, drunkards, swearers
swash-bucklers, maid-marIions, morrice-dancers
maskers, mummers, May-poe stealers, health
, drinkers, gamesters, lewd-men, light women, con
temners Of magistrates, affronters of ministers re
bellious to masters, disobedient to parents, mis-
spenders Of time, aud abusers of the creature, &c
A cavalier poetaster, on the other hand thus pill
tories the q straitlaced Puritancals :"
These teach that Dancing is Jezabel,
And Barey-Brea the ready road TO Hell;
The Morrice- Idols, Whtsun ales can be
But prophane reliques of jubilee;
There is real T. espresso how much they do
The Organs hate-haye silenced Bagpipes too;
And harmless May4poles all are rallied upon,
As if they we're the tow of Babylon"
Rdadolphs Poems, 1916.
In the same strain after the Restoration, is the
following, quoted by Brand, from volume bearing
the omnous title of the sWelsh Leyite tossed in a
Blanket" London, 1851:
- remember the blessed times when every thing in the
World that displeasing and offensive to the Brethren
went under the name of horrid abomnabe Popish Su-
perstton Organs, and Maypoles, Bishops Courts and
the Bear Garden SUPPLIES and Long HAIR Cathedrals
and Play Houses Set Forms and Painted Glass Fonts and
Apostle Spoons Church Musick and Bull Batting, Altar
Rails and Rosemary Brawn-nay, Fddles, Wilson
ale, Pig at Bartholomew Fair, Plum Porrige, Puppet
Shows Carriers Bells Figures in Gingerbread and at
last Moses and Aaron the Decalogue the Creeds and the
an Angel, and Bishops Head could be endured
much as in Sign. Our Carriers Bellows, and Warming
Pans wore gody Notices, our Bandboxes were lined with
wholesome Instructions and even our Trunks with the
Assembly mems Sayings. Ribbons converted into
Bible Strings Nay in ZEAL visited the Gardens
and the Apothecarys Shops Unguentum AposoAeum,
Carduas bensdictus, Angsca, 81. Johns Wort and Our
Lady's Thistle summoned before Class and COM
manded TO take Names; Of course unsainted the
| Apostles"
What the overstrained zeal of the Puritans COM
menced modern refinement has finished; so that, to
employ the grateful language of Irving, the tradi-
tonary customs of goldenhearted antiquity its feu
dial Inequalities and lordly wassaings, have passed
away with the baronial castles and stately manor
houses in which they were celebrated. They com
ported with the shadowy hall, thesgreat oaken gal
lery, and the tapestred parlor but are untitled for
the light snowy saloons and gay drawingrooms of
the modern villa. Society, he well says, has ac-
has lost many Of its strong local peculiarities, its
hemebred feelings, its honest Preside delights The
world has become more worldly.
1t is apparent that the tendency of modern civil
izaton is to educate the reason at the expense Of
every other faculty the Imagination meanwhile
has been Overland by useful knowledge" and " sci
entifc facts, UNTIL to borrow an illustration from
the exploded mythology of the elves and fairies, it
has become tongue-tied, stunted and diotic, like
the little changeng child, which "some night-trip-
ping fairy" has left in place of the aninosas
i infans," the sprightly boy: thus has Fancy been
stolen away from the Paphian bowers in which she
was wont to disport, and is changed into weakly
and starveling Elf
-" fairy thee unweeting reft
There as thou slep's in tender swadling band
And her base lin brood there for thee left"
Let not the reader suppose that we intend to in
dulge ourselves in homiy against the progress of
science because it has made havoc among the light
and aerial creations of romantic fancy, or because
it has dispelled the wonders of wonderloving age
Still it may be permitted us to doubt whether the
habit of seeking scientific exploitation of every
phenomenon in nature and history may not be in
sensibly sealing up fountains Of pleasure which we
can i'll afford to lose. If there be any sentiment
which is adapted more than another to- chill the tides
Of emotion at their source and freeze the natural
outgushings of the human heart it is that very nil
adn,rdri spirit which has been quckened into life
by the developments Of modern science. The i'm
, pressional and emotional elements in our natur,
have been constantly held in check BY the practi
cal and the philosophical, that they hardly b,
reckoned any longer among the categories of modern
$ mind Those of US who are pretty well advanced
in years can revert in memory to the period when
4 the world seemed to us one huge sphinx wonder
of wonders, in which every thing was wondrous
The mobile fancy was then quick to people all space
" with life and mystical predominance," and as I'm
agination bodied forth the forms of things un-
known" it was not perhaps the poets pen," but
the youthful ardor Of vivid fancy" which gave to
our airy nothings "a local habitation and name !"
1t is just such an experience as this that Words
worth, the poet of Nature has described in his sub
FINEST ode on the limitations Of immortality, from
recollections of early childhood:
Heaven lies about us in our infapcyi
Shades Of the prison-house begin TO close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he behOlds the light and whence it flows,
He sees ii in his Joy;
The Youth who daily farther from the East
Must travel, still is Natures Priest,
7 And BY the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives il die away,
: And fade into the light Of common day.
1t is pleasant to reflect that there are those among
us who can remember the time when there were
boys and girls upon their earth if it were not so we
might with reason have suspected that their exist
ence was almost apocryphal as that Of the lubber
fends and genial divinities Of the old Teutonic my
thology. There are no children nowadays. The
miss who has scarcely been emancipated from the
nursery, speaks in the language of one who has be-
come Jlasee with lifes joys and sorrows, and fances
that there is no longer any thing left to her worth
knowing she is afflicted with eann because We
suppose, she has learned that the earth is hollow
and has discovered that her doll is stuffed with bran
} and sawdust The young master, impatient Of re
straint selfcon6dent and aspiring, addicts himself
to PHILOSOPHY insport," cuts open his drum to
/ where the noise comes from, and then whnes and