Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1853-06-18
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.
aYoUNG AMERICA


ca, we extract the suboned very just and forcible
passages
There is in this country consuming passion Tor gam
The nation is mad rushes with incredible aydity af
speculaons or works sixteen hours day that it may
have the means of senseess prousion and gtering
friyoty Never there less ayaricous people Here
foreigners fall into their great and enduring The
nation in this in every thing, ezrauogan peo
pie ever were from the beginning hitherto This can be
shown in many ways For example, imports last
year upwards of two hundred millions of money
and this fora young people Of only twenty three millions
who have not yet cut down hundredth part the prime
val forest trees broken up than fragment
prairies that have been accommodating rich vegetable mould
since the flood We tried pay for these imports, and
so sent abroad every production Of the soil that Europe
would take, and then added forty millions of specie
and still the balance of trade of millions against
US These immense imports in great part conse-
quence Of our extravagant living In the old world and
Ia ancient times few mobiles and merchants princes
and the masses humble and frugal perforce; but
here is whole people struggling be only political
soveregns, but to live in luxury like the peerage Of Eng
land Our remarks have neither aristocratic
mocratic bearing We do not think the glory of is
to live in fine house with gded furniture, of which the
eye tires and with army of who endessy
troublesome If any body chooses to claim an equality
with the peerage we have quarrel with him. What
saying is, that country physically support
hundreds Of thousands of palaces and that the exraya
which desires is madness and folly Whether there
ought be any palaces costing money hundred thou
sand not deciding 1t is difficult for theology
reach this evil for mode of thinking beneath like those
commissions of which geology tells upheaves theology
and the seethng forever takes forms of strug
gle, enterprise, competition luxury corruption 1t is
miserable ambition to toll oneself death, not have
as Wordsworth expresses it, plain living and high think
ing, not to have happy cultivated and refined family
around one not to have the appliances of pleasant
ciabty with friends and acquaintance have the
means Of intellectual Improvement, of enlarged useful
ness of wide intercourse with the noble and the gift
ed but merely to appear highly respectable to make the
show OF being rch to fill rooms, scarcely used with
costly furniture to crowd house twice year
with of people whose claim be the best socie
ty rests merely their keeping up the appear
ances Yet this is the object for which, in great part
urban America labors and tolls, which it sacrifices
thousand things of far Importance Fashion yran
nizes well as women and conventonalities
that really likes freeze up the lifeblood of the
nation. The result is almost Incredible when fairly
analyses the life of people They alternate between
solitude and crowds They fill the and public We
hcles; they crowd churches ecture-rooms, concerts
theatres they ostle each other change in business
places and along fashionable walks they whrl around
in the ntoxicaton of the dance or exchange nane COM
pliments with hundreds of people ball party The
remainder of their time is spent in almost absolute so
tude at home and those who dislike this crushing publ
city find medium between that and solitary
reading the society alone of their family Is there
not more excellent way? Is there such thing as mo-
deraton? Is the common which claim as our
characteristic to have influence in moulding the
ners of people, Must forever senseessly initiate
foolish foreign manners Must men live in the most cost
y luxury until three out of four fail business and then
hide their heads in obscure place if, though still
honest men, they had done some shameful deed?
In word is it possible to have moderation and common
sense pervading our land?
Internal improvements characteristic Of time
and within reasonable limits noby characteristic. But
can be casually acquainted with the opera
tons of the country without seeing extravaganza here
also. Postery may be assured will look with amaze
these times. The velocity railway train may
be fearful and yet by custom we forget the immense
speed At the city Of Dayton in Ohio found recently
constructed and constructing nearly dozen railroads
At Indianapolis, in Indiana, the is still ex
IRENE; and at Chicago in Illinois fairly wearied out
gave trying to understand the projects Some of these
roads hundreds of miles long and oil in States
yet in infancy, most in extreme youth But this is
not excitement enough. Men toing to invent new
plans for business and open for trade An
American heard has just taken pine
spars Oregon for the Dutch navy The only question
touching railroad to the PACING Is which OF hall dozen
routes shall be taken, and years may witness
three or four roads, thousands of miles long, running pa
rallel to each other commenced almost simultaneously
We have recently heard that lot thirty five feet by
venty fve rented in Eastern city for twenty years
at fourteen thousand dollars year The earth is NOV
ing at fearful velocity around the sum- and yet
to be standing STILL rate that AngloSaxon seems
slow to of any other mnges sky and earth to-
gether, and turns his brain into idiocy.
I" The increase of unacy in this country is another
frghtfu indication of the mad extravaganza of the peo
pie No wonder indeed that in a single State they
have built building three lunatic asylums. The
whole land viii be lunatic asylum If from quarter,
from experience observation from craftsmanship or
scholarship from the pulpit the Bible learn
degree of moderation. The lawyer speaks until he
is exhausted, and recruits perhaps with fiery stimulus of
the worst kind though called by foreign name the
merchant home too much night con-
verse with his family and lays himself sofa until he
is reused to go into deeper sleep in his chambers the
young and delicate girl is driven through system of ed
ucaon intensely rapid and exciting without any suitable
physical exercise and then fades every remaining vesge
Of in her cheek by late and unceasng dsspa
tion to break off suddenly and senseessly shortly after
she is married. from oil society and labor until she is
scarcely able to walk in work that if things regua
ted in reasonable way, might and would be done
mainly by servants the young aternates from ex
hausting business to exhausting revery and the minis
of rospel works and with intense