Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1858-08-07
NJ | S c L L L A N Y.
THE POCKET CELEBRATION. ="

LIE fUChEl CELEbhAI1UN.
The atlantic Monthly for August, attends to
the case of Mr.. Choate, in very pointed, bril-
liant, caustc but not ill-natured, and every way
excellent review of his recent Grafton at Boston.
We extract from it freely below, and should be
glad if our limits allowed us, to copy it in full
The article opens with an amusing sketch of the
change which has gradually come over the man.
ner of celebrating the "glorious Fourth The
first stage was the "era of good feeling" when
there was common and universal enjoyment
of the occasion. "Gradually," says the review
er, "matters took new course the Union was
suddenly supposed to lie at the point of disso-
luton, and what we may call the Doctor Brand
reth style of oratory began" The lugubrious
features of this style of celebration are graphi-
cally depicted, while it is denied that there has
ever been the least foundation for its adoption.
This year the Young Mems Democratic Asso-
citation "resolved to have public celebration
all to Themselves pocket-edition of the cum
brous civic work-and as the city provided fire
works in the evening, in order to be before hand
with it in their pyrotechnics, they gave Mr.
Choate in the forenoon"
Mr. Choate's Grafton shows that he has di avn
that full breath which is, perhaps, possible only
under Grecian sky, and it is, in its better parts
scholarly in the best sense of the word.
Let us say, then, honestly, what we honestly
think-the feeling, the mastery and choice of
language, the intellectual comprehensyeness of
glance, which can so order the many -columned
aisle of period, that the eye, losing none of the
crowded particulars, yet sees through all, at the
vistas end, the cleaning figure of the thought,
to enshrine which the costly fabric was reared
all these qualities of the orator demand and
receive our sincere applause. In an age when
Incidence or the study of French models has re-
duced our sentences to the common curtness of
telegraphic despatches-to the dimension of the
epigram without its point, Mr. Choate is one of
the few whose paragraphs echo with the long
resounding pace of Drydens coursers, and who
can drive predicate and six without danger of
an over-sct.
A patriotism by the chart is a monster that
the world ne'er saw. Men may fall in love with
lady's picture, but not with the map of their
country. Few persons have the poetic imagin-
alton of Mr.. Choate, that can viyify the dead
lines and combine the complex features. 1t
seems to us that our own problem of creating
national sentiment out of such diverse materials
of race, such sometimes discordant or even hos
tile traditions, and then of giving it an intense
ness of vitality that can overcome our vast spaces
and our differences of climate and interest, is a
new problem not easily to be worked out by the
old methods. Mr.. Choate's plan seems to con-
sist in the old formula of the Fathers. He would
have us think Of their sacrifices and their hero
isms, their common danger and their common
deliverancc. Excellent as far as it goes but
| uhot wet do with tla lnro,a, fNrt,,ar f.an
ton of our population imported within the last
forty years, great proportion of whom never
so much as heard even of the war of 1912 ?
Shall we talk of Bennington and Yorktown to the
Germans whose grandtathers, if they We're con-
cerned at all III those memorial transactions,
were concerned on the wrong side? Shall we
talk of the constaney of Puritan Pilgrims to the
Romanist Irishman, who knows more of Brian
Boru, than of the Mayhowerp
1t will be many generations before we become
so fused as to have common past, and the con-
cliation and forbearance which Mr. Choate rec
ommends to related sections of country will be
more than equally necessary to unrelated races.
But while we are waiting for a past in which
we can all agree, Mr. Choate sees danger in the
disrespect which he accuses certain alionymi of
entertaining for the past in general But for
what pastp Does Mr. Choate mean our Amer
lean past? Does he refer us to that for lessons
offorbearance, submission, and waiting for Gods
good time? Is contemplation of their own his
tory and respect for their own traditions the
lenitive he prescribes for people whose only
history is revolution, whose only tradition is
rebellionP 10 what past and to what tradition
did the Pilgrim Fathers appeal, except to that
past, older than all history, that tradition, sa-
cred from all decay, which, derived from an an
tiquity behind and beyond all the hoary gene
rations, points the human soul to the God from
whom it derived life, and with it the privilege
of freedom and the duty of obedienceP To
what historical past did Jefferson for the pre-
amble of the Declaration, unless to the reveries
of half-dozen innovating enthusiasts men of
the closet, men of the class which Mr. Choate