New-York tribune., 1868-07-27

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Whether the great physical contest with the
Rebellion has awakened our people to the con
seriousness that after all moral truths are feeble
unless sustained by muscular support, or whether
the lectures of the Psychologists IN favor Oh de-
veloping bone and Drawn as well as BRAN are
having their effect, certainly the American peo-
ple are undergoing il wholesome reform IN the
matter of athletic sports and physical enjoy
ments. The baseball tournaments, the grow
! ing popularity of yachting, and the import
ance attached to the regattas, and the IN
/ PRODUCTION of races and other sports at our
agricultural fairs annually held in every cOun-
/ ty in our great farming States, all indicate a
notable revival of the physical, which we can
not help acknowledging, though we may not
explain it. A little reflection, we think, Will
satisfy the reader who might at first dissent
| from the view, that this is no casual incident,
but universal tidal movement of tho people in
/ favor of higher development of our physical
| life and culture. American life, in the earlier
stages of Our history, was q very serious
affair Whatever rcsiduum Of vigOr was left
unexhausted by labor was deemed to be
wholly due TO intellectual and spiritual cul-
ture; and even these were strictly utilitarlan,
not csthctic the main object of education being
to deliver its pOssessOr from the bondage OF
bodily toll, and the end of Religion being that
"pcacer and "rcstn which form the natural
horizon of Hope TO a race of struggling Ia
borers Minds thus absorbed in cOntendng
with the stern realities of this world, and the
most profound problems of the next, were more
anxious to cruelty the flesh than to develop it,
ls.1 terms
ocular Christianity as an iueyerent at
tempt to establish "A league between
God and Beial Then, as now, very many fell
into the suiccways of appetite and passion, and
were dragged down to perditlon. But the new
doctrine that the appctites and passions are OF
divine origin, and when properly studied and
understood are among the guides to right and
pure living though il had been propounded by
"a few, was rightcously misinterpreted and alb
horrcd 10y the mass of good men and women.
Amusement, when il ceased to be either useful,
aboriOus, or religious when it was not in some
way connected with apple pairing, corn husking,
building stone fences, raising barns, harvest
ing getting married, or sending the Gospel
into foreign lands, was sinful, or, at the very
least n waste of time. That human and animal
strength which could find so much useful develop
mcnt in labor should be wasted in racing, boxing,
wrestling, walking skating, or cricket, or ball
playing, or quOits, OF swimming, or hunting,
or plcasure-riding, was proof Of the continued
power of the devices of the evil one. The fine
arts, music, painting, poetry, fiction, architec-
ture, the drama, were shorn of the liberty of
art, robbed of their freedom, grace, and beauty,
and made to serve as handmaids in the kitchen
no tn
the dscordant execution of style of hymns
and psalms which degraded it from creature
of life and beauty into pack-horSe for carry
ing theological dogmas. The drama was to-
tally abolished. Painting must not depart
from or rise above the literal rendering of
Mrs. Grundy's spectacled wrinkles and plated
night-cap and was judged admirable as the
wart on the nose, the wen, and the hare lip
were accurately reproduced on the canvas.
Poetry was chiefly occupied in putting Deuter-
onomy into doggcrel, the Revolutionary War
into rhyme, the exploits of Christopher Colum-
bus and Capt John Smith into verse, and those
of Capt Kidd into song. Sculpture being
expressly forbidden by the Ten Command
ments, or at least by one of them nobody
burst make any craven images, lest some
one should bow down to them and worship
them improbable as might seem such an act
of devotion toward such objects as the expert
ment would have produced had it been tried.
Fictitious literature was so under ban that COM
mentators were reluctant TO admit, and lesser
preachers Indignantly denied, that any of the
parallels described events which had not actually
occurred, or that truth could ever be usefully
conveyed through any medium framed by the
rfnlltr in
the erection of temples of worship, was con-
fined to getting the largest number of souls
into q single building with the least cost.
Alas for the old and the conservative,
when by the increase of wealth, 10y the vast
labor-power of machinery, and by accumuating
capital and leisure, society was drawn away
from these ancient m00rings and drllted out
into the wider sea of modern life! Now, enjoy
ment for its own sake has become legitimate in
public esteem and even the mOralist arrests the
oyerworked toer with "StOp, for your souls
Z" sake, and enjoy YOURSELF We have not rs u
people yet learned the art of enjoyment very
thoroughly but we have very generally come
TO entertain grave doubts whether we ought not
to. The first representative writer OF the age,
Charles Dickens, is never so truly first rs when
he shows the tendencies of unrelieVed toll to
brutalize, and of the pursuit of the useful only
to harden and benumb the finer qualities of our
nature. He has taught the age that coarseness
and savagery, and with them crime and slavery,
may result as well from the absence OF art OF
amusement as from heterodoxy in creed, and
that "sticking to facts" and to business may
make GradgIind or Podsnap so odions that we
shall thank God for endowing us with imagiIa'
tions aud rendering us capable OF play But