The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-23

German fellow-eitizens in illustration
of this important chapter in the art
of life. We as people seem somehow
to have lacked this art. We court prosperity
like anxious bond-slaves, fearing to call
moment of our lives our own, fearing to lice,
in our unceasing, feverish pursuit of the
mere means of living. We are enterprising
to fault; we go ahead faster than others;
but it is by centaur-like contrivauce, letting
a large part of our real vital, human self run
down into the lower animal, or the machine
that carries us. Why, o live Yankee" o
proud Westerner, why waste your life in
rivalliDg a steam-engine? Man makes him
self mere machine for generating or accu-
muating power, and all for what And
with what solemn, sanctimonious,
lean, hard-favored way he does it
often With what a quasi-religious and
self-righteous tone he quotes his busi-
ness maxims How he amalgamates
unworldly orthodoxy with the most secular
showmans cant in the advertising of his
wares How he practically confounds reli-
gion with his own self-love, as generalized
into prudential maxims
We esteem ourselves the freest people on
this planet, yet we have perhaps as little real
freedom as any other; for we are the slaves
of our own feverish enterprise and Of bar
Ien theory of discipline which would fain
make us virtuous to fault through abst-
nence from very life We are afraid to
give ourselves up TO the free and happy
instincts of our nature. All that is not
pursuit of advancement in some good, con-
ventional, approved way of business or poll
tics, or fashion, or intellectual reputation,
or professed religion, we count waste. We
lack 9eRtdhtyj nor do we, as people, under
stand the meaning of the word. We ought
to learn it practically of our Germans. 1t
comes of the same root with the word geniuS
Genius is the spontaneous principle; 1t is
free and happy in its work; it lis artist and not
drudge; its whole activity is reconciliation of
the heartiest pleasure with the purest loyalty
to conscience, with the most holy, universal,
and disinterested ends. Genius, as Beet
hoven gloriously illustrates in his Choral
Symphony Gndeed, in all his sympho-
nies), finds the keynote and solution
of the problem of the highest
state in Joy, taking his text from bchillers
hymn. Now, all may not be geniuses in the
sense that we call Shakespeare, Mozart, Ra-
phael, men of genius. But all should be
partakers of this spontaneous, free. and happy
method Of genius; all should live childlike,
genial lives, and not wear all the time the
consequential livery of their unrelaxing bust
ness nor the badge of party and profession in
every line and feature of their faces.
This genial, childlike faculty of social en-
joyment, this happy art of life, is just what
our countrymen may learn from the social
''Liedertafel" and the summer singing festi vals
of which the Germans are so fond. There is
no element of national character which we
so much need; and there is no class of citi-
zens whom we should be more glad to adopt
and own than those who set us the examples
So far as it is matter of culture, it is through
art chiefly that the desiderated genial era
must be ushered in. The Germans have the
sentiment of art, the feeling of the beautiful
in art, and consequently in nature, more de-
veloped than we have. Above all, music
offers itself as the most available, most popu-
lar, most influential of the fine arts-music
which is the art and language of the feelings,
the sentiments, the spiritual instincts of the
soul, and SO becomes a universal language,
tending to unite and blend and harmonize all
who may come within its sphere.
The September number of Our Young
Folks, which we have received from Turner
& Co., is nicely illustrated and presents an
entertaining variety of reading matter adapted
to the tastes of the boys and girls.
TIE Nursery for September is filled with
pretty stories, verses, and pictures which will
please the little ones.
CtIaAkAE7