The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1870-02-26

hood, fraud, violence, anger, cunning, SLAM
der, meanness, apathy, vice, and crime,
originate in selffshness, which is ordinarily
unsocial, stern, sober, laborieus, and far as
possible from pleasure or diversion. In
stead of being self-forgetful, disposed to
relaxation, playful, or gay, it is sui
len, retrospective, tightly girded, ana
in no mood of delight. Fer certainly
we must not confound things different, and
call the grim satisfaction with which the
miscr pursues his gains, the tyrant his
victims, the rogue his prize, with which
envy surveys the modification of a com
petitor, or hatred the misfortune of an
enemy, or jealousy the pangs of a rival
amusement. Nor are the vices Of society,
drunkenness, lust and gambling, to be
placed among the relaxations and amuse
ments of mankind. They are the serious
and horrible outbreak Of lawless appetites,
which do nothing to recreate, but only to
destroy. If they are found in connection
with the pleasures of the werld, they are
lust as often found in absolute separation
from them. Indeed, the lack the whole
some excitement of pleasure is commonly
seen producing the noNious excitement of
vice; and intenperance, lust, and gamb-
ling have devastated communities in which
public diversions have been scrupulously
forbidden. 1t is terrible fact, that the
first hundred years of Puritanism il New
England was marked alike by ascetic pub
lie manners, and the prevalence of vices
almost unheard Of in our free and more in
dulgent society; and it is even new assert
ed that the soberest of our sister States
contributes more than any other State in
the Union to the sad catalogue of female
frailty. There is hardly q more baleful
error in the world than that which has
produced the feud between morality and
amusement, piety and pleasure. By pre-
scnting as the mark for rcprobatien the re-
creations instead of the sins of society; by
confoundiRg amusements with vices, the
moral feeling of the world has been waste
fully diverted from its opposition to abso-
lutte wrong and depraving affections, into
opposition to things innocent, indifferent,
or hurtful only in excess; and thus a very
mischievous confusion has been introduced
into the natural and the Christian con
science Of evil Consider tho thick dark
ness. the absence Of interior Highland moral
order, which is likely to reign in soul that
has been instructed to put dancing and the
r
balls into tie same category in which ly
ing, SANDER, hatred, and unchastity are
kept, and to reckon the love Of fun, gave
ty, and social excitement as depraved and
Satanic affection! What but moral confu-
sion, secret protest, insidious revenges pri-
vate vices, latent skepticism, and laxity in
directions not open to observation or sus
picien, can result to many, from such Nm
warranted and unnatural classifications
1t is true the second generation often pays
the penalty of the ascsticism of the first,
but the first usually has ruinous pity on
itself. and treats its resolution in dark and
deadly ways. We cannot afford to waste
our moral feeling, our sensibility to sin,
our powers of sclf-contrel and ofresistance,
upon false issues OF on artificial SINS
The sum of his argument as to the de-
Feasibility of amusement is found in this
sentence ''The best things are most open
to abuse, and amusement, like food, love,
power, money, requires to have the dangers
of its pursuit pointed out but not its law
fulness OF its innecency, in its place and
degree, denied or concealed"
Some of the reverend doctors words of
advice to players and managers are worthy
to be printed in letters of gold, framed in
frames of silver, and riveted to the walls of
every green-room in the land, an ever
present preacher.
For instance these: " Be sure you gain
nothing by the srossness or immortality of
the plays you present. People will go to
see great talent and great dramatic tri
ness of the plots and incidents; but they
would go a great deal mole to see genius
and power united with purity and truth
| take no narrow, squeamish view of the
range of subjects proper for the stage, but
plays which make light of moral distinc=
lions, excuse vice, reward crime, or ridicule
religion, are essentially mischievous and
cannot be defended anywhere. If mana
gers wish to place themselves on the same
catalogue with pimps, they have only to
continue to quote the public taste an
apology for producieg immoral and deprav-
ing plays. All honor is due to those
among them who strive to produce the
that some managers feel a laudable and
artistic loyalty to their profession, and
make sacrifices to the exactions Of taste,
propriety and purity, which the public do
not sufficiently appreciate"