The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1874-08-31
The Giants or tho past.


the worst Of all times, and public manners
and morals more hopeless than ever before,
our corte mporaries pigmies and our ances-
tors giants. and to look to the future as tue
paradise of hope and the golden age, IS as
old as civilized man. In this country we
are inclined to believe that the epocn tiss1
followed the revolution was one OF tue ut
most purity and simplicity. But u was enc
OF the gathers" who said to a frfead upon Tue
adjournment of the first Congress, >fso you
suppose such set Of rascais VIII ever assetn-
BILE again 2" And In his diary John ADAMS
appeals, to the .aImer mind and custer Juug'
ment eff the coming age-meaning that IN
which we live, and lrotu which wesooK "lst-
fully back to old John Adams's cooked mat
and e-breeches as the symsots OF no
bier time. Then there is Fisher Ames, one
of the most famous orators and conspicuous
lea ders of the beginning OF the century,
VINO, studying his country at the time 10
" bch we recur as the age oil hgh par
poses and lofty men, bewsiss the sordid,
ness. seIfishness, and degradation :areuno
him. "Of course" he says, se7enty
, wears ago, "thc single passion that
engrosses us, the only avenue TO con-
sheraton and importance to our society, IS
the accumulation Of property; our 'nciina-
tions cling to gold, and are bedded 10 II US
deeply as that precious ore IN the name.
AS experience eEinoes that popHarlty-in
other words, consideration and powers to
he procured by the meanest of maskind, the
mcanest in spirit and understanding, and in
the worst of ways, it is obvious that at pres
ent the Indictment to genius is next TO no.
| thing"
We might suppose that We were listening
to contemporary CT mic; and whoever reads
the history of the politics Of that time will
find that .'the better days of the Republic
were very like the days in which we deplore
| their disappearance. When Mr.. Ames died
| MIR. John Quincy Adams wrote review of
bis works, IN which, with the mild equlnim-
! ity of the golden age, be remarks IS 1t is
| melancholy contemplation OF human nature
to see mind so highly cultivated and so rich
lv gifted as that OF MIR. Ames soured and
| cXaspcraling into the very rawlings Of bed
lamite." He then proceeds to speak Of
those who, without believing Mr.. Ames's sab
surd and inconsistent political creed,' are
seIfi,hIy eager for its propagation, being
:: choice spirits, amounting TO at most SIX
hundred (which their name was the Essex
Junto y, and who hold that the porcelain
must rule over the eartbernWare, the blind
and sordid multitude must put themselves,
bound hand and foot, into the custody OF
the lpnx-eyed, seraDhic souls of the six hun.
| dred, and then altogether must go and squat
| for protection under the hundred
hands of the British Briareus." TO this
| gentle strain Mr.. John Lowell replied in a
similar VEN, beginning by speaking of the
malignity of Mr.. Adams's sarcasm, and OF
bis following MIR. Adams to the grave with
crocodile tears, informing him that he bad
no need to assail MIR. Ames's friends with all
the venom of an uturiated partisan, because
he had already obtained bis reward for "rat-
ting" from the Federalists, and this act OF
| gratitude TO his beneiactors was unnecessary.
Dir. Lowell ends his reply by saying that
| in the course Of short political life Mir.
| Adams hud received more than seventy
thousand dollars from the public, and that
| while no man ptied Mr.. Ames. " Mr.. Adams
| is an object of sincere commiseration with
many man of high and honorable feelings,
while it is to be doubted whether he is the
object of envy to any man on EARTH"
These are glimp>es Of the golden age, of
that "better days" of the Republic, with
which our own is so often and so injuriousy
contrasted. Indeed, there is no tiuer cordial
for dependency than glance at the para
| disc that bowers behind our retreatiug steps.
| lne mountain traveller IuIIS anu sceS Il
| lovely vision floating in the sky.
| GLOW family flushed, how phantom fair,
| Was Monte Rosa, hanging there
| A thousand shadowy- pencil'u valleys,
| And Snowy dells In golden air."
| Good lack he cries, are those the crags
and precipices along which slid and stum-
bled in terror OF my life! The banging gar
dens of the past, the halcyon epoch of our
history, the lost paradise of our fathers, are
all crags and preciplces along which the race
aud our country have stumbled and slid.
If any man is disposed to think that he has
fallen upon evil times, let him open his his
tory. 1t is marvellous tonic.-Harper for
| September.