Litchfield enquirer., 1879-04-24

aSkS peJlnentenCly, 'Can there De anytInnS like morality at the polls so long as moral men, defer as they now de to mere politicians Will fpolitics ever become moral before moral men refuse to sanction immoral political pro- ceedings?" In the fact stated in recent ad- dress, that one hundred thousand of the b g. citizens of the country refrained from voting at the last presidential election from fear of contamination by politics, there is evidence sufficient that men are not allowing principle to actuate them in this matter of citizenship as against the corrupt practices of cunning and ambitious men. He surely must be lacking in some very essential clements of manhood, who when vital interests are at stake. What does our Lord himself say, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Casars, and unto God the things that are God's," which means, dc your duty faithfully in regard to each.
 Now no one can deny with reason that re- ligion is to be disseciated from politics. That it has too little to do with the politics of many is most melancholy truth On this point, let me give you paragraph from Dr. John M. Mason, one of the grandest of men and ot preachers, fifty years ago. And his words have lost none of their appropriateness to the present.
 ''What is politics ?' he asks. ''Is it not the science and the exercise of civil ghts and civil duties? And what is religion? Is it not an nl1l to fhp Qapvica Of (knS founded Gy his authority, and extending to all our relations personal and social Yet religion has nothing to do with politics! Where did you learn this maxim? The bible is full of directions for awful in it's injunctions on ruler and rulers as snch yet religion has nothing to do with pol lt1cs You are commanded III all your ways to acknowledge Him. In every thing by pray CT and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God And whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, to do all in the name of the lord Jesus. Yet religion has nothing to do with politics Most aston ishing And is there any part of your conduct, in which you are or wish to be, without law to God, and not under the Law of Jesus Christ :? Can you persuade yourselves thatpolltical men and measures are to undergo no review in the and violence the fraud and falsehood and cor ruption which pervade the system of party, and bursts out like flood at the public cleo tions, are to be plotted from the catalogue of ell l;t;
 I cannot add word to the weight of this argument. No christian man, it would seem, can stand for a moment before the momentum and the truthfulness of the challenge.
 Religion and politics ought to go together, and they must gs together, or one or the ether becomes by-word and a hissing. No man ought to be any the more christian, because he is serving his God, while serving the state. Nor have you or l any right to throw off that part of the responsibility which rests upon us, if wrong doing has entered into the nations councils, and is undermining the very fOunda- tiens, of free government. Let us be men And while honest differences may sepa rate us as to particular measures, let us join hands, as christians and as patriots, to defend and main tain all that is best and noblest in the native s life. Let us seek to inculcate in our children a gcnnine patriotism, that keeps party in the background, and God and country to the fIont; that stalwart patriotism and piety of the olden time, which shrank not from the keenest criticism of the caviling, nor deemed eny sacrifice to great, that God might be hon. ored and his ''kingdom come"
 THE OPERA IN THE EIGHTEERTH CENTURY. -Th0opera was necessary product of Italy |; it existed in germ in the very essence of the Italian language; it developed by the very pressure of Italian culture. True tragedy, as it existed in England and in Spain, was per haps impossible in Italy, with language which naturally took musical infections, and with people who naturally sought for artis- tic pleasure. The language fell into regular cadences hostile to the tiuctuating account of emotion; the people desired definite and arti- ficial forms incompatible with the upheavings and wrenchings of tragic action. The Italians wrote vnd acted many atragedy, from the me- di8val "EZZelino" of Mussats dswn to the 'Merope" of Maffei but these tragedies were works of imitaten due to the feeling that what had been done by the ancients must needs be repeated by the moderns: they were not the product of national craving which insist ed on being satisfied. They were written performed, applauded, and published, one at- fer the other ill rapid succession, but they nev- CT called into existence permanent stage ; they were the works and entertainment of academies and erudite courts; the people out side neither desired HOT noticed them. Con struct them with the utmost care, write them with the greatest eloqQence, declaim them with the greatest intelligence, it was all useless j; neither the verse of Pollzlano and Tasse, nor the skillful recitations of academic actors, nor the ingenious stage mechanisms of PeruZZi and Palladio, could make tragedy real neces- sity, real pleasure to the Italians. Human ists and erudite courtiers might be faintly in- terested in such performances, but the towns folk cared only for their carnival murmurs, gods, god-dresses, virtues, shoe makers, and pastry cocks, singing dialegued couplets on their ears, and the peasantry cared only for their naaggio actors, for their raw lads chanting on stages of blanks and bed sheets the stories of saints and paladinsS; nay, even the very courts themselves when not hampered by learned advisers, cared only for their pompous, anomalous festivals, in which knights fought for enchanted ladies' sirens and tritens swan across villa ponds, and Flemish or Flemish taught musicians sang madrigals inside the Hanks of cardboard monsters. Thus, on the part of the burghers, the peasants, and the ne- bles, we see the desire for an artistic form far more artificial than the mere recited tragedy !; this form, this fusion of drama, music, and scenic effect, will be crudely elaborated by the upper classes, saturated with humanism and chivalry, weak and uncouth anomaly, with not much vitality in it; but once born, once seen, it will be eargerly grasped by the people at large. it will be vivifed by popular feeling, and it will develop in fair growth as product of the whole nation. The opera is not the court pageant, not the street mummery, not the village play; it is the court pageant developed and transformed by the influence of those classes whose vague hankerings find their imperfect expression in the street mumme- cry as seen in the carnival song, and the village pley as exempliied in the maggio. .-Eraser' s Magazine.
 Methodist Appointments.
 West Winetad- PuI1mon