YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

RECOLLECTIONS

OF

FIFTY YEARS SINCE ;
WITH GLANCES AT THE PRESENT ASPECTS, AND FUTURE PORTENTS
OF THE AGE AND THE TIMES.

A LECTURE
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
Young Men's Association of the City of Utica,
FEBUIAUV », 1843.

"One generation passe th away, and another generation cometh : but the
earth abideth forever."

BY EZEKIEL BACON.

mica, ar. $.
R. W. ROBERTS, PRINTER, 58 GENESEE STREET.
1843.

WHY PRINTED?

Having received Ho advice, and been troubled with no
requests from any quarter touching the publication of the fol
lowing performance, the author has not been placed in the
perplexing dilemma in which "honest John Bunyan" tells
his readers that he found himself* When, as he quaintly but
sententktosly says-— Some say — " print it John,"
Others say — " no ;"
Some say — "it may do good,"
Others say — "not so."
But availing himself of the hint of Milton in his "Are-
opagitiCa, or speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing,"
that " a wise man will make better use of an idle pamphlet
than a fool will do of Sacred Scripture ;" and trusting that
the former class will be found much to outnumber the latter
in the small circle of his readers, the writer has taken the
unsolicited liberty " upon his own hook " of committing this
"idle pamphlet" to the ordeal of the press — in coming to
which determination he was also aided and prompted by some
special considerations.

4
The curiosity incident both to youth and age, which holds
many an engaged and patient listener to the rehearsal of a
tale of "olden time" (a dull and "thrice told tale," though
it may be) has undoubtedly incited to many of the requests
which have been made of the author for its perusal, as well by
those who heard, as also by those who had not an opportunity
to hear it, as it was delivered. The inconveniences attending
that mode of coming to a knowledge of its contents, in its
imperfect and interpolated manuscript shape, the very imper
fect and unsatisfactory mode of its delivery, together with
other considerations which, though not always avowed, have
probably, much influence with small authors, has induced the
writer of this to submit it for publication in this form, with
this his apology for so doing.
It may be proper to add, that some emendations and addi
tions have since been made to it. That it may be as favorably
received, as it was patiently heard by his partial and intelli
gent audience, the writer has not the vanity to expect or to
hope for.

LECTURE.

• «*«*<.* "The truth is, that the past is not everything;
nor the future everything; nor the present everything ; the intellect of man is
now neither in its infancy, nor in its decrepitude. — Judge Story.
Conformable to the commendable usage of deeper and
higher preachers from a more elevated rostrum, by way of
indicating the general theme and bearings of their intended
discourse, the speaker has adopted as his text a sentiment
from the writings of a learned and distinguished jurist and
scholar, who now and long has adorned by his wisdom and his
eloquence the highest judicial tribunal of our country ; and
very long may such steady and brilliant lights continue to
adorn them ! But whether there will be found any more clear
connection or relation than is sometimes recognized in other
orators of another and a graver class between the text and
the sermon, remains to be collected from the result. But be
that result what it may we shall proceed, as best we can do,
in our somewhat excursive ramblings over a broad and bound
less field, in which one hardly knows where to start or when
to stop ; leaving it pretty much to our intelligent hearers to
sum up its various heads, and draw from them, if they can,
a suitable and edifying improvement.
That " every generation grows wiser and wiser " is a pro
verb which it is pretty certain was not first promulgated by
an octo — or even by a sexa-genarian. The aged are probably
inclined pretty generally to think that it is a maxim entitled
to very little respect ; knowing, as they feel that they do, that
the young shoots which have started up around, and are al
ready overtopping them with their luxuriant, aspiring and saucy
branches, are but fools comparatively to the considerate wisdom
and treasured experience of their fathers. That there has

6
within the last half century been a decided falling off in that
disinterested spirit of public patriotism, private probity, and
some of the moral virtues which once prevailed with the gene
ration which is passing away, cannot it is believed be justly
questioned. " Pity it be so 5 and more it is a pity." But it
is not our present purpose to treat upon either the past state or
the present aspects and future portents of such high matters
as these : — #»»#*« „B Jmnjbier taak t,e 0UrSi
These deeper things we leave to mightier powers."
We do but essay as it were to skim the surface of much
shoaler and less affl icted waters, on which should the shipwreck
of a small barque ensue, it will hardly be missed from amongst
the great fleet of bold and gallant keels which in countless
numbers throng and plough the wide literary ocean of the
times. There are however many of the institutions, enter
prises, habits, and usages of society in which even to the
purblind eyes of a sexagenarian (reverential of the past, dis
satisfied with the present, and distrustful of the future as such
are usually and instinctively prone to be,) the present age has
it must be admitted, decidedly improved upon that which
preceded it ; the full extent, and great progression of which,
as compared with the past, those now conversant only with
the present state of things, can probably hardly realize or
appreciate. We will advert in tbe first place by way of exemplifying
our position, as perhaps the most important in itself, and the
most striking in its developments, to the subject of education ;
to the advanced grades to which it has been carried and the
different modes of instruction and inculcation adopted at these
two periods upon the subjects of it, both in our higher semina
ries of learning and in our common schools. As to the latter
class, the time is well recollected (for the speaker was one
of the subjects of their stinted instructions) when little be-
yond Dillworth's Spelling Book, the New England Primer,
teaching by a double process the first letter of the alphabet,

and the first doctrine of the creed, through the instrumentali
ty of the first poetical distich that the young minstrels of
future times were taught to jingle together—
"In Adam's fall,
We sinned all."
When these recondite volumes, together with the Psalter, and
in process of time and of intellectual juvenile development,
the other portions of the Bible, constituted about the whole
of the science of common school reading then taught. To
which when was added a knowledge of an indifferent hand
writing, and the first four rules of Arithmetic, and of casting
interest from Pike's treatise thereon — we have what then
comprised about the whole of a common school education.
The school houses too, in which these rudiments of learning
were taught, were then little better than small barns, fitted up
with coarse backless benches, on which the uneasy and restless
urchins sat in both mental and bodily torture, until from
sheer tedium, and to obtain a little ease to their aching spines,
they fell half asleep into a recumbent posture, or betook them
selves to enacting some antic or mischievous gambols, from
which they were in due time brought to their bearings by a dex
trous stroke of the ever-ready birchen rod, or the still more
ready, convenient, and double purposed rule, serving in the two
fold capacity for forming straight lines on their writing books,
and in that of a ferule for straightening out the crooked minded
juveniles who made themselves the proper subjects of these
magnetizing manipulations; an exercise which in a cold win
ter's day was in one respect at least useful and almost neces
sary both for the master and the pupil, to put into circulation
the half congealed blood of their shivering frames, and to
impart to them that degree of caloric, which the wide open
fireplace, although constantly and liberally fed with repeated
arms full of green and crackling fagots failed to do. Such
was the general range and grade of what was then esteemed
to be a good country common school education ; and such
the usual and convenient mode of imparting it in our land,
about fifty years since.

8
In our colleges and other high seminaries of education, a
state of things much corresponding with this, both as to the
extent of instruction and the mode of inculcation also existed.
A slight knowledge of the Latin and Greek Grammars with the
colloquies of Corderius ; the first four books of Virgil in Latin,
and the four evangelists in Greek, was the extent of the
requisite proficiency for entering college ; as to be able to
construe and parse the whole of Virgil, and of Cicero's Ora
tions ; to recite decently Watts' Logic, Blair's Rhetoric,
Ferguson's Astronomy, Guthrie's Geography, Enfield's Natu
ral Philosophy, Priestley's Lectures on History, and to master
after a sort the whole of Pike's Arithmetic, and Paley's Moral
Philosophy, with a smattering of Algebra, fluxions, and conic
sections, constituted pretty much the whole of that circle of
the learned sciences which entitled the young savan to the
honors of a graduation, and to the flattering adjunct to his
name of the first two letters of the alphabet — meaning in
the vernacular, and endorsing upon his valued sheep-skin the
flattering cognomen of a "Bachelor of the Arts ! " Although
not a single word had been taught of the now very useful
and practical sciences of Chemistry, Mineralogy, Physiology,
Political Economy, or Geology in general, through the gradu
ate's entire course of instruction. Much in correspondence
with the discipline of the lower schools, and the manner and
means of teaching " the young idea how to shoot," was that
of the higher seminaries. We have now in our possession,
by ancestral deseent, a written copy of the laws of the col
lege in New Jersey, then called Nassau Hall, and now known
in common parlance as Princeton College, transcribed in the
handwriting of one who was an undergraduate there in 1765 ;
and though this is at a period somewhat more remote than
the one twenty-five years after, of the general aspects and
phases of which we have attempted this brief notice, yet
little alteration in the matters of which this treats had then
taken place, either in this or its other kindred institutions in
the United States ; and of the laws, usages, and regulations
of all which this may without injustice be considered as a
pretty fair model. We will recount a few of these laws and

regulations as not unfair samples of the spirit of the age and
of the times, touching the then existing methods of education
and discipline with the rising generation who were the sub
jects of them.
Extracts from the Collegiate Code of Princeton College in
Anno Domini 1765.
" Every scholar shall keep his hat off about ten rods to the
president, and about five to the tutors. Every scholar shall
rise up and make his obeisance when the president goes in or
out of the hall, or enters the pulpit on days of religious
worship. When walking with a superior, they shall give him
the highest place ; and when first coming into his company,
they shall show their respects to him by pulling off their
hats ; shall give place to him at any door or entrance, or
meeting him going up and down stairs, shall stop, giving
him the banister side ; shall not enter into his room with
out knocking at the door, or in any way intrude themselves
upon him ; and shall never be first or foremost in any under
taking in which a superior is engaging or about to engage ;
shall never use any indecent or rude behavior or action in
a superior's presence, such as making a noise, calling loud,
or speaking at a distance, unless spoken to by him, if within
hearing ; shall always give a direct pertinent answer, con
cluding with Sir !"
There was one of these observatory and conservatory regu
lations of so very minute and delicate a nature that it was not
thought quite proper or decent to enact it in the vernacular
tongue ; and so they very modestly threw over it the veil of
the Latin language ; and which we give in the original as
it stands recorded in the little statute book before us, but shall
not now translate, even at the hazard of being supposed not
ready or willing to gratify, as it may be thought we ought
to do, the laudable and instinctive curiosity of our fair lady
hearers. It runs thus in the stately language of Cicero and
of Hortensius ; and with the precision and solemnity of an
article from the Justinian code.
" Quicunque contra collegium minxerit, vel ex fenestra
aliquid sordii ejecierit, mulctetur unum solidum, si repetat
admoneatur." 2

10
The translation of this grave statute into our vernacular,
may perhaps furnish a pleasant morning's exercise for some of
the sophomore classes in the more advanced seminaries in our
vicinity at the present day. But as the Latin classics are
altogether eschewed it seems at the " Oneida Institute," it
might be taken unkindly from us to set one of her Neophytes
whatever might be the complexion of his general scholarship,
to dig out quite so difficult a lesson from the dead rubbish of
their detested heathen Latin, to be recited before a spare
breakfast ; and we therefore in all tenderness to their feelings
and sensibilities mercifully forbear pressing this little matter
any further in that direction.
Under the absurd and degrading servileance of this servile
code, we have heard rehearsed by one who was a subject of
them, many amusing anecdotes of the natural contumacy of
those free thinking and high spirited students under whose iron
rule they were attempted to be brought ; and the ingenious
modes which they sometimes resorted to for the purpose of
defeating or evading the weight of their absurd penalties. In
order to escape from the requirements of striking his colors, and
doffing his chapeau when within the prescribed striking distance
from the venerable president or the dignified tutors — young
Ellsworth, who afterwards rose to the honorable rank of
chief justice of the United States and to many other elevated
stations in this country, and who was then a student there, cut
off entirely the brim portion of his hat, leaving of it nothing but
the crown, which he wore in the form of a skull cap on his
head, and putting it under his arm when he approached their
reverences. Being reproved for his perversity, and told that
this was not a hat within the meaning and intent of the law
which he was required to do his obeisance with, by removing
it from his head, he then made bold to wear his skull cap into
the chapel and recitation room, in presence of the authority.
Being also then again reproved for wearing his hat in those
forbidden and sacred places, he replied, that he had once sup
posed that it was in truth a veritable hat ; but having been
informed by his superiors that it was no hat at all, he had ven-
tared to come into their presence as he supposed with his head

11
uncovered by that proscribed garment. But this dilemma was,
as in his former position decided against him ; and no other
alternative remained to him but to resume his full brimmed
beaver and to comply literally with the enactments of the
collegiate pandect.
In old Yale, of which venerable institution, the speaker
was some fifty years since a rather troublesome and justly
troubled member, this and other like absurd ordinances and
observances existed and were prescribed for the students to
observe towards the existing authority, and between the dif
ferent classes in the same institution. Such as the freshman
class being subjected to be made the waiters and servitors of
the upper classes in doing their errands on the most trifling
and humbling occasions ; in carrying and fetching their soil
ed or washed linen to and from the laundress, and bringing
their beer, tobacco and pipes wherewith to regale themselves
at their assembled parties and junketings ; a power which was
often shamefully and wantonly abused by one party, but gen-
erally rigorously enforced against the other by the authorities
of the college ; (who had themselves gone through the same
trying ordeal,) by the way as they said of accustoming the
green and yet flexible freshman to the restraints of whole
some discipline, and the salutary habits of obedience to his
superiors in age and rank.
We wish that we could with truth recapitulate, as an offset
to these deficiences and absurdities, the superior state of moral
discipline, and of social habits and recreations which distin
guished these high seats of learning at the same period. But
the college buttery kept under its roof, in a place of the most
convenient access, with its viands of cakes, pies, nuts, beer,
cider, mead and (" sub rosa,") cheap and adulterated wines,
tempting the prurient appetites of the listless idler, would rise
up in swift judgment against us ; as they do against the hoary
wisdom which thus encouraged their wholly needless and
injurious indulgence ; while the almost unrestricted intermin-
gling in the social enjoyments, amusements and dissipations
of the town or city around them, led to no good, and frequently
to a ruinous relaxation of every studious habit, and. not unfre-

12
quently into the paths of vicious irregularity and irreclaimable
dissipation. And as to the intellectual education of the female portion
of the last century, how little more have we to say than that
they learned at their transient country schools, taught by some
smart spinster, to read passably in the Bible ; to repeat there,
and on Saturday or Sunday evenings at home, the Shorter
Catechism, which, if they fully understood when they had got
through it, they certainly had sharper intellects than had some
of their teachers ; to get by heart Watts' Spiritual Songs ;
scrawl a miserable handwriting ; and if deemed apt proficients,
and ambitious of teaching others in their turn, to dig out their
way through the first four rules of Arithmetic. Of the general
Geography of the globe which they inhabited, there was hardly
a book extant teaching it in our country, until Morse came
out with his first octavo edition, from which they could
learn it ; and as to Moral Philosophy and Astronomy, they
were as far removed from their knowledge, as were the fixed
stars from their reach or adequate comprehension. No Sun
day schools, Bible classes, benevolent associations or literary
and scientific lectures for the benefit either of the young or
old of either sex, for their improvement and edification in the
higher branches of science, and to fit them for any other than
the every day domestic duties of a listless life.
What in most of these respects is now the improved state
and condition both of our common schools and our higher
literary institutions, this more intelligent age and audience
need not to be informed ; a great portion of those before us
having partaken and profited under their more enlarged and
improved systems of instruction and of discipline, and they
will not probably hesitate long in coming to the rational
conclusion that in these respects at least the present genera
tion have " Grown wiser than their fathers were."
Whether they would be sustained in assuming also to have
realized the other line of Watts' distich,
" And better know the Lord,"

13
is quite another question, which it is feared will hardly obtain
so strong and undivided an affirmative verdict " ye yourselves
being judges." Thus much in exposition of the advances
and improvements made and introduced within the last half
century in relation to the subjects and methods of intellectual
education. We will pass on to some other topics connected with these
bearings of our subject. We might allude here as a sample
of the staid and stereotype habits of that age, to the time
when our revered Doctors of Divinity and their less honored
and untitled brethren made it the main object of their
weekly labors to attempt to untie the five knotty points of
their religious creed, by two long and highly elaborated ser
mons a week, devoted chiefly to that favored topic in the
prevailing theology of the day. When the clergyman liter
ally and usually settled himself as in a secure harbor in his
parish for life, and rarely left it until his body was carried to
his last and final abode, followed by the tears and regrets
of his bereaved, affectionate, and ever-trusting parishioners.
And when a worthy country gentleman who once sufficiently
obtained the favor of his town or county to be honored with
a seat in the public councils of his country, rarely lost it
except through his gross misconduct, or became incompetent
to its duties by the infirmities of age or disease, or by death.
But those days and those usages are long since past, with the
shadowy personages who acted their important dramatic parts
in their great theatres of action and of renown ; and other
actors and far other scenes have opened upon those which
preceded them. Now, a stated clergyman has hardly got
acquainted with the people of his charge, and learned the
shortest way to his pulpit, before his best seasoned sermons
begin to fall " stale, flat and unprofitable," upon the better
cultivated and more fastidious taste of his hearers, and he is
pretty soon served by them with a gentle hint, and if that be
not sufficient, with a loud warning that it is high time for
him to pull up his stakes and to quit, and give place to some
one who will furnish them at least for a time, some more sat
isfactory and inviting viands of intellectual and religious fare.

14
And although there are doubtless many inconveniences, and
some hardship and injustice growing out of these modern
deviations from " the good old paths," in which our venerable
fathers were accustomed to walk, yet we cannot say that this
change upon the whole, (ill advised and capricious as may
often be the practice under it,) is not quite as favorable to
the mutual improvement of both parson and parishioner, as it
may be more conformable to the progressive spirit of the age,
and the " go-a-head " disposition of the times.
And as to the official permanence now-a-days, of our elec
tive public servants, (very " humble servants" indeed they
usually are to us, at least just before an election ;) that of the
dancing figures in a puppet show, which the political game in
more than one respect much resembles, is hardly more
changeful and evanescent. To be danced up the great exhi-
bition hall, without much merit one year, and danced down it
without much crime the next, is the pretty general bill of fare
for those sort of entertainments ; and whether this course of
things be a modern improvement in our system of experimen
ting, may perhaps be left as a doubtful and unsolved case.
Although it is certainly not to be much complained of by him
who having very often been admitted into the temple of
honor upon pretty loose and easy terms, should he be very
soon asked to walk out of it, when his company has become
unwelcome, from pretty slight causes too. " Light come,
light go," is a maxim whose truth is sustained by the
experience of the world ; and that " what comes over the
devil's back, should go under his belly," is a result at once
natural and consequential. And so we leave that question
as a moot point for further advisement and consideration.
" Curia advisare vult."
Saying nothing about those vast improvements in mechan-
ical inventions and the arts, which have so immeasurably
multiplied and increased every sort of product and manufac
ture, either for use or ornament, within the period designated,
we will advert only to two or three particulars ; such as
facilities for personal transportation and for trade ; and habits
of social entertainment and modes of dress ; matters falling

15
within the common observation and every day business of
all, in which the modern innovations have been decidedly for
the better. For instance, it is within a little more than fifty
years' recollection, that but a single line of public stages was
run on this continent. This was on the seaboard between Bos
ton and Philadelphia. They made progress in two days, with
good luck, from Boston to Springfield, not quite a hundred
miles. But they often fell short of this when the roads were
bad, and took a part of the third day to effect it ; such was
once the speaker's luck when a youthful passenger in one of
their heavy wagon-like coaches. The same route by al
mighty steam is now run over in five hours, quite too early
for dinner. And so it is now on all the great routes of the
country. Quite an improvement certainly for a traveller who
is in a hurry, which every American traveller always is. It
may however well be questioned, whether any more individual
comfort is taken, or improvement made in this modern mode
than was in those days by the New England or Dutch farmer,
who after he had done up his early fall work, took into his
strong wagon drawn by a pair of his fat horses, his wife, and
a son or daughter or two, and started on a family visit to his
distant friends and relatives ; drove perhaps forty-five miles in
a day, partaking by the way, of the good cold cut, biscuit and
dough nuts which they carried with them ; surveyed and
talked over amongst themselves all the new objects which
their leisurely progress gave them full opportunity to observe
on the way ; put up at night at a comfortable country tavern ;
and after a warm and quiet supper retired to a good night's
rest ; and rose refreshed for another day's interesting and un
hurried travel. How different this musing meandering course
from the crazing, unobservant, lightning-like speed, and the
pulling and hauling which characterize our present rail road
and steam boat mode of darting through the world at the rate
of " thirty knots the hour ! " Single horse wagons were then
unknown. They are the invention of the last thirty five
years, and were called Dearborns, from the circumstance of
General Dearborn having journeyed in one of them, in a part
of the country where it was a novelty a little before the last

16
British war. A gig or chaise, as it was then called, was be
fore that time its only substitute for a single carriage, although
that was owned by but a few comparatively, out of the large
cities. The speaker crossed the Green Mountains between
the Connecticut and Housatonic rivers, in the first one that
was ever driven over them, where now travellers fly by steam
at the rate of twenty-five or thirty miles the hour, as before
mentioned. In the country villages, both the clergyman and
his parishioners, who had occasion to go any considerable
distance to meeting or to visit, and who could not afford to
keep a double horse wagon, took their wives "a pillion" behind
them ; perhaps with one small child on the pummel of his
saddle, and she with another, if they were blessed with so
many, in her lap. Such equitations have been seen often by
many eyes now living. A sight of one of them at this day
would attract as much notice in our streets as would that of
a caravan or menagerie of wild beasts. This was not a very
comfortable mode of " going ahead ;" and our country gen
tlemen and their families of this day, do much better in their
modern gigs, buggies and calashes.
Then as to some of the habits of living and the modes of
social entertainment, matters are clearly much mended since
the time when the country clergyman and his deacons took
their regular forenoon flip or toddy, and those of the city
their hot or cool punch, according to the season, before din
ner ; and when knotty points of divinity were discussed in
their social circles by Doctors Hopkins, Emmons, West,
and other lesser lights of the church, under a cloud of tobac
co smoke, so thick as nearly to suffocate a rash unseasoned
intruder from the heedless world who rushed thoughtlessly into
their presence from the fresh air without ; and ever and
anon, when the argument in hand slackened a little, its thread
was strengthened by the application of a little " hard cider,"
from the silver can or tankard which stood on the side-table
or cupboard ready filled for their reverend use. These are
no fancy pictures ; they are sketched from the once living
and acting originals, which are still vivid before us, and quorum
pars parva fuimus ; so far at least as to bring the pipes, fill

17
the tankard, and reverence deeply the congregated wisdom
and piety in the best parlor then and there assembled. Now,
forsooth, a clergyman or a deacon must be careful and not
take too much even of old wine by way of medicine ; or he
will be shewn up alamode the Reverend Doctor Sprague in
some Temperance Recorder, as no thorough te-totaller at any
rate. And this altered condition of things is, notwithstanding
some unreasonable and uncharitable annoyances incident to
its requirements, clearly a great advance and improvement
upon the treasured and venerable " wisdom of our revered
ancestors." Then again as to our personal costume and the fashion of
our dress. (I speak only of that of the gentlemen, not ventur
ing to meddle with so ticklish a subject as that of the ladies.)
Although one can hardly avoid snatching a furtive sideway
glance, as their departed shadows pass in tempting retrospect
before him, at the spindling stilts in the form of what were
called stick heels, on which our venerable matrons of that day
used to elevate their stately forms about four inches above
their natural stature ; and the wide spreading expanders of
their delicate dimensions called hoops, with which they encir
cled themselves, in order to enlarge by a few degrees the
already liberal circumference of their equatorial regions. Of
the modern substitutes for these outre and hollow appliances,
we, at our time of life, may reasonably be supposed to observe
and to know nothing ; and of course shall venture to say
nothing. This being, perhaps, also one of those uncome-ata-
ble and nice cases depending upon exact mensuration and close
scrutiny in which a fair comparison between ancient and
modern dimensions would be a difficult and delicate task;
and on that and other accounts probably "the least said the
soonest mended." And we make our escape gladly from out
of the range of these formidable female entrenchments, to the
more manageable dress, costume and habiliments of the gen
tlemen of that age and time. For of all things, we should
dislike to get into a bustle with the Amazonian phalanx here
or elsewhere ; as in such an unequal war the least we could
expect would be to have the whole army of bishops in their

18
full and formidable armory down upon us. We would sedu-
lously avoid, at our time of life, doing any thing that might
reasonably lead to a state of belligerency with our fellow be-
ings of any sex, cast, or character. But if in the pursuit of
duty dictated, or obligation assumed, " offences must needs
come," and civil contests are not to be honorably avoided, let
them come off rather with the bluff race of whiskerandos, with
whose tactics and stratagems we are more familiar, and can
better grapple with and circumvent. And therefore taking
our respectful leave of these our " fair daughters of Israel," we
" turn ourselves again unto the Gentiles " of our own sex,
with whom as more irreclaimable reprobates is to be found
our main business.
The dress of the gentlemen of the present day is in the
main a great and decided improvement over the old fashions,
both in point of convenience and rational appearance. There
were then the white broad bottomed wigs of the clergy, which
as they passed, the children of the parish made their manners
to, and a portion of the parishioners, (not all old women nei
ther,) almost worshipped in breach of the second command
ment — had the object bowed down to, been like unto any
other thing, to be found in either of the upper, nether, or lower
kingdoms of creation, which it was not ; only that by way of
a slant upon it, some of the wicked boys used, when they
got among themselves, to call it "a nanny." There were in
proper keeping with these, the red scarlet coats and cloaks of
the high dignitaries of civil office, nearly blinding the eyes
of the common people with the glare of their imposing majes
ty ; and when, as is well recollected, the governors of the
plain people of Massachusetts used to exhibit themselves on
election and other great gala days, equipped in a full suit of
crimson silk velvet ; a most gaudy and attractive spectacle
to the young admirers of official splendor, and the high dig
nity of " God's vicegerents," the exalted rulers of the people.
And then the famous cocked hats too, instar omnium, which
were mounted, of course, by every decent gentleman who as
pired to be a leading man in his town, or to cut a respectable
and commanding figure in his weekly goings forth to and

19
from the parish meeting house. All these unnatural and in
convenient habiliments have given place to plain, substantial
broadcloth or cotton, which much better defends against wind
and weather ; to plain unfrizzled and uncrisped locks (to say
nothing of the sedulously cultivated and valued whiskers)
which will bear wet and stormy as well as dry and calm
weather ; and to uncocked broad brim hats, which are per.
mitted to spread out and protect the eyes and the face of the
wearer from the rays of the sun and the inclemencies of the
different seasons. But the picture of a full-dressed beau or
dandy of that or a little later day, would throw quite into the
shade the most finished specimens of that genus butterfly of
the present times ; as the former would be quite a curiosity
in our streets now, we will attempt a crayon sketch of his
costume, for the benefit of his suceessors in that line, whom
he so much outshone in every essential absurdity, however
highly the latter may think of their own prowess and enter.
prise in that line. Imprimis, a dark green or blue broadcloath
coat, high standing cape of white or crimson velvet, with two
rows of buttons covered with gold or silver tinsel, about the
size of a dollar ; vest of white or buff colored kerseymere,
gaily embroidered with colored silk, and adorned with gold
or silver cord and spangles ; short breeches of the same, or
satin of any fancied color, made to as close a fit as his own
worthless dog skin, and fastened at the knee by large silk
bows or stone knee buckles ; white silk stockings with open
clock work ; with an apology for shoes, in the form of light
pumps, merely covering the toes and the bottom of the feet,
surmounted by a proportionate buckle ; a full plaited wide
ruffle, pendant out from the bosom and the wristbands of the
shirt ; a cravat stuffed with cotton padding so as to bring it
even with the chin, helping the empty headed wearer to hold
his head up in the world without much effort, and less merit ;
the hair saturated with pomatum and powder, craped or friz-
zled into a rising cushion before, and with the additional
splicing on of a false queue, twisted and turned up behind into
a club about the size of his wrist ; something like a half hour's
operation this ; but it made fine times for the barbers, who

20
were nearly ruined when the democratic habits and fashions
introduced by the French revolution made it popular for every
would-be patriot and aspiring demagogue at least, to wear his
hair a la croppe, and appear in a rather slouching and careless
costume throughout. The country bumpkins satisfied their
hair brained aspirations in that line with suspending from the
back of their necks a twelve inch eel-skin appendage, which,
when early and successfully cultivated and attended to, hung
down to their hips, and had it have been first discovered in
an African wilderness, might not unnaturally have been mis
taken by a native for the lapsed tail of some unfortunate
monkey then and there accustomed to wander, and shorn of
his pendant honors in an unlucky foray with one of his bel
ligerent fellows. But 1 had almost forgotten our fashionables'
boots, extended up to the knee bands, to which they were
fastened by straps and buckles attached thereto, with fair
white tops, and peaked toes ; the legs made elastic like India
rubber by what was called putting a tuck in them ; and
when drawn on as they were by many a hard effort, fitting
all the way to the limb like a tight stocking.
Such is a synopsis of the full bodily equipment of a fine
gentleman of most of our principal cities and villages about
the year 1793. In the remote country towns these were vied
with and imitated, though at a very humble distance, as we
had then no rail roads to convey the ever-changing patterns
and fashions in due season, and few mechanics who were
competent to getting them up in a proper style. Now our
present fashions and modes of dress, even the most outre of
them, are altogether more rational, convenient and comforta
ble than those which we have truly and without exaggeration
.chronicled and reported.
It is we believe, a well ascertained fact from authentic sta
tistical tables, imperfect and scanty as those yet are in this
country, that notwithstanding the increased dissipation of
time, of money, and of morals, in the large cities and towns,
and amongst certain classes of society, there is yet a gradual
diminution of mortality, and an average prolongation of hu
man life with the great mass of society, compared with any

21
former period. In England and Europe in general this is a
still better ascertained and marked fact, and is thus stated
from a work of good authority.
" Since 1650, all the counties of Europe, as well as the
principal towns, present a gradual diminution of mortality.
The value of life has doubled in London in the last century,
and in many cities the probability of life to a citizen has
gradually become five times greater. The increased salubrity
is referable to various causes ; the principal of which are the
improved condition of the lower classes of society as regards
food, clothing and fuel ; better habits as respect cleanliness,
ventilation, and the use of spirituous liquors, and improved
medical practice, especially in preventive means."
The same effects, owing much doubtless to the same causes,
have been ascertained to have taken place in this country,
where careful inquiries have been instituted. All this too,
denotes progress, and not retrocession and declension, in the
course of human affairs, both here and elsewhere.
In most of the enterprises and habits which we have glanced
at, there has then been obviously a great and undeniable ad
vance and improvement in the means and modes of efficient
enterprise, of social and individual enjoyment, and the gene
ral well being of society. And in these respects certainly
those who ask "why were the former days better than these ?"
do not " inquire wisely." This is one side of the picture.
Would that we could congratulate ourselves as surely, touch
ing our higher destinies for the future, and upon our having
made as great advances in the road of public patriotism, per
sonal honor and integrity, and private morality. But in these
regards it will probably be universally acknowledged that we
have but little to boast of as yet ; although we have not the
heart to add, that we have less still to hope for.
We will but glance briefly at the present position and pros
pects of civil and social society, as affected and portended
by the " signs of the times," and as developed through the
new or increased agencies which have been brought to bear
upon them. The speaker is by no means prone to be carried
away with the idea, that we are always living in the midst of
some particular and portentous crisis. He has lived to see so

22
many such alledged or predicted ones, both in the moral,
social and political world, pass off without any disastrous
concussion, or any very essential or wonderful change in the
existing order of things, to expect much more from their oc
currence or effect upon the general state of human affairs at
any particular time. Whether it be from a somewhat differ
ent habit of viewing things, growing out of more advancing
years, and increasing infirmity of nerves, he will not affirm.
But from a general view of the great movements of the age,
and the strange " signs of the times," at the present day, it
would seem as though the new and surprising developments
which have of late years, and are now manifesting themselves
in the elements and powers, both of the physical and moral
world, have a natural and inevitable tendency to lead, as they
have in many respects already led, to some new and surpris
ing results into the future condition of human affairs, and in
the state and destiny of man in his relations to himself and
to the world.
Through a new combination and application of some of the
material elements, the resistless agency of the printing press,
and the almost omnipotent power of steam, forces have been
applied and faculties created or enlarged to a degree which
has made of civilized man, as it were, a new race of giants or
anakims, both for the purpose of useful productiveness and
conservatism on the one hand, and for that of mutual destruc
tion, waste, and annoyance, multiplied more than a thousand
fold, on the other. Cotemporaneously with this increased
and unprecedented power of these natural physical agents and
servants to man wielded by human power, the mind of man
-itself seems from some quarter or other also to have received
some new active and irrepressible impulses. He has discern
ed as he thinks within himself and his fellows, new and start-
3ing powers and faculties heretofore but faintly dreamed of;
giving him new relations both to himself and to all existence
around him, or in the more remote portions of the universe ;
•such, substantially is the new science of Phrenology, with its
<cat ryings out of animal magnetical influences and operations
aipon the human system ; through the agency of which there

23
are certainly some wonderful, and as yet unexplained pheno
mena in relation to the nature and powers of the mind in its
connection with the body which it inhabits and with the
mind and bodies of others. Another portion of mankind
have discovered as they think, and so confidently believe and
teach, new disclosures or revelations of wonderful and porten
tous events touching man's immediate destiny which are very
soon to open and display themselves upon the human vision.
Such is the new and increasing sect calling themselves "New
Adventarians," now numbering their thousands in some of
the most enlightened portions of this country; who confidently
declare to us, that within a very few months is to be witnessed
« a new heaven and a new earth," and man and all his pre
sent works are then to be changed and " pass away with a
great noise " forever. It would appear from the history of
the world however that such like portending auguries and pre
dictions are not entirely of modern growth and cultivation.
The prurient spirit which prompts to them, was as Horace tells
us, moving upon the face of the troubled waters of the Roman
Empire in the age of the Caesars and the Antonines :
****** " Terruit urbem,
Terruit gentes, grave ne rediret
Saeculum Pyrrhae, nova monstra questae."
When cities and when nations terror-struck,
Shook with the fear of Pyrrha's dreaded age,
Portended monsters and " chimeras dire."
But all these and many other like auguries and vaticinations
have long since, with their self-deceived and deceiving pro
phets, seers, and soothsayers, passed away into the land of
shadows ; but " the earth abideth," still continuing to revolve
as before in its divinely appointed sphere, steadfast and unjos-
tled amidst the conflict of the elements, and the rise and fall
of its ephemeral tenants and occupants.
"Fluit, fluit, et semper cucurret amnis."
It rolls and rolls, and shall forever roll.
We would not, because it is not necessary for our present
purpose, either affirm or deny anything either of the truth or

24
soundness of many of these speculations, claims, principles,
discoveries or predictions, (although the speaker has formed
no doubting or concealed opinions on them for himself;) and
we enlarge nothing upon the wide spread delusions of Mor-
monism, no church organization, no human government, and
various other transcendentalisms of the times, which occupy
and agitate the heaving billows of the human mind, at the
present day. But under these aspects, is not this already
almost " a new world," compared with any that has been
known before it ; with new natural elements and agents ; or
what is nearly the same, new applications and combinations
of the old ones ; producing new results, impulses, develop
ments, and operations of matter and of mind, before incredi
ble and almost undreamed of, or imagined by the wildest
fancy ? In some of these relations the intellectual powers of
man, would appear to have outstripped his moral cultivation ;
the centrifugal forces to have become disproportioned to the
centripetal ones, and which at times, for want of some effec
tive balance wheel, seem to threaten the fatal disadjustment or
destruction of the impetuous machine which it impels.
Another grave question is, can this sweeping tide of many
rushing waters now be expected to recede, or to stand still
where it is ? It may, it is believed, be considered as pretty
certain that it will do neither. It must in the natural order
of things, and in the nature of man himself, be expected still
to press onward and upward, driven by the ever increasing
steam-forced powers and passions of man's restless and strug
gling spirit ; to what end, and in what final consummation,
he only who permits and governs it can, as it would seem to
us, at all with any certainty predict. These new agencies
and energies, when directed and inspired by the spirit of love
and humanity, and impelled by angelic hands, are indeed ca
pable of, and tending to much good, and of imparting much
benefit and comfort to the human race ; but, when driven by
the spirit of devilism and hatred, are equally capable of, and
tending to much misery and desolation through this fair crea
tion of God, which under its influences and its heaving
" ground swells," must, it would seem erelong become either

25
a paradise or a pandemonium, according to the direction
which its enhanced powers and forces should happen or by the
hand of the Great Architect himself be directed to take and
be applied to. It is not as of old the common " potsherds ''
striving with the old " potsherds of the earth," but it will be
as it were a new and enlarged race of human monsters fight
ing the great battle of Gog and Magog, and like Milton's
devils in the infernal regions, hurling mountains and oceans
at each other, whenever there may come on a general conflict
amongst them, either individually or in national or civil con
tests of the masses.
And what is the position and aspect of this, our own coun
try, amidst this general fermentation and excitement of matter
and of mind, and this threatened turmoil and conflict of the
elements of nature and of life ? How stand our great politi
cal and civil institutions and the social and moral principles
upon which they depend for their existence and perpetuity ?
Where, to touch upon one point only, is the adhesive power,
which is to hold together our national confederacy in its effec
tive power and strength much longer? Many of the states
have already ceased to regard, not only their own solemn ob
ligations to themselves and their individual and corporate
obligees, but also those to the Union itself, when they conflict,
or seem to conflict at all with their own supposed temporary
interest, or with the selfish views of a local and aspiring fac
tion among themselves, who may have siezed upon the rule
and conduct of their affairs. And there seems to be no inhe
rent and adequate power to compel the delinquents or recu
sants to a compliance with those obligations. And neither in
the national or state councils, does there appear to be, as it
may be feared, sufficient moral power and responsibility left
to resist effectually the sweeping floods of faction, passion and
venality which too often overwhelm and counteract every
better principle. And when we see intelligent and leading
men in our legislative bodies getting up, and gravely main-
taining what they must know to be the most palpable and
untenable absurdities, touching constitutional and moral rights
and obligations ; a majority of such bodies sanctioning, and

26
a party press universally sustaining and echoing them — can
we fail to see that constitutional ligaments are but cobwebs,
and the moral sense but as smoking flax, in the reckless hands
of our strong political Sampsons, when they have a sinister
purpose to answer by rending or disregarding them ? We
apply not here these remarks and strictures, to any such poli
tical party as we may suppose more especially to deserve
them : qui capit, illefacit ; let those who feel that they may
deserve them make their own application.
And in view of all these considerations, with their apparent
and obvious tendencies, and prospective portents, we are at
times, though but rarely, almost disposed to yield to the de
sponding prediction of an old and experienced political friend,
now attached to no existing party, " that we have not impro
bably seen the last presidential election under the constitution
of 1788." These are unpleasent and perhaps extravagant
and too sombre views of "the present and the future." But
it can surely do no harm to look at them for a moment, im
probable and distan tas they may seem to us to be, and little
as we may regard in themselves the supposed wild and fanatic
delusions of the day. Are they not all pregnant indications
at least of the pent-up winds, wrestling, and the storm and
tempest struggling for deliverance within their dark and deep
recesses ? At any rate, the most obtuse mind, and the least
acute sensibility cannot fail to discern in the events and as
pects of " the present," enough to awaken and engage all it's
powers of observation and reflection, with however much cool
ness, placidity and unconcern he may look forward upon the
prospects and foreshadowings of " the future."
As this is the age of " progress," and the day of "radical re-
reform," a few suggestions on the spirit and tendency of some
of the efforts made and making in this behalf, from one who
from necessity, rather than from disinclination has been ra
ther an observer of, than a participator in their movements
and operations, may not be altogether out of place or charac
ter in connection with our general subject.
Approving as we do of the principles, partaking of the gene
ral views, and sympathising in the aspirations of many of the

27
" men of progress," and the professed reformers of the age and
the times, there are at least two particulars in their modus ope
randi, for producing their professedly desired results, which we
can neither approve, partake of, or participate in ; since, as
appears to us, they are entirely at war with their first great
professed principle, of the " largest liberty," and exceedingly
ill adapted to attain their favorite object. One is that which
can probably not be better described or defined than by calling
it by a homemade but very expressive word "one-idealism ;"
that is, when an ardent, self-opinated, perhaps ambitious man
has strongly imbibed one idea, or enlisted himself to effect one
particular object, that he should then think and act as though
he believed that the only one in the world worthy of pursuit ;
and to make an adherence to, and engagedness in it both
in kind and degree an exclusive test of general character, both
in religious, political and social life ; saying to others who
have moved not yet quite so far or so fast in his steam-tra
velled path, " get out of my way ;" or like the Pharisee of
old, " stand you by, I am holier than thou." Thus in truth,
attempting to work his way by the law of force, and by no
means by that which they usually profess, that of universal
love and Christian kindness. These most usually run to be
sure at starting, a most rapid and hurried race ; but at the
same time an equally short and fruitless one. Need we go
very far from home to realize the existence and exercise of
such a spirit and temper, and to look for its natural results?
It began amongst us with the breaking forth of the Auti
Masonic excitement, just and rightful perhaps in its general
principles, and stimulated to action by the abuses of the ob
noxious institution which it was its professed aim to overthrow
and subvert. But both in church and state, its zealous parti.
sans endeavored, and, to a certain extent, and within certain
limits succeeded in making that the peculiar test question of
the day, both for the enjoyment of the rites and ordinances of
the former, and for the exercise of the political and civil offi-
ce&>f the latter. Their success, was as we all know, short
lived and evanescent ; and now Anti Masonry has long been
a departed phantom, or a dead carcase, which few think of,

28
and fewer still care to regard. Then came the Temperance
reform, admirable and beneficient in its principles, happy in
its legitimate results upon the well being of society, and highly
promotive of individual happiness. But that too, must be
made as its engaged advocates said, another test question ; and
we had Temperance tickets for elective offices, and total ab
stinence tests for admittance to the rites and ordinances of
the church ; followed up in some states by the penalties of
legal enactments, and " fifteen gallon measures " wherewith
to guage the appetites and the consciences of the rum and
whiskey drinkers. How all these projects ended we need not
to be informed. But the " Washingtonians" the more wise
and discreet successors of these zealous reformers, have now
found out and reduced to practice "a more excellent way."
And what has been and still is their much greater progress
and success, we also well know. Then came the " Abolition
ists," (technically so called,) with an equally rigid and still
broader test ; comprehending both sins of commission and
omission ; and excluding from their communion both civil
and ecclesiastical, not only all who acted against their views
touching the question of slavery, but all who shewed not them
selves hearty, zealous, and out-spoken co-actors in their assem
blies and associations ; denouncing the old tests of religious
communion and political confidence on the one hand, as
anti Christian and anti social, and setting up new and nar
rower ones on the other, as requisites for admission into their
fraternities and associations, which they presumptously deno
minate "the only true Christian Church or community."
With one voice vehement for " the largest liberty " of con
science and of action, and with the same voice instituting
the most abject slavery of the mind as the only pass way to
their favorable regard ; and even avowing as has one of their
" class leaders," " that he would not employ a shoe black for his
boots who would not first qualify himself for his employment
by adopting his creed on this test question of his character."
How narrow and unjustifiable in themselves, how contrary to
the free spirit of the age, at variance with their own professed
general principles, and what a snail paced tortoise like progress

29
these reformers of our civil and religious institutions have
been making or are likely to make with their cause under the
exercise of such principles and measures, it needs no wizard
or prophet to reveal to us.
And now in these latter days, have risen a new race of
reformers and religionists before alluded to, and known as
" New Adventarians," who boldly denounce all other classes
who are engaged in other objects and speculations, as " blind
leaders of the blind," and as employed in pursuits utterly vain
and worthless, in view of that great " consummation of all
things," and in the contemplation of which, as they maintain,
every faculty should be employed, and every sense and aspi
ration be absorbed. And to most or all of these heterogeneous,
and yet in one sense homogeneous classes of "one idea" spe-
culatists and reformers may not inaptly be applied Cowper's
characteristic description : —
" No wild enthusiast ever yet could rest,
Till all mankind were like himself possess'd.
Discoverers of they know not what, confined,
Within no bounds — the blind that lead the blind."
All these intolerant and illiberal dogmas and projects pro
ceed on the narrow and false assumption that there is but one
single test of moral or social character varying with the age
or the circumstances surrounding the subject of it ; whereas
man is not only " a bundle of habits," but also his moral cha
racter is made up of various and mixed ingredients all of
which should be possessed in due proportion to each other,
and cultivated with equal care, in order to compose a perfect
and harmonious whole, and those are but moral quacks and
empirics who would thus disjoin and repudiate all but one item
of them.
The other great error, if not sin of many of these refor-
mers of the age it is conceived is, their often appealing both
in their writing and oral inculcations, in the style of a design.
ing demagogue, to the lower passions and propensities of the
mixed mass whom they would influence in order to propitiate

30
their favor, and gain a portion of them to their particular
views on the subjects which they would urge upon their atten
tion. Depicting to what in common parlance are commonly
denominated the lower and poorer classes in society, the great
and unjust inequality of their condition compared with that
of the higher and more opulent ones. Forgetful or wholly
regardless of how that inequality may have arisen or been
brought about, whether through providential dispensations, or
the different degrees of talent, industry, and good habits of
the different subjects of each. This course of treatment of
the diseased state of human society, even when not practiced
as it is to be apprehended it too often is, from a spirit of mis.
chievous and ambitious demagoguery, is not without its many
dangers and abuses.
And at the hazard of being esteemed an obdurate, hide
bound conservative, which we must repeat, we are far, very
far from being, we would venture to throw out our apprehen
sions, whether the style in which they insist upon inculcating,
and the extent to which they are in the habit of pushing their
doctrines and their teachings as to certain topics of the day,
is not of very questionable justice and good effect. Not,
therefore, in relation to many of their general views of the
present position and relations of civil and social society, but
in sincerity and in apprehensive earnestness would we suggest
for their sober consideration, whether in the way in which
they often treat of these matters, there is not great danger
that in dwelling upon the natural equality of all men and their
undoubted equal right to life, its enjoyments and blessings,
contrasting them as they do in vivid colors with the general
state of practical inequality, in the means of obtaining them
which actually exists in all the various departments of civil,
domestic and social life ; whether this is not too frequently
done in a manner and to an extent quite as much calculated
to stir up the envy and the hatred of one class against the other,
and to incite the former to forcible and unlicensed methods of
obtaining their different objects and desires, as it is to conciliate
the sympathies, and excite the humane efforts of the other
class to remedy these evils, so far as may be practicable, con-

31
sistent with the fixed laws of nature and the superior rewards
consequent upon and due to the superior efforts of industry
and moral virtue. Let us dwell perpetually and vividly upon
one side of this question to perhaps an improvident man who
has but a cold potatoe for his dinner, while his more fortunate,
perhaps more provident neighbor has a rich surloin of beef
and its trimmings for his, and it is a great and may be made
an almost irrepressible temptation to the former to resolve up
on restoring the unequal balance of this hard inequality by
any means whatever, and to become if it be necessary to that
end, very different from a long suffering and ever enduring
non-resistant in carrying his purposes into effect. No indeed,
this is neither the most ready or safe way of restoring the bal
ance, or calculated to produce that happy condition of things
preluded in Miss Martineau's beautiful lines, " the fraternity
of man " when man with man shall —
" Live as they worship, side by side,
Their common claims revere."
We trust that these suggestions will not be received as the
portentous and vain croakings of staid and timid " conserva
tism," which like senile childhood, lives only in the past, sees
in the present little but declension and rash innovation, and
descries in the future nothing but ruinous destruction of the
venerated and consecrated temples before whose sacred fanes
he has been accustomed to bow himself, and in whose doc
trines and dogmas he alone recognizes " the pure milk" of the
political, the literary and the religious world. Doubtless in
these views as in almost everything else, there is a middle,
just and discreet pathway which, when taken usually conducts
the wary and way-wise traveller to the most safe and certain
results. In medias tutissimus ibis, is a maxim certainly not
to be despised or disregarded, perverted though it may often
be, and surely is, by the ultra conservative, the tide waiters
and the " waiters upon providence," who are ever " sitting
upon the fence," watching for some convenient place where
they may jump off, and from whence they may throw them
selves and their future fortunes, into the passing and swelling

32
current, which promises to bear its floating barques with their
insured cargoes into a safe harbor, and to a profitable mar
ket, for their advertised wares.
But in the much better, eloquent, and well chosen language
of Mr. Justice Story, " Considerations not less discouraging
must arise, if either of the other two extremes of opinion
are to possess an enduring influence. The truth is, that the
past is not everything, nor the future everything, nor the
present everything. The intellect of man is now neither in
its infancy, nor in its decrepitude. Human Knowledge,
whether it be for ornament or use, for pleasure or instruction,
is the accumulation of the wisdom and genius of all ages, and
is, like the occean, composed of contributions from infinitely
various sources, whose currents have mingled together from
the beginning, and must continue so to do, to the end of time.
Sound the depths as you may, they will be found not entirely
the same, nor entirely different. The shoals and the quick
sands may be removed from one side ; but they have often
only shifted to the other. The waters may have become
more clear and transparent in some parts ; but at the same
time, more turbid and shallow in others. The general level
has not materially changed in height, or the current in its
breadth, although occasional tides may have ebbed and flowed
with irregular and sometimes desolating power. In some
places the alluvial deposits have buried the ancient landmarks;
while in others they have been torn away, or submerged. So
in some measure has it been with the history of the human
mind. What has been gained in one direction has been al
most simultaneously lost in another. The known of one age
has become the obscure of the next, and the lost of the suc
ceeding. The favorite pursuits and studies of one age, have
sunk into insignificance or neglect into another. The value
as well as the interest, of particular researches has fluctuated
with the passions, and the theories, and the fashions of the
day. And while each successive generation has imagined
itself to stand upon the shoulders of all, that preceded them,
and flattered itself with the belief that it surveyed all things
with a more comprehensive power, and a less obstructed vis-

33
ion, it has forgotten, that on every side there is a natural
boundary to the intellectual horizon, at which every object
becomes obscure, or evanescent ; and that just in proportion
as we advance in one direction, we may be receding from
well defined and fixed lines of light in the other."
For the particular consideration of the younger portion of
our respected audience, through whose perhaps mistaken par
tiality we have been honored with this opportunity of standing
in a position, and occupying a place reared by their enter
prise, and devoted principally to their intellectual and moral
improvement, permit us to suggest a few brief hints of a
somewhat personal nature ; intended under any aspects in
which the present age may present itself, or the " signs of the
times" may be thought in future to portend, to bear on their
future well being, pursuits and destinies, in their progress
through that perilous journey of life which is just opening
upon their rising horizon, and which we entitle what they in
fact were in their origin and conception :
BROKEN AND BRIEF HINTS TO YOUNG MEN,
FROM THE JOURNAL OF A SICK ROOM'S REFLECTIONS.
"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the
days of thy youth, but remember, *** ****»
Although the speaker has prefixed a scriptural quotation
to these few closing and desultory thoughts, he has not the
ambition or the presumption to assume the office of a scrip
tural preacher, or to affect the port and bearing of a religious
sermonizer. Such an assumption would neither befit his own
position, nor be appropriate to the occasion which has called
them forth. He has but adopted part of a broken text, in cor
respondence with, and conformity to the few broken hints and
suggestions which he may throw out, flowing fitfully and irre
gularly, as they have, from a broken and frail cistern of nearly
exhausted and troubled waters. .
Public duties, and objects of personal ambition and
pursuit. — Every man, young or old, has, of course, an opin-
5

34
ion to make up and a duty to perform, touching the public
concerns and interests of his country, which he is not at liberty
to omit or to disregard ; and when called upon by its condition
or the dangers which may threaten it, he is bound to examine
from his best lights the questions presented to him, form his
deliberate judgment thereon, and act according to its results,
and as guided by the dictates of a well informed conscience
in the premises.
But there is always much false show of mock patriotism
put forth by the zealous and interested partisans of the
day to cover their sinister designs and self-seeking, and
which is but too often successful with their unsuspecting
and uninitiated followers and supporters. Let all young
men, however, who hope to establish for themselves in future
life permanent and safe reliances of fortune, of character, and
of tranquility, be cautioned against setting their hearts, or
making their main dependencies upon political pursuits, objects
and promotions, or the supposed benefits and emoluments ex
pected to flow to them from those unreliable and generally
utterly delusive sources.
Political ambition, and the promotion calculated upon from
its pursuit, is a chase which when closely pursued, more often
than otherwise perverts the high and honorable principles of
the engrossed, impatient, and aspiring mind, which engages
in it, and unfits it for the cool, patient and successful pursuit
of better, more reliable, but less exciting objects. In our
country, no man can travel all lengths with any party, without
sometimes crossing the tracks of the straight path of duty and
of conscience. And yet such are too often and too much its
requirements as a condition on which to entitle its anxious
and sedulous followers to their due share of the honors and
emoluments which it may have to bestow upon its favorite
votaries. " The madness of many for the gain of a few," is
but too just an epitome of party ethics. Very few indeed,
compared with the whole, are they of those who crowd its
bustling and jostling ranks, who draw any of its beneficial
and permanent prizes ; and those few, often through the leger
demain of some sly trick, dishonorable compromise of princi-

35
pie, or by the unfair turning and twisting of the great political
wheel. This, every observing and disinterested spectator
cannot fail to see, who looks but slightly at the game which
is going on and the shifting political phantasmagoria which
are constantly and yearly passing before him.
How ill-advised and short-sighted must it then be for a
young man of correct sentiments, elevated views and high
aims, to sacrifice better and more enduring objects, that he
may fit himself to become one of the dancing, wire-moved
puppets in such an inglorious exhibition ? Let him rather
wait patiently and firmly in his own fast and well-anchored
boat of principle and of honor, for the favoring tide to ap.
proach and buoy him upward and onward, if it will, without
etriving to accommodate his course to its shifting and muddy
surges, (and if it so happen that it never does reach him, it
will be of little matter to him in the end ;) rather submit to
this result, than to be forever following its various ebbs and
flows, to the evident danger of his shipwreek at last, the loss
of his " household gods," and his more valuable and honestly
gained possessions and enjoyments. This is one of the allur
ing but dangerous rocks, which all young aspiring naviga-
tors will do well to avoid. There are a thousand others of
a more private and personal nature some of which may here
be briefly hinted at.
Personal habits and indulgencies. — It is probable that
young men pretty universally esteem it a fortunate circum
stance, and a desirahle object, that they now are, or soon may
be enabled to command and enjoy the many personal gratifi
cations, indulgencies, and allurements of life, which fortune
may have placed within their reach, or the means of which
they fondly hope at no distant day to acquire and possess.
This is a sadly false and delusive use and estimation of the
true sources and means of the long continued and highest en.
joyment of the good things of this life ; even of those which
are too often esteemed as its summum bonum, the gratifica
tions of sense.
With his plain and wholesome fare and health giving
habits, the active and temperate farmer or mechanic en-

36
joys more in the long run, even of the pleasures of sensual
appetite, than does the fastidious and feasting epicure and
gormand, with his complicated and surfeiting viands. Besides
this, that a continued course of selfish sensual gratification is
inevitably followed up and confirmed into a fixed habit, utterly
fatal to those higher, safer, and ever increasing enjoyments
which grow out of the exercise of the intellectual, moral, and
imaginative powers of the mind, its benevolent affections, and
its lively interest in the beauties and harmonies of nature and
of art, in all their admirable and inspiring works.
Man was not created to yield everything to the suggestions
of his present ease, or to the growing calls of his sensual
cravings ; much less to be ever engaged in pampering and
inflating them by gratuitous and needless provocatives. —
From the time when our first parents were placed in the
garden, his duty and his permanent well being has required
of him, that he should resist manfully the proffered tempta
tion of the fair but treacherous fruit which is plucked and
presented to him by the insidious hands of a thousand de
lusive charmers, "charming ever so wisely;" that he should
maintain a constant and vigorous struggle, with the secretly
armed adversaries " whose name is legion," and who in
many cheating forms are ever watching for his annoyance
and destruction. " Of comely form she was, and fair of face,
And underneath her eyelids sat a kind
Of witching sorcery, that nearer drew
Whoever with unguarded looks beheld."
To these he must ever be ready to give battle with all his
forces, and not flatter himself that he can safely repose upon
his downy couch in a state of easy quietude, or pampered
and enervating indulgence. And woe be to him, as it cer
tainly will be, who mistakes this his irreversible and unwel
come destiny, and suffers himself to fall into the alluring lap
of the Circean tempter who will soon bind him with her Phi
listine cords, when no Sampson's arm wherewith to burst them
shall be left to him. Even the healthful fruits of the delight.

37
ful gardens of the Hesperides may be over used to the loath
ing and disgust of their imprudent partakers ; let them beware
then of indulging themselves too largely or too frequently in
their refreshing bowers, and of lingering too long in their
seductive retreats.
There are few more effective preachers than an academical
or college catalogue, when its silent, but effective moral and
practical teachings are seriously listened to by a contempla
tive observer, as he looks upon their thick starred columns after
a few years' absence from his youthful classic retreats. How
much the after usefulness, enjoyment, and. respectability of
future life, and even the long continuance of life itself in the
ordinary course of providential dealings, depends upon the
manner in which its early forming years may have been
passed, will be made evident from the fact which such obser
vation will indicate, that but a very few, comparatively, of
those young men who, when pursuing their collegiate or aca
demical course were distinguished for their idle, self-indulgent,
and dissipated habits, will be found to have arrived in after
life to a state of enviable reputation, or high distinction in
any department of worldly honor or fame ; and a very large
share of such will be found to have been quite short-lived,
and to have passed early "ad astra" to a premature and inglo
rious grave. And any one who will make such examination
of the fate of his classmates and cotemporaries in his acade
mical life, will find, perhaps to his surprise, that such is the
almost invariable result. So true is it in the proverbial lan
guage of the wise man of old, that, " Happy is the man that
findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding."
" Length of days is in her right hand ; and in her left hand
riches and honor." While of the froward and perverse it is
at the same time and with equal truth, affirmed, " The man
that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain
in the congregation of the dead ;" and " Shame shall be the
promotion of fools."
It was amidst the musing contemplations suggested by lis
tening to such a silent preacher, that the following reflections
were a short time since elicited.

38
LINES
On seeing a Catalogue of the Graduates of Yale College, after forty-
eight years graduation there. Those deceased marked by stars,
"Sic itur ad astra.1*
As on my dim and fading sight,
These thick starr'd columns rise,
Sad thoughts my troubled heart o'erflow,
And tears my weeping eyes.
Fond memory now with vision strong,
Surveys those ancient walls,
Beneath whose calm and friendly shade,
We trod Yale's classic halls.
It tells, alas ! of other years,
Of friends and follies past ;
And ah! it tells of summer skies,
By wintry clouds o'ercast.
And still those ancient walls remain,
Those pleasant halls are there ;
But oh ! ye friends of other days,
Where have ye vanished — where ?
This star marked chronicle, it speaks
How frail is life's fond dream;
How many gay and joyous hearts
Have sunk beneath its stream.
As ships upon the stormy main,
By wasting tempests driven,
Or by the winged lightning's shock,
The verdant oak is riven.
So launching on life's boisterous sea,
Youth leaves his peaceful shore,
Spreads all his canvass to the gale,
And parts to meet no more.
One sinks beneath the whelming wave,
In manhood's ardent prime;
Another floats through care-worn years,
Down the dark tide of time.
Oh ! is there not some tranquil port,
Where storm-tossed barques shall ride,
Beyond the swelling of life's sea,
Above time's wasting tide ?
Some calm retreat, some classic ground,
In heavenly verdure drest,
Where long lost friends shall meet again,
And weary wanderers rest ?

39
It is impossible for the young, aspiring and glowing mind,
with its bursting storehouse of full health, animal spirits, and
fond anticipations, to realize the possibility of those changes
of health, fortune, or condition, some of which inevitably
await all whom "flesh is heir to;" at some period of their
mortal existence, although indeed in quite unequal degrees.
And yet an occasional contemplation of this aspect of human
life may not be useless in checking those undue expectations,
and chastening those riotous exultations of the inexperienced
heart, to which all such are prone : — it may furnish too, an
additional inducement to inquire for, and to avoid some of
the shoals of life by which many of those changes may have
been prematurely brought about, or greatly aggravated in their
degree and intensity.
Now in life's bright and rising morning, and to the young,
healthful, and unchastened heart, all is joy, serenity and peace
in the present moment, and confident hope and expectation
for the future one. But in its appointed season —
" A change comes o'er the spirit of its dream ;"
a sad and sorrowing change ! — the rough hand of time, age,
disease or adversity, or all combined, perhaps is laid upon its
confident and self satisfied possessor ; he is driven, like the
pampered monarch of old, from the busy scenes which once
occupied him, and from the many enjoyments in which he
once delighted to participate, to linger out a cheerless and
unblesssed existence, and to " eat grass like oxen." In this
condition, no untried subject can at all realize, delineate or
conceive the vivid and absorbing sensations, under the force
of which the otherwise listless and unemployed mind falls
back as it were upon itself, and forever calls up the shadows
(now dark and sombre ones) of departed days, scenes and
associations, which although once deeply interesting and de
lightful, had nearly vanished from the reccollection, or lain
dormant, amidst the active and absorbing scenes of life's va
ried occupations, recreations, or amusements. Now in his
secluded retreats, how brightly and intensely, and yet how
sadly, hover over and around him —

40
" Those rainbow dreams,
So Innocent and fair, that withered age,
Ev'n at the grave cheer'd up his dusty eye ;
And passing all between, look'd fondly back
To see them once again ere he departed."
And yet how little were those days, scenes, associations
and opportunities realized, and their intrinsic charms and
value estimated, as they were in possession or passing, com
pared with those new estimates of them, which are elicited
when viewed through the magnifying, retrospective telescope
of their passed and vanished shadows ; and for the lamented
loss of which the stagnated and exhausted fountains of life
can afford no substitute or compensation ; for most certain it
is, that — " We cannot from the dregs of life receive,
That which its fresher runnings failed to give."
Happy those who can fill this fearful vacuum by drawing
refreshing waters from a deeper and more exhaustless foun
tain elsewhere ! The best partial preventative or palliative
for most of these destined and some of them unavoidable af
flictions of humanity, whether constitutional or acquired, will
be found in self denying temperate habits of life, an active
and engaged scene of employment of all the bodily and men
tal powers ; and an habitual interest, association and sympa
thy in the well being, the wants and enjoyments of our fellow
men ; and never forgetting amongst all the appointed means
and requisites for assured happiness here below, that
" From purity of heart all pleasure springs,
And from a quiet conscience all our peace."
But after all is done or attempted, we may adjust the parts,
regulate the movements and oil the springs of this mysteri
ously complicated physical and spiritual machine as we may,
the saddening view of its disjointed and decayed ruins, is a
spectacle sure, near and fast approaching to all of them. And
what a spectacle, indeed is that ! Look upon its earthly re
mains whilst yet left lingering here in its frail and perishing

41
tenement, upon its low and last couch, not much more uncon-
scious perhaps of the joys and the beauties of the existence
in and around it, than is the weary and worn burden, which
it a little longer sustains. The once active, bounding, and
elastic limbs, now torpid, stiff, and paralysed ; the intelligent,
brilliant, and darting eye, sunk, glazed, and wandering ; the
perception, once quick and penetrating, slow and obtuse ; the
affections once ardent and glowing, cold and indifferent ; the
imagination once revelling in a world redolent of life and
beauty, plunging through a struggling morass of death, defor-
mity and decay ; the aspirations once lofty and ennobling,
crushed, degraded, and self abasing ; the senile tear and the
deep-drawn groan fill up and finish the gasping and vanishing
portrait ; and there, even there, upon that lorn and restless
couch lies mayhap all that remains here of the hero, the
statesman, the sage, the orator, or the minstrel. What a self
humbling and abasing spectacle is that ! and how does its
near contemplation sink into almost utter worthlesness, the
most lofty capacities, the proudest attainments, and the widest
domains of the most envied possessor of them all ?
And yet in the humble semblance of this dark and forlorn
portrait must all flesh, with some slight variation of its distin
guishing "lights and shades," be at last sketched and presen
ted to our averted and unwilling gaze ; and in this struggling
and " parting strife" must each and every one, with somewhat
greater or less degrees of prominence, act or bear his final
part and character. Why or wherefore thus constituted and
thus destined by a benevolent and all-wise architect,
" We know not ; but we soon shall know
" When life's sore conflicts cease."
And happy and fortunate, is he whom "wisdom's great
teacher" has not only instructed how to live usefully to his
fellow beings, and happily to himself here in this transient
vale of disappointment and of trouble,—-
" *»»»*» But ah ! too high
For human knowledge, taught him how to die !"
6

42

POSTSCRIPT.
We omitted to notice in its proper place with the distinct
ness and prominence which it is entitled to, as evidence of
the highly advancing and progressive state of our country for
the last fifty years in the great cause of humanity and of so
cial improvement, the contrasted state of the charitable and
benevolent institutions and associations existing within it at
these different periods. At the former one, no associations
for the promotion of Temperance, or for moral improvement
as such, existed, it is believed, through the whole extent of
the land ; no Asylums for the insane, no retreats for the mute
and the blind, no general hospitals for the infirm, reared by
the hands of benevolence and charity, opened their hospita-
ble doors for the relief and consolation of suffering humanity ;
if we except perhaps the one at an early day erected by the
hand, and dictated by the enlarged spirit of William Penn,
and sustained by the active piety of his admirable and phi
lanthropic Christian sect, the society of Friends. What these
institutions and associations are now, and how diffusive in
their effects upon human improvement, comfort and happiness
it were superfluous to recount. The story is more emphati
cally told in the words of an intelligent and observing foreign
er who has lately visited our country, and whose national
feelings would certainly not prompt him in this or any other
respect to do it more than justice at any rate. Says Mr.
Dickens in his "Notes on America."
" Above all I sincerely believe that the public institutions
and charities of this capital of Massachusetts, are as nearly
perfect as the most considerate wisdom, benevolence and hu
manity can make them." The same credit, though in a less

43
perfect and lower degree may justly be awarded to most of
the other states and portions of our country, whose territories
are dotted over with these noble trophies of humanity and
practical piety. We have no space or time to do more than
to allude merely to the great advances we have made in the
same time in ameliorating the sanguinary penal code of for
mer times ; the almost entire abrogation of capital punish
ment, soon it is hoped to be sought for only amongst the " lost
things of the earth ;" and the admirable systems of state pri
son discipline and employment which have taken the abhorred
places of the " gallows and the whipping post," those nearly
discarded relics of a barbarous and bloody age.

YALE UNIVERSIT* l JBIHj'iH"

3 9002 03472 4188