 | Letters from New York |  |
LETTER XII.
I wish you a Happy New-Year. A year of brave conflict
with evil, within and without—a year of sinless victories.
Would that some fairy, whose word fulfils itself in
fate, would wish me such a year! Yet scarcely are the
words written, when I fall to pitying myself, in view of the
active images they have conjured up; and my soul turns,
with wistful gaze, towards the green pastures and still waters
of spiritual quietude, and poetic ease. Yet were the
aforesaid fairy standing before me, ready to grant whatsoever
I might ask. I think I should have strength enough to choose
a year of conflict for the good of my race; but it should be
warfare without poisoned arrows, and fought on the broad
table-land of high mountains, never descending into the
narrow by-paths of personal controversy, or chasing its foe
through the crooked lanes of policy. In all ages of the
because they have been ever tempted to use the
weapons her antagonists have chosen. Let us learn wisdom
by the Past. The warnings that sigh through experience,
and the hope that smiles through prophecy, both
have power to strengthen us.
The Past and the Future! how vast is the sound, how
infinite the significance! Hast thou well considered of
the fact, that all the Past is reproduced in thee, and all the
Future prophesied? Had not Pharaoh's daughter saved
the Hebrew babe, and brought him up in all the learning
of the Egyptians; had not Plato's soul uttered itself in
harmony with the great choral hymn of the universe; had
not Judean shepherds listened in the deep stillness of moon-light,
on the mountains, to angels chanting forth the primal
notes whence all music flows—Worship, Peace, and Love;
had any one of these been silent, wouldst thou have been
what thou art? Nay, thou wouldst have been altogether
another; unable even to comprehend thy present self. Had
Christianity remained in dens and caves, instead of clothing
itself in outward symbols of grandeur and of beauty; had
cathedrals never risen in towered state,
Gone sounding with a royal voice
The stately minster bell;”
force, and then united his new piratical state in solemn
marriage with the Church; had Luther never thrown his
inkstand at the Devil, and hit him hard; had Bishop Laud
never driven heretics, by fire and faggot, to the rocky shores
of New England; had William Penn taken off his hat to
the Duke of York—would thy present self have been known
to thyself, couldst thou have seen its features in a mirror?
Nay, verily. Thou art made up of all that has preceded
thee; and thus was thy being predestined. And because
Our very shawls bear ornaments found in Egyptian catacombs,
and our sofas rest on the mysterious Sphinx; Caryatides,
which upheld the roof of Diana's ancient temple,
stand with the same quiet and graceful majesty, to sustain
the lighter burden of our candelabras and lamps; and the
water of modern wells flows into vases, whose beautiful
forms were dug from the lava of long-buried Herculaneum.
Truth is immortal. No fragment of it ever dies. From
time to time, the body dies off it; but it rises in a more
perfect form, leaving its grave-clothes behind it, to be, perchance,
worshipped as living things, by those who love to
watch among the tombs. Every line of beauty is the
expression of a thought, and shares the immortality of its
origin; hence the beautiful acanthus leaf is transferred
from Corinthian capitals to Parisian scarfs, and English
calicoes.
It is said that the bow of a violin drawn across the edge
of a glass covered with sand, leaves notes of music written
on the sand. Thus do the vibrations of the Present leave
its tune engraven on the soul; and in the lapse of time, we
call those written notes the language of the Past. Thus art
thou the child of the Past, and the father of the Future.
Thou standest on the Present, “like the sea-bird on a rock
in mid ocean, with the immensity of waters behind him,
ready to plunge into the immensity of waters before him.”
Art thou a Reformer? Beware of the dangers of thy position.
Let not the din of the noisy Present drown the
music of the Past. Be assured there is no tone comes to
thee from the far-off ocean of olden time, which is not a
chord in the eternal anthem of the universe; else had it
been drowned in the roaring waves, long before it came to
thee.
Reform as thou wilt; for the Present and the Future
have need of this; but let no rude scorn breathe on the
of her eye pass into thine; for she has been to thee a mother.
Hath held for ages holy: for the heart
Is alike holy in its strength and weakness;
It ought not to be jested with nor scorned.
All things to me are sacred that have been.
And though earth like a river streaked with blood,
Which tells a long and silent tale of death,
May blush her history and hide her eyes,
The Past is sacred—it is God's, not ours;
Let her and us do better if we can.”
At no season does the thoughtful soul so much realize
that it ever stands “between two infinities”—never does
it so distinctly recognise the presence of vast ideas, that
look before and after, as when the Old Year turns away
its familiar face, and goes off to join its veiled sisterhood
beyond the flood. It is true that every day ends a year,
and that which precedes our birth-day does, in an especial
manner, end our year; yet is there somewhat peculiarly
impressive in that epoch, which whole nations recognize as
a foot-print of departing time.
The season itself has a wailing voice. The very sky
in spring-time laughingly says, “How do you do?” but in
winter it looks a mute farewell. “The year is dying away,”
says Goethe, “like the sound of bells. The wind passes
over the stubble, and finds nothing to move. Only the red
berries of that slender tree seem as if they would fain remind
us of something cheerful; and the measured beat of
the thresher's flail calls up the thought that in the dry and
fallen ear lies so much of nourishment and life.”
Thus Hope springs ever from the bosom of sadness. A
welcome to the New-Year mingles with our fond farewell
to the old. Hail to the Present, with all the work it brings!
Its restlessness, if looked at aright, becomes a golden prophecy.
as schools have taught; but the heart shall chant it; and
tones shall change the words to music, that shall write itself
on all coming time.
* * * * * * * *
New-York welcomes the new year, in much the same
style that she does every thing else. She is not prone, as
the Quakers say, “to get into the stillness,” to express any
of her emotions. Such a hubbub as was kept up on the
night of the 31st, I never heard. Such a firing out of the
old year, and such a firing in of the new! Fourth of July
in Boston is nothing compared to it. The continual discharge
of guns and pistols prevented my reading or writing
in peace, and I took refuge in bed; but every five minutes
a lurid flash darted athwart the walls, followed by the hateful
crash of fire-arms. If any good thing is expressed by
that sharp voice, it lies beyond the power of my imagination
to discover it; why men should choose it for the utterance
of joy, is more than I can tell.
The racket of these powder-devilkins kept me awake till
two o'clock. At five, I was roused by a stout Hibernian
voice, almost under my window, shouting “Pa-ther!” “Pather!”
Peter did not answer, and—off went a pistol.
Upon this, Peter was fain to put his head out of the window,
and inquire what was wanted. “A bright New Year
to ye, Pa-ther. Get up and open the door.”
The show in the shop-windows, during the week between
Christmas and New-Year's, was splendid, I assure
you. All that Parisian taste, or English skill could furnish,
was spread out to tempt the eye. How I did want the
wealth of Rothschild, that I might make all the world a
present! and then, methinks, I could still long for another
world to endow. The happiness of Heaven must consist
in loving and giving. What else is there worth living for!
I have often involuntarily applied to myself a remark made
fitted to perform in the world,” says she, “I could never
think of any that quite satisfied me, but that of Divine Providence.”
To some, this may sound blasphemous; it was,
however, merely the spontaneous and childlike utterance of
a loving and liberal soul.
Though no great observer of times and seasons, I do like
the universal custom of ushering in the new year with gifts
and gladsome wishes. I will not call these returning seasons
notches cut in a stick, to count our prison hours, but
rather a garlanding of mile-stones on the way to our Father's
mansion.
In New-York, they observe this festival after the old
Dutch fashion; and the Dutch, you know, were famous
lovers of good eating. No lady, that is a lady, will be
out in the streets on the first of January. Every woman,
that is “anybody,” stays at home, dressed in her best, and
by her side is a table covered with cakes, preserves, wines,
oysters, hot coffee, &c.; and as every gentleman is in honor
bound to call on every lady, whose acquaintance he does not
intend to cut, the amount of eating and drinking done by
some fashionable beaux must of course be very considerable.
The number of calls is a matter of pride and boasting among
ladies, and there is, of course, considerable rivalry in the
magnificence and variety of the eating tables. This custom
is eminently Dutch in its character, and will pass away
before a higher civilization.
To furnish forth this treat, the shops vied with each other
to the utmost. Confectionary abounded in the shape of
every living thing; beside many things nowhere to be
found, not even among gnomes, or fairies, or uncouth merrows
of the sea. Cakes were of every conceivable shape
—pyramids, obelisks, towers, pagodas, castles, &c. Some
frosted loaves nestled lovingly in a pretty basket of sugar
eggs; others were garlanded with flowers, or surmounted
a pretty show in Broadway—too pretty—since the object
was to minister to heartless vanity, or tempt a sated appetite.
But I will not moralize. Let us all have virtue, and then
there will be no further need to talk of it, as the German
wisely said.
There is one lovely feature in this annual festival. It is
a season when all past neglect, all family feuds, all heartburning
and estrangement among friends may be forgotten
and laid aside for ever. They who have not spoken for
years may renew acquaintance, without any unpleasant
questions asked, if they signify a wish to do so by calling
on the first of January. Wishing all may copy this warm
bit of colouring in our social picture, I bid you farewell, with
my heart's best blessing, and this one scrap of morals: May
you treat every human being as you would treat him, and
speak of every one as you would speak, if sure that death
would part you before next New-Year's Day.
| Letters from New York | |