‘I must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition and doing away with altogether of thoseconsolatory intersticesandsprinklings of freedomthrough the four seasons—thered-letterdays, now become, to all intents and purposes,dead-letterdays. There was Paul and Stephen and Barnabas, Andrew and John, men famous in old times,—we used to keep all their days holy, as long back as when I was at school at Christ’s. I remember their effigies by the same token, in the old Basket Prayer-book. I honoured them all, and could almost have wept the defalcation of Iscariot, so much did we love to keep holy memories sacred; only methought I a little grudged at the coalition of thebetter JudewithSimon—clubbing, as it were, their sanctities together to make up one poor gaudy day between them, as an economy unworthy of the dispensation. These were bright visitations in a scholar’s and a clerk’s life,—“far off their coming shone.” I was as good as an almanac in those days.’[18]
‘I must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition and doing away with altogether of thoseconsolatory intersticesandsprinklings of freedomthrough the four seasons—thered-letterdays, now become, to all intents and purposes,dead-letterdays. There was Paul and Stephen and Barnabas, Andrew and John, men famous in old times,—we used to keep all their days holy, as long back as when I was at school at Christ’s. I remember their effigies by the same token, in the old Basket Prayer-book. I honoured them all, and could almost have wept the defalcation of Iscariot, so much did we love to keep holy memories sacred; only methought I a little grudged at the coalition of thebetter JudewithSimon—clubbing, as it were, their sanctities together to make up one poor gaudy day between them, as an economy unworthy of the dispensation. These were bright visitations in a scholar’s and a clerk’s life,—“far off their coming shone.” I was as good as an almanac in those days.’[18]
And who has written, like Lamb, of the forlorn pathos of the charity boy’s ‘objectless holiday;’ of the ‘most touching peal which rings out the old year;’ of ‘the safety which a palpable hallucination warrants’ on All Fools’; and the ‘Immortal Go-between,’ St. Valentine?
The devotion to the immediate, the thrift, the enterprise, and the material activity which pertain to a new country, and especially to our own, distinguish American holidays from those of the Old World. Not a few of them are consecrated to the future, many spring from the triumphs of the present, and nearly all hint progress rather than retrospection. We inaugurate civil and local improvements; glorify the achievements of mechanical skill and of social reform; pay honour by feasts, processions, and rhetoric to public men; give a municipal ovation to a foreign patriot, or a funeral pageant to a native statesman. Our festivals are chiefly on occasions of economic interest. Daily toil is suspended, and gala assemblies convene, to rejoice overthe completion of an aqueduct or a railroad, or the launching of an ocean steamer. One of the earliest of these economical displays—in New York, memorable equally from the great principle it initiated and the felicitous auguries of the holiday itself—was the celebration of the opening of the Erie Canal, the first of a series of grand internal improvements which have since advanced our national prosperity beyond all historical precedent; and one of the last was the grand excursion which signalized the union by railroads of the Atlantic seacoast and the Mississippi river. The two celebrations were but festive landmarks in one magnificent system. The enterprise initiated in Western New York, in 1825, was consummated in Illinois, in 1854, when the last link was riveted to the chain which binds the vast line of eastern seacoast to the great river of the West, and the genius of communication, so essential to our unity and prosperity, brought permanently together the boundless harvest-fields of the interior and the mighty fleets of the seaboard. To European eyes the sight of the thousand invited guests conveyed from New York to the Falls of St. Anthony would yield a thrilling impression of the scale of festal arrangements in this Republic; and were they to scan the reports of popular anniversaries and conventions in our journals, embracing every class and vocation, representative of every art, trade, and interest, a conviction would inevitably arise that we are the most social and holiday nation in the world; on the constantqui vivefor any plausible excuse for public dinners, speeches, processions, songs, toasts, and other republican divertisements. One month brings round the anniversary banquet of the printers, when Franklin’s memory is invoked and his story rehearsed; another is marked by the annual symposium and contributions of the Dramatic Fund; a temperance jubilee is announced to-day, a picnic of Spiritualists to-morrow; here we encounter a long train of Sunday scholars, and there are invited to apublishers’ feast in a ‘crystal palace;’ the triumph of the ‘Yacht America’ must be celebrated this week, and the anniversary of Clay’s birth or Webster’s death the next; a clerk delivers a poem before a Mercantile Library Association, a mechanic addresses his fellows; exhibitions of fruit, of fowls, of cattle, of machines, of horses, ploughing-matches, schools, and pictures, lead to social gatherings and volunteer discourses, and make a holiday now for the farmer and now for the artisan; so that the programme of festivals, such as they are, is coextensive with the land and the calendar. All this proves that there is no lack of holiday instinct among us, but it also demonstrates that the spirit of utility, the pride of occupation, and the ambition of success, interfuse the recreative as they do the serious life of America. The American enters into festivity as if it were a serious business; he cannot take pleasure naturally like the European, and is pursued with a half-conscious remorse if he dedicates time to amusement; so that even our holidays seem rather an ordeal to be gone through with, than an occasion to be enjoyed. At many of thesefêtes, too, we are painfully conscious of interested motives, which are essentially opposed to genuine recreation. Capital is made of amusement, as of every other conceivable element of our national life. It is often to advertise the stock, to introduce the breed, to gain political influence, to win fashionable suffrages to a scheme or a product of art or industry, that these expensive arrangements are made, these hospitalities exercised, these guests convened. Too many of our so-called holidays are tricks of trade; too many are exclusively utilitarian; too many consecrate external success and material well-being; and too few are based on sentiment, taste, and good-fellowship. In a panorama of national holidays, therefore, instead of a crowd of gracefully-attired rustics waltzing under trees, an enthusiastic chorus breathing as one deep voice the popular chant, ladies veiled intullefollowing an imperial infant to acathedral altar, the garlands and maidens of Old England’s May-day, or the splendid evolutions of the continental soldiery,—we should be most aptly represented by a fleet of steamers with crowded decks and gay pennons, sweeping through the lofty and wooded bluffs of the Upper Mississippi, the procession of boats and regiment of marines disembarking in the bay of Jeddo, or the old Hall, in whose sleeping echoes lives the patriotic eloquence of the Revolution, alive with hundreds of children invited by the city authorities to the annual school festival; for these occasions typify the enterprise at home, the exploration abroad, and the system of public instruction, which constitute our specific and absolute distinction in the family of nations. A jovial eclectic could, notwithstanding, gather traces of the partial and isolated festivals of every race and country in America;—harvest-songs among the German settlers of Pennsylvania, here a ‘golden wedding,’ there a private grape-feast; in the South a tournament, at Hoboken a cricket-match, and an archery club at Sunnyside; a Vienna lager-beer dance in New York, or a vine-dressers’ merry-making in Ohio.
If from those holidays which arise from temporary causes we turn to those which, from annual recurrence, aspire to the dignity of institutions, the first thing which strikes us is their essentially local character. ‘Pilgrim-day,’ wherever kept, is a New England festival; ‘Evacuation-day’ belongs to the city of New York; the anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill is celebrated only in Charlestown; and the victory on Lake Erie, at Newport, where its hero resided. The events thus commemorated deserve their eminence in our regard; and patriotic sentiment is excited and maintained by such observances. Yet in many instances they have dwindled to a lifeless parade, and in others have become a somewhat invidious exaggeration of local self-complacency. The latter is the case, for instance, with the New England Society’s annual feast in the commercialmetropolis of the Union. It occasionally tries the patience and vexes the liberal sentiment of the considerate son of New England, to hear the reiterated laudation of her schools, her clergy, her women, her codfish, and her granite, at the hospitable board where sits, perhaps, a venerable Knickerbocker, conscious that the glib orators and their people have worked themselves into all places of honour and profit, where the honest burgomaster used to smoke the pipe of peace and comfort in his generous portico, his children now superseded by the restless emigrants from the Eastern States, thus boastfully tracing all that redeems and sustains the republic to the wisdom, foresight, and moral superiority of their own peculiar ancestry. The style of the festival is often in bad taste; there is too little recognition of the hospitality of their adopted home, too little respect for Manhattan blood; an exuberance of language too conspicuously triumphant over a race which the best of comic histories illustrates by the reign of Peter the Silent, so that, at length, a jocose reproof was administered by the toast of a humorist present, who gave, with irresistible nasal emphasis,—‘Plymouth Rock—the Blarney-stone of New England.’
It is, however, an appropriate illustration of the cosmopolitan population of New York, that every year her English, Scotch, Welsh, Irish, French, German, and Dutch children, after their own fashion, recall their respective national associations. In point of oratory the New England Society carries the day, inasmuch as it usually presses into its service some distinguished speaker from abroad; in geniality, antique customs, and long-drawn reminiscences, the St. Nicholas excels; at St. Andrew’s board the memory of Burns is revived in song; Monsieur extols his vanishedRepublique; Welsh harps tinkle at St. David’s; ‘God save the Queen’ echoes under the banner of St. George; green sprigs and uncouth garments mark the Irish procession of St. Patrick; and the Germans multiply their festivals bysummer picnics, at which lager-beer, waltzing, and fine instrumental music recall the gardens of Vienna. ‘Thanksgiving-day’ is of Puritan origin, and was designed to combine family reunions with a grateful recognition of the autumnal harvest. The former beautiful feature is not as salient now as when the absence of locomotive facilities made it a rare privilege for the scattered members of a household to come together around the paternal hearth. The occasion has also diminished in value as one of clerical emancipation from Sabbath themes, when the preacher could expatiate unreproved on the questions of the day and the aspects of the times,—that privilege being now exercised, at will, on the regular day of weekly religious service. ‘Fast-day’ has also become anomalous; its abolition or identification with Good Friday has been repeatedly advocated; strictly speaking, its title is a misnomer, and the actual observance of it is too partial and ineffective to have any true significance.
An old town on the north-eastern extremity of an island, the nearest approach to which overland is from the southern shore of Cape Cod, was eagerly visited annually, until within a few years, by those who delight in primitive character and local festivals. The broad plain beyond the town was long held in common property by the inhabitants as a sheep-pasture. It may be that the maritime occupations of the natives, their insular position and frugal habits, imparted, by contrast, a singular relish to the rural episode thus secured in their lives of hazardous toil and dreary absence, as sailors and whalemen; but it is remarkable that amid the sands of that island flourished one of the heartiest and most characteristic of New England festivals. Simplicity of manners, hardihood, frankness, the genial spirit of the mariner, and the unsophisticated energy and kindliness of the sailor’s wife, gave to the Nantucket ‘Sheep-shearing’ a rare and permanent freshness and charm. Unfortunately discord, arising from the conflicting interestsof these primitive islanders, at length made it desirable to restore peace by sacrificing the flocks—innocent provocations of this domestic feud;—the sheep were sold, and the unique festival to which they gave occasion vanished with them. We must turn to that most available resource, an old newspaper, for a description of this now obsolete holiday:—
‘Sheep-shearing.—This patriarchal festival was celebrated on Monday and Tuesday last, in this place, with more than ordinary interest. For some days previous, the sheep-drivers had been busily employed in collecting from all quarters of the island the dispersed members of the several flocks; and committing them to the great sheepfold, about two miles from town, preparatory to the ceremonies of ablution anddevestment.‘The principal enclosure contains three hundred acres; towards one side of this area, and near the margin of a considerable pond, are four or five circular fences, one within the other—like Captain Symmes’s concentric curves,—and about twenty feet apart, forming a sort of labyrinth. Into these circuits the sheep are gradually driven, so as to be designated by their “ear-marks,” and secured for their proper owners in sheepcotes arranged laterally, or nearly so, around the exterior circle. Contiguous to these smaller pens, each of which is calculated to contain about one hundred sheep, the respective owners had erected temporary tents, wherein the operation of shearing was usually performed. The number of hands engaged in this service may be imagined from the fact that one gentleman is the owner of about 1,000 sheep, another of 700, and numerous others of smaller flocks, varying in number from three or four hundred down to a single dozen. The business of identifying, seizing, and yarding the sheep, creates a degree of bustle that adds no small amusement to the general activity of the scene. The whole number of sheep and lambs brought within the great enclosure is said to be 16,000. There are also several large flocks commonly sheared at other parts of the island.‘As these are the only important holidays which the inhabitants of Nantucket have ever been accustomed to observe, it is not to be marvelled at that all other business should on such occasions be suspended; and that the labours attendant thereon should be mingled with a due share of recreation. Accordingly, the fancies of the juvenile portion of our community are, for a long time prior to the annual “Shearing,” occupied in dreams of fun and schemes of frolic. With the mind’s eye they behold the long array of tents, surmounted with motley bannersflaunting in the breeze, and stored with tempting titbits, candidates for money and for mastication. With the mind’s ear they distinguish the spirit-stirring screak of the fiddle, the gruff jangling of the drum, the somniferoussmorzandoof the jews-harp, and the enlivening scuffle of little feet in a helter-skelter jig upon a deal platform. And their visions, unlike those of riper mortals, are always realized. For be it known, that independent of the preparations made by persons actually concerned in the mechanical duties of the day, there are erected on a rising ground in the vicinity of the sheep-field, some twenty pole and sail-cloth edifices, furnished with seats, and tables, and casks, and dishes, severally filled with jocund faces, baked pigs, punch, and cakes, and surrounded with divers savoury concomitants in the premises, courteously dispensed by the changeful master of ceremonies, studious of custom and emulous of cash. For the accommodation of those merry urchins and youngsters who choose to “trip it on the light fantastic toe,” a floor is laid at one corner, over which presides some African genius of melody, brandishing a cracked violin, and drawing most moving notes from its agonized intestines, by dint of griping fingers and right-angled elbows.‘We know of no parallel for this section of the entertainment, other than what the Boston boys were wont to denominate “Nigger ’Lection,”—so called in contradistinction from “Artillery Election.” At the former anniversary, which is the day on which “who is Governor” is officially announced, the blacks and blackees are permitted to perambulate the Mall and Common, to buy gingerbread and beer with the best of folks, and to mingle in the mysteries of pawpaw. But on the latter day, when that grave and chivalrous corps, known as the Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company, parade for choice of officers,—which officers are to receive their diplomas directly from the hands of His Excellency the Governor and Commander-in-Chief in open day, and in the august presence of all sorts of civil and martial dignitaries,—why, woe to the sable imp that shallthenadventure his woolly poll and tarnished cuticle within the hallowed neighbourhood of nobility!‘On previous days the sheep had been collected from every quarter of the island, driven into the great fold at Miacomet (the site of an ancient Indian settlement, about a mile from town), selected and identified by their respective owners, placed in separate pens, and subjected to the somewhat arduous process ofwashing, in the large pond contiguous. After this preparatory ablution, they were then ready to “throw off this muddy vesture of decay” by the aid of some hundreds of shearers, who began to ply their vocation on Monday morning, seated in rude booths, or beneath umbrageous awnings ranged around the circular labyrinth of enclosures, wherein the panting animalsawaited the divestment of their uncomfortable jackets. The space partially occupied by the unshorn sheep and their contented lambs, and in other spots exhibiting multitudes stripped of their fleece and clamorously seeking their wandering young, presented to the eye and ear of the stranger sights and sounds somewhat rare.’
‘Sheep-shearing.—This patriarchal festival was celebrated on Monday and Tuesday last, in this place, with more than ordinary interest. For some days previous, the sheep-drivers had been busily employed in collecting from all quarters of the island the dispersed members of the several flocks; and committing them to the great sheepfold, about two miles from town, preparatory to the ceremonies of ablution anddevestment.
‘The principal enclosure contains three hundred acres; towards one side of this area, and near the margin of a considerable pond, are four or five circular fences, one within the other—like Captain Symmes’s concentric curves,—and about twenty feet apart, forming a sort of labyrinth. Into these circuits the sheep are gradually driven, so as to be designated by their “ear-marks,” and secured for their proper owners in sheepcotes arranged laterally, or nearly so, around the exterior circle. Contiguous to these smaller pens, each of which is calculated to contain about one hundred sheep, the respective owners had erected temporary tents, wherein the operation of shearing was usually performed. The number of hands engaged in this service may be imagined from the fact that one gentleman is the owner of about 1,000 sheep, another of 700, and numerous others of smaller flocks, varying in number from three or four hundred down to a single dozen. The business of identifying, seizing, and yarding the sheep, creates a degree of bustle that adds no small amusement to the general activity of the scene. The whole number of sheep and lambs brought within the great enclosure is said to be 16,000. There are also several large flocks commonly sheared at other parts of the island.
‘As these are the only important holidays which the inhabitants of Nantucket have ever been accustomed to observe, it is not to be marvelled at that all other business should on such occasions be suspended; and that the labours attendant thereon should be mingled with a due share of recreation. Accordingly, the fancies of the juvenile portion of our community are, for a long time prior to the annual “Shearing,” occupied in dreams of fun and schemes of frolic. With the mind’s eye they behold the long array of tents, surmounted with motley bannersflaunting in the breeze, and stored with tempting titbits, candidates for money and for mastication. With the mind’s ear they distinguish the spirit-stirring screak of the fiddle, the gruff jangling of the drum, the somniferoussmorzandoof the jews-harp, and the enlivening scuffle of little feet in a helter-skelter jig upon a deal platform. And their visions, unlike those of riper mortals, are always realized. For be it known, that independent of the preparations made by persons actually concerned in the mechanical duties of the day, there are erected on a rising ground in the vicinity of the sheep-field, some twenty pole and sail-cloth edifices, furnished with seats, and tables, and casks, and dishes, severally filled with jocund faces, baked pigs, punch, and cakes, and surrounded with divers savoury concomitants in the premises, courteously dispensed by the changeful master of ceremonies, studious of custom and emulous of cash. For the accommodation of those merry urchins and youngsters who choose to “trip it on the light fantastic toe,” a floor is laid at one corner, over which presides some African genius of melody, brandishing a cracked violin, and drawing most moving notes from its agonized intestines, by dint of griping fingers and right-angled elbows.
‘We know of no parallel for this section of the entertainment, other than what the Boston boys were wont to denominate “Nigger ’Lection,”—so called in contradistinction from “Artillery Election.” At the former anniversary, which is the day on which “who is Governor” is officially announced, the blacks and blackees are permitted to perambulate the Mall and Common, to buy gingerbread and beer with the best of folks, and to mingle in the mysteries of pawpaw. But on the latter day, when that grave and chivalrous corps, known as the Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company, parade for choice of officers,—which officers are to receive their diplomas directly from the hands of His Excellency the Governor and Commander-in-Chief in open day, and in the august presence of all sorts of civil and martial dignitaries,—why, woe to the sable imp that shallthenadventure his woolly poll and tarnished cuticle within the hallowed neighbourhood of nobility!
‘On previous days the sheep had been collected from every quarter of the island, driven into the great fold at Miacomet (the site of an ancient Indian settlement, about a mile from town), selected and identified by their respective owners, placed in separate pens, and subjected to the somewhat arduous process ofwashing, in the large pond contiguous. After this preparatory ablution, they were then ready to “throw off this muddy vesture of decay” by the aid of some hundreds of shearers, who began to ply their vocation on Monday morning, seated in rude booths, or beneath umbrageous awnings ranged around the circular labyrinth of enclosures, wherein the panting animalsawaited the divestment of their uncomfortable jackets. The space partially occupied by the unshorn sheep and their contented lambs, and in other spots exhibiting multitudes stripped of their fleece and clamorously seeking their wandering young, presented to the eye and ear of the stranger sights and sounds somewhat rare.’
We have sometimes been tempted to believe that all illustrious occasions, men, and things, in this Republic, must inevitably be profaned,—that, as a compensatory balance to the ‘greatest good of the greatest number,’ secured by democratic institutions, there must exist a sacrifice of the hallowed, aspiring, and consecrated elements of national feeling and achievement. If there is an anniversary which should compel respect, excite eternal gratitude, and win unhackneyed observance, it is that of the day when, for the first time in the world’s history, the select intelligences of a country proclaimed to the nations, with deliberate and resolved wisdom, the principles of human equality and the right of self-government, pledged thereto their lives, fortunes, and honour, and consistently redeemed the heroically prophetic pledge. Subsequent events have only deepened the significance of that act, and extended its agency; every succeeding year has increased its moral value and its material fruits; the career of other and less happy nations has given more and more relief to its isolated grandeur; and not a day fraught with more hope and glory lives in the calendar. Yet what is the actual observance, the average estimation, it boasts among us? In our large cities, especially in New York, ‘Independence’ is, by universal consent, a nuisance. It is most auspicious to the Chinese, from increasing the importation of fire-crackers. The municipal authorities provide for it as for a lawless saturnalia; the fire-department dread its approach as indicative of conflagrations; physicians, as hazardous to such unfortunate patients as cannot be removed into the country; quiet citizens, as insufferable from incessant detonation; the prudent, as fraught with reckless tomfoolery; and therespectable, as desecrated by rowdyism. John Adams, when he prophesied that the Fourth of July would be hailed, in all after-time, by the ringing of bells, the blaze of bonfires, and the roar of cannon, was far from intending, by this programme of Anglo-Saxon methods of popular rejoicing, to indicate the exclusive and ultimate style of our national holiday. On its earlier recurrence, when many of the actors in the scenes it commemorates still lived, there was an interest and a meaning in the ceremonies which time has lessened. Yet it is difficult to account for the absence of all that high civilization presupposes, in the celebration of our only holiday which can strictly be called national; and if the sympathies of the most intelligent of our citizens could be enlisted, so as to make the occasion a genuine patriotic jubilee—instead of a noisy carnival, or a time for political animosity to assert itself with special emphasis,—much would be gained on the score of rational enjoyment and American fraternity. As it is, although the ‘Hundred Boston Orators’ nobly vindicate the talent and good taste of one city in regard to this anniversary, and is a most pleasing historical memorial of the occasion, it cannot be denied that our usual synonyme for bombast and mere rhetorical patriotism is ‘a Fourth of July Oration,’ and that Pickwickian sentiment, pyrotechnic flashes, torpedoes, arrests, bursting cannon, draggled flags, crowded steamboats, the retiracy of the educated and the uproar of the multitude, make up the confused and wearisome details of what should and might be a sacred feast, a pious memory, a hallowed consecration, a ‘Sabbath day of Freedom.’ Perhaps the real zest of this holiday is felt only abroad, when, under some remote consular flag, at the board of private and munificent hospitality in London, or at an Americanréunionin the French capital, distance from home, the ties of common nativity in a foreign land, and the contrast of uneducated masses or despotic insignia around, with the prosperous, free, and enlightened populationof our own favoured country, to say nothing of superior festal arrangements, render the occasion at once charming and memorable.
One of the most noticeable features of American life to a stranger’s eye is the prevalent habit of travel; and although the incessant and huge caravans that rush along the numerous railways which make an iron network over this Union are, for the most part, impelled by motives of enterprise and thrift, yet the common idea of recreation is associated with a ‘trip.’ Whether the facilities or the temperament of our country, or both, be the reason of this locomotive propensity, it is a characteristic which at once distinguishes the American from the home-tethered German, the Paris-bound Frenchman, and the locally-patriotic Italian. The schoolboy in vacation, the college graduate, the bridegroom, the overtasked professional man,—all Americans who give themselves a ‘holiday,’ are wont to dedicate it to a journey. But even this resource has lost much of its original charm from the catastrophes which have associated some of the most beautiful scenery of the land with the most agonizing of human tragedies. In the crystal waters of Lake George, by the picturesque banks of the Hudson, amid the fertile valleys of the Connecticut, on the teeming currents of Long Island Sound, have perished, often through reckless hardihood, always by more or less reprehensible negligence, some of the fairest and the noblest of our citizens. The statistics of these melancholy events, which have so often appalled the public, have yet to be written; but their moral effect may be divined by a mere glance at the mercenary hardihood and soulless haste that mark our civilization. ‘Les dangers personnels,’ says an acute writer; ‘quand ils attegnent une certaine limite, bouleversent tous les rapports et l’oublie de l’espérance changé presque notre nature.’ The zest, too, of a journey in America is much diminished by the monotonous character of the people, and by the gregarious habits, the rapid transits, and the business motives ofthevoyageurs, so that it is only at the terminus that we enjoy our pilgrimage; there the sight of a magnificent prairie or mountain range, cataract or mammoth cave, may, indeed, vindicate our locomotive taste, and the wonders of Nature make, for the imaginative and reverential, a glorious holiday.
A pleasing feature in the recreative aspect of American life is the literary festival. It is a beautiful custom of our scholars annually to meet amid the scenes of their academical education and renew youthful friendships, while they listen to the orator and poet, who dwell upon those problems of the times which challenge an intellectual solution and identify the duties of the citizen with the offices of learning. Within the memory of almost all, there is probably at least one of these occasions when the interest of the performances or the circumstances of the hour lent a memorable charm to the collegiate holiday; when, under the shade of venerable elms that witnessed the first outpouring of mental enthusiasm or the earliest honours of genius and attainment, they who parted as boys meet as men, and the classic dreamer felt himself a recognized and practical thinker for the people; when the language of eloquent wisdom or poetic beauty came warm from lips hallowed by the chalice of fame. Who that listened ever can forget the anniversary graced by the chaste eloquence of Buckminster, that on which Bryant recitedThe Ages, or Everett’s musical periods welcomed Lafayette to the oldest seat of American learning? What New England scholar, after years of professional labour in a distant State, ever found himself once more within the charmed precincts of hisalma mater, and surrounded by the companions of his youthful studies, without a thrill of happy reminiscence? Yet even these rational opportunities for what should be a genuine holiday to mind and heart are but casually appreciated. The sultry period of their occurrence, the irregularity of attendance, and the precarious quality of the ‘feastof reason’ provided, have caused them gradually to lose a tenacious hold upon the affections, while there are fewhabitués, the majority, especially those who live at a distance from the scene, and whose presence is therefore especially desirable,—are not loyal pilgrims to the shrine where their virgin distinction was earned and their intellectual armour forged. To many, our literary festivals are but technical ceremonies; to not a few, wearisome forms; associated rather with fans, didactics, perspiration, and cold viands, than with any social or intellectual refreshment. The ‘lean annuitant’ who loved to visit ‘Oxford in vacation,’ and fancy himself a gownsman, and the ingenious ‘Opium Eater’ who has recorded the enduring claims of those venerable cloisters to the scholar’s gratitude, enjoyed speculatively more of the real luxury of academic repose and triumph than is often attained by those who ostensibly participate in our college festivals; and seldom do her children go up to the altars of wisdom consecrated by the pious zeal of our ancestors, with the faithful recognition of the venerable pastor, so long the statistical oracle of the surviving graduates, who, while his strength sufficed, cheerily walked from his rural parish to Old Harvard, to lead off the anniversary psalm, with genial pride and honest self-gratulation.
Of our purely social holidays, New Year’s day, as observed in the city of New York, bears the palm. Initiated by the hospitable instinct of the Dutch colonists, neither the heterogeneous population which has succeeded them, nor the annually enlarged circuit of the metropolis, has diminished the universality or the heartiness of its observance. When the snow is massed in the thoroughfares, and the sunshine tempers a clear, frosty atmosphere, a more cheerful scene, on a large scale, it is impossible to imagine. From morning to midnight, sleighs, freighted with gay companions and drawn by handsome steeds, dash merrily along,—the tinkling of their bells and the scarlet liningtheir buffalo-robes redolent of afête; the sidewalks are alive with hurrying pedestrians who exchange cordial greetings as they pass one another; doors incessantly fly open; guests come and go; every one looks prosperous and happy; business is totally suspended; in warm parlours, radiant with comfort or splendid with luxury, sit the wives, daughters, sisters, or fair favourites of these innumerable visitors, the queens of the day; the neglects of the past are forgiven and forgotten in the welcome of the present; kindred, friends, and acquaintances all meet and begin the year with mutual good wishes; in every dwelling a little feast stands ready, encompassed with smiles; and all varieties of fortune, all degrees of intimacy, all tastes in dress, entertainment, and manners, on this one day, are consecrated by the liberal and kindly spirit of a social carnival.
Of associations expressly instituted for the observance of holidays there is no lack; of days technically devoted to festivity, in the aggregate, our proportion equals that of older communities; and the legitimate occasions for pastime and ceremony, social pleasure, or historical commemoration, are as numerous as is consistent with the industrious habits and the civic prosperity of the land. The traveller who should make it his specialty to discover and note the ostensible merrymakings and pageants of America would find the list neither brief nor monotonous. In the summer he would light upon many an excursion on our beautiful lakes, many a chowder-party to the seaside, and picnic in the grove; and in the winter would catch the shrill echo of the skating frolic. Here, through pillared trunks, he would behold the smoke-wreaths of the sugar-camp; there watch laughing groups clustered round the cider-mill or hop-field; and in woods radiant with autumnal tints, or prairies balmy with a million flowers, would sounds of merriment announce to him the cheerful bivouac. Nor have American holidays, even in their most primitiveaspect, been devoid of use and beauty. The once-renowned ‘musters’ fostered military taste, and the cattle-shows encouraged agricultural science; with the increase of horticultural festivals, our fruits and flowers have constantly improved; regattas and yacht-clubs have indirectly promoted nautical architecture; school festivals attest the superiority of our system of popular education; family gatherings, on the large scale observed in several instances, have induced genealogical research; historical celebrations have led to the collection and preservation of local archives and memorials; the Cincinnati Society annually renews the noblest patriotic sympathies; and the genius for mechanical invention is proclaimed by the fairs which, every October, bring together so many trophies of skilful handiwork and husbandry, and recognize so emphatically the dignity and scientific amelioration of labour. Yet these facts do not invalidate the general truth that our festivals are too much tinctured with utilitarian aims to breathe earnestness and hilarity; that they are so specific as to represent the division rather than the social triumphs of human toil; that they are too partial in their scope, too sectional in their objects, and too isolated in their arrangements, to meet the claims of popular and permanent interests. Our harvests are songless. Reaping-machines have diminished the zest of autumn’s golden largess, as destructive inventions have lessened the miracles of chivalry. Here and there may yet convene a quilting-party, but locomotive facilities have deprived rural gatherings, in sparse neighbourhoods, of their marvel and their joy; and the hilarious huskings of old chiefly survive in Barlow’s neglected verse:—
‘The days grow short; but though the fallen sunTo the glad swain proclaims his day’s work done;Night’s pleasant shades his various tasks prolong,And yield new subjects to my various song.For now, the corn-house filled, the harvest home,The invited neighbours to thehuskingcome;A frolic scene, where work and mirth and play,Unite their charms to chase the hours away.Where the huge heap lies centred in the hall,The lamp suspended from the cheerful wall,Brown, corn-fed nymphs, and strong, hard-handed beaux,Alternate ranged, extend in circling rows,Assume their seats, the solid mass attack;The dry husks rustle, and the corn-cobs crack;The song, the laugh, alternate notes resound,And the sweet cider trips in silence round.The laws of husking every wight can tell,And sure no laws he ever keeps so well:For each red ear a general kiss he gains,With each smut ear he smuts the luckless swains;But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast,Red as her lips and taper as her waist,She walks the round and culls one favoured beau,Who leaps the luscious tribute to bestow.Various the sports, as are the wits and brainsOf well-pleased lasses and contending swains;Till the vast mound of corn is swept away,And he that gets the last ear wins the day.’
‘The days grow short; but though the fallen sunTo the glad swain proclaims his day’s work done;Night’s pleasant shades his various tasks prolong,And yield new subjects to my various song.For now, the corn-house filled, the harvest home,The invited neighbours to thehuskingcome;A frolic scene, where work and mirth and play,Unite their charms to chase the hours away.Where the huge heap lies centred in the hall,The lamp suspended from the cheerful wall,Brown, corn-fed nymphs, and strong, hard-handed beaux,Alternate ranged, extend in circling rows,Assume their seats, the solid mass attack;The dry husks rustle, and the corn-cobs crack;The song, the laugh, alternate notes resound,And the sweet cider trips in silence round.The laws of husking every wight can tell,And sure no laws he ever keeps so well:For each red ear a general kiss he gains,With each smut ear he smuts the luckless swains;But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast,Red as her lips and taper as her waist,She walks the round and culls one favoured beau,Who leaps the luscious tribute to bestow.Various the sports, as are the wits and brainsOf well-pleased lasses and contending swains;Till the vast mound of corn is swept away,And he that gets the last ear wins the day.’
Progress in taste and sentiment, however, is already obvious in our recreative arrangements. There is vastly more of intellectual dignity and permanent use in thefêtesof the Lyceum than in those of the training-days and election-jubilees which formerly were the chief holidays of our rural population; exhibitions of flowers mark a notable advance upon the coarse diversions of the ring and the race-ground; and, within a few years, statues by native artists, worthy of their illustrious subjects, have been inaugurated by public rites and noble eloquence.
A radical cause of the inefficiency, and therefore of the indifferent observance of our holidays, may be found in our national inadequacy of expression, in the want of those modes of popular rejoicing and ceremonial that win and triumph, from their intrinsic beauty. As a general truth, it may be asserted that but two methods of representing holiday sentiment are native to the average taste of ourpeople,—military display and oral discourse. These exhaust our festal resources. Our citizens have an extraordinary facility in making occasional speeches; and the love of soldiership is so prevalent that it is the favourite sport of children, and all classes indulge in costly uniforms and volunteer parades. But the language of art, which in the Old World lends such a permanent attraction to holidays, with us hardly finds voice. Had we requiems conceived with the eternal pathos of Mozart; harmonious embodiments of rural pastime, like that which Beethoven caught while sitting on a style amid the subdued murmurs of a summer evening; melodious invocations to freedom, such as Bellini’s thrillingduo; were a symphony as readily composed in America as an oration; tableaux, costumes, and processions as artistically invented here as in France; were dance and song as spontaneously expressive as among the European peasantry; had we vast, open, magnificent temples, free gardens, statues to crown, shrines to frequent, palatial balconies, fields Elysian for both rich and poor, a sensibility to music, and a sense of the appropriate and beautiful, as wide and as instinctive as our appreciation of the useful, the practical, and the comfortable,—it would no longer be requisite to resort exclusively to drums, fifes, powder, substantial viands, and speechifying, to give utterance to the common sentiment, which would find vent in tones, forms, hues, combinations, and sympathies, that respond to the heart, through the imagination, and conform ‘the show of things to the desires of the mind.’
Other causes of our deficient holidays are obvious. The primary are to be found in the absorption in business and the dominion of practical habits, both of thought and action. Enterprise holds Carnival while Poetry keeps Lent. The facts of to-day shut out of view the perspective of time, or, at best, lure the gaze forward with boundless expectancy. To rehearse the fortunate achievements of the past gratifies our national egotism; but the sensibility and meditationwhich consecrate historical associations find no room amid the rush and eagerness of the passing hour. Content to point to the heroic episode of the Revolution, to the wisdom and justice of our Constitution, to the caravans that sweep on iron tracks over leagues of what a few years ago was a pathless forest, to the swiftest keels and most graceful models that traverse the ocean, to the aërial viaducts that span dizzy heights and impetuous torrents, to the exquisite vignettes of a limitless paper currency, to the dignified and consistent maintenance of usurped law in younger States of the Union, and to the continually increasing resources of its older members; we are disposed to sneer at the childish love of amusement which beguiles the inhabitants of European capitals, and to pity the superstition and idleness which retain, in this enlightened age, the melodramatic church shows of Romanism. In all this there is doubtless a certain manly intelligence; but there is also an inauspicious moral hardihood. If, as a people, we cultivated more heartily the social instincts and humane sentiments expressed in holiday rites, life would be more valued, the whole nature would find congenial play, and our taskwork and duty, our citizenship and our natural advantages, would be adorned by gracefulness, alacrity, and repose. Quantity would not be so grossly estimated above quality, speed above security, routine above enjoyment. We need to win from time what is denied to us in material. Other nations have in art a permanent and accessible refreshment, which prevents life from being wholly prosaic; the humblest dweller on English soil can enter a time-hallowed and beautiful cathedral; the poorest rustic in Italy can feel the honest pride of a distinctive festal attire; the veriest clod-hopper in Germany can soften the rigours of poverty by music; the London apprentice may wander once a week amid the venerable beauties of Hampton Court; and the Parisian shopkeeper may kindle pride of country by reading the pictorial history of France at Versailles. It is not theexpensive arrangements, but the national provision, and, above all, the personal sentiment, which makes the holiday. There was more holy rapture in the low cadence of the hymn stealing from the Roman catacombs, where the hunted Christians of old kept holy the Sabbath day, than there is in the gorgeous display and complex melody under the magnificent dome of St. Peter’s. There was more of the grace of festivity in such a dance as poor Goldsmith’s flute enlivened on the banks of the Loire, than there is in the grand ball which marks the season’s climax at an American watering-place. In public not less than private banquets, the scriptural maxim holds true: ‘Better is a dinner of herbswhere love is.’ Our national life is too diffusive to yield the best social fruits. The extent of territory, the nomadic habits of our people, the alternations of climate, the vicissitudes of trade, the prevalence of spasmodic and superficial excitements, the boundless passion for gain, the local changes, the family separations, and the incessant fevers of opinion, scatter the holy fire of love, reverence, self-respect, contemplation, and faith. What a senseless boast, that the United States has thirty-five thousand miles of railroad,[19]while England claims but ninety-two hundred, France forty-eight hundred, if against the American overplus are to be arrayed countless hecatombs of murdered fellow-citizens, and desolating frauds unparalleled in the history of finance! What a mockery the distinction of having accumulated a fortune in a few years, by sagacity and toil, if, to complete the record, it is added that mercenary ambition risked and lost it in as many months, or the want of self-control and mental resources made its possession a life-long curse fromennuior tasteless extravagance! It is as a check to the whirl of inconsiderate speculation, an antidote to the bane of material luxury, an interval in the hurried march of executive life, that holidaysshould ‘give us pause,’ and might prove a means of refinement and of disinterestedness. We could thus infuse a better spirit into our work-day experience, refresh and warm the nation’s heart, and gradually concentrate what of higher taste and more genial sympathy underlies the restless and cold tide that hurries us onward, unmindful of the beauty and indifferent to the sanctities with which God and Nature have invested our existence.
Of natal anniversaries we have in our national calendar one which it would augur well for the Republic to observe as a universal holiday. Every sentiment of gratitude, veneration, and patriotism has already consecrated it to the private heart; and every consideration of unity, good faith, and American feeling designates its celebration as the most sacred civicfêteof the land. Recent demonstrations in literature, art, and oratory, indicate that the obligation and importance of keeping before the eyes, minds, and affections of the people the memory of Washington, are emphatically recognized by genius and popular sentiment. Within a few years, the pen of our most endeared author, the eloquence of our most finished orator, and the chisel of our best sculptors, have combined to exhibit, in the most authentic and impressive forms of literary and plastic art, the character and image of the Father of his Country. Copies of Stuart’s masterly portrait have multiplied. A monument bearing the revered name is slowly rising at the Capital, the materials of which are gathered from every part of the globe. One of the last and most noble efforts to renew the waning national sentiment, ere its lapse brought on civil war, was that of a New England scholar, patriot, and orator who, despite the allurements of prosperity and the claims of age and long service, traversed the length and breadth of the Republic, eloquently expatiating on the character of Washington, retracing his spotless and great career, and evoking his sacred memory as a talisman to quicken and combine a people’s love. With the largecontributions thus secured, and those gathered by the daughters of the Republic, the home and grave of Washington has been redeemed as national property. Let the first homage of a free people be paid at that shrine; and alienated fellow-citizens gather there as at a common altar: his tomb is thus doubly hallowed. In Virginia is a sculptured memorial of enduring beauty and historical significance. A new and admirable biography, with all the elements of standard popularity, makes his peerless career familiar to every citizen from the woods of Maine to the shores of the Pacific. One effective statue already ornaments the commercial emporium, and another is about to be erected in the city of Boston. These, and many other signs of the times, prove that the fanaticism of party strife has awakened the wise and loyal to a consciousness of the inestimable value of that great example and canonized name, as a bond of union, a conciliating memory, and a glorious watchword. Desecrated as has been his native State by rebels against the government he founded and the nation he inaugurated, profaned as has been his memory, now that Peace smiles upon the land his august image will reappear to every true, loyal, and patriotic heart with renewed authority, and hallowed by a deeper love. The present, therefore, is a favourable moment to institute the birthday of Washington—hitherto but partially and ineffectually honoured—as a solemn National Festival. Around his tomb let us annually gather; let eloquence and song, leisure and remembrance, trophies of art, ceremonies of piety, and sentiments of gratitude and admiration, consecrate that day with an unanimity of feeling and of rites, which shall fuse and mould into one pervasive emotion the divided hearts of the country, until the discordant cries of faction are lost in the anthems of benediction and of love; and, before the august spirit of a people’s homage, sectional animosity is awed into universal reverence.
‘To vindicate the majesty of the law.’—Judge’s Charge.‘Why may not this be a lawyer’s skull? Why does he suffer this rude knave to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action for battery?’—Hamlet.
‘To vindicate the majesty of the law.’—Judge’s Charge.
‘Why may not this be a lawyer’s skull? Why does he suffer this rude knave to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action for battery?’—Hamlet.
Theminiature effigy of a town-crier, with a little placard on his bell, inscribed ‘Lost—a Lawyer’s conscience!’ was a favourite toy for children not many years ago; and about the same time a song was in vogue, warbled by a whole generation of young misses, ‘all about the L-A-W,’ in which that venerable profession was made the subject of a warning chant, whose dolorous refrain, doubtless, yet lingers in many an ear. Thus early is law associated with uncertainty and shamelessness; Messrs. Roe and Doe become the most dreaded of apocryphal characters; red-tape the clew of an endless labyrinth; Justice Shallow, with all his imbecility, a dangerous personage; and human beings, even a friend, transformed by the mysterious perspective of this anomalous element to a ‘party.’ The most popular of modern novelists have found these associations sufficiently universal to yield good material in ‘dead suitors broken, heart and soul, on the wheel of chancery;’ and Flite, Gridley, and Rick, are fresh and permanent scarecrows in the harvest-field of the law.
From the Mosaic code, enrolled on tables of stone, to the convention which inaugurated that of the modernconqueror of Europe, law has been a field for the noblest triumphs and most gross perversions of the human intellect. No profession offers such extremes of glory and shame. From the most wretched sophistry to the grandest inference, from a quibble to a principle, from the august minister of justice to the low pettifogger, how great the distance; yet all are included within a common pale.
In every social circle and family group there is an oracle—some individual whose age, wit, or force of character, gives an intellectual ascendency,—and there are always Bunsbys, to ‘give an opinion’ among the ignorant, to which the others spontaneously defer; and thus instinctively arises the lawgiver, sometimes ruling with the rude dogmatism of Dr. Johnson, and at others, through the humorous good sense of Sydney Smith, or the endearing tact of Madame Recamier. These authorities, in the sphere of opinion and companionship, indicate how natural to human society is a recognized head, whence emanates that controlling influence to which we give the name of law. Like every other element of life, this loses somewhat of its native beauty, when organized and made professional. To every vocation there belong master-spirits who have established precedents, and there are natural lawgivers; as in art, Michael Angelo and Raphael; in oratory, Demosthenes; in philosophy, Bacon. The endowments of each not only justify, but originate their authority; they interpret truth through their superior insight and wisdom in their respective departments of action and of thought; but of the vast number who undertake to illustrate, maintain, or apply the laws which govern states, a small minority are gifted for the task, or aspire to its higher functions; hence the proverbial abuse of the profession, its few glorious ornaments, and its herd of perverted slaves.
From this primary condition, it is impossible for any human being to escape; if he goes into the desert, he is still subject to the laws of Nature, and, however retired he may live amid his race, the laws of society press upon himat some point; if his own opinion is his law in matters of fancy or politics, he must still obey the law of the road: in one country the law of primogeniture; in another, that of conscription; in one circle, a law of taste; in another, of custom; and in a third, of privilege, reacts upon his free agency; at his club is sumptuary law; over his game of whist, Hoyle; in his drawing-room, Chesterfield; nowl’esprit du corps; and, again, the claims of rank; in Maine, the liquor law; in California, lynch law; in Paris, agens d’armes; at Rome, a permission of residence; on an English domain, the game laws; in the fields of Connecticut, a pound; everywhere, turnpikes, sheriffs’ sales, marriage certificates, prisons, courts, passports, and policemen, thrust before the eyes of the most peaceable and reserved cosmopolite—insignia that assure him that law is everywhere unavoidable. His physician discourses to him of the laws of health; his military friends, of tactics; the beaux, of etiquette; the belles, ofla mode; the authors, of tasteful precedents; the reformer, of social systems; and thus all recognize and yield to some code.
If he have nothing to bequeath, no tax to pay, no creditor to sue, or libeller to prosecute, he yet must walk the streets, and thereby realize the influence or neglect of municipal law in the enjoyment of ‘right of way,’ or the nausea from some neglected offal; the accidents incident to travel in this country assure him of the slight tenure of corporate responsibility under republican law; and the facility of divorce, the removal of old landmarks, the incessant subdivision and dispersion of estates, indicate that devotion to the immediate which a French philosopher ascribes to free institutions, and which affects legal as well as social phenomena. In a tour abroad, he discovers new majesty in the ruins of the Forum, from their association with the ancient Roman law, upon which modern jurisprudence is founded; and a curious interest attaches to the picturesque beauty of Amalfi, because the Pandects were there discovered.Westminster revives the tragic memories of the State trials, and seems yet to echo the Oriental rhetoric that made the trial of Hastings a Parliamentary romance. At Bologna, amid the old drooping towers, under the pensive arcades, in the radiant silence of the picture-gallery, comes back the traditionary beauty of the fair lecturer, who taught the students juridical lore from behind a curtain, that her loveliness might not bewilder the minds her words informed; and at Venice, every dark-robed, graceful figure that glides by the porticoes of San Marco’s moonlit square, revives the noble Portia’s image, and that ‘same scrubbed boy, the doctor’s clerk.’
No inconsiderable legal knowledge has been traced in Shakspeare. His Justice Shallow and Dogberry are types of imbecile magistracy; in the historical plays, the law of legitimacy is defined; and not a little judicial lore is embodied in theMerchant of VeniceandTaming the Shrew. Lord Campbell wrote a book to prove that Shakspeare, in his youth, must have been, at least, an attorney’s clerk. One of the characters in a popular novel is made to say that he is never in company with a lawyer but he fancies himself in a witness-box. This hit at the interrogative propensity of the class is by no means an exaggerated view of a use to which they are specially inclined to put conversation; and if we compare the ordeal of inquiry to which we are thus subjected, it will be found more thorough and better fitted to test our knowledge than that of any other social catechism; so that, perhaps, we gain in discipline what we lose in patience. It is to be acknowledged, also, that few men are better stocked with ideas, or more fluent in imparting them, than well-educated lawyers. There is often a singular zest in their anecdotes, a precision in their statement of facts, and a dramatic style of narrative, which render them the pleasantest of companions. In all clever coteries of which we have any genial record, there usually figures a lawyer, as a wit, a boon companion, an entertainingdogmatist, or an intellectual champion. In literature, the claims and demerits of the profession are emphatically recognized; and it is curious to note the varied inferences of philosophers and authors. Thus, Dr. Johnson says to Boswell: ‘Sir, a lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause he undertakes;’ and ‘everybody knows you are paid for affecting a warmth for your client.’ ‘Justice,’ observes Sydney Smith, ‘is found, experimentally, to be best promoted by the opposite efforts of practised and ingenious men, presenting to an impartial judge the best argument for the establishment and explanation of truth.’ ‘Some are allured to the trade of law,’ says Milton, ‘by litigiousness and fat fees;’ one authoritative writer describes a lawyer as a man whose understanding is on the town; another declares no man departs more from justice; Sancho Panza said his master would prattle more than three attorneys; and Coleridge thought that, ‘upon the whole, the advocate is placed in a position unfavourable to his moral being, and indeed to his intellect also, in its higher powers;’ while it was a maxim of Wilkes, that scoundrel and lawyer are synonymous terms. Our pioneerlittérateur, Brockden Brown, whose imaginative mind revolted at the dry formalities of the law, for which he was originally intended, defined it as ‘a tissue of shreds and remnants of a barbarous antiquity, patched by the stupidity of modern workmen into new deformity.’ ‘In the study of law,’ remarks the poet Gray, ‘the labour is long, and the elements dry and uninteresting, nor was there ever any one not disgusted at the beginning.’ Foote, the comic writer and actor, feigned surprise to a farmer that attorneys were buried in the country like other men; in town, he declared, it was the custom to place the body in a chamber, with an open window, and it was sure to disappear during the night, leaving a smell of brimstone. A portrait-painter assures us he is never mistaken in a lawyer’s face; the avocation is betrayed to his observant eye by a certaininscrutableexpression; and Dickens has given this not exaggerated picture of a class in the profession: ‘Smoke-dried and faded, dwelling among mankind, but not consorting with them, aged without experience of genial youth, and so long used to make his cramped nest in holes and corners of human nature, that he has forgotten its broader and better range.’
A French writer defines a lawyer as ‘un marchand de phrases, un fabricant de paradoxes, qui ment pour l’argent et vend ses paroles;’ and another remarks of the profession that it is a ‘vaste champ, ouvert aux ambitions des honnêtes; une tribune offerte aux subtilités de la pensée et l’abus de la parole;’ while Arthur Helps declares that ‘law affords a notable example of loss of time, of heart, of love, of leisure. I observe,’ he adds, ‘that the first Spanish colonists in America wrote home to Government, begging them not to allow lawyers to come to the colony.’[20]On the other hand, what an eloquent tribute to the possible actual beneficence of law is the close of Lord Brougham’s memorable speech in its defence:—