SACRED PHILOSOPHY OF
THE SEASONS
FIRST WEEK - TUESDAY.
AUTUMN
IN THE CITY.
How often have British hearts swelled with pride on the
view of those tokens of commercial wealth and industry, which, in union with
her liberty, form the distinguishing characteristics of our country. Harbours
crowded with vessels that import the produce of distant lands, or distribute on
remote shores what we have manufactured; rivers, canals, and railways, groaning
under the merchandise of many a city; highways thundering under the hurrying
wheels of vehicles of all descriptions; and people of all ranks thronging
along, each in eager pursuit of some object, and each bearing on his
countenance the expression of business and lively interest ;- such is the view
which meets us on approaching any of our maritime towns, and it is complicated
an hundred-fold when we draw near to the metropolis.
If we enter the huge
aggregate of buildings, and consider the palaces, the public offices, the
cathedrals, the churches, the monuments, the magazines,-these, too, lead the
heart to exultation, and we say, what a wonderful creature is man! How
indefatigable, how ingenious, how aspiring, how powerful! Walk we the thronged
pavements, where our way is threaded through countless masses of human beings,
under the influence of all varieties of passion, sordid or generous, vengeful
or merciful, how little do we meet with to offend the eye or even the taste of
the fastidious. How orderly, how cleanly, how sober! For even in this great
wilderness of eartlly appetites and passions, order is the rule, the
infringement of it the exception. That which shocks and disgusts is met with
but rarely, which that which pleases or aids our purposes is frequent and at
hand.
Or, if we venture to tread the silent midnight streets, still parched
or slippery from the thousand footsteps of the previous day, how quiet the
repose of the busy souls, who sleep, or seem to sleep. The noise of day, the
crash of wheels, the din of men, and bells, and hammers, and machinery, is
hushed; and the muffled watchman, cyeing askance the straggler, or urging
forward the suspected footstep, is all that meets us to tell of life. But for
him, and a few scattered lights in upper casements, we might imagine ourselves
perambulating a city of the plague,- a doomed spot,- a forsaken region, to
which the rising sun will no more restore life and action, than he will to the
mouldering towers of Palmyra or of Thebes. Blessed sleep! thou mercifully
designed composer of human irritations, winder-up of worldly cares, and soother
of drooping infirmities! how well did He who knoweth our frame, and remembereth
that we are dust, consider our necessities, when he bestowed thy periodical
return of rest, and dropt the curtain of the night, not only on the lonely and
tranquil hamlets, but on the great Babels of the world, which send their roar
through all their gates by day.
The town is wonderful. It is the invention
and the handiwork of the gregarious creature, Man. We admire while we consider
it,- but if our admiration be analysed, it will be found to partake of a
mixture of opposite things. That so much licentiousness should exist, and
produce so little that is outwardly disgusting; that so many selfish and
grasping creatures should so little betray their rapacity; that so many
vindictive and angry beings should so well conceal their hatred or wrath ;- all
these subjects are as wonderful, as that such a mass of humanity should be
accommodated in so little space, and such an accumulation of bodily necessities
find, within the same, meat, drink, and clothing. The heart is weighed down by
the consideration, that a crowd of dying and responsible men is but an
aggregation of evil.
Were the fair covering withdrawn, what would be the
spectacle behind it! Remove the whited sepulchre, and the soul recoils from the
festering mass beneath! Pass through the airless alleys of a city in autumn;
look on the languid and pallid faces of its inhabitants; see the poor children,
unconscious of the elasticity of their age, and with cheeks on which grime has
occupied the place where roses never bloomed; inhale the dull oily atmosphere
which hangs over them for ever; and sicken at the inevitable odours which
assault your senses ;- then let your imagination convey you to the airy brow of
a balmy hill, whence you can survey the valleys covered with corn, inhale the
fragrance of the bean and clover fields, and behold the lusty rustics glowing
over the sickle; see them breasting the waves of toil, and with light hearts
encountering every labour,- and you will look back with compassion tenfold more
inteuse on those whose lot is cast where man is plentiful as the ears of corn,
and where moral and physical evil aggravate each other.
Even the balconies
of the opulent, with their dusty beau-pots, cause a breathiess longing for
green fields; and the splendid array of highly cultivated flowers, fruits, and
vegetables, compressed into such a space as Covent Garden market, tell of that
wealth which can command all that is luxurious, rather than of the simple
garden and the glade studded with trees. Did you ever, at the upper windows of
some poor dwelling in a narrow court, observe a broken tea-pot, with its sprig
of peppermint or southern-wood, sustained by a rude rail, ambitiously painted
green? You may be sure some poor soul dwells there, who is transplanted by hard
necessity into the cheerless privations of that home, from some fresh cottage
where the spring bubbled up in crystal beauty in the well, where the grass,
sown with daisies and buttercups, approached even to the doorstep, and the free
breeze of heaven blew all around him:- Far from the headlong stream and lucid
air The palid alpine rose to meet him stoops, Ae if to soothe a brother in
despair, Exiled from nature and her pictures fair.
And well will it
be, if the denizen of the city lose not regret for that country home; well will
it be, if, even - at the expense of some sentimental sorrow, the intervals of
toil be filled up by remembrances of country habits, - and youthful happiness;
well will it be, if the soul-destroying gin-palace do not obliterate the
remembrance of the tranquil cottage, and if the sight of a poor, drooping,
smoky, city sparrow draw a tear at the remembrance of the sweet songsters that
peopled the hedges of the fields where his childhood roamed at large.
Such
regrets and remembrances do not necessarily indicate discontent with our
present lot, but rather keep alive in the heart the healthier associations
which protect from deterioration, and save from complete amalgamation with the
evil which surrounds us. Their influence is calculated to be even of higher and
nobler utility, if it lead him to cast the eye of faith far into that promised
laud where the sun will not light on the inhabitants, nor any heat,- where
hunger, thirst, toil, and tears are unknown,- where unavailing regrets and
bootless longings can no more enter than stings of conscience, or apprehensions
of future sorrow.
How merciful is that arrangement which secludes every
mind from all the minds around it, and leaves it unveiled before its God alone!
The soul can rise superior to that contaminating mass of human beings, which
limits bodily movement, taints the air, and injures health; for, in its
spiritual mechanism, it is capable of a secret and enuobling intercourse,
unintruded on by the thronging and bustling crowd around it. Obadiah was able
to fear the Lord greatly, while his eyes and ears were exposed to
the offensive and polluted worship of Baal; and his sovereign, Ahab, in whose
hand his life was, could not, with all his tyranny and malignity, either
penetrate or prevent the communion which his spirit held with his God.
So
may the soul, that has tasted how suitable to holy contemplation are the calm
retreat and silent shade, be able to sustain that contemplation, when the
remembrance of the retreat and shade are all that is left him. The mind
is its own place, and those who in any situation endeavour to draw nigh
unto God, will find his promise sure, that He will draw nigh unto them. The
very restlessness of human wishes, the fruitless toil, the failure of enjoyment
even when the desired object is possessed, which are constantly exhibited in
the crowded city, are as well calculated to tutor the contemplative mind, as
tIme lonely wilderness, or the mouldering ruin. All that man labours after, and
all the mistaken estimates that he forms of himself, may be seen rather in the
city than the country. It is not, therefore, a place of tranquil enjoyment, but
surely it is a place of warning
Earth walketh on the earth, glittering like gold,
Earth goeth to the earth sooner than it would;
Earth buildeth on the
earth temples and towers,
Earth sayeth to the earth, all shall be
ours.
So says the mouldering grave-stone by the gray ruins of Melrose Abbey. The same great lesson is as surely, and far more painfully, impressed on the contemplative soul, in the din of a great community.
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