Home as Found - James Fenimore Cooper (moboreader TXT) 📗

its theory in practice; whereas, in countries where the institutions are the results of time and accidents, improvement is only obtained by innovations . Party invariably assails and weakens power. When power is the possession of a few, the many gain by party; but when power is the legal right of the many, the few gain by party. Now, as party has no ally as strong as ignorance and prejudice, a right understanding of the principles of a government is of far more importance in a popular government, than in any other. In place of the eternal eulogies on facts, that one hears on all public occasions in this country, I would substitute some plain and clear expositions of principles; or, indeed, I might say, of facts as they are connected with principles."

" Mais, la musique, Monsieur ," interrupted Mademoiselle Viefville, in a way so droll as to raise a general smile, " qu'en pensez-vous? "

"That it is music, my dear Mademoiselle, in neither fact nor principle."

"It only proves that a people can be free, Mademoiselle," observed Mrs. Bloomfield, "and enjoy fourth of July orations, without having very correct notions of harmony or time. But do our rejoicings end here, Miss Effingham?"

"Not at all--there is still something in reserve for the day, and all who honour it. I am told the evening, which promises to be sufficiently sombre, is to terminate with a fête that is peculiar to Templeton, and which is called 'The Fun of Fire.'"

"It is an ominous name, and ought to be a brilliant ceremony."

As this was uttered, the whole party entered the Wigwam.

"The Fun of Fire" took place, as a matter of course, at a later hour. When night had set in, every body appeared in the main street of the village, a part of which, from its width and form, was particularly adapted to the sports of the evening. The females were mostly at the windows, or on such elevated stands as favoured their view, and the party from the Wigwam occupied a large balcony that topped the piazza of one of the principal inns of the place.

The sports of the night commenced with rockets, of which a few, that did as much credit to the climate as to the state of the pyrotechnics of the village, were thrown up, as soon as the darkness had become sufficiently dense to lend them brilliancy. Then followed wheels, crackers and serpents, all of the most primitive kind, if, indeed, there be any thing primitive in such amusements. The "Fun of Fire" was to close the rejoicings, and it was certainly worth all the other sports of that day, united, the gingerbread and spruce beer included.

A blazing ball cast from a shop-door, was the signal for the commencement of the Fun. It was merely a ball of rope-yarn, or of some other similar material, saturated with turpentine, and it burned with a bright, fierce flame until consumed. As the first of these fiery meteors sailed into the street, a common shout from the boys, apprentices, and young men, proclaimed that the fun was at hand. It was followed by several more, and in a few minutes the entire area was gleaming with glancing light. The whole of the amusement consisted in tossing the fire-balls with boldness, and in avoiding them with dexterity, something like competition soon entering into the business of the scene.

The effect was singularly beautiful. Groups of dark objects became suddenly illuminated, and here a portion of the throng might be seen beneath a brightness like that produced by a bonfire, while all the back-ground of persons and faces were gliding about in a darkness that almost swallowed up a human figure. Suddenly all this would be changed; the brightness would pass away, and a ball alighting in a spot that had seemed abandoned to gloom, it would be found peopled with merry countenances, and active forms. The constant changes from brightness to deep darkness, with all the varying gleams of light and shadow, made the beauty of the scene, which soon extorted admiration from all in the balcony."

" Mais, c'est charmant !" exclaimed Mademoiselle Vielville, who was enchanted at discovering something like gaiety and pleasure among the " tristes Amêricains ," and who had never even suspected them of being capable of so much apparent enjoyment.

"These are the prettiest village sports I have ever witnessed," said Eve, "though a little dangerous, one would think. There is something refreshing, as the magazine writers term it, to find one of these miniature towns of ours condescending to be gay and happy in a village fashion. If I were to bring my strongest objection to American country life, it would be its ambitious desire to ape the towns, converting the ease and abandon of a village, into the formality and stiffness that render children in the clothes of grown people so absurdly ludicrous."

"What!" exclaimed John Effingham; "do you fancy it possible to reduce a free-man so low, as to deprive him of his stilts! No, no, young lady; you are now in a country where if you have two rows of flounces on your frock, your maid will make it a point to have three, by way of maintaining the equilibrium. This is the noble ambition of liberty."

"Annette's foible is a love of flounces, cousin Jack, and you have drawn that image from your eye, instead of your imagination. It is a French, as well as an American ambition, if ambition it be."

"Let it be drawn whence it may, it is true. Have you not remarked, Sir George Templemore, that the Americans will not even bear the ascendency of a capital? Formerly, Philadelphia, then the largest town in the country, was the political capital; but it was too much for any one community to enjoy the united consideration that belongs to extent and politics; and so the honest public went to work to make a capital, that should have nothing else in its favour, but the naked fact that it was the seat of government, and I think it will be generally allowed, that they have succeeded to admiration. I fancy Mr. Dodge will admit that it would be quite intolerable, that country should not be town, and town country."

"This is a land of equal rights, Mr. John Effingham, and I confess that I see no claims that New-York possesses, which does not equally belong to Templeton."

"Do you hold, sir," inquired Captain Truck, "that a ship is a brig, and a brig a ship."

"The case is different; Templeton is a town, is it not, Mr. John Effingham?"

" A town, Mr. Dodge, but not town. The difference is essential."

"I do not see it, sir. Now, New-York, to my notion is not a town , but a city ."

"Ah! This is the critical acumen of the editor! But you should be indulgent, Mr. Dodge, to us laymen, who pick up our phrases by merely wandering about the world; or in the nursery perhaps, while you, of the favoured few, by living in the condensation of a province, obtain a precision and accuracy to which we can lay no claim."

The darkness prevented the editor of the Active Inquirer from detecting the general smile, and he remained in happy ignorance of the feeling that produced it. To say the truth, not the smallest of the besetting vices of Mr. Dodge had their foundation in a provincial education, and in provincial notions; the invariable tendency of both being to persuade their subject that he is always right, while all opposed to him in opinion are wrong. That well-known line of Pope, in which the poet asks, "what can we reason, but from what we know?" contains the principle of half our foibles and faults, and perhaps explains fully that proportion of those of Mr. Dodge, to say nothing of those of no small number of his countrymen. There are limits to the knowledge, and tastes, and habits of every man, and, as each is regulated by the opportunities of the individual, it follows of necessity, that no one can have a standard much above his own experience. That an isolated and remote people should be a provincial people, or, in other words, a people of narrow and peculiar practices and opinions, is as unavoidable as that study should make a scholar; though in the case of America, the great motive for surprise is to be found in the fact that causes so very obvious should produce so little effect. When compared with the bulk of other nations, the Americans, though so remote and insulated, are scarcely provincial, for it is only when the highest standard of this nation is compared with the highest standard of other nations, that we detect the great deficiency that actually exists. That a moral foundation so broad should uphold a moral superstructure so narrow, is owing to the circumstance that the popular sentiment rules, and as every thing is referred to a body of judges that, in the nature of things, must be of very limited and superficial attainments, it cannot be a matter of wonder to the reflecting, that the decision shares in the qualities of the tribunal. In America, the gross mistake has been made of supposing, that, because the mass rules in a political sense, it has a right to be listened to and obeyed in all other matters, a practical deduction that can only lead, under the most favourable exercise of power, to a very humble mediocrity. It is to be hoped, that time, and a greater concentration of taste, liberality, and knowledge than can well distinguish a young and scattered population, will repair this evil, and that our children will reap the harvest of the broad fields of intelligence that have been sowed by ourselves. In the mean time, the present generation must endure that which cannot easily be cured; and, among its other evils, it will have to submit to a great deal of very questionable information, not a few false principles, and an unpleasant degree of intolerant and narrow bigotry, that are propagated by such apostles of liberty and learning as Steadfast Dodge, Esquire.

We have written in vain, if it now be necessary to point out a multitude of things in which that professed instructor and Mentor of the public, the editor of the Active Inquirer, had made a false estimate of himself, as well as of his fellow-creatures. That such a man should be ignorant, is to be expected, as he had never been instructed; that he was self-sufficient was owing to his ignorance, which oftener induces vanity than modesty; that he was intolerant and bigoted, follows as a legitimate effect of his provincial and contracted habits; that he was a hypocrite, came from his homage of the people; and that one thus constituted, should be permitted, periodically, to pour out his vapidity, folly, malice, envy, and ignorance, on his fellow-creatures, in the columns of a newspaper, was owing to a state of society in which the truth of the wholesome adage "that what is every man's business is nobody's business," is exemplified not only daily, but hourly, in a hundred other interests of equal magnitude, as well as to a capital mistake, that leads the community to fancy that whatever is done in their time, is done for their good.

As the "Fun of Fire" had, by this time, exhibited most of its beauties, the party belonging to the Wigwam left the balcony, and, the evening proving mild, they walked into the grounds of the building, where they naturally broke into groups, conversing on the incidents of the day, or of such