The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, August, 1851Various
History
The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, August, 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
It would be vain to attempt, in this desultory sketch, any account of
the means of morals and religion in New-York. In these respects she
differs but little from English commercial towns. The number of places
of worship is something under three hundred, and each form of
religious benevolence has its appropriate society, as elsewhere.
Sabbath Schools are very popular, and attended by the children of the
first citizens. An immense number of persons are associated as Sons
and Daughters of Temperance, who present a strong front against that
vice which turns the wise man into a fool. But as there is nothing
distinctive in these and similar associations, we pass them by. A
puritan tone of manners prevails; that is to say, with the mass of the
well-to-do citizens, puritan manners are the beau-ideal of propriety
and safety. Yet New-York is fast assuming a cosmopolitan tone which
will make it difficult, before very long, to speak of any particular
style of manners as prevailing. Representatives of every nation, and
tongue, and kindred, and people, meeting on a footing of perfect
equality of political advantages, must in time produce a social state,
differing in some important particulars from any that the world has
yet seen. The population of New-York will, at the past rate of
increase, be in ten years greater than that of Paris, and in thirty
equal to that of London. How can one speculate on a social state
formed under such circumstances? The present aspect of what claims to
be New-York society is certainly rather anomalous.
An exceptional American--John Quincy Adams--in some patriotic speech,
mentioned, among other occasions of thankfulness to Heaven, that
excellent gift, "a heritable habitation;" but there is nothing which
the prosperous citizen of New-York so much despises. If he read
Ruskin, he thinks the man benighted when he utters such sentiments as
these: "There must be a strange dissolution of natural affection; a
strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents
taught; a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our
father's honor, or that our lives are not such as would make our
dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to
himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only * *
* *. Our God is a household god, as well as a heavenly one. He has an
altar in every man's dwelling; let men look to it when they rend it
lightly, and pour out its ashes!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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