On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
lemon sticking therein ; but these are rare sights ; most folks take a juste milieu course , and seek nothing extra , either in churchservice , or in dinner-service . Then there is the 29 th of May , when all that happens , is that one sometimes sees an oak-apple in a . bumpkin ' s hat , wondering how or why it got there , and quite as well able as the wearer to tell the reason . Besides these , there
are only the movable festivals of each happy and glorious reign in succession ; days chiefly marked by being holidays at the public offices ; or by disappointed parsons , desperate of preferment , sometimes repeating the pulpit joke , about preaching from c sufficient for the day , is the evil thereof . ' Truly , for National Anniversaries , these are but a paltry bundle of dry sticks . There is no vitality in them . They nave neither
the fun and frolic of voluntary and gladsome recollection , nor the dignified demeanour of high and stately ceremonial . They are the first of April without a fool ; and May-day without a queen . Pretty things , indeed , to show , as adornments of the pleasuregrounds of a people ' s memory ! They would disgrace a cockney ' s garden in the suburbs . They are _ like the poor , dusty , shrivelled ,
withered sticks in pots , ( blasphemous mockery of plants !) that stand , rank and file , in the lower window of some close lane in London , without even a telescope to look upwards for a glimpse of the third reflection of the sunshine , three stories above their heads . We know nothing , in England , of real national festivals . The words , mean nothing in our ears . They are worth less than even the unmeaning terms of faith without charity ; for they are
' sounding brass , and the tinkling cymbal . ' For us the brass sounds not , nor tinkle the cymbals . Our nothing is noiseless . We have no anniversaries . We once knew a little club that bravely resolved to hold four anniversaries every year ; and they all proved right joyous ones ; but the great club of the nation has not one . right joyous ones ; but the great club of the nation has not one .
What can be the reason ? We suppose the nation does not want them . For where there is a demand , there is a supply , say the political economists : though some hungry mechanics deny ihe universality of the proposition . Certain it is , however , as the wise Polonius affirm eth , that this effect defective comes b y cause . ' We should like to trace its genealogy , and ascertain whether it
be essential or accidental , removable or incurable . Is it that social enjoyment , and pageantry , and public demonstration , are not the Englishman ' s mode of showing his feelings ? or is it , that his history and experience lack the requisite
stimulus , in achievements of great public good , to call up the feeling itself from year to year ? Does he despise red-letter days , or are there no red-letter days in his calendar ? Something of both reasons may hold , perhaps . But not enough of either to show that he may not mend his manners , if it be an amendment . With all our boasted nationality , there is not much that is really national in our pleasures , our sympathies * our interests , and our
Untitled Article
750 National Anniversaries .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1834, page 750, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2639/page/2/
-