Part 1

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THE RURAL MAGAZINE, AND LITERARY EVENING FIRE-SIDE.

VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA, _Ninth Month_, 1820. _No. 9._

FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.

THE DESULTORY REMARKER. No. VIII.

Thou only know'st That dark meandering maze Where wayward Falsehood strays, And, seizing swift the lurking sprite, Forces her forth to shame and light[1]

[1] Ode to Truth, from Mason's Caractacus.

Man has been in all ages and countries, in a greater or less degree, the victim of imposture and superstition. Their origin can every where be traced to rude and uncultivated periods of society; but subsequent stages of comparative elegance and refinement have also ministered to the support of their dominion. Egypt, Greece and Rome were successively the seats of learning and science; yet in these celebrated regions, the human mind was enveloped in darkness and loaded with chains. The Egyptians have this ancient proverb: "It is easier to find a deity than a man."--Apotheosis must have been carried to an extraordinary length indeed when this was the case. Among these deities, Isis was prominently distinguished, and universally worshipped. On her statues, these words were impudently inscribed: "I am all that has been, that shall be, and none among mortals has hitherto taken off my veil!" Who but would blush for the credulity which listened with reverential awe to the oracular responses at Delphi, a town situate in the neighbourhood of Mount Parnassus, believed by every one at that time to be the centre of the earth! And concerning this precious object, the wars denominated the "_sacred_ wars," were so furiously and destructively waged. The Grecians were compelled, under pain of death, rigidly to observe the mysteries of Eleusis; and the wisest of the Romans were seen consulting the flight of birds and the entrails of animals, for infallible prognostics of future events. Where the footsteps of _true_ philosophy can be traced, her triumphs have been signal; and having found most of these and many other errors exploded, we lay claim in this enlightened age and country, to an extraordinary exemption from the influence of imposture and superstition. Although the darkness and gloom of former ages have in a great degree fled at the approach of the light of knowledge, still here and there the skirts of a black cloud remain, to indicate the failure of an absolute conquest. And the presence of these potent adversaries of human happiness, should inculcate the duty on every friend of his species of lending his aid in advancing the cause of TRUTH.

Among the reprehensible customs which now obtain in the United States, none are more affrontful to the good sense of the community, and few more pernicious in their effects on youth and inexperience, than LOTTERIES, and the disgusting advertisements connected with them, which daily appear in the public journals. The funds which constitute a lottery, are principally derived from the pockets of those whose straitened circumstances, prompt them to grasp at the glittering phantoms, paraded before their eyes by professional jugglers.--Their minds become unsettled; a love of idleness and extravagance is excited; and their attention diverted from the true sources of prosperity--industry, frugality and sound morals. This cautionary advice may be deduced from the best and brightest of books; "Make not haste to be rich."[2] Experience and observation unite in confirming its wisdom. We need but contemplate the consequences, which have almost universally resulted to those who have been so _fortunate_ as to draw large prizes! Nine times perhaps out of ten, bankruptcy and ruin have trodden close on the heels of the dissipation and thoughtlessness they have occasioned. Lotteries are made by legislation, (which ought to be much better employed,) a species of legalized gambling, altogether destitute, in every point of view, of the slightest recommendation, to the countenance and patronage of the public. Being thus prejudicial to individual and social happiness, is it not to be lamented, that respectable editors instead of branding it as they ought, with its proper characteristics; should, to augment the profits of their papers, give to this system of deception, the widest circulation, among all classes of readers. These gentlemen should remember, that pecuniary sacrifices should sometimes be made at the shrine of virtue.

[2] Proverbs ch. xxviii. 22d verse.

Another source of imposture may be traced to the venders of QUACK MEDICINES. Few persons are, perhaps, aware of the amount of this tax, levied by unprincipled charlatans, on the afflicted and credulous portion of the community. But it is not their money only that is sacrificed, but frequently their constitutions and their lives. He, whose constant companions have long been Pain and Disease, is easily persuaded to listen to the confident promises of impudent pretenders to medical science. He indulges the flattering but false anticipation of returning health, until his symptoms assume an incurable character, and nature gives him the "signal for retreat." It is not to be expected, that for all the multiform shapes which vice is constantly assuming, remedies can be furnished by statutory provision. For many evils, and some of them of a positively mischievous character, no other cure can be relied on with certainty, than the virtue and intelligence of the public. In proportion as these shall be cultivated, will be the augmentation of social enjoyment, and the increasing splendour of the orb of truth.

It has been observed by an eminent writer, that although all argument is against the existence of GHOSTS, all opinion is in its favour.--The celebrated JOHN WESLEY, it is said, believed in them; and EDWARD CAVE asserted confidently, though he avoided dwelling on the subject, that he had himself seen an apparition.--The story of Mrs. VEAL, prefixed to Drelincourt on Death, though not conclusive, tended to strengthen such opinions. Few of those who held them, were countenanced by stronger evidence than that detailed in the following authentic narrative. In the earlier periods of the settlement of Pennsylvania, public houses of entertainment were few and distant from each other. A farmer, who resided in Montgomery then Philadelphia county, was returning from market at a late hour, of a cold winter night. As he was passing a meeting house, he discovered through the interstices of the door, a light which proceeded from a fire-place; there having been public worship held there during the preceding day. Having dismounted and hitched his horse, he proceeded to the door, and having opened it, beheld a large fire burning, a man laying before it, and between this mysterious personage and the door, a coffin! He instinctively shrunk back, as the time, the place, and the circumstances he witnessed, were well calculated to produce considerable excitement.--Summoning his resolution, however, he advanced to the fire-place, where he found a person asleep, and a new coffin along side of him. The man informed him, that being a joiner, he was employed to make a coffin for a relation who died a few miles above, and that he was taking it up from Germantown where he resided. It appeared that they had both turned in with the same object, to warm themselves; and the honest farmer was pleased to find the spectral apparition subside into a sober reality. How fortunate would it be if on all occasions, investigation were equally honest and determined. Then, indeed, would error and falsehood frequently be forced to "SHAME AND LIGHT." ☞

FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.

THE VILLAGE TEACHER.

My favourite occupation between school hours, during the Spring and Summer, is GARDENING. The munificence of some village Lorenzo has bequeathed, for the use of the schoolmaster, several acres of ground, well situated for tillage or ornamental purposes. Since I have been the incumbent, I have taken much pains to improve it by surrounding the chief part with hedges of cedar and thorn, and planting a good selection of fruit and forest trees. The lower part of the field is in grass, and a winding gravel walk leads from one group of trees to another. Here, according to their various tastes and habits, may be seen the magnolias of our own and the southern states, the walnut, the locust, the elm, the tulip tree, and the different varieties of pine, and larch, and fir, which it has been my study to arrange so as to diversify the view, and exhibit as much as my slender means would allow, the great families into which the vegetable kingdom is divided. A brook as clear as crystal babbles along through an adjoining lot, and enters mine towards the lower end. I have conducted it to a natural hollow in the ground, and have thus, at a trifling expense, formed a fish-pond, which adds greatly to the beauty of my little domain, and furnishes me not only with wholesome food for my own and my friends' tables, but is well suited, from the natural moisture of its banks, for the cultivation of many of our beautiful ferns and aquatic plants. The middle of the lot I have planted with the various fruit trees in which our climate is so rich, if, indeed, it may not challenge a competition in this respect with the world. The upper and smaller portion of the lot, I have appropriated to what is called gardening in the stricter sense of the word. In marking out the walks, I have endeavoured to follow, as nearly as I could, what the painters, perhaps a little fantastically, call the line of beauty, so as to have but few sharp corners or square beds. At the prominent angles and the centres of the beds, are planted the Rhododendron; the two Kalmias; the scarlet, the tri-coloured and the flowering Azaleas; the Clethra and the Philadelphus, mingling with the most beautiful of the domesticated foreign shrubbery--the different Roses, Honeysuckles, and Jessamines. Underneath, and among this shrubbery, are seen the blue and scarlet Lobelias, the native Lily, the Gerardia, the Arethusa, the Orchis, the Bartsia, the Epigea, and all those beautiful flowers that spring up in our woods and meadows, and so frequently bloom and die unseen or unappropriated. These native flowers make a fine show and not an unfavourable comparison even with those beauties of Europe and the East that I have been able to collect and arrange by their side.

I have been thus particular and egotistical in describing my garden, perhaps from vanity, but partly from a wish that the plan may be followed. Our native shrubbery and flowers are not surpassed in beauty and splendour by those of any region in the temperate zone, and many of them in magnificence of foliage and colours are truly tropical. They are sought for abroad with great eagerness, and form an indispensable part of every gentleman's collection. I wish it were more the custom for our farmers and cottagers to domesticate them in their gardens and around their houses.--They improve materially by cultivation, and new varieties are frequently formed. What can be a more beautiful ornament to the front of a farm-house, or a neat white-washed cottage, than a Sweet-briar, winding between the windows and over the door? or the Carolina Passion flower, the Alleghany Vine, the Clematis, or the scarlet Trumpet flower? These rural decorations add more than one would imagine, who had not tried them, to the innocent pleasures of a family; they have no small influence in forming the taste of children; they form a favourite retreat for the birds; and they fling over the whole country an air of peace, and contentment, and innocent enjoyment, which no one, who has not travelled in the more beautiful and retired parts of England, can fully appreciate.

I recollect once in riding through the valley of Chester county with some foreign gentlemen, that they were struck with the nakedness and rudeness of the farm-houses. It appeared to them the most beautiful region they had ever seen, and they exclaimed, with one voice, that the inhabitants did not seem worthy of possessing it. On the side of some sloping hill and in front of a lawn as smooth as velvet, or laden with the riches of the harvest, would be seen a barn and a house that looked as if the master and horse had changed lodgings, both of rude unhewn stone, without a single tree, or shrub, or a trailing vine, for shade or ornament. Such an insensibility to the beauties of rural decoration, in a region where every thing seems calculated to call out and quicken the taste, is unnatural, and can only arise from sordid habits or ignorance.

If these hasty remarks should call the attention of our farmers to the subject, and induce them to devote some of their leisure hours to the ornamenting of their grounds, I shall be richly rewarded; and I can promise to them also a rich reward.--Their houses will be more cool and healthful, and they will find that by encouraging in their children a taste for gardening, and for observing the native beauties of our forests, their fondness for the innocent pleasures of home and for reading will be increased, together with that unambitious ease and industry which form the distinguishing traits in the character of a virtuous peasantry.

I began this paper with a design to eulogise the art of gardening, and investigate its effects on the mind. I have been diverted, however, from my purpose, and must, in a future number, resume the disquisition.

FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.

THE AFRICAN PEOPLE.

It does not appear that sufficient consideration is given to the case of those black people, who have been rendered free by or under the laws of the states and old provinces, from the earliest period. We have established in the city and county of Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, _a system professing to be for the universal education of the poor_, at the public expense, to which the black people, by the taxes upon their real property, consumption taxes, and all the taxes of the whites (except the little personal or occupation tax,) actually contribute. It cannot be denied, that many of them are as truly among the poor, as the most and least poor of the white heads of families, whose children are admitted to this _constitutional_ and legal provision. The blacks also pay all the consumption duties on imported foreign articles, so far as they consume them.

We ought to consider the very low state of the proper blacks in Africa, where their uncivilized condition has long been most unhappily made worse by the neighbourhood of the four Saracen or Moorish piratical States of Barbary, devoted to military plunder, the slavery of the whites and blacks, and the imposter superstitions of Mahomet, sacrilegiously pretending to add himself to the Almighty in the government of his church and his earth. Besides these, the slave dealers of the world have resorted to the African ports and islands, and have combined with powerful, avaricious, and inhuman princes and dealers, in that country, to make out a course of slave traffic with every nation, in whose system of industry African slaves are more profitable and efficient than white labourers. From the islands of Bourbon, Mauritius and Madagascar, round by the Cape of Good Hope and up to the Saracen or Moorish kingdom of Morocco, this system has long prevailed. It is unhappily true, that the great collection of proper Negro districts of Africa, remain now in the darkest state of irreligion, immorality and incivilization. It is also true, that this is so rooted in their system, that the actual transfer, since the year 1620, of a number of Africans to this country now amounting, with their descendants, to about one million and a half of the unmixed and mixed breeds, is to be considered as _a great and complicated dispensation of Divine Providence_, drawing that numerous people into the bosom and body of an enlightened nation, averse to the traffic, from the date of the _first_ act of Virginia of 1778, _abolishing the slave trade_, to the present consummation of that prohibition, under the laws of the Union. We have gone, _first_ in Pennsylvania, one step further by our act of 1780, which, while it unhappily recognized _the slavery of all the living_, instead of emancipating three or four thousand at the public expense, or at the expense of the holders, confined its operation to establishing the freedom of those who should be _thereafter_ born of the slaves held and continuing to be held among us.

In order, so far as in us lies, humbly to justify and bless the dispensation of Providence, which has drawn these people out of the gloomy abyss of the human family in the vast African black-peopled district, stained as it unhappily partially is even by the awful cannibal practice, and by human sacrifices, let us, of Pennsylvania, who have been first to make their native American _posterity_ free, be the most distinguished, _in justice to their submissive and patient early labours in forming our fair old province_, in dispensing to them the benefits of that religious, moral, scholastic and professional education, without which they cannot live in the good hopes of this their earthly residence or of the world beyond the grave.--It is well understood, that our city and county school system is not practically and effectually extended to the poor black people. An appeal is respectfully made to the friends of religion, morals, useful knowledge, and general industry, whether we ought not to dispense to them a more generous, just and civilized freedom. If we mean to avoid arguments against the gradual and ultimate abolition of slavery, let us endeavour to instruct them in all those things, which will enable them to labour with advantage, to get their own living in the progressive station on this continent, to which it has pleased God to suffer them to be transferred. To the black people themselves, it is proper to recommend a very modest and good conduct in all things, without which _they_ cannot succeed, nor can the endeavours of _their best friends_ be availing and effectual.

_A Friend of all the Poor._

FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.

ON GIMCRACKERY.

The invention of new instruments and machines is among the noblest exertions of the human faculties. It is said to be considered by some philosophers as the most striking distinguishing character between our species and the brute creation, that man is a _tool-making_ animal. He is certainly the only one who selects his instruments with care and adapts them to his purposes, by altering their shape and structure. At any rate, the temporal advantages which we possess over the beasts, are universally, perhaps, obtained through this medium. As this is the case, one might suppose that they who invent and improve these engines of superiority, would receive the homage of their fellow men to their talents and thanks for their benefit to the human race. Why, then, what is called Gimcrackery should fall into disrepute, is an inquiry of some curiosity.

We cannot well deny the truth of the very common remark, that inventors are very apt to fail of realizing, by their ingenuity, a solid provision for life; nor can we well avoid concluding, that of the many contrivances daily offered to the public, that the probability of any one becoming permanently useful is very small indeed. When we consider, however, that the great mass of these inventions are designed for the attainment of wealth, and that such an amount of skill and ingenuity are employed, the above conclusions cannot fail to appear singular. One would think inventors could not, with these acknowledged talents, well fail of at least securing their own independence, although their schemes may not be profitable to others. If, however, we analyse the motives by which such persons are guided, we shall find, I think, some explanation.

There are few if any men who are not more or less influenced by a desire of some species of fame or distinction, although, in many of the common situations of life, this does not interfere with the pursuit of wealth, and only shows itself in moments of relaxation from the toils of necessity. For one who wishes to signalize himself in his trade or profession, and who is swayed by that desire as a ruling passion, there are probably many who seek to gratify their pride, by the pursuit of eminence in other things. People aim at distinction in conversational wit, in politics, philosophy or even drinking or gaming; while the hours devoted to business are guided by the wish for property alone, undisturbed by the love of fame. In the persons of whom we are speaking, this feeling, inseparable from the nature of man, has a powerful influence on their serious business. They are not to get wealth only, but distinction, by their talents; and I question much whether they are not more under the influence of a wish for the latter than the former. Praise is most generally, at least in this instance, gained by a single exertion, and by the study of a short time. The invention once made, and its applicability rendered plausible, all further contemplation of the subject is accompanied by an exulting hope that fills and occupies the mind. But applying either inventions or any other means to the common business of life, is a more monotonous, common-place labour, that affords no high and exhilarating excitement to persevere. The consequence too often is that the inventor quits one hopeful scheme before it is half reduced to practice, to fly to something still more new; showing by this that he is fonder of the act of inventing than of making money by the results. Of this preference of fame to wealth, a striking instance is often afforded by those illiterate persons who follow this pursuit. These often voluntarily abstain from studying the scientific labours of their predecessors, of which I have known instances, in order to preserve the originality of their projects, though frequently at the expense of their perfection and utility. If, then, the larger portion of the labour of these men is devoted to the attainment of celebrity, they can hardly quarrel with results of their own making, nor expect fortune to come to their hands unsought.

Persons who wish to acquire wealth, or, in fact, to achieve any permanent end, are generally obliged to use steady perseverance, and to apply all the talents they are masters of for a length of time. Precisely the same is the case with inventors. That inventor meets with very extraordinary success indeed, who is not obliged, in the application of his plans to a useful purpose, to employ prudence and economy, and all those qualities which enable a man to conduct business to advantage and to influence the minds of others. Hence it is that inventions so often lie for a length of years, forgotten or neglected, till some one of less originality, but more perseverence, influence and mercantile calculation, carries them into effect with advantage.