Forms that have
ceased to facilitate and have become obstructive--whether political,
religious, or other--have ever to be swept away; and eventually are so
swept away in all cases. Signs are not wanting that some change is at
hand. A host of satirists, led on by Thackeray, have been for years
engaged in bringing our sham-festivities, and our fashionable follies,
into contempt; and in their candid moods, most men laugh at the
frivolities with which they and the world in general are deluded.
Ridicule has always been a revolutionary agent. That which is habitually
assailed with sneers and sarcasms cannot long survive. Institutions that
have lost their roots in men's respect and faith are doomed; and the day
of their dissolution is not far off. The time is approaching, then, when
our system of social observances must pass through some crisis, out of
which it will come purified and comparatively simple.
How this crisis will be brought about, no one can with any certainty
say. Whether by the continuance and increase of individual protests, or
whether by the union of many persons for the practice and propagation of
some better system, the future alone can decide.
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