The materials of riot in the heart of the
vast and populous city then strike one with terror. We see the worst
elements of European life cast upon our shore, and impending, as it
were, like a huge wave, over the peacefulness and prosperity of the
nation. The corruptions of New York local government are explained at a
glance. The reason why even patriotic citizens shrink from the primary
meetings whence spring the practical issues of municipal rule is easily
understood; and the absolute necessity of a reform in the legislative
machinery, whereby property and character may find adequate
representation, is brought home to the most careless observer of
Broadway phenomena. But it is when threading the normal procession
therein that distrust wanes, in view of so much that is hopeful in
enterprise and education, and auspicious in social intelligence and
sympathy. It may be that on one of our bright and balmy days of early
spring, or on a cool and radiant autumnal afternoon, you behold, in your
walk from Union Square to the Battery, an eminent representative of each
function and phase of high civilization;--wealth vested in real estate
in the person of an Astor, peerless nautical architecture in a Webb; the
alert step and venerable head of the poet of nature, as Bryant glides
by, and the still bright eye of the poet of patriotism and wit, as
Halleck greets you with the zest of a rural visitor refreshed by the
sight of "old, familiar faces"; anon comes Bancroft, a chronicler of
America's past, yet moving sympathetically through living history the
while; Verplanck, the Knickerbocker Nestor, and the gentlemen of the old
school represented by Irving's old friend, the companionable and
courteous Governor Kemble; pensive, olive-cheeked, sad-eyed Hamlet, in
the person of Edwin Booth, our native histrionic genius; Vandyke-looking
Charles Elliot, the portrait-painter; Paez, the exiled South American
general; Farragut, the naval hero; Hancock, Hooker, Barlow, or some
other gallant army officer,--volunteer heroes, maimed veterans of the
Union war; merchants, whose names are synonymous with beneficence and
integrity; artists, whose landscapes have revealed the loveliness of
this hemisphere to the Old World; women who lend grace to society and
feed the poor; men of science, who alleviate, and of literature, who
console, the sorrows of humanity; the stanch in friendship, the loyal in
national sentiment, the indomitable in duty, the exemplary in Christian
faith, the tender and true in domestic life,--the redeeming and
recuperative elements of civic society.
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