THE ROUÉ. INTRODUCTION. To feel We are not what we have been; and to deem BYRON. How many of the genuine feelings of human nature have been repressed and spoiled by the coldness of those outward forms which constitute so great a proportion of our education! We enter into the world with buoyant feelings, fresh and "thick-coming fancies," enthusiastic anticipation-with hearts and hands open to the impression and impulses of love, friendship, and generosity, and with a multitude of senses and passions, all promising pleasure in their pursuit and their gratification. We feel the genuine tears of sympathy spring into our eyes at a tale of distress; and while The world to our unpractised hearts A flattering prospect shows; Our fancy forms a thousand schemes we find our young pulses bounding with delight at the sight of beauty, and experience a thousand sensations which impel us to an intimate intercourse of hearts with our fellow-creatures; and the first thing we are taught in life, is to unlearn these early lessons of our nature: to repress these delightful springings of the heart To shut up all the passages of joy : and to substitute the coldness of educated ceremony for these bursts of genuine feelings. We are taught to repress our generosity, to steel our hearts against the influence of beauty, and to admit friendship and love only where they are compatible with our interest. Interest, that mainspring of human nature, as it is called, at whose shrine all our best. feelings are sacrificed, and to which our young hearts are directed in school-days, at college, and through the world, as the only God that should be worshipped. The whole of our early life seems to be spent in getting rid of nature, and in the acquirement of artifice, till our hearts and minds are no more like that for which they were first intended, than the tree, which some laborious Cincinnatus of a cit has trimmed into the shape of a peacock, is like that which has grown up in all the unconfined and vigorous luxuriance of its native forest. All the first feelings of our nature in early life become the subjects of punishment or reproof: the buoyancy of our youthful spirit is curbed, because it encroaches on the conventional forms of society. Natural enthusiasm is repressed and shamed with the stigma of eccentricity; and the whole system of our education is an attempt to put the heart in an ice-pail, and to treat it as we do our Champagne, without considering that though coldness may improve the wine, it is certain to deteriorate the man. All our first lessons of life come upon the heart, as the rude hand upon the leaf of the sensitive plant. It shrinks within itself, ashamed of the feelings which it is thus com pelled to bury within its own limits; and finding no outlet for them, they perish, in time, for want of use, as a limb will become contracted, and wither and die for want of exercise. It is this which gives such a sameness to society. It is this which prevents that individuality of character which made the heroes, the lovers, and the friends of the "golden age." All is now conventional form and outward ceremony. Friend< ships are made or broken as these forms prescribe, and are seldom strong enough to abide the storm of adversity-to stand the test of ridicule-or the influence of etiquette. |