On the Other Side of the Water.
Dr. John Lord writes to the New York Observer under date of July 10, in the following strain. How long can things go on in this fashion? He says:— It is not the fashion in London to appeal to the intellect. Everything is in the way of amusement. The whole city seems sensualized. Of course, there are grand exceptions; but no man, except in Parliament, or in the court, or universities, rises to fame, in the popular sense, unless he amuses. The novelists are sensational. Music is sensational. Preaching is sensational. Everything is sensational. More and more are all classes assimilating in intellect with no towering men of genius. He who expects to be lifted up by profound thought and lofty, impassioned eloquence, will be disappointed here; as in Antioch, or Carthage, or Rome in the third century, men live for the present hour. An intense epicureanism is the only vitality, aside, of course, from machinery. Society is conventional when not luxurious. I am, however, amazed at so much honesty, propriety, civility, and decorum, when there appears to be so little of earnest thought or religious life. It is not preaching or reading that keeps the English people so respectable. It is moral machinery—custom, decency, public opinion. Yet I cannot see how public opinion or conventional life can long be sound when there is so little interest in those subjects which pertain to intellectual growth and moral improvement. I anticipate a decline of those virtues in which the strength of man is located. I see no sources of renovation. And when I examine the heart of common life, I am amazed at the extent of demoralizing amusements. The shops shut at 6. Philanthropy—mechanical philanthropy—has effected this. But the clerks spend their evenings at low theaters, still lower saloons of vulgar pleasure, in coffee houses, in drinking and smoking. The gin palaces are still more splendid in gas than ever; the tobacco shops are greatly multiplied, and the streets as ever, disgraced by the class who walk in them till nearly morning with mincing eyes and outstretched necks, and where no stern prophet arises to rebuke the degeneracy. When and how will retribution come?—for come it must, or the God of Moses and David and Isaiah is not the same to-day, yesterday and forever. There seems to be a greater devotion to pleasure in London than with us. The lower classes, after their day's work, frequent the low places of amusement. With the upper classes, it is a perpetual round of banquets and fetes and operas—after the duties of the day are discharged. The day does not begin till 9 o'clock with scarcely any class, and sometimes much later, even when the sun rises at 4 or 5. At 7 in the morning the streets are deserted, except by hucksters and market people. The gayest hours are from 5 to 12 P. M. The streets are all animation at 12 o'clock. One is hungry in a country town in America at 2 o'clock, in New York at 6, in London not till 7 or 8. The upper classes seldom dine till 7 1-2. The Queen gave a public breakfast the other day, from 4 to 6 P. M.! It is an old story for Parliament to sit till 2 in the morning; but it is not till 11 or 12 that balls or parties begin. Still I suppose there are thousands who do not bow the knee to Baal of fashion, but retire in good season, and commence work at 10 in the morning. The courts open at 10, and lunch at 1.