Meantime, the highest and subtlest and broadest truths of modern
science wait for their true assignment and last vivid flashes of
light--as Democracy waits for it's--through first-class metaphysicians
and speculative philosophs--laying the basements and foundations for
those new, more expanded, more harmonious, more melodious, freer
American poems.
"SOCIETY"
I have myself little or no hope from what is technically called
"Society" in our American cities. New York, of which place I have
spoken so sharply, still promises something, in time, out of its
tremendous and varied materials, with a certain superiority of
intuitions, and the advantage of constant agitation, and ever new and
rapid dealings of the cards. Of Boston, with its circles of social
mummies, swathed in cerements harder than brass--its bloodless
religion, (Unitarianism,) its complacent vanity of scientism and
literature, lots of grammatical correctness, mere knowledge, (always
wearisome, in itself)--its zealous abstractions, ghosts of reforms--I
should say, (ever admitting its business powers, its sharp, almost
demoniac, intellect, and no lack, in its own way, of courage and
generosity)--there is, at present, little of cheering, satisfying
sign. In the West, California, &c., "society" is yet unform'd,
puerile, seemingly unconscious of anything above a driving business,
or to liberally spend the money made by it, in the usual rounds and
shows.
Then there is, to the humorous observer of American attempts at
fashion, according to the models of foreign courts and saloons, quite
a comic side--particularly visible at Washington city--a sort of
high-life-below-stairs business.
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