Vermont Telegraph

Novel Reading

BY O. A. BROWNSON.

It is never good to excite the mind or the heart overmuch, save when it can find immediate vent in actions which concern real life. A confirmed novel reader is always morbid; on some sides preternaturally sensitive, on others preternaturally callous; capable, it may be, of talking much fine sentiment, but wanting in that spiritual strength, in that moral robustness, which is equal to the performance of a useful but difficult part in real life. The less fine sentiment we have on our lips, the more genuine feeling shall we have in our hearts; and the more noble and generous action shall we perform. He who stops to sentimentalize about poverty, will be the last to throw his cloak over the tattered gabardine of the beggar.

This is no doubt all very antiquated and altogether old fashioned. But we hope our young friends, seated on rich ottomans, or reclining on soft couches, with the last new novel still moist from the press, will forgive this our antediluvianism. It is with no vinegar visage, nor cant, that we tell them to throw that novel aside, to rouse themselves from their indolence, and go forth and devote the sensibilities of their hearts, the richness of their fancies, and the creativeness of their imaginations, to the great and noble work of relieving actual distress, and of upbuilding the cause of truth and righteousness on earth. Oh! my young friends, there is not such an overplus of generous sentiment, of warm and noble feeling, in this cold, wintry world of ours, that you have any to waste over a Paul Clifford or a Jack Sheppard. No—go forth into real life, and let your sensibilities flow out for the actual poor and wretched; let the tear, so lovely in the eye of beauty, start at no fictitious woe. That poor mother, by her dying boy in that miserable hovel, needs it; those poor children, ragged, encrusted with filth; growing up to fill your penitentiaries, need it; the wrongs and outrages man is everywhere inflicting on man, should call it forth. Throw away the last new novel; go with me through these dark lanes and blind courts, into the damp cellars, unfurnished garrets, where poverty, vice, and crimes are crowded together, layer upon layer, where breeds the corruption that pollutes our whole atmosphere. Here, my friends, is a volume that may excite you; here is a work which you may read. Forget your luxury, forget your luxurious ease, blush for your repinings, sentimental whimperings, your vapors and indigestion; and remember that you are men and that it is your business to make this earth a paradise.