Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly reviews : with addresses and other pieces / by John F.W. Herschel.

  • Herschel, John F. W. (John Frederick William), 1792-1871.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly reviews : with addresses and other pieces / by John F.W. Herschel. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    chase away the cloud from their brow after the fatigue of a day's hard work, or the stupifying monotony of some sedentary occupation ? Why, really very little—I hardly like to assume the appearance of a wish to rip up grievances by saying how little. The pleasant field-walk and the village- green are becoming rarer and rarer every year. Music and dancing (the more's the pity) have become so closely associated with ideas of riot and debauchery, among the less cultivated classes, that a taste for them for their own sakes can hardly be said to exist, and before they can be recommended as innocent or safe amusements, a very great change of ideas must take place. The beer-shop and the public-house, it is true, are always open, and always full, but it is not by those institutions that the cause of moral and intellectual culture is advanced. The truth is, that under the pressure of a continually condensing population, the habits of the city have crept into the village—the demands of agriculture have become sterner and more imperious, and while hardly a foot of ground is left uncultivated, and unappropriated, there is positively not space left for many of the cheerful amusements of rural life. Now, since this appears to be un- avoidable, and as it is physically impossible that the amusements of a condensed population should continue to be those of a scattered one, it behoves us strongly to consider of some substitutes. But perhaps it may appear to some almost preposterous to enter on the question. Why, the very name