Customs And Fashions In Old New England Classic Reprint PDF Download

Excerpt from The Customs of New England A reason why Curiosity thus notices things of greater and less importance is, that it may have a symmetry in its impres sions Of human customs, actions, and character. It eves the forest in some paradisiacal portion of the earth, and singles out for its admiring gaze a fair-proportioned tree, crowned with abundance of flowers, even more beautiful and charm ing than those of the magnolia, in our own adopted Floridas. But were it to notice nothing else, except these ornaments of the landscape, and to throw out from the means of its grati fication the roots, trunk, limbs, and leaves, on which they depend for their subsistence and attraction, it would violate the laws of correct taste, indelibly and divinely inscribed on every well-trained and rightly-ordered mind. SO would it b at fault, were it to seize only on the most prominent features of the portraiture, which the pencil Of truth has drawn to represent men of other years, and, at the same time, pass over the rest of the graphic sketch as if altogether unworthy of a single glance. Its true province is to collect the small as well as the great; to notice the frieze, the cornice, the architrave, and base, as well as the shaft of ancient ages, that it may know the correct proportions of Agrippa's Pantheon. Thus faithful to its trust, Curiosity furnishes us with the customs of our ancestors as a topic on which we may look and not be altogether unrewarded for our attention. In the accomplishment of this enterprise, we have not always a compass, nor a cloudless polar star, for our guide. Still we may venture in the hope that we may fare better than our fears. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.