Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from American Miscellany: Consisting of Choice Selections From the Writings of Headley, Channing, Webster, Bryant, Cooper, Ames, Story, Willis, Irving, Jefferson, Havens, Percival, Poe, Wirt, Adams, Halleck, Woodworth, Melville, Allston, Brainard, and Other English Authors
What strange contrasts this earth of ours presents. It seems to be the middle spot between heaven andhell, and to partake of the character of both. Beings from both are found moving over its surface, and scenes from both are constantly occurring upon it. The glory from one and the midnight shades from the other meet along its bosom, and the song of angels and the shriek of fiends go up from the same spot. Noonday and midnight are not more opposite than the scenes that are constantly passing before our eyes. The temple of God stands beside a brothel, and the place of prayer is separated only by a single dwelling from the hell of the gambler. Truth and falsehood walk side by side through our streets, and vice and virtue meet and pass every hour of the day. The hut of the starving stands in the shadow of the palace of the wealthy, and the carriage of the dives every day throws the dust of its glittering wheels over the tattered garments of Lazarus. Health and sickness lie down in the same apartment 5 joy and agony look out of the same window; and hope and despair dwell under the same roof. The cry of the new born infant and groan cf the dying rise together from the same dwelling; the funeral procession treads close on the heels of the bridal party, and. The tones of the lute and viol have scarcely died away before the requiem for the dead comes swelling after. Oh! The beautiful and the deformed, the pure and corrupt, joy and sorrow, ecstacies and agonies life and death, are strangely blent on this restless planet of ours.
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