OUR PICTURE GALLERY.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 348, 6 November 1875, Page 2

OUR PICTURE GALLERY.

BUTTERFLIES. The men who do the'most harm in the world of social life are not malicious by design. They are not the villains of the nov«4 or the stage, but tlio "thoughtless trifiefts who float along life with all Hail set to catch tho prevalent breeze of the hour. Heady tbese to fly on tho wings of vice or to leisurely drift with the calmer currents of the fashion of the day. Society's butterfly has grown ho knows not how. At the first stage, wonderful in his innocence ; at tho next precocious among his schoolfellows, noted for sharp retort and self-preservation ; advanced yet but a step, with the down on his cheek, in" selfbelief a man, he trifles with all of the little truth and beauty ho can discern; again, ho develops into the bodily stature of a man —now a graduate in self-protec-tion, a stranger to chivalry and truth, and a wonder to the universe that knows what, and of what, he is. The world is full of butterflies. We cannot be angry with them. They bear a whole lyra innocentium on their brows. They have not energy enough to master | villainy, as they have not spirit enough to understand charity. They grow ; they develop ; they form tho centres of small social circles, none of which can by possibility cohero to tho others. They marry, they rear children—perpetuating the race. Finally they shuffle off the stage in an ignominious, terrified way, their only remembrance being tho marble, stone, or humble wood sign-board, false in death, pointing to virtues and maxims which in the mouth of the living butterfly would have been but as ashes to the teeth or smoke to the eyes. Happy for them they are launched whither we cannot follow, to a judgment immeasurable, we cannot comprehend. The butterfly is to the eye the most inoffensive of men. Ho steers his own course. He is, as the times go, honest. He strives to get his living honestly if he can; but, if not, he still gets his living. Ought ho not to be coinmended rather than blamed —be represented as a model for example rather than a beacon signifying destruction. Consider tho matter for a momeDt. See how the buttorfly robs life of its reality. Note how ho perpetuates a system of shutting the eyes to w : hat is truest in the wealthy imagery of the highest minds of all worshipping at the shrine of immensity j how ho refuses to see the depths of living suffering pleading prostrate at the same all-powerful throne —its path strewed with poverty, cruelty, starvation, and disease—its sufferers in their forced drama uttering, in fact if not in word, that awful cry—How long ? how long butterfly will know nothing of this. He must not be bothered. He must have his meals "at Regular hours, not omitting his supper of toasted cheese and alo, salmon, or tho like. He carries his delicacy of feeling, thus delicately nurtured, to the verge of painful sensitiveness, till lie can feel a flutter of sympathetic sensation, as if he too had in him the germs of manhood. Dickens is therefore his favorite author. Ho will maunder away by the hour about David Copperflold, Smike Mrs. Nickleby and the like, quite forgetful of tho fact that the character Dickens hated next to Bumbledom in any shape was tho race of which he supplies a type. " Tho rational iLoral principle spark of the Divinity is sunk deep in him in quiet paralysis ot life death. ... He is the insincere man : smooth polished, respectable in some times and places; inoffensive, says nothing harsh to anybody ; most cleanly—just as carbonic acia is, which is death and poison." What is to bo done with the butterflies —wo would rather say for them ? The gardener selects a choice artificial plant, and carefully guards it from the heat by day and the cold by night until it fruits. He throws away carelessly the seed, and in tho place of sweet fruits we gather wild ones. Mankind appear to be intensely artificial. The natural aro a wild untameable race, even with tho color and prestige of civilization, at their best developing into the butterfly. Artificial man requires tho graft of educated truth, yet cannot be held to be altogether responsible for what he could not give himself. At raro times marriage converts the butterfly into the man, the earnest searcher after what is true honest, and.helpful to others. It will be a bad day for the world when the butterflies become the Tace, and tho stolid, unlovely, but earnest men become tho exception.