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by A. K. H. Boyd
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Title: The Recreations of A Country Parson
Author: A. K. H. Boyd
Release Date: April, 2004 [EBook #5407]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on July 9, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE RECREATIONS OF A COUNTRY PARSON ***
This eBook was created by Charles Aldarondo ([email protected]).
THE RECREATIONS OF A COUNTRY PARSON.
SECOND SERIES.
A. K. H. BOYD.
BOSTON:
1862.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. CONCERNING THE PARSON'S CHOICE
CHAPTER II. CONCERNING DISAPPOINTMENT AND SUCCESS
CHAPTER III. CONCERNING SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS
CHAPTER IV. CONCERNING CHURCHYARDS
CHAPTER V. CONCERNING SUMMER DAYS
CHAPTER VI. CONCERNING SCREWS
CHAPTER VII. CONCERNING SOLITARY DAYS
CHAPTER VIII. CONCERNING GLASGOW DOWN THE WATER
CHAPTER IX. CONCERNING MAN AND HIS DWELLING-PLACE
CHAPTER X. LIFE AT THE WATER-CURE
CHAPTER XI. CONCERNING FRIENDS IN COUNCIL
CHAPTER XII. CONCERNING THE PULPIT IN SCOTLAND
CHAPTER XIII. CONCERNING FUTURE TEARS
CHAPTER XIV. CONCLUSION
CHAPTER I.
CONCERNING THE PARSON'S CHOICE BETWEEN TOWN AND COUNTRY.
One very happy circumstance in a clergyman's lot, is that he is
saved from painful perplexity as regards his choice of the scene
in which he is to spend his days and years. I am sorry for the
man who returns from Australia with a large fortune; and with no
further end in life than to settle down somewhere and enjoy it.
For in most cases he has no special tie to any particular place;
and he must feel very much perplexed where to go. Should any person
who may read this page cherish the purpose of leaving me a hundred
thousand pounds to invest in a pretty little estate, I beg that
he will at once abandon such a design. He would be doing me no
kindness. I should be entirely bewildered in trying to make up my
mind where I should purchase the property. I should be rent asunder
by conflicting visions of rich English landscape, and heathery Scottish
hills: of seaside breezes, and inland meadows: of horse-chestnut
avenues, and dark stern pine-woods. And after the estate had been
bought, I should always be looking back and thinking I might have
done better. So, on the whole, I would prefer that my reader should
himself buy the estate, and bequeath it to me: and then I could
soon persuade myself that it was the prettiest estate and the
pleasantest neighbourhood in Britain.
Now, as a general rule, the Great Disposer says to the parson, Here
is your home, here lies your work through life: go and reconcile
your mind to it, and do your best in it. No doubt there are men in
the Church whose genius, popularity, influence, or luck is such,
that they have a bewildering variety of livings pressed upon them:
but it is not so with ordinary folk; and certainly it was not so
with me. I went where Providence bade me go, which was not where
I had wished to go, and not where I had thought to go. Many who
know me through the pages which make this and a preceding volume,
have said, written, and printed, that I was specially cut out for
a country parson, and specially adapted to relish a quiet country
life. Not more, believe me, reader, than yourself. It is in every
man who sets himself to it to attain the self-same characteristics.
It is quite true I have these now: but, a few years since, never
was mortal less like them. No cockney set down near Sydney Smith
at Foston-le-Clay: no fish, suddenly withdrawn from its native
stream: could feel more strange and cheerless than did I when I
went to my beautiful country parish, where I have spent such happy
days, and which I have come to love so much.
I have said that the parson is for the most part saved the labour
of determining where he shall pitch his tent: his place and his
path in life are marked out for him. But he has his own special
perplexity and labour: quite different from those of the man to
whom the hundred thousand pounds to invest in land are bequeathed:
still, as some perhaps would think, no less hard. His work is to
reconcile his mind to the place where God has set him. Every mortal
must, in many respects, face one of these two trials. There is all
the world before you, where to choose; and then the struggle to
make a decided choice with which you shall on reflection remain
entirely satisfied. Or there is no choice at all: the Hand above
gives you your place and your work; and then there is the struggle
heartily and cheerfully to acquiesce in the decree as to which you
were not consulted.
And this is not always an easy thing; though I am sure that the
man who honestly and Christianly tries to do it, will never fail to
succeed at last. How curiously people are set down in the Church;
and indeed in all other callings whatsoever! You find men in the
last places they would have chosen; in the last places for which
you would say they are suited. You pass a pretty country church,
with its parsonage hard-by embosomed in trees and bright with
roses. Perhaps the parson of that church had set his heart on an
entirely different kind of charge: perhaps he is a disappointed
man, eager to get away, and (the very worst possible policy) trying
for every vacancy of which he can hear. You think, as you pass by,
and sit down on the churchyard wall, how happy you could be in so
quiet and sweet a spot: well, if you are willing to do a thing,
it is pleasant: but if you are struggling with a chain you cannot
break, it is miserable. The pleasantest thing becomes painful,
if it is felt as a restraint. What can be cosier than the warm
environment of sheet and blanket which encircles you in your snug
bed? Yet if you awake during the night at some alarm of peril, and
by a sudden effort try at once to shake yourself clear of these
trammels, you will, for the half-minute before you succeed, feel
that soft restraint as irksome as iron fetters. 'Let your will lead
whither necessity would drive,' said Locke, 'and you will always
preserve your liberty.' No doubt, it is wise advice; but how to do
all that?
Well, it can be done: but it costs an effort. Great part of the
work of the civilized and educated man consists of that which the
savage, and even the uneducated man, would not regard as work at
all. The things which cost the greatest effort may be done, perhaps,
as you sit in an easy chair with your eyes shut. And such an effort
is that of making up our mind to many things, both in our own lot,
and in the lot of others. I mean not merely the intellectual effort
to look at the success of other men and our own failure in such a
way as that we shall be intellectually convinced that, we have no
right to complain of either: I do not mean merely the labour to
put things in the right point of view: but the moral effort to look
fairly at the facts not in any way disguised,--not tricked out by
some skilful art of putting things;--and yet to repress all wrong
feeling;--all fretfulness, envy, jealousy, dislike, hatred. I do
not mean, to persuade ourselves that the grapes are sour; but (far
nobler surely) to be well aware that they are sweet, and yet be
content that another should have them and not we. I mean the labour,
when you have run in a race and been beaten, to resign your mind
to the fact that you have been beaten, and to bear a kind feeling
towards the man who beat you. And this is labour, and hard labour;
though very different from that physical exertion which the uncivilized
man would understand by the word. Every one can understand that to
carry a heavy portmanteau a mile is work. Not every one remembers
that the owner of the portmanteau, as he walks on carrying nothing
weightier than an umbrella, may be going through exertion much
harder than that of the porter. Probably St. Paul never spent
days of harder work in all his life, than the days he spent lying
blind at Damascus, struggling to get free from the prejudices and
convictions of all his past years, and resolving--on the course he
would pursue in the years to come.
I know that in all professions and occupations to which men
can devote themselves, there is such a thing as com petition: and
wherever there is competition, there will be the temptation to envy,
jealousy, and detraction, as regards a man's competitors: and so
there will be the need of that labour and exertion which lie in
resolutely trampling that temptation down. You are quite certain,
rny friend, as you go on through life, to have to make up your
mind to failure and disappointment on your own part, and to seeing
other men preferred before you. When these tilings come, there
are two ways of meeting them. One is, to hate and vilify those who
surpass you, either in merit or in success: to detract from their
merit and under-rate their success: or, if you must admit some
merit, to bestow upon it very faint praise. Now, all this is natural
enough; but assuredly it is neither a right nor a happy course to
follow. The other and better way is, to fight these tendencies to
the death: to struggle against them, to pray against them: to resign
yourself to God's good will: to admire and love the man who beats
you. This course is the right one, and the happy one. I believe the
greatest blessing God can send a man, is disappointment, rightly
met and used. There is no more ennobling discipline: there is no
discipline that results in a happier or kindlier temper of mind.
And in honestly fighting against the evil impulses which have been
mentioned, you will assuredly get help and strength to vanquish
them. I have seen the plain features look beautiful, when man or
woman was faithfully by God's grace resisting wrong feelings and
tendencies, such as these. It is a noble end to attain, and it
is well worth all the labour it costs, to resolutely be resigned,
cheerful, and kind, when you feel a strong inclination to be
discontented, moody, and bitter of heart. Well said a very wise
mortal, 'Better is he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh
a city.' And that ruling of the spirit which is needful to rightly
meet disappointment, brings out the best and noblest qualities that
can be found in man.
Sometimes, indeed, even in the parson's quiet life, he may know
something of the first perplexity of which we have been thinking:
the perplexity of the man who is struggling to make up his mind
where he is to settle down for the remainder of life. And it is
not long since such a perplexity came my way. For I had reached a
spot in my onward path at which I must make a decided choice. I must
go either to the right or the left: for, as Goldsmith has remarked
with great force, when the road you are pursuing parts into several
roads, you must be careful to follow only one. And I had to decide
between country and town. I had to resolve whether I was to remain
in that quiet cure of souls about which I formerly told you; or go
into the hard work and hurry of a large parish in a certain great
city.
I had been for more than five years in that sweet country place: it
seemed a very long time as the days passed over. Even slow-growing
ivy grew feet longer in that time, and climbing roses covered yards
and yards of wall. And for very many months I thought that here I
was to live and die, and never dreamt of change. Not indeed that
my tastes were always such. At the beginning of that term of years,
when I went down each Sunday morning to preach in the plain little
church to a handful of quiet rustic people, I used to think of
a grand edifice where once upon a time, at my first start in my
profession, I had preached each afternoon for many months to a very
large congregation of educated folk; and I used to wonder whether
my old friends remembered and missed me. Once there was to me
a fascination about that grand church, and all connected with it:
now it is to me no more than it is to every one else, and I pass
near it almost every day and hardly look at it. Other men have
taken my old place in it, and had the like feelings, and got over
them. Several of these men I never saw: how much I should like to
shake each man's hand! But all these fancies were long, long ago:
I was pleased to be a country parson, and to make the best of it.
Friends, who have held like stations in life, have you not felt,
now and then, a little waking up of old ideas and aspirations? All
this, you thought, was not what you once had wished, and pictured
to yourself. You vainly fancied, in your student days, that you
might reach a more eminent place and greater usefulness. I know,
indeed, that even such as have gone very unwillingly to a little
remote country parish, have come most heartily to enjoy its peaceful
life: have grown fond of that, as they never thought to do. I do
not mean that you need affectedly talk, after a few months there,
as if you had lived in the country all your life, and as if your
thoughts had from childhood run upon horses, turnips, and corn. But
in sober earnest, as weeks pass over, you gain a great interest in
little country cares; and you discover that you may be abundantly
useful, and abundantly laborious, amid a small and simple population.
Yet sometimes, my clever friend, I know you sit down on a green
bank, under the trees, and look at your little church. You think,
of your companions and competitors in College days, filling
distinguished places in life: and, more particularly, of this and
that friend in your own calling, who preaches to as many people on
one Sunday as you do in half a year. Fine fellows they were: and
though you seldom meet now, you are sure they are faithful, laborious,
able, and devoted ministers: God bless them all! You wonder how
they can do so much work; and especially how they have confidence
to preach to so large and intelligent congregations. For a certain
timidity, and distrust of his own powers, grows upon the country
parson. He is reaching the juster estimate of himself, indeed: yet
there is something not desirable in the nervous dislike to preach
in large churches and to cultivated people which is sure to come.
And little things worry him, which would not worry a mind kept more
upon the stretch. It is possible enough that among the Cumberland
hills, or in curacies like Sydney Smith's on Salisbury Plain, or
wandering sadly by the shore of Shetland fiords, there may be men
who had in them the makings of eminent preachers; but whose powers
have never been called out, and are rusting sadly away: and in whom
many petty cares are developing a pettiness of nature.
I have observed that in those advertisements which occasionally appear
in certain newspapers, offering for sale the next presentation to
some living in the Church, the advertiser, after pointing out the
various advantages of the situation, frequently sums up by stating
that the population of the parish is very small, and so the
clergyman's duty very light. I always read such a statement with
great displeasure. For it seems to imply, that a clergyman's great
object is, to enjoy his benefice and do as little duty as possible
in return for it. I suppose it need not be proved, that if such
were truly the great object of any parson, he has no business to
be in the Church at all. Failing health, or powers overdriven, may
sometimes make even the parson whose heart is in his work desire a
charge whose duty and responsibility are comparatively small: but
I firmly believe that in the case of the great majority of clergymen,
it is the interest and delight they feel in their work, and not
its worldly emolument, that mainly attach them to their sacred
profession: and thus that the more work they have to do (provided
their strength be equal to it), the more desirable and interesting
they hold their charge to be. And I believe that the earnest pastor,
settled in some light and pleasant country charge, will oftentimes,
even amid his simple enjoyment of that pleasant life, think that
perhaps he would be more in the path of duty, if, while the best
years of his life are passing on, he were placed where he might
serve his Master in a larger sphere.
And thinking now and then in this fashion, I was all of a sudden
asked to undertake a charge such as would once have been my very
ideal: and in that noble city where my work began, and so which
has always been very dear. But I felt that everything was changed.
Before these years of growing experience, I dare say I should not
have feared to set myself even to work as hard; but now I doubted
greatly whether I should prove equal to it. That time in the country
had made me sadly lose confidence. And I thought it would be very
painful and discouraging to go to preach to a large congregation,
and to see it Sunday by Sunday growing less, as people got discontented
and dropped away.
But happily, those on whom I leant for guidance and advice, were
more hopeful than myself; and so I came away from my beautiful
country parish. You know, my friends, who have passed through the
like, the sorrow to look for the last time at each kind homely
face: the sorrow to turn away from the little church where you have
often preached to very small congregations: the sorrow to leave
each tree you have planted, and the evergreens whose growth you
have watched, year by year. Soon, you are in all the worry of what
in Scotland we call a flitting: the house and all its belongings
are turned upside down. The kindness of the people comes out with
tenfold strength when they know how soon you are to part. And some,
to whom you had tried to do little favours, and who had somewhat
disappointed you by the slight sense of them they had shown, now
testify by their tears a hearty regard which you never can forget.
The Sunday comes when you enter your old pulpit for the last time.
You had prepared your sermon in a room from which the carpet had
been removed, and amid a general confusion and noise of packing.
The church is crowded in a fashion never seen before. You go through
the service, I think, with a sense of being somewhat stunned and
bewildered. And in the closing sentences of your sermon, you say
little of yourself; but in a few words, very hard to speak, you
thank your old friends for their kindness to you through the years
you have passed together; and you give them your parting advice, in
some sentence which seems to contain the essence of all you meant
to teach in all these Sundays; and you say farewell, farewell.
You are happy, indeed, if after all, though quitting your country
parsonage, and turning over a new leaf in life, you have not to make
a change so entire as that from country to town generally is: if,
like me, you live in the most beautiful city in Britain: a city
where country and town are blended together: where there are green
gardens, fields, and trees: shady places into which you may turn
from the glaring streets, into verdure as cool and quiet as ever,
and where your little children can roll upon the grass, and string
daisies as of old; streets, from every opening in which you look
out upon blue hills and blue sea. No doubt, the work is very hard,
and very constant; and each Sunday is a very exciting and exhausting
day. You will understand, my friend, when you go to such a charge,
what honour is due to those venerable men who have faithfully and
efficiently done the duty of the like for thirty or forty years.
You will look at them with much interest: you will receive their
kindly counsel with great respect. You will feel it somewhat trying
and nervous work to ascend your pulpit; and to address men and women
who in mental cultivation, and in things much more important, are
more than equal to yourself. And as you walk down; always alone,
to church each Sunday morning, you will very earnestly apply for
strength and wisdom beyond your own, in a certain Quarter where
they will never be sought in vain. Yet you will delight in all your
duty: and you will thank God you feel that were your work in life
to choose again, you would give yourself to the noblest task that
can be undertaken by mortal, with a resolute purpose firmer a
thousand times than even the enthusiastic preference of your early
youth. The attention and sympathy with which your congregation
will listen to your sermons, will be a constant encouragement and
stimulus; and you will find friends so dear and true, that yon.
will hope never to part from them while life remains. In such a
life, indeed, these Essays, which never would have been begun had
my duty been always such, must be written in little snatches of
time: and perhaps a sharp critic could tell, from internal evidence,
which of them have been written in the country and which in the
town. I look up from the table at which I write: and the roses,
honeysuckle, and the fuchsias, of a year since, are far away:
through the window I discover lofty walls, whose colour inclines
to black. Yet I have not regretted the day, and I do not believe
I ever will regret the day, when I ceased to be a Country Parson.
CHAPTER II.
CONCERNING DISAPPOINTMENT AND SUCCESS.
Russet woods of Autumn, here you are once more! I saw you, golden
and brown, in the afternoon sunshine to-day. Crisp leaves were
falling, as I went along the foot-path through the woods: crisp
leaves lie upon the green graves in the churchyard, fallen from the
ashes: and on the shrubbery walks, crisp leaves from the beeches,
accumulated where the grass bounds the gravel, make a warm edging,
irregular, but pleasant to see. It is not that one is 'tired of
summer:' but there is something soothing and pleasing about the
autumn days. There is a great clearness of the atmosphere sometimes;
sometimes a subdued, gray light is diffused everywhere. In the
country, there is often, on these afternoons, a remarkable stillness
in the air, amid which you can hear a withering leaf rustling down.
I will not think that the time of bare branches and brown grass
is so very near as yet; Nature is indeed decaying, but now we have
decay only in its beautiful stage, wherein it is pensive, but not
sad. It is but early in October; and we, who live in the country all
through the winter, please ourselves with the belief that October
is one of the finest months of the year, and that we have many
warm, bright, still days yet before us. Of course we know we are
practising upon ourselves a cheerful, transparent delusion; even
as the man of forty-eight often declares that about forty-eight
or fifty is the prime of life. I like to remember that Mrs. Hemans
was describing October, when she began her beautiful poem on The
Battle of Morgarlen, by saying that, 'The wine-month shone in its
golden prime:' and I think that in these words the picture presented
to the mind of an untravelled Briton, is not the red grapes hanging in
blushing profusion, but rather the brown, and crimson, and golden
woods, in the warm October sunshine. So, you russet woods of autumn,
you are welcome once more; welcome with all your peculiar beauty,
so gently enjoyable by all men and women who have not used up life;
and with all your lessons, so unobtrusive, so touching, that have
come home to the heart of human generations for many thousands
of years. Yesterday was Sunday; and I was preaching to my simple
rustics an autumn sermon from the text We all do fade as a leaf.
As I read out the text, through a half-opened window near me, two
large withered oak-leaves silently floated into the little church
in the view of all the congregation. I could not but pause for a
minute till they should preach their sermon before I began mine.
How simply, how unaffectedly, with what natural pathos they seemed
to tell their story! It seemed as if they said, Ah you human beings,
something besides us is fading; here we are, the things like which
you fade!
And now, upon this evening, a little sobered by the thought that
this is the fourth October which has seen this hand writing that
which shall attain the authority of print, I sit down to begin an
essay which is to be written leisurely as recreation and not as
work. I need not finish this essay, unless I choose, for six weeks
to come: so I have plenty of time, and I shall never have to write
under pressure. That is pleasant. And I write under another feeling,
more pleasing and encouraging still. I think that in these lines
I am addressing many unknown friends, who, though knowing nothing
more of me than they can learn from pages which I have written,
have come gradually not to think of me as a stranger. I wish here
to offer my thanks to many whose letters, though they were writing
only to a shadow, have spoken in so kindly a fashion of the writer's
slight productions, that they have given me much enjoyment in the
reading, and much encouragement to go on. To all my correspondents,
whether named or nameless, I now, in a moral sense, extend a friendly
hand. As to the question sometimes put, who the writer is, that
is of no consequence. But as to what he is, I think, intelligent
readers of his essays, you will gradually and easily see that.
It is a great thing to write leisurely, and with a general feeling
of kindliness and satisfaction with everybody; but there is a
further reason why one should set to work at once. I feel I must
write now, before my subject loses its interest; and before the
multitude of thoughts, such as they are, which have been clustering
round it since it presented itself this afternoon in that walk
through the woods, have faded away. It is an unhappy thing, but it
is the fact with many men, that if you do not seize your fancies
when they come to you, and preserve them upon the written page, you
lose them altogether. They go away, and never come back. A little
while ago I pulled out a drawer in this table whereon I write; and
I took out of it a sheet of paper, on which there are written down
various subjects for essays. Several are marked with a large cross;
these are the essays which are beyond the reach of fate: they are
written and printed. Several others have no cross; these are the
subjects of essays which are yet to be written. But upon four of
those subjects I look at once with interest and sorrow. I remember
when I wrote down their names, what a vast amount, as I fancied,
I had to say about them: and all experience failed to make me feel
that unless those thoughts were seized and chronicled at once,
they would go away and never come back again. How rich the subjects
appeared to me, I well remember! Now they are lifeless, stupid
things, of which it is impossible to make anything. Before, they
were like a hive, buzzing with millions of bees. Now they are like
the empty hive, when the life and stir and bustle of the bees are
gone. O friendly reader, what a loss it was to you, that the writer
did not at once sit down and sketch out his essays, Concerning Things
Slowly Learnt; and Concerning Growing Old! And two other subjects
of even greater value were, Concerning the Practical Effect of
Illogical Reasons, and An Estimate of the Practical Influence of
False Assertions. How the hive was buzzing when these titles were
written down: but now I really hardly remember anything of what
I meant to say, and what I remember appears wretched stuff. The
effervescence has gone from the champagne; it is flat and dead.
Still, it is possible that these subjects may recover their interest;
and the author hereby gives notice that he reserves the right of
producing an essay upon each of them. Let no one else infringe his
vested claims.
There is one respect in which I have often thought that there is
a curious absence of analogy between the moral and the material
worlds. You are in a great excitement about something or other; you
are immensely interested in reaching some aim; you are extremely
angry and ferocious at some piece of conduct; let us suppose. Well,
the result is that you cannot take a sound, clear, temperate view
of the circumstances; you cannot see the case rightly; you actually
do see it very wrongly. You wait till a week or a month passes;
till some distance, in short, intervenes between you and the matter;
and then your excitement, your fever, your wrath, have gone down,
as the matter has lost its freshness; and now you see the case
calmly, you see it very differently indeed from the fashion in
which you saw it first; you conclude that now you see it rightly.
One can think temperately now of the atrocities of the mutineers
in India, It does riot now quicken your pulse to think of them.
You have not now the burning desire you once felt, to take a Sepoy
by the throat and cut him to pieces with a cat-of-nine-tails. The
common consent of mankind has decided that you have now attained
the right view. I ask, is it certain that in all cases the second
thought is the best;--is the right thought, as well as the calmest
thought? Would it be just to say (which would be the material
analogy) that you have the best view of some great rocky island when
you have sailed away from it till it has turned to a blue cloud on
the horizon; rather than when its granite and heather are full in
view, close at hand? I am not sure that in every case the calmer
thought is the right thought, the distant view the right view. You
have come to think indifferently of the personal injury, of the
act of foul cruelty and falsehood, which once roused you to flaming
indignation. Are you thinking rightly too? Or has not just such
an illusion been practised upon your mental view, as is played upon
your bodily eye when looking over ten miles of sea upon Staffa?
You do not see the basaltic columns now; but that is because you
see wrongly. You do not burn at the remembrance of the wicked lie,
the crafty misrepresentation, the cruel blow; but perhaps you ought
to do so. And now (to speak of less grave matters) when all I had
to say about Growing Old seems very poor, do I see it rightly? Do
I see it as my reader would always have seen it? Or has it faded
into falsehood, as well as into distance and dimness? When I look
back, and see my thoughts as trash, is it because they are trash
and no better? When I look back, and see Ailsa as a cloud, is it
because it is a cloud and nothing more? Or is it, as I have already
suggested, that in one respect the analogy between the moral and
the material fails.
I am going to write Concerning Disappointment and Success. In the
days when I studied metaphysics, I should have objected to that
title, inasmuch as the antithesis is imperfect between the two
things named in it. Disappointment and Success are not properly
antithetic; Failure and Success are. Disappointment is the feeling
caused by failure, and caused also by other things besides failure.
Failure is the thing; disappointment is the feeling caused by the
thing; while success is the thing, and not the feeling. But such
minute points apart, the title I have chosen brings out best the
subject about which I wish to write. And a very wide subject it
is; and one of universal interest.
I suppose that no one will dispute the fact that in this world
there are such things as disappoititment and success. I do not
mean merely that each man's lot has its share of both; I mean that
there are some men whose life on the whole is a failure, and that
there are others whose life on the whole is a success. You and I,
my reader, know better than to think that life is a lottery; but
those who think it a lottery, must see that there are human beings
who draw the prizes, and others who draw the blanks. I believe in
Luck, and Ill Luck, as facts; of course I do not believe the theory
which common consent builds upon these facts. There is, of course,
no such thing as chance; this world is driven with far too tight a
rein to permit of anything whatsoever falling out in a way properly
fortuitous. But it cannot be denied that there are persona with
whom everything goes well, and other persons with whom everything
goes ill. There are people who invariably win at what are called
games of chance. There are people who invariably lose. You remember
when Sydney Smith lay on his deathbed, how he suddenly startled
the watchers by it, by breaking a long silence with a sentence from
one of his sermons, repeated in a deep, solemn voice, strange from
the dying man: His life had been successful at last; but success
had come late; and how much of disappointment he had known! And
though he had tried to bear up cheerily under his early cares, they
had sunk in deep. 'We speak of life as a journey,' he said, 'but
how differently is that journey performed! Some are borne along
their path in luxury and ease; while some must walk it with naked
feet, mangled and bleeding.'
Who is there that does not sometimes, on a quiet evening, even
before he has attained to middle age, sit down and look back upon
his college days, and his college friends; and think sadly of the
failures, the disappointments, the broken hearts, which have been
among those who all started fair and promised well? How very much
has after life changed the estimates which we, formed in those
days, of the intellectual mark and probable fate of one's friends
and acquaintances! You remember the dense, stolid dunces of that
time: you remember the men who sat next you in the lecture-room,
and never answered rightly a question that was put to them: you
remember how you used to wonder if they would always be the dunces
they were then. Well, I never knew a man who was a dunce at twenty,
to prove what might be called a brilliant or even a clever man in
after life; but we have all known such do wonderfully decently.
You did not expect much of them, you see. You did not try them by
an exacting standard. If a monkey were to write his name, you would
be so much surprised at seeing him do it at all, that you would
never think of being surprised that he did not do it very well. So,
if a man you knew as a remarkably stupid fellow preaches a decent
sermon, you hardly think of remarking that it is very common-place
and dull, you are so much pleased and surprised' to find that the
man can preach at all. And then, the dunces of college days are
often sensible, though slow and in this world, plain plodding common
sense is very likely in the long run to beat erratic brilliancy.
The tortoise passes the hare. I owe an apology to Lord Campbell
for even naming him on the same page on which stands the name of
dunce: for assuredly in shrewd, massive sense, as well as in kindness
of manner, the natural outflow of a kind and good heart, no judge
ever surpassed him. But I may fairly point to his career of unexampled
success as an instance which proves my principle. See how that
man of parts which are sound and solid, rather than brilliant or
showy, has won the Derby and the St. Ledger of the law: has filled
with high credit the places of Chief Justice of England and Lord
Chancellor. And contrast his eminently successful and useful course
with that of the fitful meteor, Lord Brougham. What a great, dazzling
genius Brougham unquestionably is; yet his greatest admirer must
admit that his life has been a brilliant failure. But while you,
thoughtful reader, in such a retrospect as I have been supposing,
sometimes wonder at the decent and reasonable success of the dunce,
do you not often lament over the fashion in which those who promised
well, and even brilliantly, have disappointed the hopes entertained
of them? What miserable failures such have not unfrequently made!
And not always through bad conduct either: not always, though
sometimes, by taking to vicious courses; but rather by a certain want
of tact and sense, or even by just somehow missing the favourable
tide. You have got a fair living and a fair standing in the Church;
you have held them for eight or ten years; when some evening as you
are sitting in your study or playing with your children, a servant
tells you, doubtfully, that a man is waiting to see you. A poor,
thin, shabbily-dressed fellow comes in, and in faltering tones begs
for the lean of five shillings. Ah, with what a start you recognise
him! It is the clever fellow whom you hardly beat at college, who
was always so lively and merry, who sang so nicely, and was so
much asked out into society. You had lost sight of him for several
years; and now here he is, shabby, dirty, smelling of whisky, with
bloated face and trembling hand: alas, alas, ruined! Oh, do not
give him up. Perhaps you can do something for him. Little kindness
he has known for very long. Give him the five shillings by all
means; but next morning see you go out, and try what may be done
to lift him out of the slough of despond, and to give him a chance
for better days! I know that it may be all in vain; and that
after years gradually darkening down you may some day, as you pass
the police-office, find a crowd at the door, and learn that they
have got the corpse of the poor suicide within. And even when the
failure is not so utter as this, you find, now and then, as life
goes onward, that this and that old acquaintance has, you cannot
say how, stepped out of the track, and is stranded. He went into the
Church: he is no worse preacher or scholar than many that succeed;
but somehow he never gets a living. You sometimes meet him in
the street, threadbare and soured: he probably passes you without
recognising you. O reader, to whom God has sent moderate success,
always be chivalrously kind and considerate to such a disappointed
man!
I have heard of an eminent man who, when well advanced in years,
was able to say that through all his life he had never set his
mind on anything which he did not succeed in attaining. Great and
little aims alike, he never had known what it was to fail. What a
curious state of feeling it would be to most men to know themselves
able to assert so much! Think of a mind in which disappointment
is a thing unknown! I think that one would be oppressed by a vague
sense of fear in regarding one's self as treated by Providence in
a fashion so different from the vast majority of the race. It cannot
be denied that there are men in this world in whose lot failure
seems to be the rule. Everything to which they put their hand breaks
down or goes amiss. But most human beings can testify that their
lot, like their abilities, their stature, is a sort of middling
thing. There is about it an equable sobriety, a sort of average
endurableness. Some things go well: some things go ill. There is
a modicum of disappointment: there is a modicum of success. But so
much of disappointment comes to the lot of almost all, that there
is no object in nature at which we all look with so much interest
as the invariably lucky man--the man whom all this system of things
appears to favour. You knew such a one at school: you knew him at
college: you knew him at the bar, in the Church, in medicine, in
politics, in society. Somehow he pushes his way: things turn up
just at the right time for him: great people take a fancy to him:
the newspapers cry him up. Let us hope that you do not look at him
with any feeling of envy or bitterness; but you cannot help looking
at him with great interest, he is so like yourself, and at the same
time so very unlike you. Philosophers tell us that real happiness
is very equally distributed; but there is no doubt that there is a
tremendous external difference between the man who lives in a grand
house, with every appliance of elegance and luxury, with plump
servants, fine horses, many carriages, and the poor struggling
gentleman, perhaps a married curate, whose dwelling is bare, whose
dress is poor, whose fare is scanty, whose wife is careworn, whose
children are ill-fed, shabbily dressed, and scantily educated.
It is conceivable that fanciful wants, slights, and failures, may
cause the rich man as much and as real suffering as substantial
wants and failures cause the poor; but the world at large will
recognise the rich man's lot as one of success, and the poor man's
as one of failure.
This is a world of competition. It is a world full of things that
many people wish to get, and that all cannot get at once; and
to say this is much as to say that this is a world of failure and
disappointments. All things desirable, by their very existence imply
the disappointment of some. When you, my reader, being no longer
young, look with a philosophic eye at some pretty girl entering a
drawing-room, you cannot but reflect, as you survey the pleasing
picture, and more especially when you think of the twenty thousand
pounds--Ah! my gentle young friend, you will some day make one heart
very jolly, but a great many more extremely envious, wrathful, and
disappointed. So with all other desirable things; so with a large
living in the Church; so with aliy place of dignity; so with a seat
on the bench; so with the bishopric; so with the woolsack; so with
the towers of Lambeth. So with smaller matters; so with a good
business in the greengrocery line; so with a well-paying milk-walk;
so with a clerk's situation of eighty pounds a year; so with an
errand boy's place at three shillings a week, which thirty candidates
want, and only one can get. Alas for our fallen race! Is it not
part, at least, of some men's pleasure in gaining some object which
has been generally sought for, to think of the mortification of
the poor fellows that failed?
Disappointment, in short, may come and must come wherever man can
set his wishes and his hopes. The only way not to be disappointed
when a thing turns out against you, is not to have really cared how
the thing went. It is not a truism to remark that this is impossible
if you did care. Of course you are not disappointed at failing of
attaining an end which you did not care whether you attained or
not; but men seek very few such ends. If a man has worked day and
night for six weeks in canvassing his county, and then, having been
ignominiously beaten, on the following day tells you he is not in
the least degree disappointed, he might just as trulv assure you,
if you met him walking up streaming with water from a river into
which he had just fallen, that he is not the least wet. No doubt
there is an elasticity in the healthy mind which very soon tides
it over even a severe disappointment; and no doubt the grapes which
are unattainable do sometimes in actual fact turn sour. But let no
man tell us that he has not known the bitterness of disappointment
for at least a brief space, if he have ever from his birth tried
to get anything, great or small, and yet not got it. Failure is
indeed a thing of all degrees, from the most fanciful to the most
weighty: disappointment is a thing of all degrees, from the transient
feeling that worries for a minute, to the great crushing blow that
breaks the mind's spring for ever. Failure is a fact which reaches
from the poor tramp who lies down by the wayside to die, up to the
man who is only made Chief Justice when he wanted the Chancellorship,
or who dies Bishop of London when he had set his heart upon being
Archbishop of Canterbury; or to the Prime Minister, unrivalled in
eloquence, in influence, in genius, with his fair domains and his
proud descent, but whose horse is beaten after being first favourite
for the Derby. Who shall say that either disappointed man felt less
bitterness and weariness of heart than the other? Each was no more
than disappointed; and the keenness of disappointment bears no
proportion to the reality of the value of the object whose loss
caused it. And what endless crowds of human beings, children and
old men, nobles and snobs, rich men and poor, know the bitterness
of disappointment from day to day. It begins from the child shedding
many tears when the toy bought with the long-hoarded pence is broken
the first day it comes home; it goes on to the Duke expecting the
Garter, who sees in the newspaper. at breakfast that the yards of
blue ribbon have been given to another. What a hard time his servants
have that day. How loudly he roars at them, how willingly would he
kick them! Little recks he that forenoon of his magnificent castle
and his ancestral woods. It may here be mentioned that a very
pleasing opportunity is afforded to malignant people for mortifying
a clever, ambitious man, when any office is vacant to which it is
known he aspires. A judge of the Queen's Bench has died: you, Mr.
Verjuice, know how Mr. Swetter, Q. C., has been rising at the bar;
you know how well he deserves the ermine. Well, walk down to his
chambers; go in and sit down; never mind how busy he is--your time
is of no value--and talk of many different men as extremely suitable
for the vacant seat on the bench, but never in the remotest manner
hint at the claims of Swetter himself. I have often seen the like
done. And you, Mr. Verjuice, may conclude almost with certainty that
in doing all this you are vexing and mortifying a deserving man.
And such a consideration will no doubt be compensation sufficient
to your amiable nature for the fact that every generous muscular
Christian would like to take you by the neck, and swing your sneaking
carcase out of the window.
Even a slight disappointment, speedily to be repaired, has in it
something that jars painfully the mechanism of the mind. You go to
the train, expecting a friend, certainly. He does not come. Now this
worries you, even though you receive at the station a telegraphic
message that he will be by the train which follows in two hours.
Your magazine fails to come by post on the last day of the month;
you have a dull, vague sense of something wanting for an hour or
two, even though you are sure that you will have it next morning.
And indeed a very krge share of the disappointments of civilized
life are associated with the post-office. I do not suppose the
extreme case of the poor fellow who calls at the office expecting
a letter containing the money without which he cannot see how he
is to get through the day; nor of the man who finds no letter on
the day when he expects to hear how it fares with a dear relative
who is desperately sick. I am thinking merely of the lesser
disappointments which commonly attend post-time: the Times not
coming when you were counting with more than ordinary certainty
on its appearing; the letter of no great consequence, which yet
you would have liked to have had. A certain blankness--a feeling
difficult to define--attends even the slightest disappointment; and
the effect of a great one is very stunning and embittering indeed.
You remember how the nobleman in Ten Thousand a Year, who had been
refused a seat in the Cabinet, sympathized with poor Titmouse's
exclamation when, looking at the manifestations of gay life
in Hyde-park, and feeling his own absolute exclusion from it, he
consigned everything to perdition. All the ballads of Professor
Aytoun and Mr. Theodore Martin are admirable, but there is none
which strikes me as more so than the brilliant imitation of Locksley
Hall, And how true to nature the state of mind ascribed to the
vulgar snob who is the hero of the ballad, who, bethinking himself
of his great disappointment when his cousin married somebody else,
bestowed his extremest objurgations upon all who had abetted the
hateful result, and then summed up thus comprehensively:--
Cursed be the foul apprentice, who his loathsome fees did earn;
Cursed be the clerk and parson; CURSED BE THE WHOLE CONCERN!
It may be mentioned here as a fact to which experience will testify,
that such disappointments as that at the railway station and the
post-office are most likely to come when you are counting with
absolute certainty upon things happening as you wish; when not
a misgiving has entered your mind as to your friend's arriving or
your letter coining. A little latent fear in your soul that you
may possibly be disappointed, seems to have a certain power to fend
off disappointment, on the same principle on which taking out an
umbrella is found to prevent rain. What you are prepared for rarely
happens. The precise thing you expected comes not once in a thousand
times. A confused state of mind results from long experience of
such cases. Your real feeling often is: Such a thing seems quite
sure to happen; I may say I expect it to happen; and yet I don't
expect it, because I do: for experience has taught me that the
precise thing which I expect, which I think most likely, hardly
ever comes. I am not prepared to side with a thoughtless world,
which is ready to laugh at the confused statement of the Irishman
who had killed his pig. It is not a bull; it is a great psychological
fact that is involved in his seemingly contradictory declaration--'It
did not weigh as much as I expected, and I never thought it would!'
When young ladies tell us that such and such a person 'has met with
a disappointment,' we all understand what is meant. The phrase,
though it is conventionally intelligible enough, involves a fallacy:
it seems to teach that the disappointment of the youthful heart in
the matter of that which in its day is no doubt the most powerful
of all the affections, is by emphasis the greatest disappointment
which a human being can ever know. Of course that is an entire
mistake. People get over that disappointment not but what it may
leave its trace, and possibly colour the whole of remaining life;
sometimes resulting in an unlovely bitterness and hardness of
nature; sometimes prolonging even into age a lingering thread of
old romance, and keeping a kindly corner in a heart which worldly
cares have in great measure deadened. But the disappointment
which has its seat in the affections is outgrown as the affections
themselves are outgrown, as the season of their predominance passes
away; and the disappointment which sinks the deepest and lasts the
longest of all the disappointments which are fanciful rather than
material, is that which reaches a man through his ambition and his
self-love,--principles in his nature which outlast the heyday of
the heart's supremacy, and which endure to man's latest years. The
bitter and the enduring disappointment to most human beings is that
which makes them feel, in one way or other, that they are less
wise, clever, popular, graceful, accomplished, tall, active, and in
short fine, than they had fancied themselves to be. But it is only
to a limited portion of human kind that such words as disappointment
and success are mainly suggestive of gratified or disappointed
ambition, of happy or blighted affection; to the great majority
they are suggestive rather of success or non-success in earning
bread and cheese, in finding money to pay the rent, in generally
making the ends meet. You are very young, my reader, and little
versed in the practical affairs of ordinary life, if you do not
know that such prosaic matters make to most men the great aim of
their being here, so far as that aim is bounded by this world's
horizon. The poor cabman is successful or is disappointed, according
as he sees, while the hours of the day are passing over, that he
is making up or not making up the shillings he must hand over to
his master at night, before he has a penny to get food for his wife
and children. The little tradesman is successful or the reverse,
according as he sees or does not see from week to week such a small
accumulation of petty profits as may pay his landlord, and leave a
little margin by help of which he and his family may struggle on.
And many an educated man knows the analogous feelings. The poor
barrister, as he waits for the briefs which come in so slowly--the
young doctor, hoping for patients--understand them all. Oh what
slight, fanciful things, to such men, appear such disappointments
as that of the wealthy proprietor who fails to carry his county,
or the rich mayor or provost who fails of being knighted!
There is an extraordinary arbitrariness about the way in which great
success is allotted in this world. Who shall say that in one case
out of every two, relative success is in proportion to relative
merit? Nor need this be said in anything of a grumbling or captious
spirit. It is but repeating what a very wise man said long ago,
that 'the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the
strong.' I suppose no one will say that the bishops are the greatest
men in the Church of England, or that every Chief Justice is a
greater man than every puisne judge. Success is especially arbitrary
in cases where it goes by pure patronage: in many such cases the
patron would smile at your weakness if you fancied that the desire
to find the best man ever entered his head. In the matter of the
bench and bar, where tangible duties are to be performed, a patron
is compelled to a certain amount of decency; for, though he may
not pretend to seek for the fittest man, he must at least profess
to have sought a fit man. No prime minister dare appoint a blockhead
a judge, without at least denying loudly that he is a blockhead.
But the arbitrariness of success is frequently the result of causes
quite apart from any arbitrariness in the intention of the human
disposer of success; a Higher Hand seems to come in here. The
tide of events settles the matter: the arbitrariness is in the way
in which the tide of events sets. Think of that great lawyer and
great man, Sir Samuel Romilly. Through years of his practice at
the bar, he himself, and all who knew him, looked to the woolsack
as his certain destination. You remember the many entries in his
diary bearing upon the matter; arid I suppose the opinion of the
most competent was clear as to his unrivalled fitness for the post.
Yet all ended in nothing. The race was not to the swift. The first
favourite was beaten, and more than one outsider has carried ofil
the prize for which he strove in vain. Did any mortal ever dream,
during his days of mediocrity at the bar, or his time of respectability
as a Baron of the Exchequer, that Sir R. M. Rolfe was the future
Chancellor? Probably there is no sphere in which there is more of
disappointment and heartburning than the army. It must be supremely
mortifying to a grey-headed veteran, who has served his country for
forty years, to find a beardless Guardsman put over his head into
the command of his regiment, and to see honours and emoluments
showered upon that fair-weather colonel. And I should judge that
the despatch written by a General after an important battle must
be a source of sad disappointment to many who fancied that their
names might well be mentioned there. But after all, I do not know
but that it tends to lessen disappointment, that success should
be regarded as going less by merit than by influence or good luck.
The disappointed man can always soothe himself with the fancy that
he deserved to succeed. It would be a desperately mortifying thing
to the majority of mankind, if it were distinctly ascertained
that each man gets just what he deserves. The admitted fact that
the square man, is sometimes put in the round hole, is a cause
of considerable consolation to all disappointed men, and to their
parents, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers.
No stronger proof can be adduced of the little correspondence that
often exists between success and merit, than the fact that the
self-same man, by the exercise of the self-same powers, may at one
time starve and at another drive his carriage and four. When poor
Edmund Kean was acting in barns to country bumpkins, and barely
rinding bread for his wife and child, he was just as great a genius
as when he was crowding Drury Lane. When Brougham presided in the
House of Lords, he was not a bit better or greater than when he
had hung about in the Parliament House at Edinburgh, a briefless
and suspected junior barrister. When all London crowded to see the
hippopotamus, he was just the animal that he was a couple of years
later, when no one took the trouble of looking at him. And when
George Stephenson died, amid the applause and gratitude of all the
intelligent men in Britain, he was the same man, maintaining the
same principle, as when men of science and of law regarded as a
mischievous lunatic the individual who declared that some day the
railroad would be the king's highway, and mail-coaches would be
drawn by steam.
As to the very highest prizes of human affairs, it is, I believe,
admitted on all hands, that these generally fall to second-rate
men. Civilized nations have found it convenient entirely to give
up the hallucination that the monarch is the greatest, wisest, and
best man in his dominions. Nobody supposes that. And in the case
of hereditary dynasties, such an end is not even aimed at. But it
is curious to find how with elective sovereignties it is just the
same way. The great statesmen of America have very rarely attained
to the dignity of President of the United States. Not Clays and
Webstcrs have had their four years at the White House. And even
Cardinal Wiseman candidly tells us that the post which is regarded
by millions as the highest which can be held by mortal, is all but
systematically given to judicious mediocrity. A great genius will
never be Pope. The coach must not be trusted to too dashing a
charioteer. Give us the safe and steady man. Everybody knows that
the same usage applies to the Primacy in England. Bishops must be
sensible; but archbishops are by some regarded with suspicion if
they have ever committed themselves to sentiments more startling
than that two and two make four. Let me suppose, my reader, that you
have met with great success: I mean success which is very great in
your own especial field. The lists are just put out, and you are
senior wrangler; or you have got the gold medal in some country
grammar-school. The feeling in both cases is the same. In each case
there combines with the exultant emotion, an intellectual conception
that you are one of the greatest of the human race. Well, was
not the feeling a strange one? Did you not feel somewhat afraid?
It seemed too much. Something was sure to come, you thought, that
would take you down. Few are burdened with such a feeling; but surely
there is something alarming in great success. You were a barber's
boy: you are made a peer. Surely you must go through life with an
ever-recurring emotion of surprise at finding yourself where you
are. It must be curious to occupy a place whence you look down upon
the heads of most of your kind. A duke gets accustomed to it; but
surely even he must sometimes wonder how he comes to be placed so
many degrees above multitudes who deserve as well. Or do such come
to fancy that their merit is equal to their success; and that by
as much as they are better off than other men, they are better than
other men? Very likety they do. It is all in human nature. And I
suppose the times have been in which it would have been treasonable
to hint that a man with a hundred thousand pounds a year was not
at least two thousand times as good as one with fifty.
The writer always feels a peculiar sympathy with failure, and with
people who are suffering from disappointment, great or small. It is
not that he himself is a disappointed man. No; he has to confess,
with deep thankfulness, that his success has far, very far,
transcended his deserts. And, like many other men, he has found
that one or two events in his life, which seemed disappointments
at the time, were in truth great and signal blessings. Still, every
one has known enough of the blank, desolate feeling of disappointment,
to sympathize keenly with the disappointments of others. I feel
deeply for the poor Punch and Judy man, simulating great excitement
in the presence of a small, uninterested group, from which people
keep dropping away. I feel for the poor barn-actor, who discovers,
on his first entrance upon his rude stage, that the magnates of
the district, who promised to be present at the performance, have
not come. You have gone to see a panorama, or to hear a lecture on
phrenology. Did you not feel for the poor fellow, the lecturer or
exhibitor, when ne came in ten minutes past the hour, and found
little but empty benches? Did you not see what a chill fell upon
him: how stupified he seemed: in short, how much disappointed he
was? And if the money he had hoped to earn that evening was to pay
the lodgings in which he and his wife were staying, you may be sure
there was a heart sickness about his disappointment far beyond the
mortification of mere self-love. When a rainy day stops a pic-nic,
or mars the enjoyment of it, although the disappointment is hardly
a serious one, still it is sure to cause so much real suffering,
that only rancorous old ladies will rejoice in the fact. It is
curious how men who have known disappointment themselves, and who
describe it well, seem to like to paint lives which in the meantime are
all hope and success. There is Mr. Thackeray. With what sympathy,
with what enjoyment, he shows us the healthy, wealthy, hopeful
youths, like Clive Newcome, or young Pendennis, when it was all
sunshine around the young prince! And yet how sad a picture of
life he gives us in The Newcomes. It would not have done to make
it otherwise: it is true, though sad: that history of the good and
gallant gentleman, whose life was a long disappointment, a long
failure in all on which he had set his heart; in his early love,
in his ambitious plans for his son, even in his hopes for his son's
happiness, in his own schemes of fortune, till that life of honour
ended in the almshouse at last. How the reader wishes that the
author would make brighter days dawn upon his hero! But the author
cannot: he must hold on unflinchingly as fate. In such a story as
his, truth can no more be sacrificed to our wishes than in real
life we know it to be. Well, all disappointment is discipline; and
received in a right spirit, it may prepare us for better things
elsewhere. It has been said that heaven is a place for those who
failed on earth. The greatest hero is perhaps the man who does his
very best, and signally fails, and still is not embittered by the
failure. And looking at the fashion in which an unseen Power permits
wealth and rank and influence to go sometimes in this world, we are
possibly justified in concluding that in His judgment the prizes
of this Vanity Fair are held as of no great account. A life here,
in which you fail of every end you seek, yet which disciplines you
for a better, is assuredly not a failure.
What a blessing it would be, if men's ambition were in every case
made to keep pace with their ability. Very much disappointment
arises from a man's having an absurd over-estimate of his own
powers, which leads him, to use an expressive Scotticism, to even
himself to some position for which he is utterly unfit, and which
he has no chance at all of reaching. A lad comes to the university
who has been regarded in his own family as a great genius, and
who has even distinguished himself at some little country school.
What a rude shock to the poor fellow's estimate of himself; what
a smashing of the hopes of those at home, is sure to come when he
measures his length with his superiors; and is compelled, as is
frequently the case, to take a third or fourth-rate position. If
you ever read the lives of actors (and every one ought, for they
show you a new and curious phase of life), you must have smiled
to see the ill-spelled, ungrarnmatical letters in which some poor
fellow writes to a London manager for an engagement, and declares
that he feels within him the makings of a greater actor than Garrick
or Kean. How many young men who go into the Church fancy that they
are to surpass Melvill or Chalmers! No doubt, reader, you have
sometimes come out of a church, where you had heard a preacher
aiming at the most ambitious eloquence, who evidently had not the
slightest vocation that way; and you have thought it would be well
if no man ever wished to be eloquent who had it not in him to be
so. Would that the principle were universally true! Who has not
sometimes been amused iff passing along the fashionable street of
a great city, to see a little vulgar snob dressed out within an
inch of his life, walking along, evidently fancying that he looks
like a gentleman, and that he is the admired of all admirers?
Sometimes, in a certain street which I might name, I have witnessed
such a spectacle, sometimes with amusement, oftener with sorrow and
pity, as I thought of the fearful, dark surmises which must often
cross the poor snob's mind, that he is failing in his anxious
endeavours. Occasionally, too, I have beheld a man bestriding a
horse in that peculiar fashion which may be described as his being
on the outside of the animal, slipping away over the hot stones,
possibly at a trot, and fancying ivthough with many suspicions to
the contrary; that he is witching the world with noble horsemanship.
What a pity that such poor fellows will persist in aiming at what
they cannot achieve! What mortification and disappointment they must
often know! The horse backs on to the pavement, into a plate-glass
window, just as Maria, for whose sake the poor screw was hired, is
passing by. The boys halloo in derision; and some ostler, helpful,
but not complimentary, extricates the rider, and says, 'I see you
have never been on 'ossback before; you should not have pulled the
curb-bit that way!' And when the vulgar dandy, strutting along,
with his Brummagem jewellery, his choking collar, and his awfully
tight boots which cause him agony, meets the true gentleman; how
it rushes upon him that he himself is only a humbug! How the poor
fellow's heart sinks!
Turning from such inferior fields of ambition as these, I think
how often it happens that men come to some sphere in life with
a flourish of trumpets, as destined to do great things, and then
fail. There is a modest, quiet self-confidence, without which
you will hardly get on in this world; but I believe, as a general
rule, that the men who have attained to very great success have
started with very moderate expectations. Their first aim was lowly;
and the way gradually opened before them. Their ambition, like
their success, went on step by step; they did not go at the top of
the tree at once. It would be easy to mention instances in which
those who started with high pretensions have been taught by stern
fact to moderate them; in which the man who came over from the
Irish bar intending to lead the Queen's Bench, and become a Chief
Justice, was glad, after thirty years of disappointment, to get
made a County Court judge. Not that this is always so; sometimes
pretension, if big enough, secures success. A man setting up as a
silk-mercer in a strange town, is much likelier to succeed if he
opens a huge shop, painted in flaring colours and puffed by enormous
bills and vast advertising vans, than if he set up in a modest
way, in something like proportion to his means. And if he succeeds,
well; if he fails, his creditors bear the loss. A great field
has been opened for the disappointment of men who start with the
flourish of trumpets already mentioned, by the growing system of
competitive examinations. By these, your own opinion of yourself,
and the home opinion of you, are brought to a severe test. I think
with sympathy of the disappointment of poor lads who hang on week
after week, hoping to hear that they have succeeded in gaining the
coveted appointment, and then learn that they have failed. I think
with sympathy of their poor parents. Even when the prize lost is
not substantial pudding, but only airy praise, it is a bitter thing
to lose it, after running the winner close. It must be a supremely
irritating and mortifying thing to be second wrangler. Look at the
rows of young fellows, sitting with their papers before them at a
Civil Service Examination, and think what interest and what hopes
are centred on every one of them. Think how many count on great
success, kept up to do so by the estimation in which they are held
at home. Their sisters and their mothers think them equal to anything.
Sometimes justly; sometimes the fact justifies the anticipation.
When Baron Alderson went to Cambridge, he tells us that he would
have spurned the offer of being second man of his year; and sure
enough, he was out of sight the first. But for one man of whom the
home estimation is no more than just, there are ten thousand in
whose case, to strangers, it appears simply preposterous.
There is one sense in which all after-life may be said to be a
disappointment. It is far different from that which it was pictured
by early anticipations and hopes. The very greatest material success
still leaves the case thus. And no doubt it seems strange to many
to look back on the fancies of youth, which experience has sobered
down. When you go back, my reader, to the village where you were
brought up, don't you remember how you used to fancy that when you
were a man you would come to it in your carriage and four? This, it
is unnecessary to add, you have not yet done. You thought likewise
that when you came back you would be arrayed in a scarlet coat,
possibly in a cuirass of steel; whereas in fact you have come to
the little inn where nobody knows you to spend the night, and you
are wandering along the bank of the river (how little changed!) in
a shooting-jacket of shepherd's plaid. You intended to marry the
village grocer's pretty daughter; and for that intention probably
you were somewhat hastily dismissed to a school a hundred miles
off; but this evening as you passed the shop you discovered her,
a plump matron, calling to her children in a voice rather shrill
than sweet; and you discovered from the altered sign above the
door that her father is dead, and that she has married the shopman,
your hated rival of former years. And yet how happily the wind is
tempered to the shorn lamb! You are not the least mortified. You
are much amused that your youthful fancies have been blighted. It
would have been fearful to have married that excellent individual;
the shooting-jacket is greatly more comfortable than the coat
of mail; and as for the carriage and four, why, even if you could
afford them, you would seldom choose to drive four horses. And it
is so with the more substantial anticipations of maturer years.
The man who, as already mentioned, intended to be a Chief Justice,
is quite happy when he is made a County Court judge. The man who
intended to eclipse Mr. Dickens in the arts of popular authorship
is content and proud to be the great writer of the London Journal.
The clergyman who would have liked a grand cathedral like York Minster
is perfectly pleased with his little country church, ivy-green and
grey. We come, if we are sensible folk, to be content with what we
can get, though we have not what we could wish.
Still, there are certain cases in which this can hardly be so. A
man of sense can bear cheerfully the frustration of the romantic
fancies of childhood and youth; but not many are so philosophical
in regard to the comparatively reasonable anticipations of more
reasonable years. When you got married at five-and-forty, your
hopes were not extravagant. You knew quite well you were not winning
the loveliest of her sex, and indeed you felt you had no right to
expect to do so. You were well aware that in wisdom, knowledge,
accomplishment, amiability, you could not reasonably look for more
than the average of the race. But you thought you might reasonably
look for that: and now, alas, alas! you find you have not got it.
How have I pitied a worthy and sensible man, listening to his wife
making a fool of herself before a large company of people! How
have I pitied such a one, when I heard his wife talking the most
idiotical nonsense; or when I saw her flirting scandalously with
a notorious scapegrace; or learned of the large parties which she
gave in his absence, to the discredit of her own character and the
squandering of his hard-earned gains! No habit, no philosophy, will
ever reconcile a human being of right feeling to such a disappointment
as that. And even a sadder thing than this--one of the saddest
things in life--is when a man begins to feel that his whole life is
a failure; not merely a failure as compared with the vain fancies
of youth, but a failure as compared with his sobered convictions of
what he ought to have been and what he might have been. Probably,
in a desponding mood, we have all known the feeling; and even when
we half knew it was morbid and transient, it was a very painful
one. But painful it must be beyond all names of pain, where it is
the abiding, calm, sorrowful conviction of the man's whole being.
Sore must be the heart of the man of middle age, who often thinks
that he is thankful his father is in his grave, and so beyond mourning
over his son's sad loss in life. And even when the stinging sense
of guilt is absent, it is a mournful thing for one to feel that he
has, so to speak, missed stays in his earthly voyage, and run upon
a mud-bank which he can never get off: to feel one's self ingloriously
and uselessly stranded, while those who started with us pass by
with gay flag and swelling sail. And all this may be while it is
hard to know where to attach blame; it may be when there was nothing
worse to complain of than a want of promptitude, resolution, and
tact, at the one testing time. Every one knows the passage in point
in Shakspeare.
Disappointment, I have said, is almost sure to be experienced in
a greater or less degree, so long as anything remains to be wished
or sought. And a provision is made for the indefinite continuance
of disappointment in the lot of even the most successful of men,
by the fact in rerum naturu that whenever the wants felt on a lower
level are supplied, you advance to a higher platform, where a new
crop of wants is felt. Till the lower wants are supplied you never
feel the higher; and accordingly people who pass through life
barely succeeding in gaining the supply of the lower wants, will
hardly be got to believe that the higher wants are ever really felt
at all. A man who is labouring anxiously to earn food and shelter
for his children--who has no farther worldly end, and who thinks he
would be perfectly happy if he could only be assured on New Year's
day that he would never fail in earning these until the thirty-first
of December, will hardly believe you when you tell him that the
Marquis at the castle is now utterly miserable because the King would
not give him a couple of yards of blue or green ribbon. And it is
curious in how many cases worldly-successful men mount, step after
step, into a new series of wants, implying a new set of mortifications
and disappointments. A person begins as a small tradesman; all he
aims at is a maintenance for him and his. That is his first aim.
Say he succeeds in reaching it. A little ago he thought he would
have been quite content could he only do that. But from his new
level he sees afar a new peak to climb; now he aims at a fortune.
That is his next aim. Say he reaches it. Now he buys an estate;
now he aims at being received and admitted as a country gentleman;
and the remainder of his life is given to striving for social
recognition in the county. How he schemes to get the baronet to dine
with him, and the baronet's lady to call upon his homely spouse!
And every one has remarked with amusement the hive of petty
mortifications, failures, and disappointments, through which he
fights his way, till, as it may chance, he actually gains a dubious
footing in the society he seeks, or gives up the endeavour as a
final failure. Who shall say that any one of the successive wants
the man has felt is more fanciful, less real, than any other? To
Mr. Oddbody, living in his fine house, it is just as serious an
aim to get asked to the Duke's ball, as in former days it was to
Jack Oddbody to carry home on Saturday night the shillings which
were to buy his bread and cheese.
And another shade of disappointment which keeps pace with all material
success is that which arises, not from failing to get a thing, but
from getting it and then discovering that it is not what we had
fancied--that it will not make us happy. Is not this disappointment
ft It everywhere? When the writer was a little boy, he was promised
that on a certain birthday a donkey should be bought for his future
riding. Did not he frequently allude to it in conversation with
his companions? Did not he plague the servants for information as
to the natural history and moral idiosyncrasy of donkeys? Did not
the long-eared visage appear sometimes through his dreams? Ah,
the donkey came! Then followed the days of being pitched over his
head; the occasions on which the brute of impervious hide rushed
through hedges and left me sticking in them: happiness was no
nearer, though the donkey was there. Have you not, my philosophic
friend, had your donkey? I mean your moral donkey. Yes, and scores
of such. When you were a schoolboy, longing for the holidays,
have you not chalked upon doors the legend--OH FOR AUGUST! Vague,
delightful visions of perfect happiness were wrapped up in the
words. But the holidays came, as all holidays have done and will
do; and in a few days you were heartily wearied of them. When you
were spoony about Marjory Anne, you thought that once your donkey
came, once you were fairly married and settled, what a fine thing
it would be! I do not say a syllable against that youthful matron;
but I presume you have discovered that she falls short of perfection,
and that wedded life has its many cares. You thought you would
enjoy so much the setting-up of your carriage; your wife and you
often enjoyed it by anticipation on dusty summer days: but though
all very well, wood and iron and leather never made the vehicle
that shall realize your anticipations. The horses were often lame;
the springs would sometimes break; the paint was always getting
scratched and the lining cut. Oh, what a nuisance is a carriage!
You fancied you would be perfectly happy when you retired from
business and settled in the country. What a comment upon such
fancies is the fashion in which retired men of business haunt the
places of their former toils like unquiet ghosts! How sick they
get of the country! I do not think of grand disappointments of
the sort; of the satiety of Vathek, turning sickly away from his
earthly paradise at Cintra; nor of the graceful towers I have seen
rising from a woody cliff above a summer sea, and of the story
told me of their builder, who, after rearing them, lost interest
in them, and in sad disappointment left them to others, and went
back to the busy town wherein he had made his wealth. I think of
men, more than one or two, who rented their acre of land by the
sea-side, and built their pretty cottage, made their grassplots and
trained their roses, and then in unaccustomed idleness grew weary
of the whole and sold their place to some keen bargain-maker for
a tithe of what it cost them.
Why is it that failure in attaining ambitious ends is so painful?
When one has honestly done one's best, and is beaten after all,
conscience must be satisfied: the wound is solely to self-love;
and is it not to the discredit of our nature that that should imply
such a weary, blank, bitter feeling as it often does? Is it that
every man has within his heart a lurking belief that, notwithstanding
the world's ignorance of the fact, there never was in the world
anybody so remarkable as himself? I think that many mortals need
daily to be putting down a vague feeling which really comes to that.
You who have had experience of many men, know that you can hardly
over-estimate the extent and depth of human vanity. Never be afraid
but that nine men out of ten will swallow with avidity flattery,
however gross; especially if it ascribe to them those qualities of
which they are most manifestly deficient.
A disappointed man looks with great interest at the man who has
obtained what he himself wanted. Your mother, reader, says that
her ambition for you would be entirely gratified if you could but
reach a certain place which some one you know has held for twenty
years. You look at him with much curiosity; he appears very much
like yourself; and, curiously, he does not appear particularly happy.
Oh, reader, whatever you do--though last week he gained without an
effort what you have been wishing for all your life--do not hate
him. Resolve that you will love and wish well to the man who fairly
succeeded where you fairly failed. Go to him and get acquainted
with him: if you and he are both true men, you will not find it a
difficult task to like him. It is perhaps asking too much of human
nature to ask you to do all this in the case of the man who has
carried off the woman you loved; but as regards anything else, do
it all. Go to your successful rival, heartily congratulate him.
Don't be Jesuitical; don't merely felicitate the man; put down the
rising feeling of envy: that is always out-and-out wrong. Don't
give it a moment's quarter. You clerks in an office, ready to be
angry with a fellow-clerk who gets the chance of a trip to Scotland
on business, don't give in to the feeling. Shake hands with him
all round, and go in a body with him to Euston Square, and give
him three cheers as he departs by the night mail. And you, greater
mortals--you, rector of a beautiful parish, who think you would have
done for a bishop as well as the clergyman next you who has got the
mitre; you, clever barrister, sure some day to be solicitor-general,
though sore to-day because a man next door has got that coveted
post before you; go and see the successful man--go forthwith,
congratulate him heartily, say frankly you wish it had been you:
it will do oreat good both to him and to yourself. Let it not be
that envy--that bitter and fast-growing fiend--shall be suffered
in your heart for one minute. When I was at college I sat on the
same bench with a certain man. We were about the same age. Now, I
am a country parson, and he is a cabinet minister. Oh, how he has
distanced poor me in the race of life! Well, he had a tremendous
start, no doubt. Now, shall I hate him? Shall I pitch into him, rake
up all his errors of youth, tell how stupid he was (though indeed
he was not stupid), and bitterly gloat over the occasion on which
he fell on the ice and tore his inexpressibles in the presence of
a grinning throng? No, my old fellow-student, who hast now doubtless
forgotten my name, though I so well remember yours, though you got
your honours possibly in some measure from the accident of your
birth, you have nobly justified their being given you so early; and
so I look on with interest to your loftier advancement yet, and I
say--God bless you!
I think, if I were an examiner at one of the Universities, that I
should be an extremely popular one. No man should ever be plucked.
Of course it would be very wrong, and, happily, the work is in the
hands of those who are much fitter for it; but, instead of thinking
solely and severely of a man's fitness to pass, I could not help
thinking a great deal of the heartbreak it would be to the poor
fellow and his family if he were turned. It would be ruin to any
magazine to have me for its editor. I should always be printing
all sorts of rubbishing articles, which are at present consigned
to the Balaam-box. I could not bear to grieve and disappoint the
young lady who sends her gushing verses. I should be picturing to
myself the long hours of toil that resulted in the clever lad's
absurd attempt at a review, and all his fluttering hopes and fears
as to whether it was to be accepted or not. No doubt it is by this
mistaken kindness that institutions are damaged and ruined. The
weakness of a sympathetic bishop burdens the Church with a clergy-man
who for many years will be an injury to her; and it would have been
far better even for the poor fellow himself to have been decidedly
and early kept out of a vocation for which he is wholly unfit. I am
far from saying that the resolute examiner who plucks freely, and
the resolute editor who rejects firmly, are deficient in kindness
of heart, or even in vividness of imagination to picture what they
are doing: though much of the suffering and disappointment of this
world is caused by men who are almost unaware of what they do. Like
the brothers of Isabella, in Keats' beautiful poem,
Half ignorant, they turn an easy wheel,
That sets sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.
Yet though principle and moral decision may be in you sufficient
to prevent your weakly yielding to the feeling, be sure you always
sympathize with failure;--honest, laborious failure. And I think
all but very malicious persons generally do sympathize with it. It
is easier to sympathize with failure than with success. No trace of
envy comes in to mar your sympathy, and you have a pleasant sense
that you are looking down from a loftier elevation. The average man
likes to have some one to look down upon--even to look down upon
kindly. I remember being greatly touched by hearing of a young man
of much promise, who went to preach his first sermon in a little
church by the sea-shore in a lonely highland glen. He preached his
sermon, and got on pretty fairly; but after service he went down
to the shore of the far-sounding sea, and wept to think how sadly
he had fallen short of his ideal, how poor was his appearance
compared to what he had intended and hoped. Perhaps a foolish vanity
and self-conceit was at the foundation of his disappointment; but
though I did not know him at all, I could not but have a very kindly
sympathy for him. I heard, years afterwards, with great pleasure,
that he had attained to no small eminence and success as a pulpit
orator; and I should not have alluded to him here but for the fact
that in early youth, and amid greater expectations of him, he
passed away from this life of high aims and poor fulfilments. I
think how poor Keats, no doubt morbidly ambitious as well as morbidly
sensitive, declared in his preface to Endymion that 'there is no
fiercer hell than failure in a great attempt.'
Most thoughtful men must feel it a curious and interesting study,
to trace the history of the closing days of those persons who have
calmly and deliberately, in no sudden heat of passion, taken away
their own life. In such cases, of course, we see the sense of
failure, absolute and complete. They have quietly resolved lo give
up life as a losing game. You remember the poor man who, having
spent his last shilling, retired to a wood far from human dwellings,
and there died voluntarily by starvation. He kept a diary of those
days of gradual death, setting out his feelings both of body and
mind. No nourishment passed his lips after he had chosen his last
resting-place, save a little water, which he dragged himself to
a pond to drink. He was not discovered till he was dead; but his
melancholy chronicle appeared to have been carried down to very
near the time when he became unconscious. I remember its great
characteristic appeared to be a sense of utter failure. There
seemed to be no passion, none of the bitter desperate resolution
which prompts the energetic 'Anywhere, anywhere, out of the world;'
but merely a weary, lonely wish to creep quietly away. I have no
look but one of sorrow and pity to cast on the poor suicide's grave.
I think the common English verdict is right as well as charitable,
which supposes that in every such case reason has become unhinged,
and responsibility is gone. And what desperate misery, what a
black horrible anguish of heart, whether expressing itself calmly
or feverishly, must have laid its gripe upon a human being before
it can overcome in him the natural clinging to life, and make him
deliberately turn his back upon 'the warm precincts of the cheerful
day.' No doubt it is the saddest of all sad ends; but I do not
forget that a certain Authority, the highest of all authorities,
said to all human beings, 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' The
writer has, in the course of his duty, looked upon more than one
suicide's dead face; and the lines of Hood appeared to sketch the
fit feeling with which to do so:--
Owning her weakness,
Her evil behaviour;
And leaving, with meekness,
Her soul to her Saviour.
What I have just written recalls to me, by some link of association,
the words I once heard a simple old Scotch-woman utter by her son's
deathbed. He was a young man of twenty-two, a pious and good young
man, and I had seen him very often throughout his gradual decline.
Calling one morning, I found he was gone, and his mother begged me
to come and see his face once more; and standing for the last time
by him, I said (and I could say them honestly) some words of Christian
comfort to the poor old woman. I told her, in words far better than
any of my own, how the Best Friend of mankind had said, 'I am the
Resurrection and the Life: he that believeth in Me, though he were
dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me,
shall never die.' I remember well her answer. 'Aye,' said she, 'he
gaed away trusting in that; and he'll be sorely disappointed if he
doesna' find it so.' Let me venture to express my hope, that when
my readers and I pass within the veil, we may run the risk of
no other disappointment than that these words should prove false;
and then it will be well with us. There will be no disappointment
there, in the sense of things failing to come up to our expectations.
Let it be added, that there are disappointments with which even
the kindest hearts will have no sympathy, and failures over which
we may without malignity rejoice. You do not feel very deeply for
the disappointed burglar, who retires from your dwelling at 3 A. M.,
leaving a piece of the calf of his leg in the jaws of your trusty
watch-dog; nor for the Irish bog-trotter who (poor fellow),
from behind the hedge, misses his aim at the landlord who fed him
and his family through the season of famine. You do not feel very
deeply for the disappointment of the friend, possibly the slight
acquaintance, who with elongated face retires from your study,
having failed to persuade you to attach your signature to a bill
for some hundreds of pounds 'just as a matter of form.' Very likely
he wants the money; so did the burglar: but is that any reason why
you should give it to him? Refer him to the wealthy and influential
relatives of whom he has frequently talked to you; tell him they
are the very people to assist him in such a case with their valuable
autograph. As for yourself, tell him you know what you owe to your
children and yourself; and say that the slightest recurrence to
such a subject must be the conclusion of all intercourse between
you. Ah, poor disappointed fellow! How heartless it is in you to
refuse to pay, out of your hard earnings, the money which he so
jauntily and freely spent!
How should disappointment be met? Well, that is far too large
a question to be taken up at this stage of my essay, though there
are various suggestions which I should like to make. Some disappointed
men take to gardening and farming; and capital things they are.
But when disappointment is extreme, it will paralyse you so that
you will suffer the weeds to grow up all about you, without your
having the heart to set your mind to the work of having the place
made neat. The state of a man's garden is a very delicate and
sensitive test as to whether he is keeping hopeful and well-to-do.
It is to me a very sad sight to see a parsonage getting a dilapidated
look, and the gravel walks in its garden growing weedy. The parson
must be growing old and poor. The parishioners tell you how trim
and orderly everything was when he came first to the parish. But
his affairs have become embarrassed, or his wife and children are
dead; and though still doing his duty well, and faithfully, he has
lost heart and interest in these little matters; and so things are
as you see.
I have been amused by the way in which some people meet disappointment.
They think it a great piece of worldly wisdom to deny that they
have ever been disappointed at all. Perhaps it might be so, if the
pretext were less transparent than it is. An old lady's son is
plucked at an examination for a civil appointment. She takes up
the ground that it is rather a credit to be plucked; that nearly
everybody is plucked; that all the cleverest fellows are plucked;
and that only stupid fellows are allowed to pass. When the
examiners find a clever man, they take a pleasure in plucking him.
A number of the cleverest men in England can easily put out a lad
of one-and-twenty. Then, shifting her ground, she declares the
examination was ridiculously easy: her son was rejected because he
could not tell what two and two amount to: because he did not know
the name of the river on which London is built: because he did not
(in his confusion) know his own name. She shows you the indignant
letter which the young man wrote to her, announcing the scandalous
injustice with which he was treated. You remark three words misspelt
in the first five lines; and you fancy you have fathomed the secret
of the plucking.
I have sometimes tried, but in vain, to discover the law which
regulates the attainment of extreme popularity. Extreme popularity,
in this country and age, appears a very arbitrary thing. I defy any
person to predict a priori what book, or song, or play, or picture,
is to become the rage,--to utterly transcend all competition. I
believe, indeed, that there cannot be popularity for even a short
time, without some kind or degree of merit to deserve it; and in
any case there is no other standard to which one can appeal than
the deliberate judgment of the mass of educated persons. If you
are quite convinced that a thing is bad which all such think good,
why, of course you are wrong. If you honestly think Shakspeare
a fool, you are aware you must be mistaken. And so, if a book,
or a picture, or a play, or a song, be really good, and if it be
properly brought before the public notice, you may, as a general
rule, predict that it will attain a certain measure of success.
But the inexplicable thing--the thing of which I am quite unable to
trace the law--is extreme success. How is it that one thing shoots
ahead of everything else of the same class; and without being
materially better, or even materially different, leaves everything
else out of sight behind? Why is it that Eclipse is first and the
rest nowhere, while the legs and wind of Eclipse are no whit better
than the legs and wind of all the rest? If twenty novels of nearly
equal merit are published, it is not impossible that one shall dart
ahead of the remaining nineteen; that it shall be found in every
library; that Mr. Mudie may announce that he has 3250 copies of
it; that it shall be the talk of every circle; its incidents set to
music, its plot dramatized; that it shall count readers by thousands
while others count readers by scores; while yet one cannot really
see why any of the others might not have taken its place. Or of a
score of coarse comic songs, nineteen shall never get beyond the
walls of the Cyder Cellars (I understand there is a place of the
name), while the twentieth, no wise superior in any respect, comes to
be sung about the streets, known by everybody, turned into polkas
and quadrilles and in fact to become for the time one of the
institutions of this great and intelligent country. I remember
how, a year or two since, that contemptible Rat-catcher's Daughter,
without a thing to recommend it, with no music, no wit, no sentiment,
nothing but vulgar brutality, might be heard in every separate town
of England and Scotland, sung about the streets by every ragged
urchin; while the other songs of the vivacious Cowell fell dead
from his lips. The will of the sovereign people has decided that
so it shall be. And as likings and dislikings in most cases are
things strongly felt, but impossible to account for even by the
person who feels them, so is it ffith the enormous admiration,
regard, and success which fall to the lot of many to whom popularity
is success. Actors, statesmen, authors, preachers, have often in
England their day of quite undeserved popular ovation; and by and
bye their day of entire neglect. It is the rocket and the stick.
We are told that Bishop Butler, about the period of the great
excesses of the French Revolution, was walking in his garden with
his chaplain. After a long fit of musing, the Bishop turned to the
chaplain, and asked the question whether nations might not go mad,
as well as individuals? Classes of society, I think, may certainly
have attacks of temporary insanity on some one point. The Jenny
Lind fever was such an attack. Such was the popularity of the
boy-actor Betty. Such the popularity of the Small Coal Man some time
in the last century; such that of the hippopotamus at the Regent's
Park; such that of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
But this essay must have an end. It is far too long already. I am
tired of it, and a fortiori my reader must be so. Let me try the
effect of an abrupt conclusion.
CHAPTER III.
CONCERNING SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS;
SOME THOUGHTS UPON THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM.
[Footnote: For the suggestion of the subject of this essay, and
for many valuable hints as to its treatment, I am indebted to the
kindness of the Archbishop of Dublin. Indeed, in all that part of
the essay which treats of Secondary Vulgar Errwi, I have done little
more than expand and illustrate the skeleton of thought supplied
to me by Archbishop Whately.]
I have eaten up all the grounds of my tea, said, many years since,
in my hearing, in modest yet triumphant tones, a little girl of
seven years old. I have but to close my eyes, and I see all that
scene again, almost as plainly as ever. Six or seven children (I
am one of them) are sitting round a tea-table; their father and
mother are there too; and an old gentleman, who is (in his own
judgment) one of the wisest of men. I see the dining-room, large and
low-ceilinged; the cheerful glow of the autumnal fire; the little
faces in the soft candle-light, for glaring gas was there unknown.
There had been much talk about the sinfulness of waste--of the
waste of even very little things. The old gentleman, so wise (in
his own judgment, and indeed in my judgment at that period), was
instilling into the children's minds some of those lessons which
are often impressed upon children by people (I am now aware) of
no great wisdom or cleverness. He had dwelt at considerable length
upon the sinfulness of wasting anything; likewise on the sinfulness
of children being saucy or particular as to what they should eat.
He enforced, with no small solemnity, the duty of children's eating
what was set before them without minding whether it was good or not,
or at least without minding whether they liked it or not. The poor
little girl listened to all that was said, and of course received
it all as indubitably true. Waste and sauciness, she saw, were
wrong, so she judged that the very opposite of waste and sauciness
must be right. Accordingly, she thought she would turn to use
something that was very small, but still something that ought not
to be wasted. Accordingly, she thought she would show the docility
of her taste by eating up something that was very disagreeable.
Here was an opportunity at once of acting out the great principles
to which she had been listening. And while a boy, evidently destined
to be a metaphysician, and evidently possessed of the spirit
of resistance to constituted authority whether in government or
doctrine, boldly argued that it could not be wicked in him to hate
onions, because God had made him so that he did hate onions, and
(going still deeper into things) insisted that to eat a thing when
you did not want it was wasting it much more truly than it would
be wasting it to leave it; the little girl ate up all the grounds
left in her teacup, and then announced the fact with considerable
complacency.
Very, very natural. The little girl's act was a slight straw
showing how a great current sets. It was a fair exemplification
of a tendency which is woven into the make of our being. Tell the
average mortal that it is wrong to walk on the left side of the road,
and in nine cases out of ten he will conclude that the proper thing
must be to walk on the right side of the road; whereas in actual
life, and in almost all opinions, moral, political, and religious,
the proper thing is to walk neither on the left nor the right side,
but somewhere about the middle. Say to the ship-master, You are to
sail through a perilous strait; you will have the raging Scylla on
one hand as you go. His natural reply will be, Well, I will keep as
far away from it as possible; I will keep close by the other side.
But the rejoinder must be, No, you will be quite as ill off there;
you will be in equal peril on the other side: there is Charybdis.
What you have to do is to keep at a safe distance from each. In
avoiding the one, do not run into the other.
It seems to be a great law of the universe, that Wrong lies upon
either side of the way, and that Right is the narrow path between.
There are the two ways of doing wrong--Too Much and Too Little.
Go to the extreme right hand, and you are wrong; go to the extreme
left hand, and you are wrong too. That you may be right, you have
to keep somewhere between these two extremes: but not necessarily
in the exact middle. All this, of course, is part of the great fact
that in this world Evil has the advantage of Good. It is easier to
go wrong than right.
It is very natural to think that if one thing or course be wrong,
its reverse must be right. If it be wrong to walk towards the east,
surely it must be right to walk towards the west. If it be wrong to
dress in black, it must be right to dress in white. It is somewhat
hard to say, Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt--to
declare, as if that were a statement of the whole truth, that
fools mistake reverse of wrong for right. Fools do so indeed, but
not fools only. The average Jiuman being, with the most honest
intentions, is prone to mistake reverse of wrong for right. We
are fond, by our natural constitution, of broad distinctions--of
classifications that put the whole interests and objects of this
world to iho Tight-hand and to the left. We long for Aye or No--for
Heads or Tails. We are impatient of limitations, qualifications,
restrictions. You remember how Mr. Micawber explained the philosophy
of income and expenditure, and urged people never to run in debt.
Income, said he, a hundred pounds a year; expenditure ninety-nine
pounds nineteen shillings: Happiness. Income, a hundred pounds a
year; expenditure a hundred pounds and one shilling: Misery. You
see the principle involved is, that if you are not happy, you must
be miserable--that if you are not miserable, you must be happy.
If you are not any particular thing, then you are its opposite. If
you are not For, then you are Against. If you are not black, many
men will jump to the conclusion that you are white: the fact probably
being that you are gray. If not a Whig, you must be a Tory: in
truth, you are a Liberal-Conservative. We desiderate in all things
the sharp decidedness of the verdict of a jury--Guilty or Not
Guilty. We like to conclude that if a man be not very good, then
he is very bad; if not very clever, then very stupid; if not very
wise, then a fool: whereas in fact, the man probably is a curious
mixture of good and evil, strength and weakness, wisdom and folly,
knowledge and ignorance, cleverness and stupidity.
Let it be here remarked, that in speaking of it as an error to
take reverse of wrong for right, I use the words in their ordinary
sense, as generally understood. In common language the reverse
of a thing is taken to mean the thing at the opposite end of
the scale from it. Thus, black is the reverse of white, bigotry
of latitudinarianism, malevolence of benevolence, parsimony of
extravagance, and the like. Of course, in strictness, these things
are not the reverse of one another. In strictness, the reverse of
wrong always is right; for, to speak with severe precision, the
reverse of steering upon Scylla is simply not steering upon Scylla;
the reverse of being extravagant is not being parsimonious--it is
simply not being extravagant; the reverse of walking eastward is
not walking westward--it is simply not walking eastward. And that
may include standing still, or walking to any point of the compass
except the east. But I understand the reverse of a thing as meaning
the opposite extreme from it. And you see, the Latin words quoted
above are more precise than the English. It is severely true, that
while fools think to shun error on one side, they run into the
contrary error--i. e., the error that lies equi-distant, or nearly
equi-distant, on the other side of the line of right.
One class of the errors into which men are prone to run under this
natural impulse are those which have been termed Secondary Vulgar
Errors. A vulgar error, you will understand, my reader, does not
by any means signify an error into which only the vulgar are likely
to fall. It does not by any means signify a mistaken belief which
will be taken up only by inferior and uneducated minds. A vulgar
error means an error either in conduct or belief into which man,
by the make of his being, is likely to fall. Now, people a degree
wiser and more thoughtful than the mass, discover that these vulgar
errors are errors. They conclude that their opposites (i. e., the
things at the other extremity of the scale) must be right; and by
running into the opposite extreme they run just as far wrong upon
the other side. There is too great a reaction. The twig was bent
to the right--they bend it to the left, forgetting that the right
thing was that the twig should be straight. If convinced that waste
and sauciness are wrong, they proceed to eat the grounds of their
tea; if convinced that self-indulgence is wrong, they conclude that
hair-shirts and midnight floggings are right; if convinced that
the Church of Rome has too many ceremonies, they resolve that they
will have no ceremonies at all; if convinced that it is unworthy to
grovel in the presence of a duke, they conclude that it will be a
fine thing to refuse the duke ordinary civility; if convinced that
monarehs are not much wiser or better than other human beings, they
run off into the belief that all kings have been little more than
incarnate demons; if convinced that representative government
often works very imperfectly, they raise a cry for imperialism;
if convinced that monarchy has its abuses, they call out for
republicanism; if convinced that Britain has many things which are
not so good as they ought to be, they keep constantly extolling
the perfection of the United States.
Now, inasmuch as a rise of even one step in the scale of thought
elevates the man who has taken it above the vast host of men who
have never taken even that one step, the number of people who (at
least in matters of any moment) arrive at the Secondary Vulgar
Error is much less than the number of the people who stop at the
Primary Vulgar Error. Very great multitudes of human beings think
it a very fine thing, the very finest of all human things, to
be very rich. A much smaller number, either from the exercise of
their own reflective powers, or from the indoctrination of romantic
novels and overdrawn religious books, run to the opposite extreme:
undervalue wealth, deny that it adds anything to human comfort and
enjoyment, declare that it is an unmixed evil, profess to despise
it. I dare say that many readers of the Idylls of the King will
so misunderstand that exquisite song of 'Fortune and her Wheel,'
as to see in it only the charming and sublime embodiment of a
secondary vulgar error,--the error, to wit, that wealth and outward
circumstances are of no consequence at all. To me that song appears
rather to take the further step, and to reach the conclusion
in which is embodied the deliberate wisdom of humankind upon this
matter: the conclusion which shakes from itself on either hand
either vulgar error: the idolization of wealth on the one side,
the contempt of it on the other: and to convey the sobered judgment
that while the advantages and refinements of fortune are so great
that no thoughtful man can long despise it, the responsibilities
and temptations of it are so great that no thoughtful man will
much repine if he fail to reach it; and thus that we may genially
acquiesce in that which it pleases God to send. Midway between two
vulgar errors: steering a sure track between Scylla and Charybdis:
the grovelling multitude to the left, the romantic few to the
right; stand the words of inspired wisdom. The pendulum had probably
oscillated many times between the two errors, before it settled at
the central truth; 'Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me
with food convenient for me: Lest I be full and deny Thee, and say,
Who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name
of my God in vain.'
But although these errors of reaction are less common than the
primary vulgar errors, they are better worth noticing: inasmuch as
in many cases they are the errors of the well-intentioned. People
fall into the primary vulgar errors without ever thinking of right
or wrong: merely feeling an impulse to go there, or to think thus.
But worthy folk, for the most part, fall into the secondary vulgar
errors, while honestly endeavouring to escape what they have
discerned to be wrong. Not indeed that it is always in good faith
that men run to the opposite extreme. Sometimes they do it in pet
and perversity, being well aware that they are doing wrong. You hint
to some young friend, to whom you are nearly enough related to be
justified in doing so, that the dinner to which he has invited you,
with several others, is unnecessarily fine, is somewhat extravagant,
is beyond what he can afford. The young friend asks you back in
a week or two, and sets before you a feast of salt herrings and
potatoes. Now the fellow did not run into this extreme with the
honest intention of doing right. He knew perfectly well that this
was not what you meant. He did not go through this piece of folly
in the sincere desire to avoid the other error of extravagance. Or,
you are a country clergyman. You are annoyed, Sunday by Sunday, by
a village lad who, from enthusiasm or ostentation, sings so loud
in church as to disturb the whole congregation. You hint to him,
as kindly as you can, that there is something very pleasing about
the softer tones of his voice, and that you would like to hear
them more frequently. But the lad sees through your civil way of
putting the case. His vanity is touched. He sees you mean that you
don't like to hear him bellow: and next Sunday you will observe
that he shuts up his hymn-book in dudgeon, and will not sing at
all. Leave the blockhead to himself Do not set yourself to stroke
down his self-conceit: he knows quite well he is doing wrong:
there is neither sense nor honesty in what he does. You remark at
dinner, while staying with a silly old gentleman, that the plum-pudding,
though admirable, perhaps errs on the side of over-richness; next
day he sets before you a mass of stiff paste with no plums at
all, and says, with a look of sly stupidity, 'Well, I hope you are
satisfied now.' Politeness prevents your replying, 'No, you don't.
You know that is not what I meant. You are a fool.' You remember
the boy in Pickwick, who on his father finding fault with him for
something wrong he had done, offered to kill himself if that would
be any satisfaction to his parent. In this case you have a more
recondite instance of this peculiar folly. Here the primary course
is tacitly assumed, without being stated. The primary impulse of
the human being is to take care of himself; the opposite of that
of course is to kill himself. And the boy, being chidden for doing
something which might rank under the general head of taking care
of himself, proposed (as that course appeared unsatisfactory) to
take the opposite one. 'You don't take exercise enough,' said a
tutor to a wrong-headed boy who was under his care: 'you ought to
walk more.' Next morning the perverse fellow entered the breakfast
parlour in a fagged condition, and said, with the air of a martyr,
'Well, I trust I have taken exercise enough to-day: I have walked
twenty miles this morning.' As for all such manifestations of the
disposition to run into opposite extremes, let them be treated as
manifestations of pettedness, perversity, and dishonesty. In some
cases a high-spirited youth may be excused them; but, for the
most part, they come with doggedness, wrong-headedness, and dense
stupidity. And any pretext that they are exhibited with an honest
intention to do right, ought to be regarded as a transparently
false pretext.
I have now before me a list (prepared by a much stronger hand
than mine) of honest cases in which men, avoiding Scylla, run into
Charybdis: in which men, thinking to bend the crooked twig straight,
bend it backwards. But before mentioning these, it may be remarked,
that there is often such a thing as a reaction from a natural
tendency, even when that natural tendency is not towards what may
be called a primary vulgar error. The law of reaction extends to
all that human beings can ever feel the disposition to think or do.
There are, doubtless, minds of great fixity of opinion and motive:
and there are certain things, in the case of almost all men, as
regards which their belief and their active bias never vary through
life: but with most human beings, with nations, with humankind,
as regards very many and very important matters, as surely and as
far as the pendulum has swung to the right, so surely and so far
will it swing to the left. I do not say that an opinion in favour
of monarchy is a primary vulgar error; or that an opinion in favour
of republicanism is a secondary: both may be equally right: but
assuredly each of these is a reaction from the other. America, for
instance, is one great reaction from Europe. The principle on which
these reactionary swings of the pendulum take place, is plain.
Whatever be your present position, you feel its evils and drawbacks
keenly. Your feeling of the present evil is much more vivid than
your imagination of the evil which is sure to be inherent in the
opposite system, whatever that may be. You live in a country where
the national Church is Presbyterian. You see, day by day, many
inconveniences and disadvantages inherent in that form of church
government. It is of the nature of evil to make its presence much
more keenly felt than the presence of good. So while keenly alive
to the drawbacks of presbytery, you are hardly conscious of its
advantages. You swing over, let us suppose, to the other end: you
swing over from Scotland into England, from presbytery to episcopacy.
For awhile you are quite delighted to find yourself free from the
little evils of which you had been wont to complain. But by and
bye the drawbacks of episcopacy begin to push themselves upon your
notice. You have escaped one set of disadvantages: you find that
you have got into the middle of another. Scylla no longer bellows
in your hearing; but Charybdis whirls you round. You begin to feel
that the country and the system yet remain to be sought, in which
some form of evil, of inconvenience, of worry, shall not press you.
Am I wrong in fancying, dear friends more than one or two, that
but for very shame the pendulum would swing back again to the point
from which it started: and you, kindly Scots, would find yourselves
more at home in kindly and homely Scotland, with her simple forms
and faith? So far as my experience has gone, I think that in all
matters not of vital moment, it is best that the pendulum should
stay at the end of the swing where it first found itself: it will
be in no more stable position at the other end: and it will somehow
feel stranger-like there. And you, my friend, though in your visits
to Anglican territory you heartily conform to the Anglican Church,
and enjoy as much as mortal san her noble cathedrals and her
stately worship; still I know that after all, you cannot shake off
the spell in which the old remembrances of your boyhood have bound
you. I know that your heart warms to the Burning Bush; [Footnote:
The scutcheon of the Church of Scotland.] and that it will, till
death chills it.
A noteworthy fact in regard to the swing of the pendulum, is that
the secondary tendency is sometimes found in the ruder state of
society, and the less reflective man. Naturalness comes last. The
pendulum started from naturalness: it swung over into artificiality:
and with thoughtful people it has swung back to naturalness again.
Thus it is natural, when in danger, to be afraid. It is natural,
when you are possessed by any strong feeling, to show it. You see
all this in children: this is the point which the pendulum starts
from. It swings over, and we find a reaction from this. The reaction
is, to maintain and exhibit perfect coolness and indifference in
danger; to pretend to be incapable of fear. This state of things
we find in the Red Indian, a rude and uncivilized being. But
it is plain that with people who are able to think, there must be
a reaction from this. The pendulum cannot long stay in a position
which flies so completely in the face of the law of gravitation. It
is pure nonsense to talk about being incapable of fear. I remember
reading somewhere about Queen Elizabeth, that 'her soul was incapable
of fear.' That statement is false and absurd. You may regard fear
as unmanly and unworthy: you may repress the manifestations of
it; but the state of mind which (in beings not properly monstrous
or defective) follows the perception of being in danger, is fear.
As surely as the perception of light is sight, so surely is the
perception of danger fear. And for a man to say that his soul is
incapable of fear, is just as absurd as to say that from a peculiarity
of constitution, when dipped in water, he does not get wet. You,
human being, whoever you may be, when you are placed in danger, and
know you are placed in danger, and reflect on the fact, you feel
afraid. Don't vapour and say no; we know how the mental machine
must work, unless it be diseased. Now, the thoughtful man admits
all this: he admits that a bullet through his brain would be a very
serious thing for himself, and like-wise for his wife and children:
he admits that he shrinks from such a prospect; he will take pains
to protect himself from the risk; but he says that if duty requires
him to run the risk he will run it. This is the courage of the
civilized man as opposed to the blind, bull-dog insensibility of
the savage. This is courage--to know the existence of danger, but
to face it nevertheless. Here, under the influence of longer thought,
the pendulum has swung into common sense, though not quite back to
the point from which it started. Of course, it still keeps swinging
about in individual minds. The other day I read in a newspaper a
speech by a youthful rifleman, in which he boasted that no matter
to what danger exposed, his corps would never take shelter behind
trees and rocks, but would stand boldly out to the aim of the enemy.
I was very glad to find this speech answered in a letter to the
Times, written by a rifleman of great experience and proved bravery.
The experienced man pointed out that the inexperienced man was
talking nonsense: that true courage appeared in manfully facing risks
which were inevitable, but not in running into needless peril: and
that the business of a soldier was to be as useful to his country
and as destructive to the enemy as possible, and not to make needless
exhibitions of personal foolhardiness. Thus swings the pendulum as
to danger and fear. The point of departure, the primary impulse,
is,
1. An impulse to avoid danger at all hazards: i. e., to run away,
and save yourself, however discreditably.
The pendulum swings to the other extremity, and we have the secondary
impulse--
2. An impulse to disregard danger, and even to run into it, as if
it were of no consequence at all; i. e., young rifleman foolhardiness,
and Red Indian insensibility.
The pendulum comes so far back, and rests at the point of wisdom:
3. A determination to avoid all danger, the running into which would
do no good, and which may be avoided consistently with honour; but
manfully to face danger, however great, that comes in the way of
duty.
But after all this deviation from the track, I return to my list of
Secondary Vulgar Errors, run into with good and honest intentions.
Here is the first--
Don't you know, my reader, that it is natural to think very bitterly
of the misconduct which affects yourself? If a man cheats your
friend, or cheats your slight acquaintance, or cheats some one who
is quite unknown to you, by selling him a lame horse, you disapprove
his conduct, indeed, but not nearly so much as if he had cheated
yourself. You learn that Miss Limejuice has been disseminating a
grossly untrue account of some remarks which you made in her hearing:
and your first impulse is to condemn her malicious falsehood, much
more severely than if she had merely told a few lies about some
one else. Yet it is quite evident that if we were to estimate the
doings of men with perfect justice, we should fix solely on the
moral element in their doings; and the accidental circumstance
of the offence or injury to ourselves would be neither here nor
there. The primary vulgar error, then, in this case is, undue and
excessive disapprobation of misconduct from which we have suffered.
No one but a very stupid person would, if it were fairly put to him,
maintain that this extreme disapprobation was right: but it cannot
be denied that this is the direction to which all human beings are
likely, at first, to feel an impulse to go. A man does you some
injury: you are much angrier than if he had done the like injury
to some one else. You are much angrier when your own servants are
guilty of little neglects and follies, than when the servants of
your next neighbour are guilty in a precisely similar degree. The
Prime Minister (or Chancellor) fails to make you a Queen's Counsel
or a Judge: you are much more angry than if he had overlooked
some other man, of precisely equal merit. And I do not mean merely
that the injury done to yourself comes more home to you, but that
positively you think it a worse thing. It seems as if there were
more of moral evil in it. The boy who steals your plums seems worse
than other boys stealing other plums. The servant who sells your
oats and starves your horses, seems worse than other servants who
do the like. It is not merely that you feel where the shoe pinches
yourself, more than where it pinches another: that is all quite
right. It is that you have a tendency to think it is a worse shoe
than another which gives an exactly equal amount of pain. You are
prone to dwell upon and brood over the misconduct which affected
yourself.
Well, you begin to see that this is unworthy, that selfishness and
mortified conceit are at the foundation of it. You determine that
you will shake yourself free from this vulgar error. What more
magnanimous, you think, than to do the opposite of the wrong thing?
Surely it will be generous, and even heroic, to wholly acquit
the wrong-doer, and even to cherish him for a bosom friend. So
the pendulum swings over to the opposite extreme, and you land in
the secondary vulgar error. I do not mean to say that in practice
many persons are likely to thus bend the twig backwards; but it is
no small evil to think that it would be a right thing, and a fine
thing, to do even that which you never intend to do. So you write
an essay, or even a book, the gist of which is that it is a grand
thing to select for a friend and guide the human being who has done
you signal injustice and harm. Over that book, if it be a prettily
written tale, many young ladies will weep: and though without the
faintest intention of imitating your hero's behaviour, they will
think that it would be a fine thing if they did so. And it is a
great mischief to pervert the moral judgment and falsely to excite
the moral feelings. You forget that wrong is wrong, though it be
done against yourself, and that you have no right to acquit the
wrong to yourself as though it were no wrong at all. That lies
beyond your province. You may forgive the personal offence, but it
does not rest with you to acquit the guilt. You have no right to
confuse moral distinctions by practically saying that wrong is not
wrong, because it is done against you. All wrong is against very
many things and very grave things, besides being against you. It
is not for you to speak in the name of God and the universe. You
may not wish to say much about the injury done to yourself, but
there it is; and as to the choosing for your friend the man who has
greatly injured you, in most cases such a choice would be a very
unwise one, because in most cases it would amount to this--that
you should select a man for a certain post mainly because he has
shown himself possessed of qualities which unfit him for that post.
That surely would be very foolish. If you had to appoint a postman,
would you choose a man because he had no legs? And what is very
foolish can never be very magnanimous.
The right course to follow lies between the two which have been
set out. The man who has done wrong to you is still a wrong-doer.
The question you have to consider is, What ought your conduct to be
towards a wrong-doer? Let there be no harbour given to any feeling
of personal revenge. But remember that it is your duty to disapprove
what is wrong, and that it is wisdom not too far to trust a man
who has proved himself unworthy to be trusted. I have no feeling of
selfish bitterness against the person who deceived me deliberately
and grossly, yet I cannot but judge that deliberate and gross
deceit is bad; and I cannot but judge that the person who deceived
me once might, if tempted, deceive me again: so he shall not have
the opportunity. I look at the horse which a friend offers me for
a short ride. I discern upon the knees of the animal a certain slight
but unmistakeable roughness of the hair. That horse has been down;
and if I mount that horse at all (which I shall not do except in
a case of necessity), I shall ride him with a tight rein, and with
a sharp look-out for rolling stones.
Another matter in regard to which Scylla and Charybdis are very
discernible, is the fashion in which human beings think and speak
of the good or bad qualities of their friends.
The primary tendency here is to blindness to the faults of a friend,
and over-estimate of his virtues and qualifications. Most people
are disposed extravagantly to over-value anything belonging to
or connected with themselves. A farmer tells you that there never
were such turnips as his turnips; a schoolboy thinks that the world
cannot show boys so clever as those with whom he is competing for
the first place in his class; a clever student at college tells
you what magnificent fellows are certain of his compeers--how sure
they are to become great men in life. Talk of Tennyson! You have
not read Smith's prize poem. Talk of Macaulay! Ah, if you could
see Brown's prize essay! A mother tells you (fathers are generally
less infatuated) how her boy was beyond comparison the most
distinguished and clever in his class--how he stood quite apart
from, any of the others. Your eye happens to fall a day or two
afterwards upon the prize-list advertised in the newspapers, and
you discover that (curiously) the most distinguished and clever
boy in that particular school is rewarded with the seventh prize.
I dare say you may have met with families in which there existed
the most absurd and preposterous belief as to their superiority,
social, intellectual, and moral, above other families which were
as good or better. And it is to be admitted, that if you are happy
enough to have a friend whose virtues and qualifications are really
high, your primary tendency will probably be to fancy him a great
deal cleverer, wiser, and better than, he really is, and to imagine
that he possesses no faults at all. The over-estimate of his good
qualities will be the result of your seeing them constantly, and
having their excellence much pressed on your attention, while from
not knowing so well other men who are quite as good, you are led to
think that those good qualities are more rare and excellent than
in fact they are. And you may possibly regard it as a duty to
shut your eyes to the faults of those who are dear to you, and to
persuade yourself, against your judgment, that they have no faults
or none worth thinking of. One can imagine a child painfully struggling
to be blind to a parent's errors, and thinking it undutiful and
wicked to admit the existence of that: which is too evident. And if
you know well a really good and able man, you will very naturally
think his goodness and his ability to be relatively much greater
than they are. For goodness and ability are in truth very noble
things: the more you look at them the more you will feel this: and
it is natural to judge that what is so noble cannot be very common;
whereas in fact there is much more good in this world than we are
ready to believe. If you find an intelligent person who believes
that some particular author is by far the best in the language, or
that some particular composer's music is by far the finest, or that
some particular preacher is by far the most eloquent and useful, or
that some particular river has by far the finest scenery, or that
some particular sea-side place has by far the most bracing and
exhilarating air, or that some particular magazine is ten thousand
miles ahead of all competitors, the simple explanation in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred is this--that the honest individual who
holds these overstrained opinions knows a great deal better than
he knows any others, that author, that music, that preacher, that
river, that sea-side place, that magazine. He knows how good they
are: and not having much studied the merits of competing things,
he does not know that these are very nearly as good.
But I do not think that there is any subject whatever in regard to
which it is so capricious and arbitrary whether you shall run it
into Scylla or into Charybdis. It depends entirely on how it strikes
the mind, whether you shall go off a thousand miles to the right or
a thousand miles to the lefn You know, if you fire a rifle-bullet
at an iron-coated ship, the bullet, if it impinge upon the iron
plate at A, may glance away to the west, while if it impinge upon
the iron plate at B, only an inch distant from A, it may glance off
towards the directly opposite point of the compass. A very little
thing makes all the difference. You stand in the engine-room of
a steamer; you admit the steam to the cylinders, and the paddles
turn ahead; a touch of a lever, you admit the selfsame steam to the
selfsame cylinders, and the paddles turn astern. It is so oftentimes
in the moral world. The turning of a straw decides whether the
engines shall work forward or backward.
Now, given a friend, to whom you are very warmly attached: it is
a toss-up whether your affection for your friend shall make you,
1. Quite blind to his faults; or,
2. Acutely and painfully alive to his faults.
Sincere affection may impel either way. Your friend, for instance,
makes a speech at a public dinner. He makes a tremendously bad
speech. Now, your love for him may lead you either
1. To fancy that his speech is a remarkably good one; or,
2. To feel acutely how bad his speech is, and to wish you could
sink through the floor for very shame.
If you did not care for him at all, you would not mind a bit whether
he made a fool of himself or not. But if you really care for him,
and if the speech be really very bad, and if you are competent to
judge whether speeches in general be bad or not, I do not see how you
can escape falling either into Scylla or Charybdis. And accordingly,
while there are families in which there exists a preposterous
over-estimate of the talents and acquirements of their several
members, there are other families in which the rifle-bullet has
glanced off in the opposite direction, and in which there exists
a depressing and unreasonable under-estimate of the talents and
acquirements of their several members. I have known such a thing as
a family in which certain boys during their early education had it
ceaselessly drilled into them that they were the idlest, stupidest,
and most ignorant boys in the world. The poor little fellows grew
up under that gloomy belief: for conscience is a very artificial
thing, and you may bring up very good boys in the belief that
they are very bad. At length, happily, they went to a great public
school; and like rockets they went up forthwith to the top of their
classes, and never lost their places there. From school they went
to the university, and there won honours more eminent than had ever
been won before. It will not surprise people who know much of human
nature, to be told that through this brilliant career of school
and college work the home belief in their idleness and ignorance
continued unchanged, and that hardly at its end was the toil-worn
senior wrangler regarded as other than an idle and useless blockhead.
Now, the affection which prompts the under-estimate may be quite
as real and deep as that which prompts the over-estimate, but its
manifestation is certainly the less amiable and pleasing. I have
known a successful author whose relatives never believed, till the
reviews assured them of it, that his writings were anything but
contemptible and discreditable trash.
I have been speaking of an honest though erroneous estimate of the
qualities of one's friends, rather than of any expression of that
estimate. The primary tendency is to an over-estimate; the secondary
tendency is to an under-estimate. A commonplace man thinks there
never was mortal so wise and good as the friend he values; a man
who is a thousandth part of a degree less common-place resolves
that he will keep clear of that error, and accordingly he feels
bound to exaggerate the failings of his friend and to extenuate his
good qualities. He thinks that a friend's judgment is very good and
sound, and that he may well rely upon it; but for fear of showing
it too much regard, he probably shows it too little. He thinks that
in some dispute his friend is right; but for fear of being partial
he decides that his friend is wrong. It is obvious that in any
instance in which a man, seeking to avoid the primary error of
over-estimating his friend, falls into the secondary of under-estimating
him, he will (if any importance be attached to his judgment) damage
his friend's character; for most people will conclude that he is
saying of his friend the best that can be said; and that if even he
admits that there is so little to approve about his friend, there
must be very little indeed to approve: whereas the truth may be,
that he is saying the worst that can be said--that no man could
with justice give a worse picture of the friend's character.
Not very far removed from this pair of vulgar errors stand the
following:
The primary vulgar error is, to set up as an infallible oracle one
whom we regard as wise--to regard any question as settled finally
if we know what is his opinion upon it. You remember the man in the
Spectator who was always quoting the sayings of Mr. Nisby. There
was a report in London that the Grand Vizier was dead. The good
man was uncertain whether to believe the report or not. He went and
talked with Mr. Nisby and returned with his mind reassured. Now,
he enters in his diary that 'the Grand Vizier was certainly dead.'
Considering the weakness of the reasoning powers of many people,
there is something pleasing after all in this tendency to look
round for somebody stronger upon whom they may lean. It is wise
and natural in a scarlet-runner to climb up something, for it could
not grow up by itself; and for practical purposes it is well that
in each household there should be a little Pope, whose dicta on
all topics shall be unquestionable. It saves what is to many people
the painful effort of making up their mind what they are to do or
to think. It enables them to think or act with much greater decision
and confidence. Most men have always a lurking distrust of their
own judgment, unless they find it confirmed by that of somebody
else. There are very many decent commonplace people who, if they
had been reading a book or article and had been thinking it very
fine, would, if you were resolutely and loudly to declare in their
hearing that it was wretched trash, begin to think that it was
wretched trash too.
The primary vulgar error, then, is to regard as an oracle one whom
we esteem as wise; and the secondary, the Charybdis opposite to
this Scylla, is, to entertain an excessive dread of being too much
led by one whom we esteem as wise. I mean an honest candid dread.
I do not mean a petted, wrong-headed, pragmatical determination to
let him see that you can think for yourself. You see, rny friend,
I don't suppose you to be a self-conceited fool. You remember how
Presumption, in the Pilgrim's Progress, on being offered some good
advice, cut his kind adviser short by declaring that Every tub must
stand on its own bottom. We have all known men, young and old, who,
upon being advised to do something which they knew they ought to
do, would, out of pure perversity and a wrong-headed independence,
go and do just the opposite thing. The secondary error of which
I am now thinking is that of the man who honestly dreads making
too much of the judgment of any mortal: and who, acting from a
good intention, probably goes wrong in the same direction as the
wrong-headed conceited man. Now, don't you know that to such an
extent does this morbid fear of trusting too much to any mortal go
in some men, that in their practical belief you would think that
the fact of any man being very wise was a reason why his judgment
should be set aside as unworthy of consideration; and more particularly,
that the fact of any man being supposed to be a powerful reasoner,
was quite enough to show that all he says is to go for nothing? You
are quite aware how jauntily some people use this last consideration,
to sweep away at once all the reasons given by an able and ingenious
speaker or writer. And it cuts the ground effectually from under
his feet. You state an opinion, somewhat opposed to that commonly
received. An honest, stupid person meets it with a surprised stare.
You tell him (I am recording what I have myself witnessed) that
you have been reading a work on the subject by a certain prelate:
you state as well as you can the arguments which are set forth by
the distinguished prelate. These arguments seem of great weight.
They deserve at least to be carefully considered. They seem to
prove the novel opinion to be just: they assuredly call on candid
minds to ponder the whole matter well before relapsing into the
old current way of thinking. Do you expect that the honest, stupid
person will judge thus? If so, you are mistaken. He is not shaken
in the least by all these strong reasons. The man who has set
these reasons forth is known to be a master of logic: that is good
ground why all his reasons should count for nothing. Oh, says the
stupid, honest person, we all know that the Archbishop can prove
anything! And so the whole thing is finally settled.
I have a considerable list of instances in which the reaction from
an error on one side of the line of right, lands in error equally
distant from the line of right on the other side: but it is needless
to go on to illustrate these at length; the mere mention of them
will suffice to suggest many thoughts to the intelligent reader. A
primary vulgar error, to which very powerful minds have frequently
shown a strong tendency, is bigoted intolerance: intolerance in
politics, in religion, in ecclesiastical affairs, in morals, in
anything. You may safely say that nothing but most unreasonable
bigotry would lead a Tory to say that all Whigs are scoundrels,
or a Whig to Bay that all Tories are bloated tyrants or crawling
sycophants. I must confess that, in severe reason, it is impossible
entirely to justify the Churchman who holds that all Dissenters
are extremely bad; though (so does inveterate prepossession warp
the intellect) I have also to admit that it appears to me that for
a Dissenter to hold that there is little or no good in the Church
is a great deal worse. There is something fine, however, about
a heartily intolerant man: you like him, though you disapprove of
him. Even if I were inclined to Whiggery, I should admire the downright
dictum of Dr. Johnson, that the devil was the first Whig. Even if
I were a Nonconformist, I should like Sydney Smith the better for
the singular proof of his declining strength which he once adduced:
'I do believe,' he said, 'that if you were to put a knife into my
hand, I should not have vigour enough to stick it into a Dissenter!'
The secondary error in this respect is a latitudinarian liberality
which regards truth and falsehood as matters of indifference.
Genuine liberality of sentiment is a good thing, and difficult as
it is good: but much liberality, political and religious, arises
really from the fact, that the liberal man does not care a rush
about the matter in debate. It is very easy to be tolerant in a
case in which you have no feeling whatever either way. The Churchman
who does not mind a bit whether the Church stands or falls, has no
difficulty in tolerating the enemies and assailants of the Church.
It is different with a man who holds the existence of a national
Establishment as a vital matter. And I have generally remarked
that when clergymen of the Church profess extreme catholicity of
spirit, and declare that they do not regard it as a thing of the
least consequence whether a man be Churchman or Dissenter, intelligent
Nonconformists receive such protestations with much contempt, and
(possibly with injustice) suspect their utterer of hypocrisy. If
you really care much about any principle; and if you regard it as
of essential importance; you cannot help feeling a strong impulse
to intolerance of those who decidedly and actively differ from you.
Here are some further vulgar errors, primary and secondary:
Primary--Idleness, and excessive self-indulgence;
Secondary--Penances, and self-inflicted tortures.
Primary--Swallowing whole all that is said or done by one's party;
Secondary--Dread of quite agreeing, or quite disagreeing on any
point with any one; and trying to keep at exactly an equal distance
from each.
Primary--Following the fashion with indiscriminate ardour;
Secondary--Finding a merit in singularity, as such.
Primary--Being quite captivated with thought which is striking and
showy, but not sound;
Secondary--Concluding that whatever is sparkling must be unsound.
I hardly know which tendency of the following is the primary, and
which the secondary; but I am sure that both exist. It may depend
upon the district of country, and the age of the thinker, which of
the two is the action and which the reaction:
1. Thinking a clergyman a model of perfection, because he is a stout
dashing fellow who plays at cricket and goes out fox-hunting; and,
generally, who flies in the face of all conventionalism;
2. Thinking a clergyman a model of perfection because he is of very
grave and decorous deportment; never plays at cricket, and never
goes out fox-hunting; and, generally, conforms carefully to all
the little proprieties.
1. Thinking a bishop a model prelate because he has no stiffness
or ceremony about him, but talks frankly to everybody, and puts
all who approach him at their ease;
2. Thinking a bishop a model prelate because he never descends from
his dignity; never forgets that he is a bishop, and keeps all who
approach him in their proper places.
1. Thinking the Anglican Church service the best, because it is so
decorous, solemn, and dignified;
2. Thinking the Scotch Church service the best, because it is so
simple and so capable of adaptation to all circumstances which may
arise.
1. Thinking an artisan a sensible right-minded man, knowing his
station, because he is always very respectful in his demeanour to
the squire, and great folks generally;
2. Thinking an artisan a fine, manly, independent fellow, because
he is always much less respectful in his demeanour to the squire
than he is to other people.
1. Thinking it a fine thing to be a fast, reckless, swaggering,
drinking, swearing reprobate: Being ashamed of the imputation
of being a well-behaved and (above all) a pious and conscientious
young man: Thinking it manly to do wrong, and washy to do right;
2. Thinking it a despicable thing to be a fast, reckless, swaggering,
drinking, swearing reprobate: Thinking it is manly to do right,
and shameful to do wrong.
1. That a young man should begin his letters to his father
with HONOURED SIR; and treat the old gentleman with extraordinary
deference upon all occasions:
2. That a young man should begin his remarks to his father on any
subject with, I SAY, GOVERNOR; and treat the old gentleman upon
all occasions with no deference at all.
But indeed, intelligent reader, the swing of the pendulum is the
type of the greater amount of human opinion and human feeling. In
individuals, in communities, in parishes, in little country towns,
in great nations, from hour to hour, from week to week, from century
to century, the pendulum swings to and fro. From Yes on the one
side to No on the other side of almost all conceivable questions,
the pendulum swings. Sometimes it swings over from Yes to No in a
few hours or days; sometimes it takes centuries to pass from the one
extremity to the other. In feeling, in taste, in judgment, in the
grandest matters and the least, the pendulum swings. From Popery to
Puritanism; from Puritanism back towards Popery; from Imperialism
to Republicanism, and back towards Imperialism again; from Gothic
architecture to Palladian, and from Palladian back to Gothic;
from hooped petticoats to drapery of the scantiest, and from that
backwards to the multitudinous crinoline; from crying up the science
of arms to crying it down, and back; from the schoolboy telling you
that his companion Brown is the jolliest fellow, to the schoolboy
telling you that his companion Brown is a beast, and back again;
from very high carriages to very low ones and back; from very short
horsetails to very long ones and back again--the pendulum swings.
In matters of serious judgment it is comparatively easy to discern
the rationale of this oscillation from side to side. It is that
the evils of what is present are strongly felt, while the evils of
what is absent are forgotten; and so, when the pendulum has swung
over to A, the evils of A send it flying over to B, while when it
reaches B the evils of B repel it again to A. In matters of feeling
it is less easy to discover the how and why of the process: we
can do no more than take refuge in the general belief that nature
loves the swing of the pendulum. There are people who at one time
have an excessive affection for some friend, and at another take
a violent disgust at him: and who (though sometimes permanently
remaining at the latter point) oscillate between these positive
and negative poles. You, being a sensible man, would not feel very
happy if some men were loudly crying you up: for you would be very
sure that in a little while they would be loudly crying you dovvn.
If you should ever happen to feel for one day an extraordinary
lightness and exhilaration of spirits, you will know that you must
pay for all this the price of corresponding depression--the hot fit
must be counterbalanced by the cold. Let us thank God that there
are beliefs and sentiments as to which the pendulum does not swing,
though even in these I have known it do so. I have known the young
girl who appeared thoroughly good and pious, who devoted herself
to works of charity, and (with even an over-scrupulous spirit)
eschewed vain company: and who by and bye learned to laugh at all
serious things, and ran into the utmost extremes of giddiness and
extravagant gaiety. And not merely should all of us be thankful if
we feel that in regard to the gravest sentiments and beliefs our
mind and heart remain year after year at the same fixed point:
I think we should be thankful if we find that as regards our
favourite books and authors our taste remains unchanged; that the
calm judgment of our middle age approves the preferences of ten
years since, and that these gather strength as time gives them the
witchery of old remembrances and associations. You enthusiastically
admired Byron once, you estimate him very differently now. You once
thought Festus finer than Paradise Loft, but you have swung away
from that. But for a good many years you have held by Wordsworth,
Shakspeare, and Tennyson, and this taste you are not likely to
outgrow. It is very curious to look over a volume which we once
thought magnificent, enthralling, incomparable, and to wonder
how on earth we ever cared for that stilted rubbish. No doubt the
pendulum swings quite as decidedly to your estimate of yourself
as to your estimate of any one else. It would be nothing at all to
have other people attacking and depreciating your writings, sermons,
and the like, if you yourself had entire confidence in them. The
mortifying thing is when your own taste and judgment say worse of
your former productions than could be said by the most unfriendly
critic; and the dreadful thought occurs, that if you yourself to-day
think so badly of what you wrote ten years since, it is probable
enough that on this day ten years hence (if you live to see it)
you may think as badly of what you are writing to-day. Let us hope
not. Let us trust that at length a standard of taste and judgment
is reached from which we shall not ever materially swing away. Yet
the pendulum will never be quite arrested as to your estimate of
yourself. Now and then you will think yourself a block-head: by and
bye you will think yourself very clever; and your judgment will
oscillate between these opposite poles of belief. Sometimes you
will think that your house is remarkably comfortable, sometimes
that it is unendurably uncomfortable; sometimes you will think that
your place in life is a very dignified and important one, sometimes
that it is a very poor and insignificant one; sometimes you will
think that some misfortune or disappointment which has befallen you
is a very crushing one; sometimes you will think that it is better
as it is. Ah, my brother, it is a poor, weak, wayward thing, the
human heart!
You know, of course, how the pendulum of public opinion swings
backwards and forwards. The truth lies somewhere about the middle
of the arc it describes, in most cases. You know how the popularity
of political men oscillates, from A, the point of greatest popularity,
to B, the point of no popularity at all. Think of Lord Brougham.
Once the pendulum swung far to the right: he was the most popular
man in Britain. Then, for many years, the pendulum swung far to
the left, into the cold regions of unpopularity, loss of influence,
and opposition benches. And now, in his last days, the pendulum
has come over to the right again. So with lesser men. When the
new clergyman comes to a country parish, how high his estimation!
Never was there preacher so impressive, pastor so diligent, man
so frank and agreeable. By and bye his sermons are middling, his
diligence middling; his manners rather stiff or rather too easy.
In a year or two the pendulum rests at its proper point: and from
that time onward the parson gets, in most cases, very nearly the
credit he deserves. The like oscillation of public opinion and feeling
exists in the case of unfavourable as of favourable judgments. A
man commits a great crime. His guilt is thought awful. There is a
general outcry for his condign punishment. He is sentenced to be
hanged. In a few days the tide begins to turn. His crime was not
so great. He had met great provocation. His education had been
neglected. He deserves pity rather than reprobation. Petitions
are got up that he should be let off; and largely signed by the
self-same folk who were loudest in the outcry against him. And
instead of this fact, that those folk were the keenest against the
criminal, being received (as it ought) as proof that their opinion
is worth nothing at all, many will receive it as proof that their
opinion is entitled to special consideration. The principle of the
pendulum in the matter of criminals is well understood by the Old
Bailey practitioners of New York and their worthy clients. When
a New Yorker is sentenced to be hanged, he remains as a cool as
cucumber; for the New York law is, that a year must pass between
the sentence and the execution. And long before the year passes,
the public sympathy has turned in the criminal's favour. Endless
petitions go up for his pardon. Of course he gets off. And indeed
it is not improbable that he may receive a public testimonial. It
cannot be denied that the natural transition in the popular feeling
is from applauding a man to hanging him, and from hanging a man to
applauding him.
Even so does the pendulum swing, and the world run away!
CHAPTER IV.
CONCERNING CHURCHYARDS.
Many persons do not like to go near a churchyard: some do not like
even to hear a churchyard mentioned. Many others feel an especial
interest in that quiet place--an interest which is quite unconnected
with any personal associations with it. A great deal depends upon
habit; and a great deals turns, too, on whether the churchyard
which we know best is a locked-up, deserted, neglected place, all
grown over with nettles; or a spot not too much retired, open to
all passers-by, with trimly-mown grass and neat gravelled walks.
I do not sympathize with the taste which converts a burying-place
into a flower-garden or a fashionable lounge for thoughtless people:
let it be the true 'country churchyard,' only with some appearance
of being remembered and cared for. For myself, though a very
commonplace person, and not at all sentimentally inclined, I have
a great liking for a churchyard. Hardly a day passes on which I do
not go and walk up and down for a little in that which surrounds
my church. Probably some people may regard me as extremely devoid
of occupation, when I confess that daily, after breakfast, and
before sitting down to my work (which is pretty hard, though they
may not think so), I walk slowly down to the churchyard, which
is a couple of hundred yards off, and there pace about for a few
minutes, looking at the old graves and the mossy stones. Nor is
this only in summer-time, when the sward is white with daisies,
when the ancient oaks around the gray wall are leafy and green,
when the passing river flashes bright through their openings and
runs chiming over the warm stones, and when the beautiful hills
that surround the quiet spot at a little distance are flecked with
summer light and shade; but in winter too, when the bare branches
look sharp against the frosty sky, and the graves look like wavelets
on a sea of snow. Now, if I were anxious to pass myself off upon
my readers as a great and thoughtful man, I might here give an
account of the profound thoughts which I think in my daily musings
in my pretty churchyard. But, being an essentially commonplace
person (as I have no doubt about nine hundred and ninety-nine out
of every thousand of my readers also are), I must here confess
that generally I walk about the churchyard, thinking and feeling
nothing very particular. I do not believe that ordinary people,
when worried by some little care, or pressed down by some little
sorrow, have only to go and muse in a churchyard in order to feel
how trivial and transient such cares and sorrows are, and how very
little they ought to vex us. To commonplace mortals, it is the
sunshine within the breast that does most to brighten; and the thing
that has most power to darken is the shadow there. And the scenes
and teachings of external nature have, practically, very little
effect indeed. And so, when musing in the churchyard, nothing grand,
heroical, philosophical, or tremendous ever suggests itself to me.
I look with pleasure at the neatly cut walks and grass. I peep in
at a window of the church, and think how I am to finish my sermon
for next Sunday. I read over the inscriptions on the stones which
mark where seven of my predecessors sleep. I look vacantly at the
lichens and moss which have overgrown certain tombstones three
or four centuries old. And occasionally I think of what and where
I shall be, when the village mason, whistling cheerfully at his
task, shall cut out my name and years on the stone which will mark
my last resting-place. But all these, of course, are commonplace
thoughts, just what would occur to anybody else, and really not
worth repeating.
And yet, although 'death, and the house appointed for all living,'
form a topic which has been treated by innumerable writers, from
the author of the book of Job to Mr. Dickens; and although the
subject might well be vulgarized by having been, for many a day,
the stock resort of every commonplace aimer at the pathetic; still
the theme is one which never can grow old. And the experience and
the heart of most men convert into touching eloquence even the
poorest formula of set phrases about the tremendous Fact. Nor are
we able to repress a strong interest in any account of the multitude
of fashions in which the mortal part of man has been disposed of,
after the great change has passed upon it. In a volume entitled
God's Acre, written by a lady, one Mrs. Stone, and published a year
or two since, you may find a great amount of curious information
upon such points: and after thinking of the various ways of burial
described, I think you will return with a feeling of home and
of relief to the quiet English country churchyard. I should think
that the shocking and revolting description of the burning of the
remains of Shelley, published by Mr. Trelawney, in his Last Days
of Shelhy and Byron, will go far to destroy any probability of
the introduction of cremation in this country, notwithstanding the
ingenuity and the eloquence of the little treatise published about
two years ago by a Member of the College of Surgeons, whose gist
you will understand from its title, which is Burning the Dead; or,
Urn-Sepulture Religiously, Socially, and Generally considered; with
Suggestions for a Revival of the Practice, as a Sanitary Measure.
The choice lies between burning and burying: and the latter being
universally accepted in Britain, it remains that it be carried
out in the way most decorous as regards the deceased, and most
soothing to the feelings of surviving friends. Every one has seen
burying-places of all conceivable kinds, and every one knows how
prominent a feature they form in the English landscape. There is
the dismal corner in the great city, surrounded by blackened walls,
where scarce a blade of grass will grow, and where the whole thing
is foul and pestilential. There is the ideal country churchyard,
like that described by Gray, where the old elms and yews keep watch
over the graves where successive generations of simple rustics have
found their last resting-place, and where in the twilight the owls
hoot from the tower of the ivy-covered church. There is the bare
enclosure, surrounded by four walls, and without a tree, far up the
lonely Highland hill-side; and more lonely still, the little gray
stone, rising above the purple heather, where rude letters, touched
up by Old Mortality's hands, tell that one, probably two or three,
rest beneath, who were done to death for what they firmly believed
was their Redeemer's cause, by Claverhouse or Dalyell. There is
the churchyard by the bleak sea-shore, where coffins have been laid
bare by the encroaching waves; and the niche in cathedral crypt,
or the vault under the church's floor. I cannot conceive anything
more irreverent than the American fashion of burying in unconsecrated
earth, each family having its own place of interment in the corner
of its own garden: unless it be the crotchet of the silly old
peer, who spent the last years of his life in erecting near his
castle-door, a preposterous building, the progress of which he
watched day by day with the interest of a man who had worn out all
other interest, occasionally lying down in the stone coffin which
he had caused to be prepared, to make sure that it would fit him.
I feel sorry, too, for the poor old Pope, who when he dies is laid
on a shelf above a door in St. Peter's, where he remains till the
next Pope dies, and then is put out of the way to make room for
him; nor do I at all envy the noble who has his family vault filled
with coffins covered with velvet and gold, occupied exclusively by
corpses of good quality. It is better surely to be laid, as Allan
Cunningham wished, where we shall 'not be built over;' where 'the
wind shall blow and the daisy grow upon our grave.' Let it be
among our kindred, indeed, in accordance with the natural desire;
but not on dignified shelves, not in aristocratic vaults, but lowly
and humbly, where the Christian dead sleep for the Resurrection.
Most people will sympathize so far with Beattie, though his lines
show that he was a Scotchman, and lived where there are not many
trees:--
Mine be the breezy hill that skirts the down,
Where a green grassy turf is all I crave,
With here and there a violet bestrown,
Fast by a brook, or fountain's murmuring wave;
And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave!
But it depends entirely upon individual associations and fancies
where one would wish to rest after life's fitful fever: and I have
hardly ever been more deeply impressed than by certain lines which
I cut out of an old newspaper when I was a boy, and which set out
a choice far different from that of The Minstrel. They are written
by Mr. Westwood, a true poet, though not known as he deserves to
be. Here they are:--
Not there, not there!
Not in that nook, that ye deem so fair;--
Little reck I of the blue bright sky,
And the stream that floweth so murmuringly,
And the bending boughs, and the breezy air--
Not there, good friends, not there!
In the city churchyard, where the grass
Groweth rank and black, and where never a ray
Of that self-same sun doth find its way
Through the heaped-up houses' serried mass--
Where the only sounds are the voice of the throng,
And the clatter of wheels as they rush along--
Or the plash of the rain, or the wind's hoarse cry,
Or the busy tramp of the passer-by,
Or the toll of the bell on the heavy air--
Good friends, let it be there!
I am old, my friends--I am very old--
Fourscore and five--and bitter cold
Were that air on the hill-side far away;
Eighty full years, content, I trow,
Have I lived in the home where ye see me now,
And trod those dark streets day by day,
Till my soul doth love them; I love them all,
Each battered pavement, and blackened wall,
Each court and corner. Good sooth! to me
They are all comely and fair to see--
They have old faces--each one doth tell
A tale of its own, that doth like me well--
Sad or merry, as it may be,
From the quaint old book of my history.
And, friends, when this weary pain is past,
Fain would I lay me to rest at last
In their very midst;--full sure am I,
How dark soever be earth and sky,
I shall sleep softly--I shall know
That the things I loved so here below
Are about me still--so never care
That my last home looketh all bleak and bare--
Good friends, let it be there!
Some persons appear to think that it argues strength of mind and
freedom from unworthy prejudice, to profess great indifference as
to what becomes of their mortal part after they die. I have met with
men who talked in a vapouring manner about leaving their bodies to
be dissected; and who evidently enjoyed the sensation which such
sentiments produced among simple folk. Whenever I hear any man
talk in this way, my politeness, of course, prevents my telling him
that he is an uncommonly silly person; but it does not prevent my
thinking him one. It is a mistake to imagine that the soul is the
entire man. Human nature, alike here and hereafter, consists of
soul and body in union; and the body is therefore justly entitled to
its own degree of thought and care. But the point, indeed, is not
one to be argued; it is, as it appears to me, a matter of intuitive
judgment and instinctive feeling; and I apprehend that this feeling
and judgment have never appeared more strongly than in the noblest
of our race. I hold by Burke, who wrote, 'I should like that my dust
should mingle with kindred dust; the good old expression, "family
burying-ground," has something pleasing in it, at least to me.' Mrs.
Stone quotes Lady Murray's account of the death of her mother, the
celebrated Grissell Baillie, which shows that that strong-minded
and noble-hearted woman felt the natural desire:--
The next day she called me: gave directions about some few things:
said she wished to be carried home to lie by my father, but that
perhaps it would be too much trouble and inconvenience to us at
that season, therefore left me to do as I pleased; but that, in a
black purse in her cabinet, I would find money sufficient to do it,
which she had kept by her for that use, that whenever it happened,
it might not straiten us. She added, 'I have now no more to say or
do:' tenderly embraced me, and laid down her head upon the pillow,
and spoke little after that.
An instance, at once touching and awful, of care for the body
after the soul has gone, is furnished by certain well-known lines
written by a man not commonly regarded as weak-minded or prejudiced;
and engraved by his direction on the stone that marks his grave.
If I am wrong, I am content to go wrong with Shakspeare:
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
The most eloquent exposition I know of the religious aspect of the
question, is contained in the concluding sentences of Mr. Melvill's
noble sermon on the 'Dying Faith of Joseph.' I believe my readers
will thank me for quoting it:--
It is not a Christian thing to die manifesting indifference as to
what is done with the body. That body is redeemed: not a particle
of its dust but was bought with drops of Christ's precious blood.
That body is appointed to a glorious condition; not a particle of
the corruptible but what shall put on incorruption; of the mortal
that shall not assume immortality. The Christian knows this: it
is not the part of a Christian to seem unmindful of this. He may,
therefore, as he departs, speak of the place where he would wish to
be laid. 'Let me sleep,' he may say, 'with my father and my mother,
with my wife and my children; lay me not here, in this distant land,
where my dust cannot mingle with its kindred. I would he chimed to
my grave by my own village bell, and have my requiem sung where I
was baptized into Christ.' Marvel ye at such last words? Wonder ye
that one, whose spirit is just entering the separate state, should
have this care for the body which he is about to leave to the worms?
Nay, he is a believer in Jesus as 'the Resurrection and the Life:'
this belief prompts his dying words; and it shall have to be said
of him as of Joseph, that 'by faith,' yea, 'by faith,' he 'gave
commandment concerning his bones!'
If you hold this belief, my reader, you will look at a neglected
churchyard with much regret; and you will highly approve of all
endeavours to make the burying-place of the parish as sweet though
solemn a spot as can be found within it. I have lately read a little
tract, by Mr. Hill, the Rural Dean of North Frome, in the Diocese
of Hereford, entitled Thoughts on Churches and Churchyards, which
is well worthy of the attentive perusal of the country clergy. Its
purpose is to furnish practical suggestions for the maintenance
of decent propriety about the church and churchyard. I am not,
at present, concerned with that part of the tract which relates
to churches; but I may remark, in passing, that Mr. Hill's views
upon that subject appear to me distinguished by great good sense,
moderation, and taste. He does not discourage country clergymen,
who have but limited means with which to set about ordering
and beautifying their churches, by suggesting arrangements on too
grand and expensive a scale: on the contrary, he enters with hearty
sympathy into all plans for attaining a simple and inexpensive
seemliness where more cannot be accomplished. And I think he hits
with remarkable felicity the just mean between an undue and excessive
regard to the mere externalities of worship, and a puritanical
bareness and contempt for material aids, desiring, in the words
of Archbishop Bramhall, that 'all be with due moderation, so as
neither to render religion sordid and sluttish, nor yet light and
garish, but comely and venerable.'
Equally judicious, and equally practical, are Mr. Hill's hints as
to the ordering of churchyards. He laments that churchyards should
ever be found where long, rank grass, briers, and nettles abound,
and where neatly kept walks and graves are wanting. He goes on:--
And yet, how trifling an amount of care and attention would suffice
to render neat, pretty, and pleasant to look upon, that which has
oftentimes an unpleasing, desolate, and painful aspect. A few sheep
occasionally (or better still, the scythe and shears now and then
employed), with a trifling attention to the walks, once properly
formed and gravelled, will suffice, when the fences are duly kept,
to make any churchyard seemly and neat: a little more than this
will make it ornamental and instructive.
It is possible that many persons might feel that flower-beds and
shrubberies are not what they would wish to see in a churchyard;
they might think they gave too garden-like and adorned a look to
so solemn and sacred a spot; persons will not all think alike on
such a matter: and yet something may be done in this direction with
an effect which would please everybody. A few trees of the arbor
vitae, the cypress, and the Irish yew, scattered here and there, with
tirs in the hedge-rows or boundary fences, would be unobjectionable;
while wooden baskets, or boxes, placed by the sides of the walks,
and filled in summer with the fuchsia or scarlet geranium, would give
our churchyards an exceedingly pretty, and perhaps not unsuitable
appearance. Little clumps of snowdrops and primroses might also
be planted here and there; for flowers may fitly spring up, bloom,
and fade away, in a spot which so impressively tells us of death
and resurrection: and where sheep even are never admitted, all
these methods for beautifying a churchyard may be adopted. Shrubs
and flowers on and near the graves, as is so universal in Wales;
independently of their pretty effect, show a kindly feeling for the
memory of those whose bodies rest beneath them; and how far to be
preferred to those enormous and frightful masses of brick or stone
which the country mason has, alas, so plentifully supplied!
In the case of a clergyman, a taste for keeping his churchyard
in becoming order is just like a taste for keeping his garden and
shrubbery in order: only let him begin the work, and the taste
will grow. There is latent in the mind of every man, unless he be
the most untidy and unobservant of the species, a love for well-mown
grass and for sharply outlined gravel-walks. My brethren, credite
experto. I did not know that in my soul there was a chord that
vibrated responsive to trim gravel and grass, till I tried, and
lo! it was there. Try for yourselves: you do not know, perhaps,
the strange affinities that exist between material and immaterial
nature. If any youthful clergyman shall read these lines, who knows
in his conscience that his churchyard-walks are grown up with weeds,
and the graves covered with nettles, upon sight hereof let him summon
his man-servant, or get a labourer if he have no man-servant. Let
him provide a reaping-hook and a large new spade. These implements
will suffice in the meantime. Proceed to the churchyard: do not
get disheartened at its neglected look, and turn away. Begin at
the entrance-gate. Let all the nettles and long grass for six feet
on. either side of the path be carefully cut down and gathered
into heaps. Then mark out with a line the boundaries of the first
ten yards of the walk. Fall to work and cut the edges with the spade;
clear away the weeds and grass that have overspread the walk, also
with the spade. In a little time you will feel the fascination
of the sharp outline of the walk against the grass on each side.
And I repeat, that to the average human being there is something
inexpressibly pleasing in that sharp outline. By the time the ten
yards of walk are cut, you will find that you have discovered a new
pleasure and a new sensation; and from that day will date a love
of tidy walks and grass;--and what more is needed to make a pretty
churchyard? The fuchsias, geraniums, and so forth, are of the nature
of luxuries, and they will follow in due time: but grass and gravel
are the foundation of rustic neatness and tidiness.
As for the treatise on Burning the Dead, it is interesting
and eloquent, though I am well convinced that its author has been
putting forih labour in vain. I remember the consternation with
which I read the advertisements announcing its publication. I made
sure that it must be the production of one of those wrong-headed
individuals who are always proposing preposterous things, without
end or meaning. Why on earth should we take to burning the dead?
What is to be gained by recurring to a heathen rite, repudiated by
the early Christians, who, as Sir Thomas Browne tells us, 'stickt
not to give their bodies to be burnt in their lives, but detested
that mode after death?' And wherefore do anything so horrible, and
so suggestive of cruelty and sacrilege, as to consign to devouring
flames even the unconscious remains of a departed friend? But after
reading the essay, I feel that the author has a great deal to say
in defence of his views. I am obliged to acknowledge that in many
cases important benefits would follow the adoption of urn-sepulture.
The question to be considered is, what is the best way to dispose
of the mortal part of man when the soul has left it? A first
suggestion might be to endeavour to preserve it in the form and
features of life; and, accordingly, in many countries and ages,
embalming in its various modifications has been resorted to. But
all attempts to prevent the human frame from obeying the Creator's
law of returning to the elements have miserably failed. And surely
it is better a thousand times to 'bury the dead from our sight,'
than to preserve a hideous and revolting mockery of the beloved
form. The Egyptian mummies every one has heard of; but the most
remarkable instance of embalming in recent times is that of the
wife of one Martin Van Butchell, who, by her husband's desire, was
embalmed in the year 1775, by Dr. William Hunter and Mr. Carpenter,
and who may be seen in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons
in London. She was a beautiful woman, and all that skill and science
could do were done to preserve her in the appearance of life; but
the result is nothing short of shocking and awful. Taking it, then,
as admitted, that the body must return to the dust from whence it
was taken, the next question is, How? How shall dissolution take
place with due respect to the dead, and with least harm to the
health and the feelings of the living?
The two fashions which have been universally used are, burial and
burning. It has so happened that burial has been associated with
Christianity, and burning with heathenism; but I shall admit at once
that the association is not essential, though it would be hard,
without very weighty reason indeed, to deviate from the long-remembered
'earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.' But such weighty
reason the author of this treatise declares to exist. The system
of burial, he says, is productive of fearful and numberless evils
and dangers to the living. In the neighbourhood of any large
burying-place, the air which the living breathe, and the water
which they drink, are impregnated with poisons the most destructive
of health and life. Even where the damage done to air and water
is inappreciable by our senses, it is a predisposing cause of
headache, dysentery, sore throat, and low fever;' and it keeps all
the population around in a condition in which they are the ready prey
of all forms of disease. I shall not shock my readers by relating
a host of horrible facts, proved by indisputable evidence, which
are adduced by the surgeon to show the evils of burial: and all
these evils, he maintains, may be escaped by the revival of burning.
Four thousand human beings die every hour; and only by that swift
and certain method can the vast mass of decaying matter which,
while decaying, gives off the most subtle and searching poisons,
be resolved with the elements without injury or risk to any one. So
convinced has the French Government become of the evils of burial
that it has patronized and encouraged one M. Bonneau, who proposes
that instead of a great city having its neighbouring cemeteries,
it should be provided with a building called The Sarcophagus,
occupying an elevated situation, to which the bodies of rich and
poor should be conveyed, and there reduced to ashes by a powerful
furnace. And then M. Bonneau, Frenchman all over, suggests that
the ashes of our friends might be preserved in a tasteful manner;
the funeral urn, containing these ashes, 'replacing on our consoles
and mantelpieces the ornaments of bronze clocks and china vases now
found there.' Our author, having shown that burning would save us
from the dangers of burying, concludes his treatise by a careful
description of the manner in which he would carry out the burning
process. And certainly his plan contains as little to shock one as
may be, in carrying out a system necessarily suggestive of violence
and cruelty. There is nothing like the repulsiveness of the Hindoo
burning, only half carried out, or even of Mr. Trelawney's furnace
for burning poor Shelley. I do not remember to have lately read
anything more ghastly and revolting than the entire account of
Shelley's cremation. It says much for Mr. Trelawney's nerves, that
he was able to look on at it; and it was no wonder that it turned
Byron sick, and that Mr. Leigh Hunt kept beyond the sight of it.
I intended to have quoted the passage from Mr. Trelawney's book,
but I really cannot venture to do so. But it is right to say that
there were very good reasons for resorting to that melancholy mode
of disposing of the poet's remains, and that Mr. Trelawney did all
he could to accomplish the burning with efficiency and decency:
though the whole story makes one feel the great physical difficulties
that stand in the way of carrying out cremation successfully. The
advocate of urn-sepulture, however, is quite aware of this, and
he proposes to use an apparatus by which they would be entirely
overcome. It is only fair to let him speak for himself; and I think
the following passage will be read with interest:--
On a gentle eminence, surrounded by pleasant grounds, stands a
convenient, well-ventilated chapel, with a high spire or steeple.
At the entrance, where some of the mourners might prefer to take
leave of the body, are chambers for their accommodation. Within
the edifice are seats for those who follow the remains to the last:
there is also an organ, and a gallery for choristers. In the centre
of the chapel, embellished with appropriate emblems and devices,
is erected a shrine of marble, somewhat like those which cover the
ashes of the great and mighty in our old cathedrals, the openings
being filled with prepared plate glass. Within this--a sufficient
space intervening--is an inner shrine covered with bright non-radiating
metal, and within this again is a covered sarcophagus of tempered
fire-clay, with one or more longitudinal slits near the top, extending
its whole length. As soon as the body is deposited therein, sheets
of flame at an immensely high temperature rush through the long
apertures from end to end, and acting as a combination of a modified
oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, with the reverberatory furnace, utterly
and completely consume and decompose the body, in an incredibly
short space of time. Even the large quantity of water it contains
is decomposed by the extreme heat, and its elements, instead of
retarding, aid combustion, as is the case in fierce conflagrations.
The gaseous products of combustion are conveyed away by flues; and
means being adopted to consume anything like smoke, all that is
observed from the outside is occasionally a quivering transparent
ether floating away from the high steeple to mingle vith the
atmosphere.
At either end of the sarcophagus is a closely-fitting fire-proof
door, that farthest from the chapel entrance communicating with a
chamber which projects into the chapel and adjoins the end of the
shrine. Here are the attendants, who, unseen, conduct the operation.
The door at the other end of the sarcophagus, with a corresponding
opening in the inner and outer shrine, is exactly opposite a slab
of marble on which the coffin is deposited when brought into the
chapel. The funeral service then commences according; to any form
decided on. At an appointed signal the end of the coffin, which is
placed just within the opening in the shrine, is removed, and the
body is drawn rapidly but gently and without exposure into the
sarcophagus: the sides of the coffin, constructed for the purpose,
collapse; and the wooden box is removed to be burned elsewhere.
Meantime the body is committed to the flames to be consumed, and
the words 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust' may be appropriately used.
The organ peals forth a solemn strain, and a hymn or requiem for
the dead is sung. In a few minutes, or even seconds, and without
any perceptible noise or commotion, all is over, and nothing but a
few pounds or ounces of light ash remains. This is carefully collected
by the attendants of the adjoining chamber: a door communicating
with the chapel is thrown open; and the relic, enclosed in a vase
of glass or other material, is brought in and placed before the
mourners, to be finally enshrined in the funeral urn of marble,
alabaster, stone, or metal.
Speaking for myself, I must say that I think it would cause a strange
feeling in most people to part at the chapel-door with the corpse
of one who had been very dear, and, after a few minutes of horrible
suspense, during which they should know that it was burning in a
fierce furnace, to see the vessel of white ashes brought back, and
be told that there was all that was mortal of the departed friend.
No doubt it may be weakness and prejudice, but I think that few
could divest themselves of the feeling of sacrilegious violence.
Better far to lay the brother or sister, tenderly as though still
they felt, in the last resting-place, so soft and trim. It soothes
us, if it does no good to them, and the sad change which we know
is soon to follow is wrought only by the gentle hand of Nature.
And only think of a man pointing to half-a-dozen vases on his
mantelpiece, and as many more on his cheffonier, and saying, 'There
the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest!'
No, no; the thing will never do!
One of the latest examples of burning, in the case of a Christian,
is that of Henry Laurens, the first President of the American
Congress. In his will he solemnly enjoined upon his children that
they should cause his body to be given to the flames. The Emperor
Napoleon, when at St. Helena, expressed a similar desire; and said,
truly enough, that as for the Resurrection, that would be miraculous
at all events, and it would be just as easy for the Almighty
to accomplish that great end in the case of burning as in that of
burial. And, indeed, the doctrine of the Resurrection is one that
it is not wise to scrutinize too minutely--I mean as regards its
rationale. It is best to simply hold by the great truth, that 'this
corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on
immortality.' I presume that it has been shown beyond doubt that
the material particles which make up our bodies are in a state
of constant flux, the entire physical nature being changed every
seven years, so that if all the particles which once entered into
the structure of a man of fourscore were reassembled, they would
suffice to make seven or eight bodies. And the manner in which it
is certain that the mortal part of man is dispersed and assimilated
to all the elements furnishes a very striking thought. Bryant has
said, truly and beautifully,
All that tread
The globe, are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.
And James Montgomery, in a poem of his which is little known,
and which is amplified and spoiled in the latest editions of his
works, has suggested to us whither the mortal vestiges of these
untold millions have gone. It is entitled Lines to a Molehill in
a Churchyard.
Tell me, thou dust beneath my feet,--
Thou dust that once hadst breath,--
Tell me, how many mortals meet
In this small hill of death.
The mole, that scoops with curious toil
Her subterranean bed,
Thinks not she plows a human soil,
And mines among the dead.
Yet, whereso'er she turns the ground,
My kindred earth I see:
Once every atom of this mound
Lived, breathed, and felt, like me.
Through all this hillock's crumbling mould
Once the warm lifeblood ran:
Here thine original behold,
And here thy ruins, man!
By wafting winds and flooding rains,
From ocean, earth, and sky,
Collected here, the frail remains
Of slumbering millions lie.
The towers and temples crushed by time,
Stupendous wrecks, appear
To me less mournfully sublime
Than this poor molehill here.
Methinks this dust yet heaves with breath--
Ten thousand pulses beat;--
Tell me, in this small hill of death,
How many mortals meet!
One idea, you see, beaten out rather thin, and expressed in a great
many words, as was the good man's wont. And in these days of the
misty and spasmodic school, I owe my readers an apology for presenting
them with poetry which they will have no difficulty in understanding.
Amid a great number of particulars as to the burial customs of
various nations, we find mention made of an odd way in which the
natives of Thibet dignify their great people. They do not desecrate
such by giving them to the earth, but retain a number of sacred dogs
to devour them. Not less strange was the fancy of that Englishwoman,
a century or two back, who had her husband burnt to ashes, and
these ashes reduced to powder, of which she mixed some with all the
water she drank, thinking, poor heart-broken creature, that, thus
she was burying the dear form within her own.
In rare cases I have known of the parson or the churchwarden turning
his cow to pasture in the churchyard, to the sad desecration of the
place. It appears, however, that worse than this has been done, if
we may judge from the following passage quoted by Mrs. Stone:--
1540. Proceedings in the Court of Archdeaconry of Colchester, Colne
Wake. Notatur per iconimos dicte ecclesie yt the parson mysusithe
the churche-yard, for hogis do wrote up graves, and besse lie in
the porche, and ther the pavements he broke up and soyle the porche;
and ther is so mych catell yt usithe the church-yarde, yt is more
liker a pasture than a halowed place.
It is usual, it appears, in the southern parts of France, to erect
in the churchyard a lofty pillar, bearing a large lamp, which throws
its light upon the cemetery during the night. The custom began in
the twelfth or thirteenth century. Sometimes the lanterne des marts
was a highly ornamented chapel, built in a circular form, like the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, in which the dead lay
exposed to view in the days which preceded their interment: sometimes
it was merely a hollow column, ascended by a winding stair inside,
or by projections left for the purpose within. It must have been
a striking sight when the traveller, through the dark night, saw
far away the lonely flame that marked the spot where so many of
his fellow-men had completed their journey.
One of the oddest things ever introduced into Materia Medica was
the celebrated Mummy Powder. Egyptian mummies, being broken up
and ground into dust, were held of great value as medicine both
for external and internal application. Boyle and Bacon unite in
commending its virtues: the latter, indeed, venturing to suggest
that 'the mixture of balms that are glutinous' was the foundation
of its power, though common belief held that the virtue was 'more
in the Egyptian than in the spice.' Even in the seventeenth century
mummy was an important article of commerce, and was sold at a great
price. One Eastern traveller brought to the Turkey Company six
hundred weight of mummy broken into pieces. Adulteration came into
play in a manner which would have gratified the Lancet commission:
the Jews collecting the bodies of executed criminals, filling them
with common asphaltum, which cost little, and then drying them in
the sun, when they became undistinguishable from the genuine article.
And the maladies which mummy was held to cure are set forth in a
list which we commend to the notice of Professor Holloway. It was
'to be taken in decoctions of marjoram, thyme, elder-flower, barley,
roses, lentils, jujubes, cummin-seed, carraway, saffron, cassia,
parsley, with oxymel, wine, milk, butter, castor, and mulberries.'
Sir Thomas Browne, who was a good deal before his age, did not
approve of the use of mummy. He says:
Were the efficacy thereof more clearly made out, we scarce conceive
the use thereof allowable in physic: exceeding the barbarities
of Cambyses, and turning old heroes into unworthy potions. Shall
Egypt lend out her ancients unto chirurgeons and apothecaries, and
Cheops and Psammeticus be weighed unto us for drugs? Shall we eat
of Chamnes and Amasis in electuaries and pills, and be cured by
cannibal mixtures? Surely such diet is miserable vampirism; and
exceeds in horror the black banquet of Domitian, not to be paralleled
except in those Arabian feasts wherein ghouls feed horribly.
I need hardly add that the world has come round to the great
physician's way of thinking, and that mummy is not included in the
pharmacopoeia of modern days.
The monumental inscriptions of this country, as a general rule, furnish
lamentable proof of the national bad taste. Somehow our peculiar
genius seems not to lie in that direction; and very eminent men,
who did most other things well, have signally failed when they tried
to produce an epitaph. What with stilted extravagance and bombast
on the one side, and profane and irreverent jesting on the other,
our epitaphs, for the most part, would be better away. It was well
said by Addison of the inscriptions in Westminster Abbey,--'Some
epitaphs are so extravagant that the dead person would blush;
and others so excessively modest that they deliver the character
of the person departed in Greek and Hebrew, and by that means are
not understood once in a twelve-month.' And Fuller has hit the
characteristics of a fitting epitaph when he said that 'the shortest,
plainest, and truest epitaphs are the best.' In most cases the safe
plan is to give no more than the name and age, and some brief text
of Scripture.
Every one knows that epitaphs generally are expressed in such
complimentary terms as quite explain the question of the child, who
wonderingly inquired where they buried the bad people. Mrs. Stone,
however, quotes a remarkably out-spoken one, from a monument in
Horselydown Church, in Cumberland. It runs as follows:--
Here lie the bodies
Of Thomas Bond and Mary his wife.
She was temperate, chaste, and charitable;
But
She was proud, peevish, and passionate.
She was an affectionate wife and a tender mother;
But
Her husband and child, whom she loved,
Seldom saw her countenance without a disgusting frown;
While she received visitors whom she despised with an endearing smile.
Her behaviour was discreet towards strangers;
But
Imprudent in her family.
Abroad her conduct was influenced by good breeding;
But
At home by ill temper.
And so the epitaph runs on to considerable length, acknowledging
the good qualities of the poor woman, but killing each by setting
against it some peculiarly unamiable trait. I confess that my
feeling is quite turned in her favour by the unmanly assault which
her brother (the author of the inscription) has thus made upon the
poor dead woman. If you cannot honestly say good of a human being
on his grave-stone, then say nothing at all. There are some cases
in which an exception may justly be made; and such a one, I think,
was that of the infamous Francis Chartres, who died in 1731. He was
buried in Scotland, and at his funeral the populace raised a riot,
almost tore his body from the coffin, and threw dead dogs into the
grave along with it. Dr. Arbuthnot wrote his epitaph, and here it
is:--
Here continueth to rot
The body of Francis Chartres:
Who, with an inflexible constancy,
and
Inimitable uniformity of life,
Persisted,
In spite of age and infirmities,
In the practice of every human vice,
Excepting prodigality and hypocrisy:
His insatiable avarice exempted him
from the first,
His matchless impudence from the
second.
Nor was he more singular
In the undeviating pravity of his
manners,
Than successful
In accumulating wealth:
For without trade or profession,
Without trust of public money,
And without bribeworthy service,
He acquired, or more properly created,
A Ministerial Estate:
He was the only person of his time
Who could cheat without the mask of
honesty,
Retain his primeval meanness
When possessed of ten thousand a year:
And having daily deserved the gibbet for
what he did,
Was at last condemned for what he
could not do.
Oh! indignant reader!
Think not his life useless to mankind!
Providence connived at his execrable designs,
To give to after ages
A conspicuous proof and example
Of how small estimation is exorbitant
wealth
In the sight of God,
By his bestowing it on the most
unworthy of all
mortals.
If one does intend to make a verbal assault upon any man, it
is well to do so in words which will sting and cut; and assuredly
Arbuthnot has succeeded in his laudable intention. The character
is justly drawn; and with the change of a very few words, it might
correctly be inscribed on the monument of at least one Scotch and
one English peer, who have died within the last half-century.
There are one or two extreme cases in which it is in good taste,
and the effect not without sublimity, to leave a monument with no
inscription at all. Of course this can only be when the monument
is that of a very great and illustrious man. The pillar erected
by Bernadotte at Frederickshall, in memory of Charles the Twelfth,
bears not a word; and I believe most people who visit the spot feel
that Bernadotte judged well. The rude mass of masonry, standing
in the solitary waste, that marks where Howard the philanthropist
sleeps, is likewise nameless. And when John Kyrle died in 1724, he
was buried in the chancel of the church of Ross in Herefordshire,
'without so much as an inscription.' But the Man of Ross had his
best monument in the lifted head and beaming eye of those he left
behind him at the mention of his name. He never knew, of course, that
the bitter little satirist of Twickenham would melt into unwonted
tenderness in telling of all he did, and apologize nobly for his
nameless grave:--
And what! no monument, inscription, stone?
His race, his form, his name almost, unknown?
Who builds a church to God, and not to fame,
Will never mark the marble with his name:
Go, search it there, where to be born and die,
Of rich and poor make all the history:
Enough, that virtue filled the space between,
Proved, by the ends of being, to have been!
[Footnote: Pope's Moral Essays. Epistle III.]
The two fine epitaphs written by Ben Jonson are well known. One is
on the Countess of Pembroke:--
Underneath this marble hearse,
Lies the subject of all verse:
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's'mother;
Death! ere thou hast slain another,
Learned and fair, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.
And the other is the epitaph of a certain unknown Elizabeth:--
Wouldst thou hear what man can say
In a little?--reader, stay.
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die;
Which in life did harbour give,
To more virtue than doth live.
If at all she had a fault,
Leave it buried in this vault:
One name was Elizabeth,
The other let it sleep with death:
Fitter, where it died, to tell,
Than that it lived at all. Farewell!
Most people have heard of the brief epitaph inscribed on a tombstone
in the floor of Hereford Cathedral, which inspired one of the
sonnets of Wordsworth. There is no name, no date, but the single
word MISERRIMUS. The lines, written by herself, which are inscribed
on the gravestone of Mrs. Hemans, in St. Anne's Church at Dublin,
are very beautiful, but too well known to need quotation. And
Longfellow, in his charming little poem of Nuremburg, has preserved
the characteristic word in the epitaph of Albert Durer:--
Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies;
Dead he is not,--but departed,--for the artist never dies.
Perhaps some readers may be interested by the following epitaph,
written by no less a man than Sir Walter Scott, and inscribed on
the stone which covers the grave of a humble heroine whose name his
genius has made known over the world. The grave is in the churchyard
of Kirkpatrick-Irongray, a few miles from Dumfries:--
This stone was erected
By the Author of Waverley
To the memory of
Helen Walker
Who died in the year of God 1791.
This humble individual
practised in real life
the virtues
with which fiction has invested
the imaginary character
of
Jeanie Deans.
Refusing the slightest departure
from veracity
even to save the life of a sister,
she neverthless showed her
kindness and fortitude
by rescuing her from the severity of the law;
at the expense of personal exertions
which the time rendered as difficult
as the motive was laudable.
Respect the grave of poverty
when combined with love of truth
and dear affection.
Although, of course, it is treasonable to say so, I confess I think
this inscription somewhat cumbrous and awkward. The antithesis
is not a good one, between the difficulty of Jeanie's 'personal
exertions' and the laudableness of the motive which led to them.
And there is something not metaphysically correct in the combination
described in the closing sentence--the combination of poverty,
an outward condition, with truthfulness and affection, two
inward characteristics. The only parallel phrase which I remember
in literature is one which was used by Mr. Stiggins when he was
explaining to Sam Weller what was meant by a moral pocket-handkerchief.
'It's them,' were Mr. Stiggins's words, 'as combines useful
instruction with wood-cuts.' Poverty might co-exist with, or be
associated with, any mental qualities you please, but assuredly it
cannot correctly be said to enter into combination with any.
As for odd and ridiculous epitaphs, their number is great, and
every one has the chief of them at his fingers' ends. I shall be
content to give two or three, which I am quite sure hardly any of
my readers ever heard of before. The following, which may be read
on a tombstone in a country churchyard in Ayrshire, appears to
me to be unequalled for irreverence. And let critics observe the
skilful introduction of the dialogue form, giving the inscription
a dramatic effect:--
Wha is it that's lying here?--
Robin Wood, ye needna speer.
Eh Robin, is this you?
Ou aye, but I'm deid noo!
The following epitaph was composed by a village poet and wit, not
unknown to me in my youth, for a rival poet, one Syme, who had
published a volume of verses On the Times (not the newspaper).
Beneath this thistle,
Skin, bone, and gristle,
In Sexton Goudie's keepin' lies,
Of poet Syme,
Who fell to rhyme,
(O bards beware!) a sacrifice.
Ask not at all,
Where flew his saul,
When of the body death bereft her:
She, like his rhymes
Upon the Times,
Was never worth the speerin' after!
Speerin', I should mention, for the benefit of those ignorant of
Lowland Scotch, means asking or inquiring.
It is recorded in history that a certain Mr. Anderson, who filled
the dignified office of Provost of Dundee, died, as even provosts
must. It was resolved that a monument should be erected in his memory,
and that the inscription upon it should be the joint composition
of four of his surviving colleagues in the magistracy. They met to
prepare the epitaph; and after much consideration it was resolved
that the epitaph should be a rhymed stanza of four lines, of which
lines each magistrate should contribute one. The senior accordingly
began, and having deeply ruminated he produced the following:--
Here lies Anderson, Provost of Dundee.
This formed a neat and striking introduction, going (so to speak)
to the heart of things at once, but leaving room for subsequent
amplification. The second magistrate perceived this, and felt that
the idea was such a good one that it ought to be followed up. He
therefore produced the line,
Here lies Him, here lies He:
thus repeating in different modifications the same grand thought,
after the style which has been adopted by Burke, Chalmers, Melvill,
and other great orators. The third magistrate, whose turn had now
arrived, felt that the foundation had thus been substantially laid
down, and that the time had come to erect upon it a superstructure
of reflection, inference, or exclamation. With the simplicity of
genius he wrote as follows, availing himself of a poet's license
to slightly alter the ordinary forms of language:--
Hallelujah, Hallelujee!
The epitaph being thus, as it were, rounded and complete, the
fourth contributor to it found himself in a difficulty; wherefore
add anything to that which needed and in truth admitted nothing
more? Still the stanza must he completed. What should he do?
He would fall back on the earliest recollections of his youth--he
would recur to the very fount and origin of all human knowledge.
Seizing his pen, he wrote thus:--
A. B. C. D. E. F. G.!
Whoever shall piece together these valuable lines, thus fragmentarily
presented, will enter into the feelings of the Town Council, which
bestowed a vote of thanks upon their authors, and caused the stanza
to be engraven on the worthy provost's monument. I have not myself
read it, but am assured it is in existence.
There was something of poor Thomas Hood's morbi taste for the
ghastly, and the physically repulsive, in his fancy of spending
some time during his last illness in drawing a picture of himself
dead in his shroud. In his memoirs, published by his children,
you may see the picture, grimly truthful: and bearing the legend,
He sang the Song of the Shirt. You may discover in what he drew,
as well as in what he wrote, many indications of the humourist's
perverted taste: and no doubt the knowledge that mortal disease
was for years doing its work within, led his thoughts oftentimes
to what was awaiting himself. He could not walk in an avenue
of elm-trees, without fancying that one of them might furnish
his coffin. When in his ear, as in Longfellow's, 'the green trees
whispered low and mild,' their sound did not carry him back to
boyhood, but onward to his grave. He listened, and there rose within
A secret, vague, prophetic fear,
As though by certain mark,
I knew the fore-ordained tree,
Within whose rugged bark,
This warm and living form shall find
Its narrow house and dark.
Not but that such thoughts are well in their due time and place. It
is very fit that we should all sometimes try to realize distinctly
what is meant when each of us repeats words four thousand years
old, and says, 'I know that Thou wilt bring me to death, and to the
house appointed for all living.' Even with all such remembrances
brought home to him by means to which we are not likely to resort,
the good priest and martyr Robert Southwell tells us how hard he
found it, while in buoyant life, to rightly consider his end. But
in perfect cheerfulness and healthfulness of spirit, the human
being who knows (so far as man can know) where he is to rest at
last, may oftentimes visit that peaceful spot. It will do him good:
it can do him no harm. The hard-wrought man may fitly look upon
the soft green turf, some day to be opened for him; and think to
himself, Not yet, I have more to do yet; but in a little while.
Somewhere there is a place appointed for each of us, a place that
is waiting for each of us, and that will not be complete till we
are there. Well, we rest in the humble trust, that 'through the
grave and gate of death, we shall pass to our joyful resurrection.'
And we turn away now from the churchyard, recalling Bryant's lines
as to its extent:
Yet not to thy eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone; nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world, with kings,
The powerful of the earth, the wise and good,
Fair forms and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales,
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the Great Tomb of Man!
CHAPTER V.
CONCERNING SUMMER DAYS.
There are some people whom all nature helps. They have somehow
got the material universe on their side. What they say and do, at
least upon important occasions, is so backed up by all the surroundings
that it never seems out of keeping with these, and still less ever
seems to be contradicted by these. When Mr. Midhurst [Footnote: See
the New Series of Friends in Council.] read his essay on the Miseries
of Human Life, he had all the advantage of a gloomy, overcast day.
And so the aspect of the external world was to the essay like the
accompaniment in music to a song. The accompaniment, of course,
has no specific meaning; it says nothing, but it appears to accord
and sympathize with the sense conveyed by the song's words. But
gloomy hills and skies and woods are to desponding views of life
and man, even more than the sympathetic chords, in themselves
meaningless. The gloomy world not merely accords with the desponding
views, but seems somehow to back them. You are conscious of a great
environing Presence standing by and looking on approvingly. From
all points in the horizon a voice, soft and undefined, seems to
whisper to your heart, All true, all too true.
Now, there are human beings who, in the great things they say and
do, seldom fail of having this great, vague backing. There are
others whom the grand current for the most part sets against. It
is part of the great fact of Luck--the indubitable fact that there
are men, women, ships, horses, railway-engines, whole railways,
which are lucky, and others which are unlucky. I do not believe in
the common theory of Luck, but no thoughtful or observant man can
deny the fact of it. And in no fashion does it appear more certainly
than in this, that in the case of some men cross-accidents are always
marring them, and the effect they would fain produce. The system
of things is against them. They are not in every case unsuccessful,
but whatever success they attain is got by brave fighting against
wind and tide. At college they carried off many honours, but no
such luck ever befel them as that some wealthy person should offer
during their days some special medal for essay or examination, which
they would have gained as of course. There was no extra harvest
for them to reap: they could do no more than win all that was to
be won. They go to the bar, and they gradually make their way; but
the day never comes on which their leader is suddenly taken ill,
and they have the opportunity of earning a brilliant reputation
by conducting in his absence a case in which they are thoroughly
prepared. They go into the Church, and earn a fair character as
preachers; but Ihe living they would like never becomes vacant, and
when they are appointed to preach upon some important occasion, it
happens that the ground is a foot deep with snow.
Several years since, on a Sunday in July, I went to afternoon service
at a certain church by the sea-shore. The incumbent of that church
was a young clergyman of no ordinary talent; he is a distinguished
professor now. It was a day of drenching rain and howling hurricane;
the sky was black, as in mid-winter; the waves were breaking angry
and loud upon the rocks hard by. The weather the previous week had
been beautiful; the weather became beautiful again the next morning.
There came just the one gloomy and stormy summer day. The young
parson could not forsee the weather. What more fitting subject for
a July Sunday than the teachings of the beautiful season which was
passing over? So the text was, Thou hast made summer: it was a sermon
on summer, and its moral and spiritual lessons. How inconsistent
the sermon seemed with everything around! The outward circumstances
reduced it to an absurdity. The congregation was diminished to a
sixth of its usual number; the atmosphere was charged with a muggy
vapour from sloppy garments and dripping umbrellas: and as the
preacher spoke, describing vividly (though with the chastened taste
of the scholar) blue skies, green leaves, and gentle breezes, ever
and anon the storm outside drove the rain in heavy plashes upon
the windows, and, looking through them, you could see the black sky
and the fast-drifting clouds. I thought to myself, as the preacher
went on under the cross influence of these surroundings, Now, I
am sure you are in small things an unlucky man. No doubt the like
happens to you frequently. You are the kind of man to whom the
Times fails to come on the morning you specially wish to see it.
Your horse falls lame on the morning when you have a long drive
before you. Your manservant catches a sore throat, and is unable
to go out, just when the visitor comes to whom you wish to show the
neighboring country. I felt for the preacher. I was younger then,
but I had seen enough to make me think how Mr. Snarling of the
next parish (a very dull preacher, with no power of description)
would chuckle over the tale of the summer sermon on the stormy
day. That youthful preacher (not Mr. Snarling) had been but a few
months in the church, and he probably had not another sermon to
give in the unexpected circumstances: he must preach what he had
prepared. He had fallen into error. I formed a resolution never to
do the like. I was looking forward then with great enthusiasm to
the work of my sacred, profession: with enthusiasm which has only
grown deeper and warmer through the experience of more than nine
years. I resolved that if ever I thought of preaching a summer
sermon, I would take care to have an alternative one ready for that
day in case of unfavourable weather. I resolved that I would give
my summer discourse only if external nature, in her soft luxuriant
beauty, looked summer-like: a sweet pervading accompaniment to my
poor words, giving them a force and meaning far beyond their own.
What talk concerning summer skies is like the sapphire radiance,
so distant and pure, looking in through the church windows? You
do not remember how blue and beautiful the sky is, unless when you
are looking at it: nature is better than our remembrance of her.
What description of a leafy tree equals that noble, soft, massive,
luxuriant object which I looked at for half-an-hour yesterday
through the window of a little country church, while listening to
the sermon of a friend? Do not think that I was inattentive. I heard
the sermon with the greater pleasure and profit for the sight. It
is characteristic of the preaching of a really able man, preaching
what he himself has felt, that all he says appears (as a general
rule) in harmony with all the universe; while the preaching of a
commonplace man, giving us from memory mere theological doctrine
which has been drilled into him, and which he repeats because he
supposes it must be all right, seems inconsistent with all the material
universe, or at least quite apart from it. Yet, even listening to
that excellent sermon (whose masculine thought was very superior to
its somewhat slovenly style), I thought, as I looked at the beautiful
tree rising in the silent churchyard,--the stately sycamore,
so bright green, with the blue sky all around it,--how truly John
Foster wrote, that when standing in January at the foot of a large
oak, and looking at its bare branches, he vainly tried to picture
to himself what that tree would be in June. The reality would be
far richer and finer than anything he could imagine on the winter
day. Who does not know this? The green grass and the bright leaves
in spring are far greener (you see when they come back) than you
had remembered or imagined; the sunshine is more golden, and the
sky more bright. God's works are better and more beautiful than
our poor idea of them. Though I have seen them and loved them now
for more than thirty summers, I have felt this year, with something
of almost surprise, how exquisitely beautiful are summer foliage
and summer grass. Here they are again, fresh from God! The summer
world is incomparably more beautiful than any imagination could
picture it on a dull December day. You did not know on New Year's
day, my reader, how fair a thing the sunshine is. And the commonest
things are the most beautiful. Flowers are beautiful: he must be
a blackguard who does not love them. Summer seas are beautiful, so
exquisitely blue under the blue summer sky. But what can surpass
the beauty of green grass and green trees! Amid such things let
me live; and when I am gone, let green grass grow over me. I would
not be buried beneath a stone pavement, not to sleep in the great
Abbey itself.
My summer sermon has never been written, and so has never been
preached; I doubt whether I could make much of the subject, treated as
it ought to be treated there. But an essay is a different matter,
notwithstanding that a dear, though sarcastic friend says that
my essays are merely sermons played in polka time; the thought of
sermons, to wit, lightened somewhat by a somewhat lighter fashion
of phrase and illustration. And all that has hitherto been said
is introductory to remarking, that I stand in fear of what kind of
day it may be when my reader shall see this essay, which as yet
exists but vaguely in the writer's mind; and upon, four pieces
of paper, three large and one small. If your eye lights upon this
page on a cold, bleak day; if it be wet and plashy; above all, if
there be east wind, read no further. Keep this essay for a warm,
sunshiny day; it is only then that you will sympathize with its
author. For amid a dismal, rainy, stormy summer, we have reached
fair weather at last; and this is a lovely, sunny summer morning.
And what an indescribably beautiful thing is a summer day! I do not
mean merely the hours as they pass over; the long light; the sun
going up and going down; but all that one associates with summer
days, spent in sweet rural scenes. There is great variety in summer
days. There is the warm, bright, still summer day; when everything
seems asleep, and the topmost branches of the tall trees do not
stir in the azure air. There is the breezy summer day, when warm
breaths wave these topmost branches gently to and fro, and you stand
and look at them; when sportive winds bend the green corn as they
swiftly sweep over it; when the shadows of the clouds pass slowly
along the hills. Even the rainy day, if it come with soft summer-like
rain, is beautiful. People in town are apt to think of rain as a
mere nuisance; the chief good it does there is to water the streets
more generally and thoroughly than usual; a rainy day in town is
equivalent to a bad day; but in the country, if you possess even
the smallest portion of the earth, you learn to rejoice in the
rain. You go out in it; you walk about and enjoy the sight of the
grass momently growing greener; of the trees looking refreshed,
and the evergreens gleaming, the gravel walks so free from dust,
and the roads watered so as to render them beautifully compact,
but not at all sloppy or muddy; summer rain never renders well-made
country roads sloppy or muddy. There is a pleasure in thinking that
you have got far ahead of man or machine; and you heartily despise
a watering-cart, while enjoying a soft summer shower. And after
the shower is over, what fragrance is diffused through the country
air; every tree and shrub has an odour which a summer shower
brings out, and which senses trained to perception will perceive.
And then, how full the trees and woods are of the singing of birds!
But there is one feeling which, if you live in the country, is
common to all pleasant summer days, but particularly to sunshiny
ones; it is that you are doing injustice to nature, that you are
losing a great deal, if you do not stay almost constantly in the
open air. You come to grudge every half hour that you are within
doors, or busied with things that call you off from observing and
thinking of all the beauty that is around you everywhere. That
fair scene,--trees, grass, flowers, sky, sunshine, is there to be
looked at and enjoyed; it seems wrong, that with such a picture
passing on before your eyes, your eyes should be turned upon
anything else. Work, especially mental work, is always painful;
always a thing you would shrink from if you could; but how strongly
you shrink from it on a beautiful summer morning! On a gloomy
winter day you can walk with comparative willingness into your study
after breakfast, and spread out your paper, and begin to write your
sermon. For although writing the sermon is undoubtedly an effort;
and although all sustained effort partakes of the nature of pain;
and although pain can never be pleasant; still, after all, apart
from other reasons which impel you to your work, you cannot but
feel that really if you were to turn away from your task of writing,
there is nothing to which you could take that you would enjoy very
much more than itself. And even on the fairest summer morning, you
can, if you are living in town, take to your task with comparative
ease. Somehow, in town, the weather is farther off from you;
it does not pervade all the house, as it does in the country: you
have not windows that open into the garden: through which you see
green trees and grass every time you look up; and through which you
can in a minute, without the least change of dress, pass into the
verdant scene. There is all the difference in the world, between the
shadiest and greenest public garden or park even within a hundred
yards of your door; and the green shady little spot that comes up
to your very window. The former is no very great temptation to the
busy scholar of rural tastes; the latter is almost irresistible.
A hundred yards are a long way to go, with purpose prepense of
enjoying something so simple as the green earth. After having walked
even a hundred yards, you feel that you need a more definite aim.
And the grass and trees seem very far away, if you see them at the
end of a vista of washing your hands, and putting on another coat
and other boots, and still more of putting on gloves and a hat.
Give me the little patch of grass, the three or four shady trees,
the quiet corner of the shrubbery, that comes up to the study
window, and which you can reach without even the formality of passing
through the hall and out by the front door. If you wish to enjoy
nature in the summer-time, you must attend to all these little
things. What stout old gentleman but knows that when he is seated
snugly in his easy chair by the winter evening fireside, he would
take up and read many pages in a volume which lay within reach of
his arm, though he would do without the volume, if in order to get
it he had to take the slight trouble of rising from his chair and
walking to a table half a dozen yards off? Even so must nature be
brought within easy reach of even the true lover of nature; otherwise
on a hundred occasions, all sorts of little, fanciful hindrances
will stand between him and her habitual appreciation. A very small
thing may prevent your doing a thing which you even wish to do;
but which you do not wish with any special excitement, and which
you may do at any time. I daresay some reader would have written
months since to a friend in India to whom he promised faithfully to
write frequently, but that when he sat down once or twice to write,
and pulled out his paper-drawer, lie found that all the thin Indian
paper was done. And so the upshot is, that the friend has been a
year out; and you have never written to him at all.
But to return to the point from which this deviation proceeded, I
repeat, that on a fine summer morning in the country it is excessively
difficult to take to your work. Apart from the repellent influence
which is in work itself, you think that you will miss so much. You
go out after breakfast (with a wide-awake hat, and no gloves) into
the fresh atmosphere. You walk round the garden. You look particularly
at the more eminent roses, and the largest trees. You go to the
stable-yard, and see what is doing there. There are twenty things
to think of: numberless little directions to give. You see a weedy
corner, and that must not be suffered: you see a long spray of a
climbing rose that needs training. You look into the corn-chest:
the corn is almost finished. You have the fact impressed upon you
that the old potatoes are nearly done, and the new ones hardly
ready for use. These things partake of the nature of care: if you
do not feel very well, you will regard them as worries. But it is
no care nor worry to walk down to your gate, to lean upon it, and
to look at the outline of the hills: nor to go out with your little
children, and walk slowly along the country lane outside your
gate, relating for the hundredth time the legend of the renowned
giant-killer, or the enchanted horse that flew through the air; to
walk on till you come to the bridge, and there sit down, and throw
in stones for your dog to dive after, while various shouts (very
loud to come from such little mouths) applaud his success. How
crystal-clear the water of the river! It is six feet deep, yet you
may see every pebble of its bed. An undefined laziness possesses
you. You would like to sit here, and look, and think, all day.
But of course you will not give in to the temptation. Slowly you
return to your door: unwillingly you enter it: reluctantly you take
to your work. Until you have got somewhat into the spirit of your
task, you cannot help looking sometimes at the roses which frame
your window, and the green hill you see through it, with white
sheep. And even when you have got your mind under control, and the
lines flow more willingly from your pen, you cannot but look out
occasionally into the sunshiny, shady corner in your view, and think
you should be there. And when the prescribed pages are at length
completed, how delightful to lock them up, and be off into the air
again! You are far happier now than you were in the morning. The
shadow of your work was upon you then: now you may with a pleased
conscience, and under no sense of pressure, saunter about, and
enjoy your little domain. Many things have been accomplished since
you went indoors. The weeds are gone from the corner: the spray
of the rose lias been trained. The potato-beds have been examined:
the potatoes will be all ready in two days more. Sit down in the
shade, warm yet cool, of a great tree. Now is the time to read the
Saturday Review, especially the article that pitches into you. What
do you care for it? I don't mean that you despise it: I mean that
it causes you no feeling but one of amusement and pleasure. You
feel that it is written by a clever man and a gentleman: you know
that there is not a vestige of malice in it. You would like to shake
hands with the writer, and to thank him for various useful hints.
As for reviewing which is truly malignant--that which deals in
intentional misrepresentation and coarse abuse--it is practically
unknown in respectable periodicals. And wherever you may find it
(as you sometimes may) you ought never to be angry with the man
who did it: you ought to be sorry for him. Depend upon it, the poor
fellow is in bad health or in low spirits: no one but a man who is
really unhappy himself will deliberately set himself to annoy any
one else. It is the misery, anxiety, poverty, which are wringing the
man's heart, that make their pitiful moan in that bitter article.
Make the poor man better off, and he will be better natured.
And so, my friend, now that our task is finished, let us go out
in this kindly temper to enjoy the summer day. But you must first
assure your mind that your work is really finished. You cannot thus
simply enjoy the summer day, if you have a latent feeling rankling
at your heart that you are neglecting something that you ought to
do. The little jar of your moral being caused by such a feeling,
will be like the horse-hair shirt, will be like the peas in the
pilgrim's shoes. So, clerical reader, after you have written your
allotted pages of sermon, and answered your few letters, turn to
your tablet-diary, or whatever contrivance you have for suggesting
to your memory the work you have to do. If you have marked down
some mere call to make, that may fairly enough be postponed on this
hot day. But look at your list of sick, and see when you visited
each last, and consider whether there be any you ought to visit
to-day. And if there be, never mind though the heat be sweltering
and the roads dusty and shadeless: never mind though the poor old
man or woman lives five miles off, and though your horse is lame:
get ready, and walk away as slowly as you can, and do your duty.
You are not the reader I want: you are not the man with whom I
wish to think of summer days: if you could in the least enjoy the
afternoon, or have the faintest pleasure in your roses and your
grass, with the thought of that neglected work hanging over you.
And though you may return four hours hence, fagged and jaded, you
will sit with a pleased heart down to dinner, and you will welcome
the twilight when it comes, with the cheerful sense of duty done
and temptation resisted. But upon my ideal summer day, I suppose
that after looking over your sick-list, and all your memoranda, you
find that there is nothing to do that need take you to-day beyond
your own little realm. And so, with the delightful sense of leisure
to breathe and think, you walk forth into the green shade to spend
the summer afternoon. Bring with you two or three books: bring the
Times that came that morning: you will not read much, but it is
pleasant to know that you may read if you choose: and then sit down
upon a garden-seat, and think and feel. Do you not feel, my friend
of even five-and-thirty, that there is music yet in the mention of
summer days? Well, enjoy that music now, and the vague associations
which are summoned up by the name. Do not put off the enjoyment
of these things to some other day. You will never have more time,
nor better opportunity. The little worries of the present cease
to sting in the pensive languor of the season. Enjoy the sunshine
and the leaves while they last: they will not last long. Grasp the
day and hold it and rejoice in it: some time soon you will find of
a sudden that the summer time has passed away. You come to yourself,
and find it is December. The earth seems to pause in its orbit in
the dreary winter days: it hurries at express speed through summer.
You wish you could put on a break, and make time go on more slowly.
Well, watch the sandgrains as they pass. Remark the several minutes,
yet without making it a task to do so. As you sit there, you will
think of old summer days long ago: of green leaves long since faded:
of sunsets gone. Well, each had its turn: the present has nothing
more. And let us think of the past without being lackadaisical.
Look now at your own little children at play: that sight will
revive your flagging interest in life. Look at the soft turf, feel
the gentle air: these things are present now. What a contrast to the
Lard, repellent earth of winter! I think of it like the difference
between the man of sternly logical mind, and the genial, kindly
man with both head and heart! I take it for granted that you agree
with me in holding such to be the true type of man. Not but what
some people are proud of being all head and no heart. There is no
flummery about them. It is stern, severe sense and principle. Well,
my friends, say I to such, you are (in a moral sense) deficient
of a member. Fancy a mortal hopping through creation, and boasting
that he was born with only one leg! Or even if you have a little of
the kindly element, but very little when compared with the logical,
you have not much to boast of. Your case is analogous to that of
the man who has two legs indeed, but one of them a great deal longer
than the other.
It is pleasanter to spend the summer days in an inland country
place, than by the seaside. The sea is too glaring in sunshiny
weather; the prospects are too extensive. It wearies eyes worn
by much writing and reading to look at distant hills across the
water. The true locality in which to enjoy the summer time is a
richly-wooded country, where you have hedges and hedge-rows, and
clumps of trees everywhere: where objects for the most part are
near to you; and, above all, are green. It is pleasant to live in
a district where the roads are not great broad highways, in whose
centre you feel as if you were condemned to traverse a strip of
arid desert stretching through the landscape; and where any carriage
short of a four-in-hand looks so insignificantly small. Give me
country lanes: so narrow that their glare does not pain the eye upon
even the sunniest day: so narrow that the eye without an effort
takes in the green hedges and fields on either side as you drive
or walk along.
And now, looking away mentally from this cool shady verdure amid
which we are sitting, let us think of summer days elsewhere. Let
us think of them listlessly, that we may the more enjoy the quiet
here: as a child on a frosty winter night, snug in his little bed,
puts out a foot for a moment into the chilly expanse of sheet that
stretches away from the warm nest in which he lies, and then pulls
it swiftly back again, enjoying the cozy warmth the more for this
little reminder of the bitter chill. Here, where the air is cool,
pure, and soft, let us think of a hoarding round some old house
which the labourers are pulling down, amid clouds of the white,
blinding, parching dust of lime, on a sultry summer day. I can hardly
think of any human position as worse, if not intended directly as
a position of torture. I picture, too, a crowded wharf on a river
in a great town, with ships lying alongside. There is a roar
of passing drays, a cracking of draymen's whips, a howling of the
draymen. There is hot sunshine; there are clouds of dust; and I see
several poor fellows wheeling heavy casks in barrows up a narrow
plank into a ship. Their faces are red and puffy with the exertion:
their hair is dripping. Ah, the summer day is hard upon these poor
fellows! But it would be pleasant to-day to drive a locomotive engine
through a fine agricultural country, particularly if one were driving
an express train, and so were not worried by perpetual stoppages.
I have often thought that I should like to be an engine-driver.
Should any revolution or convulsion destroy the Church, it is to
that field of industry that I should devote my energies. I should
stipulate not to drive luggage-trains; and if I had to begin with
third-class passenger-trains, I have no doubt that in a few months,
by dint of great punctuality and carefulness, and by having my
engine always beautifully clean and bright, I should be promoted
to the express. There was a time when driving a locomotive was not
so pleasant as now. In departed days, when the writer was wont to
stand upon the foot-plates, through the kindness of engine-driving
friends now far away, there was a difficulty in looking out ahead:
the current of air was so tremendous, and particles of dust were
driven so viciously into one's eyes. But advancing civilization
has removed that disadvantage. A snug shelter is now provided for
the driver: an iron partition arises before him, with two panes of
glass through which to look out. The result is that he can maintain
a far more effectual look-out; and that he is in great measure
protected from wind and weather. Yes, it would be pleasant to be an
engine-driver, especially on such a day as this. Pleasant to look
at the great train of carriages standing in the station before
starting: to see the piles of luggage going up through the exertions
of hot porters: to see the numbers of passengers, old and young,
cool and flurried, with their wraps, their newspapers, their books,
at length arranged in the soft, roomy interiors; and then the sense
of power, when by the touch of a couple of fingers upon the lever,
you make the whole mass of luggage, of life, of human interests and
cares, start gently into motion; till, gathering speed as it goes,
it tears through the green stillness of the summer noon, amid
daisied fields, through little woody dells, through clumps of great
forest-trees, within sight of quiet old manor houses, across little
noisy brooks and fair broad rivers, beside churchyard walls and
grey ivied churches, alongside of roads where you see the pretty
phaeton, the lordly coach, the lumbering waggon, and get glimpses
that suggest a whole picture of the little life of numbers of your
fellow-men, each with heart and mind and concerns and fears very
like your own. Yes, my friend, if you rejoice in fair scenery,
if you sympathize with all modes of human life--if you have some
little turn for mechanics, for neatness and accuracy, for that
which faithfully does the work it was made to do, and neither less
nor more: retain it in your mind as an ultimate end, that you may
one day drive a locomotive engine. You need not of necessity become
greasy of aspect; neither need you become black. I never have known
more tidy, neat, accurate, intelligent, sharp, punctual, responsible,
God-fearing, and truly respectable men, than certain engine-drivers.
Remember the engine must be a locomotive engine. Your taste for
scenery and life will not be gratified by employment on a stationary
one. And it is fearfully hot work on a summer day to take charge
of a stationary steam-engine; while (perhaps you would not think
it) to drive a locomotive is perfectly cool work. You never feel,
in that rapid motion, the raging flame that is doing its work so
near you. The driver of the express train may be a man of large
sympathies, of cheerful heart, of tolerant views; the man in charge
of the engine of a coal-pit or factory, even of a steam-ship, is
apt to acquire contracted ways of thinking, and to become somewhat
cynical and gloomy in his ideas as to the possible amelioration of
society. It cannot be a pleasing employment, one would think, on a
day like this, to sit and watch a great engine fire, and mend it
when needful. That occupation would not be healthful, either to
mind or body. I dare say you remember the striking and beautiful
description in Mr. Dickens's Old Curiosity Shop, of a man who
had watched and fed a furnace-fire for years, till he had come to
think of it as a living being. The fire was older than he was; it
had never gone out since before he was horn. I can imagine, perfectly
well, what kind of effect such a mode of life would have had on
myself. And very few readers are likely to have within themselves
an intellectual and moral fibre of bent and nature so determined,
that they are not what they are, mainly through the influence of
the external circumstances which have been acting upon them all
through life. Did you ever think to yourself that you would like
to make trial for a few days' space, of certain modes of life very
different from your own, and very different from each other? I have
done so many a time. And a lazy summer afternoon here in the green
shade is the time to try and picture out such. Think of being to-day
in a stifling counting-house in the hot bustling town. I have been
especially interested in a glazed closet which I have seen in a
certain immensely large and very crowded shop in a certain beautiful
city. It is a sort of little office partitioned off from the shop
it has a sloping table, with three or four huge books bound in
parchment. There is a ceaseless bustle, crush, and hum of talking
outside; and inside there are clerks Bitting writing, and receiving
money through little pigeonholes. I should like to sit for two or
three days in a corner of that little retreat; and to write a sermon
there. It would be curious to sit there to-day in the shadow, and
to see the warm sunbeams only outside through a distant window,
resting on sloping roofs. If one did not get seasick, there would
be something fresh in a summer day at sea. It is always cool and
breezy there, at least in these latitudes, on the warmest day.
Above all there is no dust. Think of the luxurious cabin of a fine
yacht to-day. Deep cushions; rich curtains; no tremor of machinery;
flowers, books, carpets inches thick; and through the windows, dim
hills and blue sea. Then, flying away in spirit, let us go to-day
(only in imagination) into the Courts of Law at Westminster. The
atmosphere on a summer day in these scenes is always hot and choky.
There is a suggestion of summer time in the sunshine through the
dusty lanterns in the roofs. Thinking of these courts, and all
their belongings and associations, here on this day, is like the
child already mentioned when he puts his foot into a very cold corner
of his bed, that he may pull it back with special sense of what a
blessing it is that he is not bodily in that very cold corner. Yes,
let us enjoy this spot where we are, the more keenly, for thinking
of the very last place in this world where we should like to-day to
be. I went lately (on a bright day in May) to revive old remembrances
of Westminster Hall. The judges of the present time are very able
and incorruptible men; but they are much uglier than the judges I
remember in my youth. Several of them, in their peculiar attire,
hardly looked like human beings. Almost all wrore wigs a great
deal too large for them; I mean much too thick and massive. The
Queen's Counsel, for the most part, seemed much younger than they
used to be; but I was aware that this phenomenon arose from the
fact that I myself was older. And various barristers, who fifteen
years since were handsome, smooth-faced young men, had now a
complexion rough as a nutmeg-grater, and red with that unhealthy
colour which is produced by long hours in a poisonous atmosphere.
The Courts at Westminster, for cramped space and utter absence of
ventilation, are nothing short of a disgrace to a civilized nation.
But the most painful reflection which they suggest to a man with
a little knowledge of the practical working of law, is, how vainly
human law strives to do justice. There, on the benches of the
various Courts, you have a number of the most able and honest men
in Britain: skilled by long practice to distinguish between right
and wrong, between truth and falsehood; and yet, in five cases out
of six that come before them, they signally fail of redressing the
wrongs brought before them. Unhappily, in the nature of things, much
delay must occur in all legal procedure; and further, the machinery
of the law cannot be set in motion unless at very considerable
expense. Now, every one knows that delay in gaining a legal decision
of a debated question, very often amounts to a decision against
both parties. What enjoyment of the summer days has the harassed
suitor, waiting in nervous anxiety for the judgment or the verdict
which may be his ruin? For very small things may be the ruin
of many men. A few pounds to be paid may dip an honest man's head
under water for years, or for life. But the great evil of the law,
after all, is, that it costs so much. I am aware that this may be
nobody's fault; it may be a vice inherent in the nature of things.
Still, where the matter in question is of no very great amount, it
is a fact that makes the wise man willing rather to take injustice than
to go to law. A man meets with an injury; he sustains some wrong.
He brings his action; the jury give him ten or twenty pounds damages.
The jury fancy that this sum will make him amends for what he has
lost or suffered; they fancy that of course he will get this sum.
What would the jury think if told that he will never get a penny
of it? It will all go (and probably a good deal more) for extra
costs; that is, the costs the winning party will have to pay his
own attorney, besides the costs in the cause which the losing party
has to pay. No one profits pecuniarily by that verdict or that
trial, except the lawyers on either side. And does it not reduce
the administration of justice to an absurdity, to think that in the
majority of cases, the decision, no matter on which side, does no
good to the man in whose favour it is given.
Another thing which makes the courts of law a sad sight is, that
probably in no scene in human affairs are disappointment and success
set in so sharp contrast--brought so close together. There, on the
bench, dignified, keen, always kind and polite (for the days of
bullying have gone by), sits the Chief Justice--a peer (if he pleases
to be one)--a great, distinguished, successful man; his kindred
all proud of him. And there, only a few yards off, sharp-featured,
desponding, soured, sits poor Mr. Briefless, a disappointed man,
living in lonely chambers in the Temple: a hermit in the great
wilderness of London; in short, a total failure in life. Very
likely he absurdly over-estimates his talents, and what he could
have done if he had had the chance; but it is at least possible
that he may have in him the genius of another Follett, wasting
sadly and uselessly away. Now, of course, in all professions, and
all walks of life, there are success and failure; but there is
none, I think, in which poor failure must bear so keenly the trial
of being daily and closely set in contrast with flushed success.
Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown were rival suitors for the hand of Miss
Jones; Mr. Smith succeeded, and Mr. Brown failed; but though Mr.
Brown feels his mortification severely even as things are, it would
be a great deal worse if he were compelled to follow at a hundred
yards' distance Mr. Smith and Miss Jones in their moonlight walks,
and contemplate their happiness; to be present when they are married,
and daily to attend them throughout their marriage excursion. Or
some one else gets the bishopric you wished for; but you are not
obliged daily to contemplate the cathedral and the palace which you
had hoped to call your own. In most cases in this world failure may
look away from the success which makes its eyes sore and its heart
heavy. You try to have a kindly feeling towards the man who succeeded
where you failed, and in time you have it; but just at first
you would not have liked to have had ever before you the visible
manifestation of his success and your failure. You must have a very
sweet nature, and (let me say it) much help from a certain high
Quarter, if, without the least envy or jealousy, genially and
unsoured, you can daily look upon the man who, without deserving
to beat you, actually did beat you;--at least while the wound is
fresh.
And while talking of disappointment and success in courts of law.
let me remark, that petty success sometimes produces, in vulgar
natures, manifestations which are inexpressibly disgusting. Did
you ever remark the exultation of some low attorney when he had
succeeded in snapping a verdict in some contemptible case which
he had taken up and carried en upon speculation? I have witnessed
such a thing, and cannot but say that it appeared to me one of
the most revolting and disgusting phases which it is possible that
human nature should assume. I think I see the dirty, oily-looking
animal, at once servile and insolent, with trickery and rascality
in every line of his countenance, rubbing his hands in the hour of
his triumph, and bustling about to make immediate preparation for
availing himself of it. And following him, also sneakily exulting,
I see an object more dirty, more oily-looking, than the low attorney;
it is the low attorney's clerk. And on such an occasion, glancing
at the bench, when the judgment-seat was occupied by a judge who
had not yet learned never to look as if he thought or felt anything
in particular, I have discerned upon the judicial countenance an
expression of disgust as deep as my own.
Pleasanter scenes come up this afternoon with the mention of summer
days. I see depths of wood, where all the light is coolly green,
and the rippling brook is crystal clear. I see vistas through pines,
like cathedral vaults; the space enclosed looks on a sunshiny day
almost black, and a bit of bright blue sky at the end of each is
framed by the trees into the likeness of a Gothic window. I see
walls of gray rock on either side of a river, noisy and brawling
in winter time, but now quiet and low. For two or three miles the
walls of rock stretch onward; there are thick woods above them,
and here and there a sunny field: masses of ivy clothe the rock
in places; long sprays of ivy hang over. I walk on in thought till
I reach the opening of the glen; here a green bank slopes upward
from a dark pool below, and there is a fair stretch of champaign
country beyond the river; on the summit of the green bank, on
this side, mouldering, grey, ivied, lonely, stand the ruins of the
monastery, which has kept its place here for seven hundred years.
I see the sky-framing eastern window, its tracery gone. There are
masses of large daisies varying the sward, and the sweet fragrance
of young clover is diffused through all the air. I turn aside, and
walk through lines of rose-trees in their summer perfection. I hear
the drowsy hum of the laden bees. Suddenly it is the twilight, the
long twilight of Scotland, which would sometimes serve you to read
by at eleven o'clock at night. The crimson flush has faded from the
bosom of the river; if you are alone, its murmur begins to turn to
a moan; the white stones of the churchyard look spectral through the
trees. I think of poor Doctor Adam, the great Scotch schoolmaster
of the last century, the teacher of Sir Walter Scott, and his last
words, when the shadow of death was falling deeper--'It grows dark,
hoys; you may go.' Then, with the professional bias, I go to a
certain beautiful promise which the deepening twilight seldom fails
to suggest to me; a promise which tells us how the Christian's
day shall end, how the day of life might be somewhat overcast and
dreary, but light should come on the darkened way at last. 'It
shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear
nor dark. But it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord,
not day, nor night; but it shall come to pass that at evening time
it shall be light.' I think of various senses in which it might be
shown that these words speak truly; in which its great principle
holds good, that signal blessing shall come when it is needed most
and expected least; but I think mainly how, sometimes, at the close
of the chequered and sober day, the Better Sun has broken through
the clouds, and made the naming west all purple and gold. I think
how always the purer light comes, if not in this world, then in a
better. Bowing his head to pass under the dark portal, the Christian
lifts it on the other side, in the presence and the light of God.
J think how you and I, my reader, may perhaps have stood in the
chamber of death, and seen in the horizon the summer sun in glory
going down. But it is only to us who remain that the evening
darkness is growing--only for us that the sun is going down. Look
on the sleeping features, and think, 'Thy sun shall no more go
down, neither shall thy moon withdraw herself; for the Lord shall
be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be
ended.' And then, my reader, tell me--as the evening falls on you,
but not on him; as the shadows deepen on you, but not on him; as
the darkness gathers on you, but not on him--if, in sober reality,
the glorious promise has not found its perfect fulfilment, that
'at the evening time there shall be light!'
Every one knows that Summer Days dispose one to a certain listlessly
meditative mood. In cold weather, out of doors at least, you must
move about actively; it is only by the evening fireside, watching
the dancing shadows, that you have glimpses of this not wholly
unprofitable condition of mind. In summer-time you sometimes feel
disposed to stand and look for a good while at the top of a large
tree, gently waving about in the blue sky. You begin by thinking
it would be curious to be up there: but there is no thought or
speculation, moral, political, or religious, which may not come at
the end of the train started by the loftiest branches of the great
beech. You are able to sit for a considerable space in front of
an ivied wall, and think out your sermon for Sunday as you look at
the dark leaves in the sun. Above all, it is soothing and suggestive
to look from a height at the soft outline of distant hills of modest
elevation; and to see, between yourself and them, many farm-houses
and many little cottages dotted here and there. There, under your
eye, how much of life, and of the interests of life, is going on!
Looking at such things, you muse, in a vague, desultory way. I
wonder whether when ordinary folk profess to be thinking, musing,
or meditating, they are really thinking connectedly or to any purpose.
I daresay the truth is they have (so to speak) given the mind its
head; laid the reins of the will on the mind's neck; and are letting
it go on and about in a wayward, interrupted, odd, semi-conscious
way. They are not holding onward on any track of thought. I believe
that common-place human beings can only get their ideas upon any
subject into shape and order by writing them down, or (at least)
expressing them in words to some one besides themselves. You have
a walk of an hour, before you: you resolve that you will see your
way through some perplexed matter as you walk along; your mind is
really running upon it all the way: but when you have got within
a hundred yards of your journey's end, you find with a start that
you have made no progress at all: you are as far as ever from
seeing what to think or do. With most people, to meditate means
to approach to doing nothing at all as closely as in the nature of
humanity it is possible to do so. And in this sense of it, summer
days, after your work is over, are the time for meditation. So,
indeed, are quiet days of autumn: so the evening generally, when
it is not cold. 'Isaac went out to meditate in the field, at the
eventide.' Perhaps he thought of the progress of his crops, his
flocks, his affairs: perhaps he thought of his expected wife: most,
probably he thought of nothing in particular; for four thousand
years have left human nature in its essence the selfsame thing. It
would be miserable work to moon through life, never thinking except
in this listless, purposeless way: but after hard work, when you
feel the rest has been fairly earned, it is very delightful on
such a day and in such a scene as this, to sit down and muse. The
analogy which suggests itself to me is that of a carriage-horse,
long constrained to keep to the even track along hard dusty roads,
drawing a heavy burden; now turned free into a cool green field
to wander, and feed, and roll about untrammelled. Even so does
the mind, weary of consecutive thinking--of thinking in the track
and thinking with a purpose--expatiate in the license of aimless
meditation.
There are various questions which may fitly be thought of in the
listlessness of this summer day. They are questions the consideration
of which does not much excite; questions to which you do not very
much mind whether you get an answer or no. I have been thinking
for a little while, since I finished the last paragraph, of this
point: Whether that clergyman, undertaking the charge of some
important church, is best equipped for his duty, who has a great
many sermons carefully written and laid up in a box, ready to come
out when needed: or that other clergyman, who has very few sermons
fully written out, but who has spent great pains in disciplining
his mind into that state in which it shall always be able to produce
good material. Which of these has made best progress towards the
end of being a good and efficient preacher? Give me, I should say,
on the whole, the solid material stock, rather than the trained
inind. I look with a curious feeling upon certain very popular
preachers, who preach entirely extempore: who make a few notes of
their skeleton of thought; but trust for the words and even for the
illustrations to the inspiration of the moment. They go on boldly:
but their path crumbles away behind them as they advance. Their
minds are in splendid working order: they turn off admirable work
Sunday by Sunday: and while mind and nervous system keep their
spring, that admirable work may be counted on almost with certainty.
They have Fortunio's purse: they can always put their hand upon
the sovereigns they need: but they have no hoard accumulated which
they might draw from, should the purse some day fail. And remembering
how much the success of the extempore speaker depends upon the
mood of the moment: remembering what little things, menial and
physical, may mar and warp the intellectual machine for the moment:
remembering how entirely successful extempore speaking founds on
perfect confidence and presence of mind: remembering how as one
grows older the nervous system may get shaken and even broken down:
remembering how the train of thought which your mind has produced
melts away from you unless you preserve a record of it (for I am
persuaded that to many men that which they themselves have written
looks before very long as strange and new as that produced by
another mind): remembering these things, I say to myself, and to
you if you choose to listen: Write sermons diligently: write them
week by week, and always do your very best: never make up your mind
that this one shall be a third-rate affair, just to get the Sunday
over; and thus accumulate material for use in days when thoughts
will not come so readily, and when the hand must write tremblingly
and slow. Don't be misled by any clap-trap about the finer thing
being to have the mental machine always equal to its task. You
cannot have that. The mind is a wayward, capricious thing. The
engine which did its sixty miles an hour to-day, may be depended on
(barring accident) to do as much to-morrow. But it is by no means
certain that because you wrote your ten or twenty pages to-day,
you will be able to do the like on another day. What educated man
does not know, that when he sits down to his desk after breakfast,
it is quite uncertain whether he will accomplish an ordinary task,
or a double task, or a quadruple one? Dogged determination may
make sure, on almost every day, of a decent amount of produced
material: but the quality varies vastly, and the quantity which the
same degree and continuance of strain will produce is not a priori
to be calculated. And a spinning-jenny will day by day produce
thread of uniform quality: but a very clever man, by very great
labour, will on some days write miserable rubbish. And no one will
feel that more bitterly than himself.
I pass from thinking of these things to a matter somewhat connected
with them. Is it because preachers now-a-days shrink from the labour
of writing sermons for themselves, or is it because they distrust
the quality of what they can themselves produce, that shameless
plagiarism is becoming so common? One cannot but reflect, thus
lazily inclined upon a summer day, what an amount of painful labour
would be saved one if, instead of toiling to see the way through
a subject, and then to set out one's views in an interesting and
(if possible) an impressive manner, one had simply to go to the
volumes of Mr. Melvill or Bishop Wilberforce or Dean Trench; or,
if your taste be of a different order, to those of Mr. Spurgeon,
Mr. Punshon, or Mr. Stowell Brown--and copy out what you want. The
manual labour might be considerable--for one blessing of original
composition is, that it makes you insensible to the mere mechanical
labour of writing,--but the intellectual saving would be tremendous.
I say nothing of the moral deterioration. I say nothing as to
what a mean, contemptible pickpocket, what a jackdaw in peacock's
feathers, you will feel yourself. There is no kind of dishonesty
which ought to be exposed more unsparingly. Whenever I hear a sermon
preached which has been stolen, I shall make a point of informing
every one who knows the delinquent. Let him get the credit which
is his due. I have not read many published sermons, and I seldom
hear any one preach except myself; so that I do not speak from
personal knowledge of the fact alleged by many, that there never
was a period when this paltry lying and cheating was so prevalent.
But five or six times within the last nine years I have listened
to sermons in which there was not merely a manifest appropriation
of thoughts which the preacher had never digested or made his own,
but which were stolen word for word; and I have been told by friends
in whom I have implicit confidence of instances twice five or six.
Generally, this dishonesty is practised by frightful block-heads,
whose sole object perhaps is to get decently through a task for
which they feel themselves unfit; but it is much more irritating
to find men of considerable talent, and of more than considerable
popularity, practising it in a very gross degree. And it is curious
how such dishonest persons gain in hardihood as they go on. Either
because they really escape detection, or because no one tells
them that they have been detected, they come at length to parade
themselves in their swindled finery upon the most public occasions.
I do believe that, like the liar who has told his story so long
that he has come to believe it at last, there are persons who have
stolen the thoughts of others so often and so long, that they hardly
remember that they are thieves. And in two or three cases in which
I put the matter to the proof, by speaking to the thief of the
characteristics of the stolen composition, I found him quite prepared
to carry out his roguery to the utmost, by talking of the trouble
it had cost him to write Dr. Newman's or Mr. Logan's discourse.
'Quite a simple matter--no trouble; scribbled off on Saturday
afternoon,' said, in my hearing, a man who had preached an elaborate
sermon by an eminent Anglican divine. The reply was irresistible:
'Well, if it cost you little trouble, I am sure it cost Mr. Melvill
a great deal.'
I am speaking, you remark, of those despicable individuals who
falsely pass off as their own composition what they have stolen
from some one else. I do not allude to such as follow the advice
of Southey, and preach sermons which they honestly declare are
not their own. I can see something that might be said in favour of
the young inexperienced divine availing himself of the experience
of others. Of course, you may take the ground that it is better
to give a good sermon by another man than a bad one of your own.
Well, then, say that it is not your own. Every one knows that when
a clergyman goes to the pulpit and gives out his text, and then
proceeds with his sermon, the understanding is that he wrote that
sermon for himself. If he did not write it, he is bound in common
honesty to say so. But besides this, I deny the principle on which
some justify the preaching of another man's sermon. I deny that
it is better to give the good sermon of another than the middling
one by yourself. Depend upon it, if you have those qualifications
of head and heart that fit you for being in the Church at all,
your own sermon, however inferior in literary merit, is the better
sermon for you to give and for your congregation to hear; it is
the better fitted to accomplish the end of all worthy preaching,
which, as you know, is not at all to get your hearers to think how
clever a man you are. The simple, unambitious instruction into
which you have thrown the teachings of your own little experience,
and which you give forth from your own heart, will do a hundred
times more good than any amount of ingenuity, brilliancy, or even
piety, which you may preach at second-hand, with the feeling that
somehow you stand to all this as an outsider. If you wish honestly
to do good, preach what you have felt, and neither less nor more.
But in no way of regarding the case can any excuse be found for
persons who steal and stick into their discourses tawdry little bits
of bombast, purple patches of thought or sentiment, which cannot
be supposed to do any good to anybody, which stand merely instead
of a little stolen gilding for the gingerbread which is probably
stolen too. I happened the other day to turn over a volume of
discourses (not, I am thankful to say, by a clergyman of either
of the national churches), and I came upon a sermon or lecture on
Woman. You can imagine the kind of thing it was. It was by no means
devoid of talent. The writer is plainly a clever, flippant person,
with little sense, and no taste at all. The discourse sets out
with a request that the audience 'would kindly try to keep awake by
pinching one another in the leg, or giving some nodding neighbour
a friendly pull of the hair;' and then there is a good deal about
Woman, in the style of a Yankee after-dinner speech in proposing such
a toast. After a little we have a highly romantic description of
a battle-field after the battle, in which gasping steeds, midnight
ravens, spectral bats, moping owls, screeching vultures, howling
night wolves appear. These animals are suddenly startled by a figure
going about with a lantern 'to find the one she loves.' Of course
the figure is a woman; and the paragraph winds up with the following
passage:--
Shall we go to her? No! Let her weep on. Leave her, &c. Oh, woman!
God beloved in old Jerusalem! We need deal lightly with thy faults,
if only for the agony thy nature will endure, in bearing heavy
evidence against us on the day of judgment!
Now, my friend, have you read Mr. Dickens' story of Martin Chuzzlewit?
Turn up the twenty-eighth chapter of that work, and in the closing
sentence you may read as follows:--
Oh woman, God-beloved in old Jerusalem! The best among us need deal
lightly with thy faults, if only for the punishment thy nature will
endure, in bearing heavy evidence against us on the Day of Judgment!
I wonder whether the writer of the discourse imagined that by varying
one or two words, and adopting small letters instead of capitals
in alluding to the Last Day, he made this sentence so entirely his
own as to justify him in bagging it without one hint that it was a
quotation. As for the value of the property bagged, that is another
question.
After thinking for a few minutes of the curious constitution of
mind which enables a man to feel his vanity flattered when he gets
credit to which he knows he is not entitled, as the plagiarist does,
I pass away into the. vast field of thought which is afforded by
the contemplation of human vanity in general. The Ettrick Shepherd
was wont to say that when he tried a new pen, instead of writing
his name, as most people do, he always wrote Solomon's famous
sentence, All is vanity. But he did not understand the words in
Solomon's sense: what he thought of was the limitless amount of
self-conceit which exists in human beings, and which hardly any
degree of mortification can (in many cases) cut down to a reasonable
quantity. I find it difficult to arrive at any fixed law in regard
to human self-conceit. It would be very pleasant if one could
conclude that monstrous vanity is confined to tremendous fools; but
although the greatest intellectual self-conceit I have ever seen
has been in blockheads of the greatest density and ignorance; and
although the greatest self-conceit of personal attractions has
been in men and women of unutterable silliness; still, it must
be admitted that very great and illustrious members of the human
race have been remarkable for their vanity. I have met very clever
men, as well as very great fools, who would willingly talk of no
other matters than themselves, and their own wonderful doings and
attainments. I have known men of real ability, who were always
anxious to impress you with the fact that they were the best riders,
the best shots, the best jumpers, in the world; who were always
telling stories of the sharp things they said on trying occasions,
and the extraordinary events which were constantly befalling them.
When a clever man evinces this weakness, we must remember that
human nature is a weak and imperfect thing, and try to excuse the
silliness for the sake of the real merit. But there are few things
more irritating to witness than a stupid, ignorant dunce, wrapped
up in impenetrable conceit of his own abilities and acquirements.
It requires all the beauty, and all the listlessness too, of this
sweet summer day, to think, without the pulse quickening to an
indignant speed, of the half-dozen such persons whom each of us has
known. It would soothe and comfort us if we could be assured that
the blockhead knew that he was a blockhead: if we could be assured
that now and then there penetrated into the dense skull and reached
the stolid brain, even the suspicion of what his intellectual
calibre really is. I greatly fear that such a suspicion never is
known. If you witness the perfect confidence with which the man is
ready to express his opinion upon any subject, you will be quite
sure that the man has not the faintest notion of what his opinion is
worth. I remember a blockhead saying that certain lines of poetry
were nonsense. He said that they were unintelligible: that they
were rubbish. I suggested that it did not follow that they were
unintelligible because he could not understand them. I told him
that various competent judges thought them very noble lines indeed.
The blockhead stuck to his opinion with the utmost firmness. What
was the use of talking to him? If a blind man tells you he does
not see the sun, and does not believe there is any sun, you ought
to be sorry for him rather than angry with him. And when the
blockhead declared that he saw only rubbish in verses which I trust
every reader knows, and which begin with the line--
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
his declaration merely showed that he lacked the power to appreciate
Mr. Tennyson. But I think, my thoughtful friend, you would have found
it hard to pity him when you saw plainly that the poor blockhead
despised and pitied you.
The conceit of the stolid dunce is bad, but the conceit of the
brisk and lively dunce is worse. The stolid dunce is comparatively
quiet; his crass mind works slowly; his vacant face wears an aspect
of repose; his talk is merely dull and twaddling. But the talk of
the brisk dunce is ambitiously absurd: he lays down broad principles:
he announces important discoveries which lie has made: he has
heard able and thoughtful men talk, and he tries to do that kind
of thing. There is an indescribable jauntiness about him apparent
in every word and gesture. As for the stolid dunce, you would be
content if the usages of society permitted your telling him that
he is a dunce. As for the brisk dunce, you would like to take him
by the ears and shake him.
It is wonderful how ordinary, sensjble persons, with nothing brilliant
about them, may live daily in a comfortable feeling that they are
great geniuses: if they live constantly amid a little circle of
even the most incompetent judges, who are always telling them that
they are great geniuses. For it is natural to conclude that the
opinion of the people whom you commonly see is a fair reflex of
the opinion of all the world; and it is wonderful how highly even
a very able man will estimate the value of the opinion of even a
very stupid man, provided the stupid man entertains and frequently
expresses an immensely high opinion of the very able man. I have
known a man, holding a somewhat important position for which he was
grossly unfit, and for which every one knew he was grossly unfit;
yet perfectly self-satisfied and comfortable under circumstances
which would have crushed many men, because he was kept up by two
or three individuals who frequently assured him that he was a very
eminent and useful person. These two or three individuals acted
as a buffer between him and the estimate of mankind at large. He
received their opinion as a fair sample of the general opinion. He
was indeed a man of very moderate ability; but I have known another
of very great talent, who by the laudations of one or two old
women was led to suppose that he possessed abilities of a totally
different nature from those which he actually possessed. I do not
mean higher abilities, but abilities extending into a field into
which his peculiar talents did not reach. Yet no one would have
been sharper at discerning the worthlessness of the judgment of
the old women had it been other than very flattering to himself.
Who is there that does not know that sometimes clever young men
are bolstered up into a self-conceit which does them much harm with
the outer world, by the violent admiration and flattery of their
mothers, sisters, and aunts at home?
But not merely does the favourable estimate of the. little circle
in which he lives serve to keep a man on good terms with himself;
it goes some way towards influencing the estimation in which he
is held by mankind at large--so far, that is, as mankind at large
know anything about him. I have known such a thing as a family whose
several members were always informing everybody they met what noble
fellows the other members of the family were. And I am persuaded
that all this really had some result. They were fine fellows, no
doubt; but this tended to make sure that they should not be hid
under a bushel. I am persuaded that if half-a-dozen clever young
men were to form themselves into a little association, each member
of which should be pledged to lose no opportunity of crying up the
other five members in conversation, through the press, and in--every
other possible way, this would materially further their success in
life and the estimation in which they would be held wherever known.
The world would take them at the value so constantly dinned into
its ear. When you read on a silver coin the legend one shilling,
you readily take it for a shilling; and if a man walks about with
great genius painted upon him in large red letters, many people
will aecept the truth of the inscription. Every one has seen how
a knot of able young men hanging together at college and in after
life can help one another even in a material sense, and not less
valuably by keeping up one another's heart. All this is quite fair,
and so is even the mutual praise when it is hearty and sincere.
For several months past I have been possessed of an idea which has
been gradually growing into shape. I have thought of getting up an
association, whose members should always hold by one another, be
true to one another, and cry one another up. A friend to whom I
mentioned my plan highly approved it, and suggested the happy name
of the MUTUAL EXALTATION SOCIETY. The association would be limited
in number: not more than fifty members could be admitted. It would
include educated men in all walks of life; more particularly men
whose success in life depends in any measure upon the estimation
in which they are commonly held, as barristers, preachers, authors,
and the like. Its purposes and operations have already been indicated
with as much fulness as would be judicious at the present juncture.
Mr. Barnum and Messrs. Moses and Son would be consulted on the
details. Sir John Ellesmere, ex-solicitor-general and author of the
Essay on the Arts of Self-Advancement, would be the first president,
and the general guide, philosopher, and friend of the Mutual
Exaltation Society. The present writer will be secretary. The only
remuneration he would expect would be that all the members should
undertake, at least six times every day, to make favourable mention
of a recently published work. Six times a day would they be expected
to say promiscuously to any intelligent friend or stranger, 'Have
you read the Recreations of a Country Parson? Most wonderful book!
Not read it? Go to Mudie's and get it directly '--and the like.
For obvious reasons it would not do to make public the names of
the members of the association; the moral weight of their mutual
laudation would be much diminished. But clever young men in various
parts of the country who may desire to join the society, may make
application to the Editor of Eraser's Magazine, enclosing testimonials
of moral and intellectual character. Applications will be received
until the First of April, 1861.
I wonder whether any real impression is produced by those puffing
paragraphs which appear in country newspapers about some men, and
which are written either by the men themselves or by their near
relatives and friends. I think no impression is ever produced upon
intelligent people, and no permanent impression upon any one. Still,
among a rural population, there may be found those who believe all
that is printed in a newspaper; and who think that the man who is
mentioned in a newspaper is a very great man. And if you live among
such, it is pleasant to be regarded by them as a hero. The Reverend
Mr. Smith receives from his parishioners the gift of a silver
salver: the county paper of the following Friday contains a lengthy
paragraph recording the fact, and giving the reverend gentleman's
feeling and appropriate reply. The same worthy clergy-man preaches
a charity sermon: and the circumstance is recorded very fully, the
eloquent peroration being given with an accuracy which says much
for the perfection of provincial reporting--given, indeed, word
for word. Now it is natural to think that Mr. Smith is a much more
eminent man than those other men whose salvers and charity sermons
find no place in the newspaper: and Mr. Smith's agricultural
parishioners no doubt think so. A different opinion is entertained
by such as know that Mr. Smith's uncle is a large proprietor in
the puffing newspaper; and that he wrote the articles in question
in a much warmer strain than that in which they appeared, the editor
having sadly curtailed and toned them down. In the long run, all
this quackery does no good. And indeed long accounts in provincial
journals of family matters, weddings and the like, serve only to make
the family in question laughed at. Still, they do harm to nobody.
They are very innocent. They please the family whose proceedings
are chronicled; and if the family are laughed at, why, they don't
know it.
And, happily, that which we do not know does us no harm: at least,
gives us no pain. And it is a law, a kindly and a reasonable law,
of civilized life, that when it is not absolutely necessary that
a man should know that which would give him pain, he shall not be
told of it. Only the most malicious violate this law. Even they
cannot do it long: for they come to be excluded from society as
its common enemies. One great characteristic of educated society
is this: it is always under a certain degree of Restraint. Nohody,
in public, speaks out all his mind. Nobody tells the whole truth,
at least, in public speeches and writings. It is a terrible thing
when an inexperienced man in Parliament (for instance) blurts out
the awkward fact which everybody knows, but of which nobody is to
speak except in the confidence of friendship or private society.
How such a man is hounded down! He is every one's enemy. Every one
is afraid of him. No one knows what he may say next. And it is quite
fit that he should be stopped. Civilized life could not otherwise
go on. It is quite right (when you calmly reflect upon it) that the
county paper, speaking of the member of Parliament, should tell us
how this much-respected gentleman has been visiting his Constituents,
but should suppress a good deal of the speech he made, which the
editor (though of the same politics) tells you frankly was worthy
only of an escaped lunatic. Above all, it is fit and decent that
the very odd private life and character of the legislator should be
by tacit consent ignored even by the journals most opposed to him.
It is right that kings and nobles should be, for the most part,
spoken of in public as if they actually were what they ought to be.
It is something of a reminder and a rebuke to them: and it is just
as well that mankind at large should not know too much of the actual
fact as to those above them. I should never object to calling a
graceless duke Tour Grace: nor to praying for a villariously bad
monarch as our most religious and gracious King (I know quite well,
small critic, that religious is an absurd mistranslation: but let
us take the liturgy in the sense in which ninety-nine out of every
hundred who hear it understand it): for it seems to me that the
daily recurring phrases are something ever suggesting what mankind
have a right to expect from those in eminent station; and a kindly
determination to believe that such are at least endeavoring to be
what they ought. No doubt there is often most bitter rehuke in the
names! This law of Restraint extends to all the doings of civilized
men. No one does anything to the very utmost of his ability. No
one speaks the entire truth, unless in confidence. No one exerts
his whole bodily strength. No one ever spoke at the very top of
his voice, unless in mortal extremity. Unquestionably, the feeling
that you must work within limits curtails the result accomplished.
You may see this in cases in which the restraint of the civilized
man binds him no longer. A man delirious or mad needs four men to
hold him: there is no restraint keeping in his exertions; and you
see what physical energy can do when utterly unlimited. And a man
who always spoke out in public the entire truth about all men and
all things, would inspire I know not what of terror. He would be
like a mad Malay running a muck, dagger in hand. If the person who
in a deliberative assembly speaks of another person as his venerable
friend, were to speak of him there as he did half an hour before
in private, as an obstructive old idiot, how people would start!
It would be like the bare bones of the skeleton showing through
the fair covering of flesh and blood.
The shadows are lengthening eastward now; the summer day will soon
be gone. And looking about on this beautiful world, I think of
a poem by Bryant, in which he tells us how, gazing on the sky and
the mountains in June, he wished that when his time should come,
the green turf of summer might be broken to make his grave. He could
not bear, he tells us, the idea of being borne to his resting-place
through sleety winds, and covered with icy clods. Of course, poets
give us fanciful views, gained by looking at one side of a picture:
arid De Quincey somewhere states the opposite opinion, that death
seems sadder in summer, because there is a feeling that in quitting
this world our friend is losing more. It will not matter much,
friendly reader, to you and me, what kind of weather there may be
on the day of our respective funerals; though one would wish for
a pleasant, sunshiny time. And let us humbly trust that when we
go, we may find admission to a Place so beautiful, that we shall
not miss the green fields and trees, the roses and honeysuckle of
June. You may think, perhaps, of another reason besides Bryant's,
for preferring to die in the summer time; you remember the quaint
old Scotch lady, dying on a night of rain and hurricane, who said
(in entire simplicity and with nothing of irreverence) to the
circle of relations round her bed, 'Eh, what a fearfu' nicht for
me to be fleein' through the air!' And perhaps it is natural to
think it would be pleasant for the parted spirit, passing away from
human ken and comfort, to mount upwards, angel-guided, through the
soft sunset air of June, towards the country where suns never set,
and where all the days are summer days. But all this is no better
than a wayward fancy; it founds on forgetfulness of the nature of
the immaterial soul, to think that there need be any lengthened
journey, or any flight through skies either stormy or calm. You have
not had the advantage, I dare say, of being taught in your childhood
the catechism which is drilled into all children in Scotland;
and which sketches out with admirable clearness and precision
the elements of Christian belief. If you had, you would have been
taught to repeat words which put away all uncertainty as to the
intermediate state of departed spirits. 'The souls of believers are
at their death made perfect in holiness, and do IMMEDIATELY pass
into glory.' Yes; IMMEDIATELY; there is to the departed spirit no
middle space at all between earth and heaven. The old lady need
not have looked with any apprehension to going out from the warm
chamber into the stormy winter night, and flying far away. Not but
that millions of miles may intervene; not but that the two worlds
may be parted by a still, breathless ocean, a fathomless abyss of
cold dead space; yet, swift as never light went, swift as never
thought went, flies the just man's spirit across the profound.
One moment the sick-room, the scaffold, the stake; the next, the
paradisal glory. One moment the sob of parting anguish; the next
the great deep swell of the angel's song. Never think, reader,
that the dear ones you have seen die, had far to go to meet God
after they parted from you. Never think, parents who have seen
your children die, that after they left you, they had to traverse
a dark solitary way, along which you would have liked (if it had
been possible) to lead them by the hand, and bear them company
till they came into the presence of God. You did so, if you stood
by them till the last breath was drawn. You did bear them company
into God's very presence, if you only stayed beside them till they
died. The moment they left you, they were with him. The slight
pressure of the cold fingers lingered with you yet; but the little
child was with his Saviour.
CHAPTER VI.
CONCERNING SCREWS:
BEING THOUGHTS ON THE PRACTICAL SERVICE OF IMPERFECT MEANS.
A CONSOLATORY ESSAY.
Almost every man is what, if he were a horse, would be called a
screw. Almost every man is unsound. Indeed, my reader, I might well
say even more than this. It would be no more than truth, to say
that there does not breathe any human being who could satisfactorily
pass a thorough examination of his physical and moral nature by a
competent inspector.
I do not here enter on the etymological question, why an unsound
horse is called a screw. Let that be discussed by abler hands.
Possibly the phrase set out at length originally ran, that an unsound
horse was an animal in whose constitution there was a screw loose.
And the jarring effect produced upon any machine by looseness
on the part of a screw which ought to be tight, is well known to
thoughtful and experienced minds. By a process of gradual abbreviation,
the phrase indicated passed into the simpler statement, that the
unsound steed was himself a screw. By a bold transition, by a subtle
intellectual process, the thing supposed to be wrong in the animal's
physical system was taken to mean the animal in whose physical
system the thing was wrong. Or, it is conceivable that the use of
the word screw implied that the animal, possibly in early youth,
had got some unlucky twist or wrench, which permanently damaged its
bodily nature, or warped its moral development. A tendon perhaps
received a tug which it never quite got over. A joint was suddenly
turned in a direction in which Nature had not contemplated its
ever turning: and the joint never played quite smoothly and sweetly
again. In this sense, we should discern in the use of the word screw,
something analogous to the expressive Scotticism, which says of a
perverse and impracticable man, that he is a thrown person; that
is, a person who has got a thraw or twist; or rather, a person the
machinery of whose mind works as machinery might be conceived to
work which had got a thraw or twist. The reflective reader will
easily discern that a complex piece of machinery, by receiving an
unlucky twist, even a slight twist, would be put into a state in
which it would not go sweetly, or would not go at all.
After this excursus, which I regard as not unworthy the attention
of the eminent Dean of Westminster, who has for long been, through
his admirable works, my guide and philosopher in all matters relating
to the study of words, I recur to the grand principle laid down at
the beginning of the present dissertation, and say deliberately,
that ALMOST EVERY MAN THAT LIVES, IS WHAT, IF HE WERE A
HORSE, WOULD BE CALLED A
SCREW. Almost every man is unsound. Every man (to use the language
of a veterinary surgeon) has in him the seeds of unsoundness. You
could not honestly give a warranty with almost any mortal. Alas!
my brother; in the highest and most solemn of all respects, if
soundness ascribed to a creature implies that it is what it ought
to be, who shall venture to warrant any man sound!
I do not mean to make my readers uncomfortable, by suggesting that
every man is physically unsound: I speak of intellectual and moral
unsoundness. You know, the most important thing about a horse is.
his body; and accordingly when we speak of a horse's soundness or
unsoundness, we speak physically; we speak of his body. But the
most important thing about a man is his mind; and so, when we say
a man is sound or unsound, we are thinking of mental soundness or
unsoundness. In short, the man is mainly a soul; the horse is mainly
and essentially a body. And though the moral qualities even of a
horse are of great importance,--such qualities as vice (which in a
horse means malignity of temper), obstinacy, nervous shyness (which
carried out into its practical result becomes shying); still the
name of screw is chiefly suggestive of physical defects. Its main
reference is to wind and limb. The soundness of a horse is to the
philosophic and stable mind suggestive of good legs, shoulders, and
hoofs; of uncongested lungs and free air-passages; of efficient eyes
and entire freedom from staggers. It is the existence of something
wrong in these matters which constitutes the unsound horse, or
screw.
But though the great thing about rational and immortal man is
the soul: and though accordingly the most important soundness or
unsoundness about him is that which has its seat THERE; still, let
it be said that even as regards physical soundness there are few
men whom a veterinary surgeon would pass, if they were horses. Most
educated men are physically in very poor condition. And particularly
the cleverest of our race, in whom intellect is most developed and
cultivated, are for the most part in a very unsatisfactory state as
regards bodily soundness. They rub on: they manage somehow to get
through their work in life; but they never feel brisk or buoyant.
They never know high health, with its attendant cheerfulness. It
is a rare case to find such a combination of muscle and intellect
as existed in Christopher North: the commoner type is the shambling
Wordsworth, whom even his partial sister thought so mean-looking
when she saw him walking with a handsome man. Let it be repeated,
most civilized men are physically unsound. For one thing, most
educated men are broken-winded. They could not trot a quarter of
a mile without great distress. I have been amused, when in church
I have heard a man beyond middle age singing very loud, and plainly
proud of his volume of voice, to see how the last note of the line
was cut short for want of wind. I say nothing of such grave signs
of physical unsoundness as little pangs shooting about the heart,
and little dizzinesses of the brain; these matters are too serious
for this page. But it is certain that educated men, for the most
part, have great portions of their muscular system hardly at all
developed, through want of exercise. The legs of even hard brain-workers
are generally exercised a good deal; for the constitutional exercise
of such is usually walking. But in large town such men give fair
play to no other thews and sinews. More especially the arms of such
men are very flabby. The muscle is soft, and slender. If the fore
legs of a horse were like that, you could not ride him but at the
risk of your neck.
Still, the great thing about man is the mind; and when I set out
by declaring that almost every man is unsound, I was thinking of
mental unsoundness. Most minds are unsound. No horse is accepted
as sound in which the practised eye of the veterinarian can find
some physical defect, something, away from normal development
and action. And if the same rule be applied to us, my readers;
if every man is mentally a screw, in whose intellectual and moral
development a sharp eye can detect something not right in the play
of the machinery or the formation of it; then I fancy that we may
safely lay it down as an axiom, that there is not upon the face of
the earth a perfectly sane man. A sane mind means a healthy mind;
that is, a mind that is exactly what it ought to be. Where shall
we discover such a one? My reader, you have not got it. I have
not got it. Nobody has got it. No doubt, at the first glance, this
seems startling; but I intend this essay to be a consolatory one,
and I wish to show you that in this world it is well if means will
fairly and decently suffice for their ends, even though they be
very far from being all that we could wish. God intends not that
this world should go on upon a system of optimism. It is enough,
if things are so, that they will do. They might do far better. And
let us remember, that though a veterinary surgeon would tell you
that there is hardly such a thing as a perfectly sound horse in
Britain, still in Britain there is very much work done, and well
done, by horses. Even so, much work, fair work, passable work,
noble work, magnificent work, may be turned off, and day by day is
turned off, by minds which, in strict severity, are no better than
good, workable, or showy screws.
Many minds, otherwise good and even noble, are unsound upon the
point of Vanity. Nor is the unsoundness one that requires any very
sharp observer to detect. It is very often extremely conspicuous;
and the merest block-head can discern, and can laugh at, the
unfortunate defect in one who is perhaps a great and excellent man.
Many minds are off the balance in the respect of Suspiciousness;
many in that of absurd Prejudice. Many are unsound in the matters
of Silliness, Pettiness, Pettedness, Perversity, or general Unpleasantness
and Thrawn-ness. Multitudes of men are what in Scotland is called
Cat-witted. I do not know whether the word is intelligible in
England. It implies a combination of littleness of nature, small
self-conceit, readiness to take offence, determination in little
things to have one's own way, and general impracticability. There
are men to whom even the members of their own families do not like
to talk about their plans and views: who will suddenly go off on
a long journey without telling anyone in the house till the minute
before they go; and concerning whom their nearest relatives think
it right to give you a hint that they are rather peculiar in temper,
and you must mind how you talk to them. There are human beings whom
to manage into doing the simplest and most obvious duty, needs, on
your part, the tact of a diplomatist combined with the skill of a
driver of refractory pigs. In short, there are in human beings all
kinds of mental twists and deformities. There are mental lameness
and broken-windedness. Mental and moral shying is extremely common.
As for biting, who does not know it? We have all seen human biters;
not merely backbiters, but creatures who like to leave the marks
of their teeth upon people present too. There are many kickers; men
who in running with others do (so to speak) kick over the traces,
and viciously lash out at their companions with little or no
provocation. There are men who are always getting into quarrels,
though in the main warm-hearted and well-meaning. There are human
jibbers: creatures that lie down in the shafts instead of manfully
(or horsefully) putting their neck to the collar, and going stoutly at
the work of life. There are multitudes of people who are constantly
suffering from depression of spirits, a malady which appears
in countless forms. There is not a human being in whose mental
constitution there is not something wrong; some weakness, some
perversion, some positive vice. And if you want further proof
of the truth of what I am saying, given by one whose testimony is
worth much more than mine, go and read that eloquent and kindly and
painfully fascinating book lately published by Dr. Forbes Winslow,
on Obscure Diseases of the Brain and Mind; and you will leave off
with the firmest conviction that every breathing mortal is mentally
a screw.
And yet, my reader, if you have some knowledge of horse-flesh, and
if you have been accustomed in your progress through life (in the
words of Dr. Johnson) to practise observation, and to look about
you with extensive view, your survey must have convinced you that
great part of the coaching and other horse work of this country is
done, and fairly done, by screws. These poor creatures are out in
all kinds of weather, and it seems to do them little harm. Any one
who knows how snug, dry, and warm a gentleman's horses are kept,
and how often with all that they are unfit for their duty, will
wonder to see poor cab horses shivering on the stand hour after
hour on a winter day, and will feel something of respect mingle
with his pity for the thin, patient, serviceable screws. Horses
that are lame, broken-winded, and vicious, pull the great bulk of
all the weight that horses pull. And they get through their work
somehow. Not long since, sitling on the box of a highland coach of
most extraordinary shape, I travelled through Glenorchy and along
Loch Awe side. The horses were wretched to look at, yet they took
the coach at a good pace over that very up and down road, which
was divided into very long stages. At last, amid a thick wood of
dwarf oaks, the coach stopped to receive its final team. It was an
extraordinary place for a coach to change horses. There was not a
house near: the horses had walked three miles from their stable.
They were by far the best team that had drawn the coach that day.
Four tall greys, nearly white with age; but they looked well and went
well, checking the coach stoutly as they went down the precipitous
descents, and ascending the opposite hills at a tearing gallop.
No doubt you could see various things amiss. They were blowing a
little; one or two were rather blind; and all four a little stiff
at starting. They were all screws. The dearest of them had not cost
the coach proprietor seven pounds; yet how well they went over the
eleven-mile stage into Inverary!
Now in like manner, a great part of the mental work that is done,
is done by men who mentally are screws. The practical every-day
work of life is done, and respectably done, by very silly, weak,
prejudiced people. Mr. Carlyle has stated, that the population of
Britain consists of 'seventeen millions of people, mostly fools.'
I shall endeavour by and bye to make some reservation upon the great
author's sweeping statement; but here it is enough to remark that
even Mr. Carlyle would admit that the very great majority of these
seventeen millions get very decently and creditably through the
task which God sets them in this world. Let it be admitted that they
are not so wise as they should be; yet surely it may be admitted
too, that they possess that in heart and head which makes them
good enough for the rough and homely wear of life. No doubt they
blow and occasionally stumble, they sometimes even bite and kick
a little; yet somehow they get the coach along. For it is to be
remembered that the essential characteristic of a screw is, that
though unsound, it can yet by management be got to go through a
great deal of work. The screw is not dead lame, nor only fit for
the knacker; it falls far short of the perfection of a horse, but
still it is a horse, after all, and it can fulfil in some measure
a horse's duty. You see, my friend, the moderation of my view. I
do not say that men in general are mad, but only that men in general
are screws. There is a little twist in their intellectual or moral
nature; there is something wanting or something wrong; they are
silly, conceited, egotistical, and the like; yet decently equal
to the work of this world. By judicious management you may get a
great deal of worthy work out of the unsound minds of other men;
and out of your own unsound mind. But always remember that you have
an imperfect and warped machine to get on with; do not expect too
much of it; and be ready to humour it and yield to it a little.
Just as a horse which is lame and broken-winded can yet by care
and skill be made to get creditably through a wonderful amount of
labour; so may a man, low-spirited, foolish, prejudiced, ill-tempered,
soured, and wretched, be enabled to turn off a great deal of work
for which the world may be the better. A human being who is really
very weak and silly, may write many pages which shall do good to
his fellow men, or which shall at the least amuse them. But as you
carefully drive an unsound horse, walking him at first starting,
not trotting him down hill, making play at parts of the road which
suit him; so you must manage many men, or they will break down or
bolt out of the path. Above all, so you must manage your own mind,
whose weaknesses and wrong impulses you know best, if you would
keep it cheerful, and keep it in working order. The showy, unsound
horse can go well perhaps, but it must be shod with leather, otherwise
it would be dead-lame in a mile. And just in that same fashion we
human beings, all more or less of screws mentally and morally, need
all kinds of management, on the part of our friends and on our own
part, or we should go all wrong. There is something truly fearful
when we find that clearest-headed and soberest-hearted of men,
the great Bishop Butler, telling us that all his life long he was
struggling with horrible morbid suggestions, devilish is what he
calls them, which, but for being constantly held in check with the
sternest effort of his nature, would have driven him mad. Oh, let
the uncertain, unsound, unfathomable human heart be wisely and
tenderly driven! And as there are things which with the unsound
horse you dare not venture on at all, so with the fallen mind. You
who know your own horse, know that you dare not trot him hard down
hill. And you who know your own mind and heart, know that there are
some things of which you dare not think; thoughts on which your
only safety is resolutely to turn your back. The management needful
here is the management of utter avoidance. How often we find poor
creatures who have passed through years of anxiety and misery,
and experienced savage and deliberate cruelty which it is best to
forget, lashing themselves up to wrath and bitterness by brooding
over these things, on which wisdom would bid them try to close
their eyes for ever!
But not merely do screws daily draw cabs and stage-coaches: screws
have won the Derby and the St. Leger. A noble-looking thorough-bred
has galloped by the winning-post at Epsom at the rate of forty
miles an hour, with a white bandage tightly tied round one of
its fore-legs: and thus publicly confessing its unsoundness, and
testifying to its trainer's fears, it has beaten a score of steeds
which were not screws, and borne off from them the blue ribbon of
the turf. Yes, my reader: not only will skilful management succeed
in making unsound animals do decently the hum-drum and prosaic
task-work of the equine world; it will succeed occasionally in
making unsound animals do in magnificent style the grandest things
that horses ever do at all. Don't you see the analogy I mean to
trace? Even so, not merely do Mr. Carlyle's seventeen millions of
fools get somehow through the petty wrork of our modern life, but
minds which no man could warrant sound and free from vice, turn off
some of the noblest work that ever was done by mortal. Many of the
grandest things ever done by human minds, have been done by minds
that were incurable screws. Think of the magnificent service done
to humankind by James Watt. It is positively impossible to calculate
what we all owe to the man that gave us iho steam-engine. It is
sober truth that the inscription in Westminster Abbey tells, when
it speaks of him as among the 'best benefactors' of the race. Yet
what an unsound organization that great man had! Mentally, what a
screw! Through most of his life, he suffered the deepest misery
from desperate depression of spirits; he was always fancying that
his mind was breaking down: he has himself recorded that he often
thought of casting off, by suicide, the unendurable burden of life.
And Still, what work the rickety machine got through! With tearing
headaches, with a sunken chest, with the least muscular of limbs,
with the most melancholy of temperaments, worried and tormented by
piracies of his great inventions, yet doing so much and doing it
so nobly, was not James Watt like the lame race-horse that won the
Derby? As for Byron, he was unquestionably a very great man; and
as a poet, he is in his own school without a rival. Still, he was
a screw. There was something morbid and unsound about his entire
development. In many respects he was extremely silly. It was
extremely silly to take pains to represent that he was morally
much worse than he really was. The greatest blockheads I know are
distinguished by the same characteristic. Oh, empty-headed Noodle!
who have more than once dropped hints in my presence as to the awful
badness of your life, and the unhappy insight which your life has
given you into the moral rottenness of society, don't do it again.
I always thought you a contemptible fool: but next time I mean to
tell you so. Wordsworth was a screw. Though one of the greatest of
poets, he was dreadfully twisted by inordinate egotism and vanity:
the result partly of original constitution, and partly of living
a great deal too much alone in that damp and misty lake country.
lie was like a spavined horse. Coleridge, again, was a jibber. He
never would pull in the team of life. There is something unsound
in the mind of the man who fancies that because he is a genius,
he need not support his wife and children. Even the sensible and
exemplary Southey was a little unsound in the matter of a crotchety
temper, needlessly ready to take offence. He was always quarrelling
with his associates in the Quarterly Review: with the editor and
the publisher. Perhaps you remember how on one occasion he wrought
himself up into a fever of wrath with Mr. Murray, because that
gentleman suggested a subject on which he wished Southey to write
for the Quarterly, and begged him to put his whole strength to it,
the subject being one which was just then of great interest and
importance. 'Flagrant insolence,' exclaimed Southey. 'Think of
the fellow bidding me put my whole strength to an article in his
six-shilling Review!' Now, reader, there you see the evil consequence
of a man who is a little of a screw in point of temper, living in
the country. Most reasonable men would never have discerned any
insult in Mr. Murray's request: but even if such a one had thought
it a shade too authoritatively expressed, he would, if he had lived
in town, gone out to the crowded street, gone down to his club,
and in half an hour have entirely forgotten the little disagreeable
impression. But a touchy man, dwelling in the country, gets the
irritative letter by the morning's post, is worried by it all the
forenoon, and goes out and broods on the offence through all his
solitary afternoon walk,--a walk in which he does not see a face,
perhaps, and certainly does not exchange a sentence with any human
being whose presence is energetic enough to turn the current of
thought into a healthier direction. And so, by the evening he has
got the little offence into the point of view in which it looks
most offensive: he is in a rage at being asked to do his best in
writing anything for a six-shilling publication. Why on earth not
do so? Is not the mind unsoundly sensitive that finds an offence
in a request like that? My brilliant brethren who write for Fraser,
don't you put your whole strength to articles to be published in
a periodical that sells for half-a-crown?
You could not have warranted manly Samuel Johnson sound, on the
points of prejudice and bigotry. There was something unsound in that
unreasoning hatred of everything Scotch. Rousseau was altogether
a screw. He was mentally lame, broken-winded, a shyer, a kicker, a
jibber, a biter: he would do anything but run right on and do his
duty. Shelley was a notorious screw. I should say, indeed, that
his unsoundness passed the limit of practical sanity, and that
on certain points he was unquestionably mad. You could not have
warranted Keats sound. You could not deny the presence of a little
perverse twist even in the noble mind and heart of the great
Sir Charles Napier. The great Emperor Napoleon was cracky, if not
cracked, on various points. There was unsoundness in his strange
belief in his Fate. Neither Bacon nor Newton was entirely sound.
But the mention of Newton suggests to me the single specimen of
human kind who might stand even before him: and reminds me that
Shakspeare was as sound as any mortal ean be. Any defect in him
extends no farther than to his taste: and possibly where we should
differ from him, he is right and we are wrong. You could not say
that Shakspeare was mentally a screw. The noblest of all genius
is sober and reasonable: it is among geniuses of the second order
that you find something so warped, so eccentric, so abnormal, as
to come up to our idea of a screw. Sir Walter Scott was sound: save
perhaps in the matter of his veneration for George IV., and of his
desire to take rank as one of the country gentlemen of Roxburghshire.
To sum up: let it be admitted that very noble work has been turned
off by minds in so far unhinged. It is not merely that great wits
are to madness near allied, it is that great wits are sometimes
actually in part mad. Madness is a matter of degree. The slightest
departure from the normal and healthy action of the mind is an
approximation to it. Every mind is a little unsound; but you don't
talk of insanity till the un.-oundness becomes very glaring, and
unfits for the duty of life. Just as almost every horse is a little
lame: one leg steps a hair-breadth shorter than the other, or is
a thought less muscular, or the hoof is a shade too sensitive; but
you don't talk of lameness till the creature's head begins to go
up and down, or till it plainly shrinks from putting its foot to
the ground. Southey's wrath about the six-shilling Review, and his
brooding on Murray's slight offence, was a step in the direction
of marked delusion such as conveys a man to Harwell or Morningside.
And the sensitive, imaginative nature, which goes to the production
of some of the human mind's best productions, is prone to such
little deviations from that which is strictly sensible and right.
You do not think, gay young readers, what poor unhappy half-cracked
creatures may have written the pages which thrill you or amuse
you; or painted the picture before which you pause so long. I know
hardly any person who ever published anything; but I have sometimes
thought that I should like to see assembled in one chamber, on the
first of any month, all the men and women who wrote all the articles
in all the magazines for that month. Some of them doubtless would
be very much like other people; but many would certainly be very
odd-looking and odd-tempered samples of humankind. The history of
some would be commonplace enough, but that of many would be very
curious. A great many readers, I dare say, would like to stand
in a gallery, and look at the queer individuals assembled below.
Magazine articles, of course, are not (speaking generally) specimens
of the highest order of literature; but still, some experience, some
thought, some observation, have gone to produce even them. And it
is unquestionably out of deep sorrow, out of the travail of heart
and nature, that the finest and noblest of all human thoughts have
come.
As for the ordinary task-work of life, it must, beyond all question,
be generally done by screws,--that is, by folk whose mental
organization is unsound on some point. Vain people, obstinate people,
silly people, evil-foreboding people, touchy people, twaddling
people, carry on the work-day world. Not that it would be giving a
fair account of them to describe them thus, and leave the impression
that such are their essential characteristics. They are all that
has been said; but there is in most a good substratum of practical
sense; and they do fairly, or even remarkably well, the particular
thing which it is their business in this life to do. When Mr. Carlyle
said that the population of Britain consists of so many millions,
'mostly fools,' he conveys a quite wrong impression. No doubt
there are some who are silly out and out, who are always fools,
and essentially fools. No doubt almost all, if you questioned them
on great matters of which they have hardly thought, would express
very foolish and absurd opinions. But then these absurd opinions
are not the staple production of their minds. These are not a fair
sample of their ordinary thoughts. Their ordinary thoughts are,
in the main, sensible and reasonable, no doubt. Once upon a time,
while a famous criminal trial was exciting vast interest, I heard
a man in a railway-carriage, with looks of vast slyness and of
special stores of information, tell several others that the judge
and the counsel on each side had met quietly the evening before
to arrange what the verdict should be; and that though the trial
would go on to its end to delude the public, still the whole thing
was already settled. Now, my first impulse was to regard the man
with no small interest, and to say to myself, There, unquestionably,
is a fool. But, on reflection, I felt I was wrong. No doubt he
talked like a fool on this point. No doubt he expressed himself in
terms worthy of an asylum for idiots. But the man may have been a
very shrewd and sensible man in matters with which he was accustomed
to deal: he was a horse-dealer, I believe, and I doubt not sharp
enough at market; and the idiotic appearance he made was the
result of his applying his understanding to a matter quite beyond
his experience and out of his province. But a man is not properly
to be called a fool, even though occasionally he says and does very
foolish things, if the great preponderance of the things he says
and does be reasonable. No doubt Mr. Carlyle is right in so far
as this: that in almost every man there is an element of the fool.
Almost all have a vein of folly running through them, and cropping
out at the surface now and then. But in most men that is not the
characteristic part of their nature. There is more of the sensible
man than of the fool.
For the forms of unsoundness in those who are mental screws
of the commonplace order; they are endless. You sometimes meet an
intellectual defect like that of the conscientious blockhead James
II., who thought that to differ from him in opinion was to doubt his
word and call him a liar. An unsoundness common to all uneducated
people is, that they cannot argue any question without getting
into a rage and roaring at the top of their voice. This unsoundness
exists in a good many educated men too. A peculiar twist of some
minds is this--that instead of maintaining by argument the thesis
they are maintaining, which is probably that two and two make five,
they branch off and begin to adduce arguments which do not go to
prove that, but to prove that the man who maintains that two and two
make four is a fool, or even a ruffian. Some good men are subject
to this infirmity--that if you differ from them on any point
whatever, they regard the fact of your differing from them as
proof, not merely that you are intellectually stupid, but that you
are morally depraved. Some really good men and women cannot let
slip an opportunity of saying anything that may be disagreeable.
And this is an evil that tends to perpetuate itself; for when Mr.
Snarling comes and says to you something uncomplimentary of yourself
or your near relations, instead of your doing what you ought to
do, and pitying poor Snarling, and recommending him some wholesome
medicine, you are strongly tempted to retort in kind: and thus you
sink yourself to Snarling's level, and you carry on the row. Your
proper course is either to speak kindly to poor Snarling, or not
to speak to him at all. There is something unsound about the man
whom you never heard say a good word of any mortal, but whom you
have heard say a great many bad words of a great many mortals. There
is unsoundness verging on entire insanity in the man who is always
fancying that all about him are constantly plotting to thwart his
plans and damage his character. There is unsoundness in the man
who is constantly getting into furious altercations with his fellow
passengers in steamers and rail-ways, or getting into angry and
lengthy correspondence with anybody in the newspapers or otherwise.
There is unsoundness in the man who is ever telling you amazing
stories which he fancies prove himself to be the bravest, cleverest,
swiftest of mankind, but which (on his own showing) prove him to
be a vapouring goose. There is unsoundness in the man or woman who
turns green with envy as a handsome carriage drives past, and then
says with awful bitterness that he or she would not enter such a
shabby old conveyance. There is unsoundness in the mortal whose memory
is full to repletion of contemptible little stories going to prove
that all his neighbours are rogues or fools. There is unsoundness
in the unfortunate persons who are always bursting into tears and
bahooing out that nobody loves them. Nobody will, so long as they
bahoo. Let them stop bahooing. There is unsoundness in the mental
organization of the sneaky person who stays a few weeks in a
family, and sets each member of it against all the rest by secretly
repeating to each exaggerated and malicious accounts of what has
been paid as to him or her by the others. There is unsoundness in
the perverse person who resolutely docs the opposite of what you
wish and expect: who won't go the pleasure excursion you had arranged
on his account, or partake of the dish which has been cooked for his
special eating. There is unsoundness in the deluded and unamiable
person who, by a grim, repellent, Pharisaic demeanour and address
excites in the minds of young persons gloomy and repulsive ideas
of religion, which wiser and better folk find it very hard to rub
away. 'Will my father be there?' said a little Scotch boy to some
one who had been telling him of the Happiest Place in the universe,
and recounting its joys. 'Yes,' was the reply. Said the little
man, with prompt decision, 'Then I'll no gang!' He must have been
a wretched screw of a Christian who left that impression on a young
child's heart. There is unsoundness in the man who cannot listen to
the praises of another man's merit without feeling as though this
were something taken from himself. And it is amusing, though sad,
to gee how such folk take for granted in others the same pretty
enviousness which they feel in themselves. They will go to one
writer, painter, preacher, and begin warmly to praise the doings
of another man in the same vocation; and when I have seen the
man addressed listen to and add to the praises with the hearty,
self-forgetting sincerity of a generous mind, I have witnessed the
bitter disappointment of the petty malignants at the failure of
their poisoned dart. Generous honesty quite baffles such. If their
dart ever wounds you, reader, it is because you deserve that it
should. There is unsoundness in the kindly, loveable man, whose
opinions are preposterous, and whose conversation that of a jackass.
But still, who can help loving the man, occasionally to be met,
whose heart is right and whose talk is twaddle? Let me add, that
I have met with one or two cases in which conscience was quite
paralysed, but all the other intellectual faculties were right.
Surely there is no more deplorable instance of the mental screw.
Tou may find the notorious cheat who is never out of church, and who
fancies himself a most creditable man. You will find the malicious
tale-bearer and liar, who attends all the prayer-meetings within
her reach, and who thanks God (like an individual in former days)
that she is so much better than other women.
In the case of commonplace screws, if they do their work well, it
is for the most part in spite of their being screws. It is because
they are sound in the main, in those portions of their mental
constitution which their daily work calls into play; and because
they are seldom required to do those things which their unsoundness
makes them unfit to do. You know, if a horse never fell lame except
when smartly trotted down a hill four miles long, you might say that
for practical purposes that horse was never lame at all. For the
single contingency to which its powers are unequal would hardly ever
occur. In like manner, if the mind of a tradesman is quite equal
to the management of his business and the respectable training of
his family, you may say that the tradesman's mind is for practical
purposes a sound and good one; although if called to consider some
important political question, such as that of the connexion of
Church and State, his judgment might be purely idiotical. You see,
he is hardly ever required to put his mind (so to speak) at a hill
at which it would break down. I have walked a mile along the road
with a respectable Scotch farmer, talking of country matters; and
I have concluded that I had hardly ever conversed with a shrewder
and more sensible man. But having accidentally chanced to speak of
a certain complicated political question, I found that quoad hoc
my friend's intellect was that of a baby. I had just come upon the
four-mile descent which would knock up the horse which for ordinary
work was sound.
Yes, reader, in the case of commonplace screws, if hey do their
work well, it is in spite of their being screws. But in the case of
great geniuses who are screws, it is often because of their unsoundness
that they do the fine things they do. It is the hectic beauty which
his morbid mind cast upon his page, that made Byron the attractive
and fascinating poet that he is to young and inexperienced minds.
Had his views been sounder and his feeling healthier, he might
have been but a commonplace writer after all. In poetry, and in
all imaginative writing, we look for beauty, not for sense; and we
all know that what is properly disease and unsoundness sometimes
adds to beauty. You know the delicate flush, the bright eyes, the
long eyelashes, which we often see in a young girl on whom consumption
is doing its work. You know the peachy complexion which often goes
with undeveloped scrofula. And had Charles Lamb not been trembling
on the verge of insanity, the Essays of Elia would have wanted great
part of their strange, undefinable charm. Had Ford and Massinger led
more regular lives and written more reasonable sentiments, what a
caput mortuum their tragedies would be! Had Coleridge been a man
of homely common-sense, he would never have written Christabel. I
remember in my boyhood reading The Ancient Mariner to a hard-headed
lawyer of no literary taste. He listened to the poem, and merely
remarked that its author was a horrible fool.
There is no doubt that physical unsoundness often is a cause of
mental excellence. Some of the best women on earth are the ugliest.
Their ugliness cut them off from the enjoyment of the gaieties of
life; they did not care to go to a ball-room and sit all the evening
without once being asked to dance; and so they learned to devote
themselves to better things. You have seen the pretty sister, a
frivolous, silly flirt; the homely sister, quietly devoting herself
to works of Christian charity. Ugly people, we often hear it said,
cry up the beauties of the mind. It may be added, that ugly people
possess a very large proportion of those beauties. And a great deal
of the best intellectual work is done by men who are physically
screws; by men who are nearly blind, broken-winded, lame, and
weakly. We all know what the Apostle Paul was physically; we know
too what the world owes to that dwarfish, bald, stammering man. I
never in my life read anything more touching than the story of that
poor weakly creature, Dr. George Wilson, the Professor of Technology
in the University of Edinburgh. Poor weakly creature, only in a
physical sense; what a noble intellectual and moral nature dwelt
within that slender frame! You remember how admirably he did his
work, though in a condition of almost ceaseless bodily weakness
and suffering; how he used to lecture often with a great blister
on his chest; how his lungs and his entire system were the very
poorest that could just retain his soul. I never saw him; but I
have seen his portrait. You see the intellectual kindly face; but
it is but the weakly shadow of a physical man. But it was only
physically that George Wilson was a poor type of humanity. What noble
health and excellence there were in that noble mind and heart! So
amiable, so patient, so unaffectedly pious, so able and industrious;
a beautiful example of a great, good, memorable and truly loveable
man. Let us thank God for George Wilson: for his life and his
example. Hundreds of poor souls ready to sink into morbid despair
of ever doing anything good, will get fresh hope and heart from
his story. It is well, indeed, that there have been some in whom
the physical system equals the moral; men like Christopher North
and Sydney Smith,--men in whom the play of the lungs was as good
as the play of the imagination, and whose literal heart was as
excellent as their metaphysical. We have all seen examples in which
the noblest intellect and kindest disposition were happily blended
with the stoutest limbs and the pleasantest face. And the sound mind
in the sound body is doubtless the perfection of the human being.
I have walked many miles and many hours over the heather, with one
of the ablest men in Britain: a man whom at fourscore his country
can heartily trust with perhaps the gravest charge which any British
subject can undertake. And I have witnessed with great delight
the combination of the keenest head and best heart, with physical
strength and activity which quite knock up men younger by forty
years.
When I was reading Dr. Forbes Winslow's book, already named, a very
painful idea was impressed upon me. Dr. Winslow gives us to understand
that madness is for the most part a condition of most awful suffering.
I used to think that though there might be dreadful misery on the
way to madness, yet once reason was fairly overthrown, the suffering
was over. This appears not to be so. All the miserable depression
of spirits, all the incapacity to banish distressing fears
and suspicions, which paved the way to real insanity, exist in
even intensified degree when insanity has actually been reached.
The poor maniac fancies he is surrounded by burning fires, that
he is encircled by writhing snakes, that he is in hell, tormented
by devils; and we must remember that the misery caused by firmly
believing a thing which does not exist, is precisely the same as that
which would be occasioned to a sane person if the things imagined
were facts. It seems, too, that many insane people are quite aware
that they are insane, which of course aggravates what they have to
endure. It must be a dreadful thing when the mind passes the point
up to which it is still useful and serviceable, though unsound, and
enters upon the stage of recognized insanity. It must be dreadful
to feel that you are not quite yourself; that something is wrong;
that you cannot discard suspicions and fears which still you are
aware are foolish and groundless. This is a melancholy stage, and
if it last long a very perilous one. Great anxiety, if continued
for any length of time, is almost certain to lead to some measure
of insanity. The man who night and day is never free from the
thought of how he is to pay his way, to maintain his children, is
going mad. It is thoroughly evil when one single thought conies to
take entire possession of the mind. It shows the brain is going.
It is no wonder, my friendly reader, that so many men are mentally
screws! There is something perfectly awful in reading what are the
premonitory symptoms of true insanity. Read this, my friend, and
be afraid of yourself. Here are what Dr. Winslow says indicates
that insanity is drawing near. Have you never seen it? Have you
never felt it?
The patient is irritable, and fractious, peevish, and pettish. He
is morbidly anxious about trifles: slight ruffles on the surface,
and trivial annoyances in the family circle or during the course
of business, worry, flurry, tease and fret him, nothing satisfying
or soothing his mind, and everything, to his distempered fancy,
going wrong within the sacred precincts of domestic life. He is
quick at fancying affronts, and greatly exaggerates the slightest
and most trifling acts of supposed inattention. The least irregularity
on the part of the domestics excites, angers, and vexes him.
He is suspicious of and quarrels with his nearest relations, and
mistrusts his best, kindest, and most faithful friends. While in
this premonitory stage of mental derangement, bordering closely
on an attack of acute insanity, he twists, distorts, misconceives,
misconstrues, and perverts in a most singular manner every look,
gesture, action, and word of those closely associated, and nearly
related to him.
Considering that Dr. Winslow does really in that paragraph sketch
the moral characteristics of at least a score of people known to
every one of us, all this is alarming enough. And considering, too,
how common a thing sleeplessness is among men who go through hard
mental work, or who are pressed by many cares and anxieties, it is
even more alarming to read, that--
Wakefulness is one of the most constant concomitants of some types
of incipient brain disease, and in many cases a certain forerunner
of insanity. It is an admitted axiom in medicine, that the brain
cannot be in a healthy condition while a state of sleeplessness
exists.
But I pass away from this part of my subject. I do not believe that
it is good for either my readers or myself to look from a medical
point of view at those defects or morbid manifestations in our mental
organization which stamp us screws. We accept the fact, generally;
without going into details. It is a bad thing for a man to be always
feeling his pulse after every little exertion, and fancying that
its acceleration or irregularity indicates that something is wrong.
Such a man is in the fair way to settled hypochondria. And I think
it is even worse to be always watching closely the play of the
mental machine, and thinking that this process or that emotion is
not as it ought to be. Let a man work his mind fairly and moderately,
and not worry himself as to its state. The mind can get no more
morbid habit than that of continually watching itself for a stumble.
Except in the case of metaphysicians, whose business it is to watch
and analyse the doings of the mind, the mind ought to be like the
stomach. You know that your stomach is right, because you never
feel that you have one; but the work intended for that organ is
somehow done. And common folk should know that they have minds,
only by finding the ends fairly attained, which are intended to be
attained by that most sensitive and ticklish piece of machinery.
I think that it is a piece of practical wisdom in driving the
mental screw, to be careful how you allow it to dwell too constantly
upon any one topic. If you allow yourself to think too much of any
subject, you will get a partial craze upon that; you will come to
vastly overrate its importance. You will make yourself uncomfortable
about it. There once was a man who mused long upon the notorious
fact that almost all human beings stoop consider ably. Few hold
themselves as upright as they ought. And this notion took such
hold upon the poor man's mind, that, waking or sleeping, he could
not get rid of it; and he published volume after volume to prove the
vast extent of the evils which come of this bad habit of stooping,
and to show that to get fairly rid of this bad habit would be the
regeneration of the human race, physically and morally. We know how
authors exaggerate the claims of their subject; and I can quite
imagine a very earnest man feeling afraid to think too much and
long about any existing evil, for fear it should greaten on his view
into a thing so large and pernicious, that he should be constrained
to give all his life to wrestling with that one thing, and attach
to it an importance which would make his neighbours think him a
monomaniac. If you think long and deeply upon any subject, it grows
in apparent magnitude and weight; if you think of it too long, it
may grow big enough to exclude the thought of all things besides.
If it be an existing and prevalent evil you are thinking of, you
may come to fancy that if that one thing were done away, it would
be well with the human race: all evil would go with it. I can conceive
the process by which, without mania, without anything worse than
the workable unsoundness of the practically sound mind, one might
come to think as the man who wrote against stooping thought. For
myself, I feel the force of this law so deeply, that there are certain
evils of which I am afraid to think much, for fear I should come
to be able to think of nothing else and nothing more. I remember,
when I was a boy, there was a man in London who constantly advertised
himself in the newspapers as the Inventor of the only Rational
System of Writing in the Universe. His system was, I believe, to
move in writing, not the fingers merely, but the entire arm from
the shoulder. This may be an improvement perhaps: and that man had
brooded over the mischiefs of moving the fingers in writing till
these mischiefs shut out the view of the rest of creation, or at
least till he saw nothing but irrationality in writing otherwise.
All the millions who wrote by the fingers were cracked. The
writing-master, in short, though possibly a reasonable man on other
subjects, was certainly unsound upon this. You may allow yourself
to speculate on the chance of being bitten by a mad dog, or of
being maimed by a railway accident, till you grow morbid on these
points. If you live in the country, you may give in to the idea
that your house will be broken into at night by burglars, till,
every time you wake in the dark hours, you may fancy you hear the
centre-bit at work boring through the window-shutters down stairs.
A very clever woman once told me, that for a year she yielded so
much to the fear that she had left, a spark behind her in any room
into which she had gone with a lighted candle, which spark would set
the house on fire, that she could not be easy till she had groped
her way back in the dark to see that things were right. Now, ye
readers whose minds must be carefully driven (I mean all the readers
who will ever see this page), don't give in to these fancies. As
you would carefully train your horse to pass the corner he always
shies at, so break your mind of this bad habit. And in breaking
your mind of the smallest bad habit, I would counsel you to resort
to the same kindly Helper whose aid you would ask in breaking
your mind of the greatest and worst. It is not a small matter,
the existence in the mind of any tendency or characteristic which
is unsound. We know what lies in that direction. You are like the
railway-train which, with breaks unapplied, is stealing the first
yard down the incline at the rale of a mile in two hours; but if
that train be not pulled up, in ten minutes it may be tearing down
to destruction at sixty miles an hour.
I have said that almost every human being is mentally a screw;
that all have some intellectual peculiarity, some moral twist, away
from the normal standard of Tightness. Let it, be added, that it
is little wonder that the fact should be as it is. I do not think
merely of a certain unhappy warping, of an old original wrench,
which human nature long ago received, and from which it never has
recovered. I am not writing as a theologian; and so I do not suggest
the grave consideration that human nature, being fallen, need not
be expected to be the right-working machinery that it may have
been before it fell. But I may at least say, look how most people
are educated; consider the kind of training they get, and the
incompetent hands that train them: what chance have they of being
anything but screws? Ah, my reader, if horses were broken by people
as unfit for their work as most of the people who form human minds,
there would not be a horse in the world that would not be dead lame.
You do not trust your thorough-bred colt, hitherto unhandled, to
any one who is not understood to have a thorough knowledge of the
characteristics and education of horses. But in numberless instances,
even in the better classes of society, a thing which needs to be
guarded against a thousand wrong tendencies, and trained up to a
thousand right things from which it is ready to shrink, the most
sensitive and complicated thing in nature, the human soul, is left
to have its character formed by hands as hopelessly unfit for the
task as the Lord Chancellor is to prepare the winner of the next
St. Leger. You find parents and guardians of children systematically
following a course of treatment calculated to bring out the very
worst tendencies of mind and heart that are latent in the little
things given to their care. If a young horse has a tendency to shy,
how carefully the trainer seeks to win him away from the habit. But
if a poor little boy has a hasty temper, you may find his mother
taking the greatest pains to irritate that temper. If the little
fellow have some physical or mental defect, you have seen parents
who never miss an opportunity of throwing it in the boy's face;
parents who seem to exult in the thought that they know the place
where a touch will always cause to wince,--the sensitive, unprotected
point where the dart of malignity will never fail to get home. If a
child has said or done some wrong or foolish thing, you will find
parents who are constantly raking up the remembrance of it, for
the pure pleasure of giving pain. Even so would a kindly man, who
knows that his horse has just come down and cut himself, take pains
whenever he came to a bit of road freshly macadamized to bring down
the poor horse on the sharp stones, again with his bleeding knees.
And even where you do not find positive malignity in those entrusted
with the training of human minds, you find hopeless incornpetcncy
exhibited in many other ways; outrageous silliness and vanity,
want of honesty, and utter want of sense. I say it deliberately,
instead of wondering that most minds are such screws, I wonder with
indescribable surprise that they are not a thousand times worse.
For they are like trees pruned and trained into ugliness and
barrenness. They are like horses carefully tutored to shy, kick,
rear, and bite. It says something hopeful as to what may yet be
made of human beings, that most of them are no worse than they are.
Some parents, fancying too that they are educating their children
on Christian principles, educate them in such fashion that Ihe only
wonder is that the children do not end at the gallows.
Let us recognise the fact in all our treatment of others, that we
have to deal with screws. Let us not think, as some do, that by
ignoring a fact you make it cease to be a fact. I have seen a man
pulling his lame horse up tight, and flicking it with his whip,
and trying to drive it as if it were not lame. Now, that won't do.
The poor horse makes a desperate effort, and runs a step or two as
if sound. But in a little the heavy head falls upon the bit at each
step, and perhaps the creature comes down bodily with a tremendous
smash. If it were only his idiotic master that was smashed, I should
not mind. So have I seen parents refusing to see or allow for the
peculiarities of their children, insisting on driving the poor screw
as though it were perfect in wind and limb. So have I seen people
refusing to see or allow for the peculiarities of those around them;
ignoring the depressed spirits, the unhappy twist, the luckless
perversity of temper, in a servant, an acquaintance, a friend,
which, rightly managed, would still leave them most serviceable
screws; but which, determinedly ignored, will land in uselessness
and misery. I believe there are people who (in a moral sense), if
they have a crooked stick, fancy that by using it as if it were
straight, it will become straight. If you have got a rifle that
sends its ball somewhat to the left side, you (if you are not a
fool) allow for that in shooting. If you have a friend of sterling
value, but of crotchety temper, you (if you are not a fool) allow
for that. If you have a child who is weak, desponding, and early
old, you (if you are not a hopeless idiot) remember that, and allow
for it, and try to make the best of it. But if you be an idiot, you
will think it deep diplomacy, and adamantine firmness, and wisdom
beyond Solomon's, to shut your eyes to the state of facts; to tug
sharply the poor screw's mouth, to lash him violently, to drive him
as though he were sound. Probably you will come to a smash: alas!
that the smash will probably include more than you.
Not, reader, that all human beings thus idiotically ignore the fact
that it is with screws they have to deal. It is very touching to
see, as we sometimes see, people trying to make the best of awful
screws. You are quite pleased if your lame horse trots four or five
miles without showing very gross unsoundness, though of course this
is but a poor achievement. And even so, I have been touched to see
the child quite happy at having coaxed a graceless father to come
for once to church; and the wife quite happy when the blackguard
bully, her husband, for once evinces a little kindness. It was not
much they did, you see: but remember what wretched screws did it,
and be thankful if they do even that little. I have heard a mother
repeat, with a pathetic pride, a connected sentence said by her
idiot boy. You remember how delighted Miss Trotwood was, in Mr.
Dickens's beautiful story, with Mr. Dick's good sense, when he said
something which in anybody else would have been rather silly. But
Mr. Dick, you see, was just out of the Asylum, and no more. How
pleased you are to find a relation, who is a terrific fool, merely
behaving like anybody else!
Yes: there is a good deal of practical resignation in this world.
We get reconciled to having and to being screws. We grow reconciled
to the fact that our possessions, our relations, our friends, are
very far indeed from being what we could wish. We grow reconciled
to the fact, and we try to make the best of it, that we ourselves
are screws: that in temper, in judgment, in talent, in tact, we
are a thousand miles short of being what we ought; and that we can
hope for little more than decently, quietlv, sometimes wearily and
sadly, to plod along the path in life which God in his kindness
and wisdom has set us. We come to look with interest, but without
a vestige of envy, at those who are cleverer and better off than
ourselves. A great many good people are so accustomed to things going
against them, that they are rather startled when things go as they
could have desired: they can stand disappointment, but success puts
them out, it is so unwonted a thing. The lame horse, the battered
old gig,--they feel at home with these; but they would be confused if
presented with my friend Smith's drag, with its beautiful steeds,
all but thoroughbred, and perfectly sound. To struggle on with
a small income, manifold worries, and lowly estimation,--to these
things they have quietly reconciled themselves. But give them
wealth, and peace, and fame (if these things can be combined), and
they would hardly know what to do. Yesterday I walked up a very long
flight of steps in a very poor part of the most beautiful city in
Britain. Just before me, a feeble old woman, bent down apparently
by eighty years, was slowly ascending. She had a very large bundle
on her back, and she supported herself by a short stick in her
withered, trembling hand. If it had been in the country, I should
most assuredly have carried up the poor creature's bundle for her;
but I am sorry to say I had not moral courage to offer to do so
in town: for a parson with a great sackcloth bundle on his back,
would be greeted in that district with depreciatory observations.
But I kept close by her, to help her if she fell; and when I got
to the top of the steps I passed her and went on. I looked sharply
at the poor old face in passing; I see it yet. I see the look of cowed,
patient, quiet, hopeless submission: I saw she had quite reconciled
her mind to bearing her heavy burden, and to the far heavier load
of years, and infirmities, and poverty, she was bearing too. She
had accepted those for her portion in this life. She looked for
nothing better. She was like the man whose horse has been broken-winded
and lame so long, that he has come almost to think that every horse
is a screw. I see yet the quiet, wearied, surprised look she cast
up at me as I passed: a look merely of surprise to see an entire
coat in a place where my fellow-creatures (every one deserving as
much as me) for the most part wear rags. I do not think she even
wished to possess an equally entire garment: she looked at it with
interest merely as the possession of some one else. She did not
even herself (as we Scotch say) to anything better than the rags
she had worn so long. Long experience had subdued her to what she
is.
But short experience does so too. We early learn to be content with
screws, and to make the best of imperfect means. As I have been
writing that last paragraph, I have been listening to a colloquy
outside my study door, which is partly open. The parties engaged
in the discussion were a certain little girl of five years old,
and her nurse. The little girl is going out to spend the day at
the house of a little companion; and she is going to take her doll
with her. I heard various sentences not quite distinctly, which
conveyed to me a general impression of perplexity; and at length,
in a cheerful, decided voice, the little girl said, 'The people will
never know it has got no legs!' The doll, you see, was unsound.
Accidents had brought it to an imperfect state. But that wise
little girl had done what you and I, my reader, must try to do very
frequently: she had made up her mind to make the best of a screw.
I learn a lesson, as I close my essay, from the old woman of eighty,
and the little girl of five. Let us seek to reconcile our minds
both to possessing screws, and (harder still) to being screws. Let
us make the best of our imperfect possessions, and of our imperfect
selves. Let us remember that a great deal of good can be done by
means which fall very far short of perfection; that our moderate
abilities, honestly and wisely husbanded and directed, may serve
valuable ends in this world before we quit it,--ends which may
remain after we are gone. I do not suppose that judicious critics,
in pointing out an author's faults, mean that he ought to stop
writing altogether. There are hopeless cases in which he certainly
ought: cases in which the steed passes being a screw, and is fit
only for the hounds. But in most instances the critic would be
quite wrong, if he argued what because his author has many flaws
and defects, he should write no more. With all its errors, what he
writes may be much better than nothing; as the serviceable screw is
better than no horse at all. And if the critic's purpose is merely
to show the author that the author is a screw,--why, if the author
have any sense at all, he knows that already. He does not claim to
be wiser than other men; and still less to be better: yet he may
try to do his best. With many defects and errors, still fair work
may be turned off. I will not forget the lame horses that took the
coach so well to Inverary. And I remember certain words in which
one who is all but the greatest English poet declared that under
the heavy visitation of God he would do his utmost still. Here is
the resolution of a noble screw:--
I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward!
CHAPTER VII.
CONCERNING SOLITARY DAYS.
Let me look back, this New Year's time, over nine years. Let me try
to revive again the pervading atmosphere of the days when I used
to live entirely alone. All days crush up into very little in the
perspective. The months and years which were long as they passed
over, are but a hand-breadth in remembrance. Five or ten years may
be packed away into a very little corner in your mind; and in the
case of a man brought up from childhood in a large family, who
spends no more than three or four years alone before he again sees
a household beginning to surround him, I think those lonely years
seem especially short in the retrospect. Yet possibly in these he
may have done some of the best work of his life; and possibly none,
of all the years he has seen, have produced so great an impression on
his character and on his temperament. And the impression left may
be most diverse in nature. I have known a man remarkably gentle, kind,
and sympathetic; always anxious to say a pleasant and encouraging
word; discerning by a wonderful intuition whenever he had presented
a view or made a remark that had caused pain to the most sensitive,
and eager to efface the painful feeling; and I have thought that
in all this I could trace the result of his having lived entirely
alone for many years. I have known a man insufferably arrogant,
conceited, and self-opinionated; another morbidly suspicious and
ever nervously anxious; another conspicuously devoid of common
Eense; and in each of these I have thought I could trace the result
of a lonely life. But indeed it depends so entirely on the nature
of the material subjected to the mill what the result turned off
shall be, that it is hard to say of any human being what shall be
the effect produced upon his character by almost any discipline you
can think of. And a solitary life may make a man either thoughtful
or vacant, either humble or conceited, either sympathetic or selfish,
either frank or shrinkingly shy.
Great numbers of educated people in this country live solitary lives.
And by a solitary life I do not mean a life in a remote district
of country with hardly a neighbour near, but with your house well
filled and noisy with, children's voices. By a solitary life I
mean a life in which, day after day and week after week, you rise
in the morning in a silent dwelling, in which, save servants,
there are none but yourself; in which you sit down to breakfast by
yourself, perhaps set yourself to your day's work all alone, then
dine by yourself, and spend the evening by yourself. Barristers living
in chambers in some cases do this; young lads living in lodgings,
young clergymen in country parsonages, old bachelors in handsome
town houses and beautiful country mansions, old maids in quiet
streets of country towns, old ladies once the centre of cheerful
families, but whose husband and children are gone--even dukes
in palaces and castles, amid a lonely splendour which must, one
would think, seem dreary and ghastly. But you know, my reader, we
sympathize the most completely with that which we have ourselves
experienced. And when I hear people talk of a solitary life, the
picture called up before me is that of a young man who has always
lived as one of a household considerable in numbers, who gets a
living in the Church, and who, having no sister to keep house for
him, goes to it to live quite alone. How many of my friends have
done precisely that! Was it not a curious mode of life? A thing is
not made commonplace to your own feeling by the fact that hundreds
or thousands of human beings have experienced the very same. And
although fifty Smiths have done it (all very clever fellows), and
fifty Robinsons have done it (all very commonplace and ordinary
fellows), one does not feel a bit the less interest in recurring
to that experience which, hackneyed as it may be, is to you of
greater interest than all other experience, in that it is your own.
Draw up a thousand men in a row, all dressed in the same dark-green
uniform of the riflemen; and I do not think that their number,
or their likeness to one another, will cause any but the most
unthinking to forget that each is an individual man as much as if
he stood alone in the desert; that each has his own ties, cares,
and character, and that possibly each, like to all the rest as he
may appear to others, is to several hearts, or perhaps to one only,
the one man of all mankind.
Most clergymen whom I have known divide their day very much in the
same fashion. After breakfast they go into their study and write
their sermon for two or three hours; then they go out and visit
their sick or make other calls of duty for several hours. If they
have a large parish, they probably came to it with the resolution
that before dinner they should always have an hour's smart walk at
least; but they soon find that duty encroaches on that hour, and
finally eats it entirely up, and their duty calls are continued
till it is time to return home to dinner. Don't you remember, my
friend, how short a time that lonely meal lasted, and how very far
from jovial the feast was? As for me, that I might rest my eyes
from reading between dinner and tea (a thing much to be desired in
the case of every scholar), I hardly ever, failed, save for a few
weeks of midwinter, to go out in the twilight and have a walk--a
solitary and very slow walk. My hours, you see, were highly
unfashionable. I walked from half-past five to half-past six: that
was my after-dinner walk. It was always the same. It looks somewhat
dismal to recall. Do you ever find, in looking back at some great
trial or mortification you have passed through, that you are
pitying yourself as if you were another person? I do not mean to
say that those walks were a trial. On the contrary, they were always
an enjoyment--a subdued quiet enjoyment, as are the enjoyments of
solitary folk. Still, now looking back, it seems to me as if I
were watching some one else going out in the cold February twilight,
and walking from half-past five to half-past six. I think I see
a human being, wearing a very thick and rough great-coat, got for
these walks, and never worn on any other occasion, walking very
slowly, bearing an extremely thick oak walking-stick (I have it
yet) by the shore of the bleak gray sea. Only on the beach did I
ever bear that stick; and by many touches of the sand it gradually
wore down till it became too short for use. I see the human being
issuing from the door of a little parsonage (not the one where there
are magnificent beeches and rich evergreens and climbing roses),
and always waiting at the door for him there was a friendly dog,
a terrier, with very short legs and a very long back, and shaggy
to that degree that at a cursory glance it was difficult to decide
which was his head and which his tail. Ah, poor old dog, you
are grown very stiff and lazy now, and time has not mellowed your
temper. Even then it was somewhat doubtful. Not that you ever offered
to bite me; but it was most unlucky, and it looked most invidious,
that occasion when you rushed out of the gate and severely tore
the garments of the dissenting minister! But he was a worthy man:
and I trust that he never supposed that upon that day you acted by
my instigation. You were very active then; and so few faces did you
see (though a considerable town was within a few hundred yards),
that the appearance of one made you rush about and bark tremendously.
Cross a field, pass through a hedgerow of very scrubby and stunted
trees, cross a railway by a path on the level, go on by a dirty
track on its further side; and you come upon the sea-shore. It is
a level, sandy beach; and for a mile or two inland the ground is
level, and the soil ungenial. There are sandy downs, thinly covered
with coarse grass. Trees will hardly grow; the few trees there are,
are cut down by the salt winds from the Atlantic. The land view,
in a raw twilight of early spring, is dreary beyond description;
but looking across the sea, there is a magnificent view of mountain
peaks. And if you turn in another direction, and look along the
shore, you will see a fine hill rising from the sea and running
inland, at whose base there flows a beautiful river, which pilgrims
come hundreds of miles to visit. How often, O sandy beach, have these
feet walked slowly along you! And in these years of such walks, I
did not meet or see in all six human beings. A good many years have
passed since I saw that dismal beach last; I dare say it would look
very strange now. The only excitement of those walks consisted in
sending the dog into the sea, and in making him run after stones.
How tremendously he ran; what tiger-like bounds he made, as he
overtook the missile! Just such walks, my friends, many of you have
taken. Homines estis. And then you have walked into your dwelling
again, walked into your study, had tea in solitude, spent the
evening alone in reading and writing. You have got on in life, let
it be hoped; but you remember well the aspect and arrangement of
the room; you remember where stood tables, chairs, candles; you
remember the pattern of the grate, often vacantly studied. I think
every one must look back with great interest upon such days. Life
was in great measure before you, what you might do with it. For
anything you knew then, you might be a great genius; whereas if
the world, even ten years later, has not yet recognized you as a
great genius, it is all but certain that it never will recognize
you as such at all. And through those long winter evenings, often
prolonged far into the night, not only did you muse on many problems,
social, philosophical, and religious, but you pictured out, I dare
say, your future life, and thought of many things which you hoped
to do and to be.
A very subdued mood of thought and feeling, I think, creeps gradually
over a man living such a solitary life. I mean a man who has been
accustomed to a house with many inmates. There is something odd in
the look of an apartment in which hardly a word is ever spoken. If
you speak while by yourself, it is in a very low tone; and though
you may smile, I don't think any sane man could often laugh heartily
while by himself. Think of a life in which, while at home, there
is no talking and no laughing. Why, one distinctive characteristic
of rational man is cut off when laughing ceases. Man is the only
living creature that laughs with the sense of enjoyment. I have
heard, indeed, of the laughing hyena; but my information respecting it
is mainly drawn from Shakspeare, who was rather a great philosopher
and poet than a great naturalist. 'I will laugh like a hyen,'
says that great man; and as these words are spoken as a threat,
I apprehend the laughter in question is of an unpleasant and
umnirthful character. But to return from such deep thoughts, let
it be repeated, that the entire mood of the solitary man is likely
to be a sobered and subdued one. Even if hopeful and content, he
will never be in high spirits. The highest degree in the scale he
will ever reach, may be that of quiet lightheartedness; and that
will come seldom. Jollity, or exhilaration, is entirely a social
thing. I do not believe that even Sydney Smith could have got into
one of his rollicking veins when alone. He enjoyed his own jokes,
and laughed at them with extraordinary zest; but he enjoyed them
because he thought others were enjoying them too. Why, you would
be terrified that your friend's mind was going, if before entering
his room you heard such a peal of merriment from within, as would
seem a most natural thing were two or three cheerful companions
together. And gradually that chastened, subdued stage comes, in
which a man can sit for half an hour before the fire as motionless
as marble; even a man who in the society of others is in ceaseless
movement. It is an odd feeling, when you find that you yourself,
once the most restless of living creatures, have come to this. I
dare say Robinson Crusoe often sat for two or three hours together
in his cave, without stirring hand or foot. The vital principle
grows weak when isolated. You must have a number of embers together
to make a warm fire; separate them, and they will soon go out and
grow cold. And even so, to have brisk, conscious, vigorous life,
you must have a number of lives together. They keep each other warm.
They encourage and support each other. I dare say the solitary man,
sitting at the close of a long evening by his lonely fireside, has
sometimes felt as though the flame of life had sunk so low that a
very little thing would be enough to put it out altogether. From
the motionless limbs, from the unstrung hands, it seemed as though
vitality had ebbed away, and barely kept its home in the feeble
heart. At such a time some sudden blow, some not very violent shock,
would suffice to quench the spark for ever. Reading the accounts
in the newspapers of the cold, hunger, and misery which our poor
soldiers suffered in the Crimea, have you not thought at such a time
that a hundredth part of that would have been enough to extinguish
you? Have you not wondered at the tenacity of material life, and
at the desperate grasp with which even the most wretched cling to
it? Is it worth the beggar's while, in the snow-storm, to struggle
on through the drifting heaps towards the town eight miles off,
where he may find a morsel of food to half-appease his hunger, and
a stone stair to sleep in during the night? Have not you thought,
in hours when you were conscious of that shrinking of life into
its smallest compass--that retirement of it from the confines of
its territory, of which we have been thinking--that in that beggar's
place you would keep up the fight no longer, but creep into some
quiet corner, and there lay yourself down and sleep away into
forgetfulness? I do not say that the feeling is to be approved, or
that it can in any degree bear being reasoned upon; but I ask such
readers as have led solitary lives, whether they have not somelimes
felt it? It is but the subdued feeling which comes of loneliness
carried out to its last development. It is the highest degree of
that influence which manifests itself in slow steps, in subdued
tones of voice, in motionless musings beside the fire.
Another consequence of a lonely life in the case of many men, is an
extreme sensitiveness to impressions from external nature. In the
absence of other companions of a more energetic character, the scenes
amid which you live produce an effect on you which they would fail
to produce if you were surrounded by human friends. It is the rule
in nature, that the stronger impression makes you unconscious of
the weaker. If you had charged with the Six Hundred, you would not
have remarked during the charge that one of your sleeves was too tight.
Perhaps in your boyhood, a companion of a turn at once thoughtful
and jocular, offered to pull a hair out of your head without your
feeling it. And this he accomplished, by taking hold of the doomed
hair, and then giving you a knock on the head that brought tears
to your eyes. For, in the more vivid sensation of that knock you
never felt the little twitch of the hair as it quitted its hold.
Yes, the stronger impression makes you unaware of the weaker. And
the impression produced either upon thought or feeling by outward
scenes, is so much weaker than that produced by the companionship
of our kind, that in the presence of the latter influence, the former
remains unfelt, even by men upon whom it would tell powerfully in
the absence of another. And so it is upon the lonely man that skies
and mountains, woods and fields and rivers, tell with their full
effect; it is to him that they become a part of life; it is in
him that they make the inner shade or sunshine, and originate and
direct the processes of the intellect. You go out to take a walk
with a friend: you get into a conversation that interests and
engrosses you. And thus engrossed, you hardly remark the hedges
between which you walk, or the soft outline of distant summer hills.
After the first half-mile, you are proof against the influence of
the dull December sky, or the still October woods. But when you go
out for your solitary walk, unless your mind be very much preoccupied
indeed, your feeling and mood are at the will of external nature.
And after a few hundred yards, unless the matter which was in your
mind at starting be of a very worrying and painful character, you
begin gradually to take your tone from the sky above you, and the
ground on which you tread. You hear the birds, which, walking with
a sympathetic companion, you would never have noticed. You feel
the whole spirit of the scene, whether cheerful or gloomy, gently
pervading you, and sinking into your heart. I do not know how far all
this, continued through months or years of comparative loneliness,
may permanently affect character; we can stand a great deal of
kneading without being lastingly affected, either for better or
worse; but there can be no question at all, that in a solitary life
nature rises into a real companion, producing upon our present mood
a real effect. As more articulate and louder voices die away upon
our ear, we begin to hear the whisper of trees, the murmur of
brooks, the song of birds, with a distinctness and a meaning not
known before.
The influence of nature on most minds is likely to be a healthful
one; still, it is not desirable to allow that influence to become
too strong. And there is a further influence which is felt in a
solitary life, which ought never to be permitted to gain the upper
hand. I mean the influence of our own mental moods. It is not
expedient to lead too subjective a life. We look at all things,
doubtless, through our own atmosphere; our eyes, to a great extent,
make the world they see. And no doubt, too, it is the sunshine
within the breast that has most power to brighten; and the thing
that can do most to darken is the shadow there. Still, it is not
fit that these mental moods should be permitted to arise mainly
through the mind's own working. It is not fit that a man should
watch his mental moods as he marks the weather; and be always
chronicling that on such a day and such another he was in high or
low spirits, he was kindly-disposed or snappish, as the case may be.
The more stirring influence of intercourse with others, renders men
comparatively heedless of the ups and downs of their own feelings;
change of scenes and faces, conversation, business engagements,
may make the day a lively or a depressed one, though they rose at
morning with a tendency to just the opposite thing. But the solitary
man is apt to look too much inward; and to attach undue importance
to the fancies and emotions which arise spontaneously within his
own breast; many of them in great measure the result of material
causes. And as it is not a healthy thing for a man to be always
feeling his pulse, and fearing that it shows something amiss; it
is not a healthy thing to follow the analogous course as regards
our immaterial health and development. And I cannot but regard those
religious biographies which we sometimes read, in which worthy
people of little strength of character record particularly from
day to day all the shifting moods and fancies of their minds as
regards their religious concerns, as calculated to do a great deal
of mischief. It is founded upon a quite mistaken notion of the spirit
of true Christianity, that a human being should be ever watching
the play of his mind, as one might watch the rise and fall of the
barometer; and recording phases of thought and feeling which it
is easy to see are in some cases, and in some degree, at least,
the result of change of temperature, of dyspepsia, of deranged
circulation of the blood, as though these were the unquestionable
effects of spiritual influence, either supernal or infernal. Let us
try, in the matter of these most solemn of all interests, to look
more to great truths and facts which exist quite independently of
the impression they may for the time produce upon us; and less to
our own fanciful or morbid frames and feelings.
It cannot be denied that, in some respects, most men are better men
alone than in the society of their fellows. They are kinder-hearted;
more thoughtful; more pious. I have heard a man say that he always
acted and felt a great deal more under the influence of religious
principle while living in a house all by himself for weeks and months,
than he did when the house was filled by a family. Of course this
is not saying much for the steadfastness of a man's Christian
principle. It is as much as to say that he feels less likely to go
wrong when he is not tempted to go wrong. It is as though you said
in praise of a horse, that he never shies when there is nothing to
shy at. No doubt, when there are no little vexatious realities to
worry you, you will not be worried by them. And little vexatious
realities are doubtless a trial of temper and of principle. Living
alone, your nerves are not jarred by discordant voices; you are to
a great degree free from annoying interruptions; and if you be of
an orderly turn of mind, you are not put about by seeing things
around you in untidy confusion. You do not find leaves torn out of
books; nor carpets strewn with fragments of biscuits; nor mantelpieces
getting heaped with accumulated rubbish. Sawdust, escaped from
maimed dolls, is never sprinkled upon your table-covers; nor ink
poured over your sermons; nor leaves from these compositions cut up
for patterns for dolls' dresses. There is an audible quiet which
pervades the house, which is favourable to thought. The first
evenings, indeed, which you spent alone in it, were almost awful
for their stillness; but that sort of nervous feeling soon wears
off. And then you have no more than the quiet in which the mind's
best work must be done, in the case of average men.
And there can be little doubt, that when you gird up the mind, and
put it to its utmost stretch, it is best that you should be alone.
Even when the studious man comes to have a wife and children, he
finds it needful that he should have his chamber to which he may
retire when he is to grapple with his task of head-work; and he
finds it needful, as a general rule, to suffer no one to enter that
chamber while he is at work. It is not without meaning that this
solitary chamber is called a study: the word reminds us that hard
mental labour must generally be gone through when we are alone.
Any interruption by others breaks the train of thought; and the
broken end may never be caught again. You remember how Maturin,
the dramatist, when he felt himself getting into the full tide of
composition, used to stick a wafer on his forehead, to signify to
any member of his family who might enter his room, that he must
not on any account be spoken to. You remember the significant
arrangement of Sir Walter's library, or rather study, at Abbotsford;
it contained one chair, and no more. Yes, the mind's best work, at
the rate of writing, must be done alone. At the speed of talking,
the case is otherwise. The presence of others will then stimulate
the mind to do its best; I mean to do the best it can do at that rate
of speed. Talking with a clever man, on a subject which interests
you, your mind sometimes produces material which is (for you) so good,
that you are truly surprised at it. And a barrister, addressing a
judge or a jury, has to do hard mental work, to keep all his wits
awake, to strain his intellect to the top of its bent, in the
presence of many; but, at the rate of speed at which he does this,
he does it all the better for their presence. So with an extempore
preacher. The eager attention of some hundreds of his fellow-creatures
spurs him on (if he be mentally and physically in good trim) to do
perhaps the very best he ever does. I have heard more than two or
three clergymen who preach extempore (that is, who trust to the
moment for the words entirely, for the illustration mainly, and
for the thought in some degree), declare that they have sometimes
felt quite astonished at the fluency with which they were able
to express their thoughts, and at the freshness and fulness with
which thoughts crowded upon them, while actually addressing a great
assemblage of people. Of course, such extemporaneous speaking is
an uncertain thing. It is a hit or a miss. A little physical or
mental derangement, and the extempore speaker gets on lamely enough;
he flounders, stammers, perhaps breaks down entirely. But still, I
hold that though the extempore speaker may think and say that his
mind often produces extempore the best material it ever produces,
it is in truth only the best material which it can produce at the
rate of speaking: and though the freshly manufactured article,
warm from the mind that makes it, may interest and impress at the
moment, we all know how loose, wordy, and unsymmetrical such a
composition always is: and it is unquestionable that the very best
product of the human soul must be turned off, not at the rate of
speaking, but at the much slower rate of writing: yes, and oftentimes
of writing with many pauses between the sentences, and long musing
over individual phrases and words. Could Mr. Tennyson have spoken
off in half-an-hour any one of the Idylls of the Kingt Could he
have said in three minutes any one of the sections of In Memoriam?
And I am not thinking of the mechanical difficulty of composition
in verse: I am thinking of the simple product in thought. Could
Bacon have extemporized at the pace of talking, one of his Essays?
Or does not Ben Jonson sum up just those characteristics which
extempore composition (even the best) entirely wants, when he tells
us of Bacon that 'no man ever wrote more neatly, more pressly; nor
suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in that he uttered?' I take
it for granted, that the highest human composition is that which
embodies most thought, experience, and feeling; and that must be
produced slowly and alone.
And if a man's whole heart be in his work, whether it be to write
a book, or to paint a picture, or to produce a poem, he will be
content to make his life such as may tend to make him do his work
best, even though that mode of life should not be the pleasantest
in itself. He may gay to himself, I would rather be a great poet
than a very cheerful and happy man; and if to lend a very retired
and lonely life be the likeliest discipline to make me a great poet,
I shall submit to that discipline. You must pay a price in labour
and self-denial to accomplish any great end. When Milton resolved
to write something 'which men should not willingly let die,' he knew
what it would cost him. It was to be 'by labour and intent study,
which I take to be my portion in this life.' When Mr. Dickens wrote
one of his Christmas Books, he shut himself up for six weeks to
do it; he 'put his whole heart into it, and came out again looking
as haggard as a murderer.' There is a substratum of philosophic
truth in Professor Aytoun's brilliant burlesque of Firmilian. That
gentleman wanted to be a poet. And being persuaded that the only
way to successfully describe tragic and awful feelings was to have
actually felt them, he got into all kinds of scrapes of set purpose,
that he might know what were the actual sensations of people
in like circumstances. Wishing to know what are the emotions of a
murderer, he goes and kills somebody. He finds, indeed, that feelings
sought experimentally prove not to be the genuine article: still,
you see the spirit of the true artist, content to make any sacrifice
to attain perfection in his art. The highest excellence, indeed,
in some one department of human exertion is not consistent with
decent goodness in all: you dwarf the remaining faculties when
you develop one to abnormal size and strength. Thus have men been
great preachers, but uncommonly neglectful parents. Thus have men
been great statesmen, but omitted to pay their tradesmen's bills.
Thus men have been great moral and social reformers, whose own lives
stood much in need of moral and social reformation. I should judge
from a portrait I have seen of Mr. Thomas Sayers, the champion of
England, that this eminent individual has attended to his physical
to the neglect of his intellectual development. His face appeared
deficient in intelligence, though his body seemed abundant in
muscle. And possibly it is better to seek to develop the entire
nature--intellectual, moral, and physical-than to push one part of
it into a prominence that stunts and kills the rest. It is better
to be a complete man than to be essentially a poet, a statesman,
a prize-fighter. It is better that a tree should be fairly grown
all round, than that it should send out one tremendous branch to
the south, and have only rotten twigs in every other direction;
better, even though that tremendous branch should be the very
biggest that ever was seen. Such an inordinate growth in a single
direction is truly morbid. It reminds one of the geese whose livers
go to form that regal dainty, the pate de foie gras. By subjecting
a goose to a certain manner of life, you dwarf its legs, wings,
and general muscular development; but you make its liver grow as
large as itself. I have known human beings who practised on their
mental powers a precisely analogous discipline. The power of
calculating in figures, of writing poetry, of chess-playing, of
preaching sermons, was tremendous; but all their other faculties
were like the legs and wings of the fattening goose.
Let us try to be entire human beings, round and complete; and if
we wish to be so, it is best not to live too much alone. The best
that is in man's nature taken as a whole is brought out by the
society of his kind. In one or two respects he may be better in
solitude, but not as the complete man. And more especially a good
deal of the society of little children is much to be desired. You
will be the better for having them about you, for listening to their
stories, and watching their ways. They will sometimes interrupt you
at your work, indeed, but their effect upon your moral development
will be more valuable by a great deal than the pages you might have
written in the time you spent with them. Read over the following
verses, which are among the latest written by Longfellow. I do not
expect that men who have no children of their own will appreciate
them duly; but they seem to me among the most pleasing and touching
which that pleasing poet ever wrote. Miserable solitary beings,
see what improving and softening influences you miss!
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations
That is known as the Children's Hour.
I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.
From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall-stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.
A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.
A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!
They climb up into my turret,
O'er the arms and back of my chair:
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.
They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!
Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old moustache as I am
Is not a match for you all?
I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeons,
In the round-tower of my heart.
And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!
What shall be said as to the effect which a solitary life will
produce upon a man's estimate of himself? Shall it lead him to fancy
himself a man of very great importance? Or shall it tend to make
him underrate himself, and allow inferior men of superior impudence
to take the wall of him? Possibly we have all seen each effect
follow from a too lonely mode of life. Each may follow naturally
enough. Perhaps it is natural to imagine your mental stature to
be higher than it is, when you have no one near with whom you may
compare yourself. It no doubt tends to take down a human being
from his self-conceit, to find himself no more than one of a large
circle, no member of which is disposed to pay any special regard
to his judgment, or in any way to yield him precedence. And the
young man who has come in his solitary dwelling to think that he
is no ordinary mortal, has that nonsense taken out of him when he
goes back to spend some days in his father's house among a lot of
brothers of nearly his own age, who are generally the very last of
the race to believe in any man. But sometimes the opposite effect
comes of the lonely life. You grow anxious, nervous, and timid; you
lose confidence in yourself, in the absence of any who may back up
your failing sense of your own importance. You would like to shrink
into a corner, and to slip quietly through life unnoticed. And all
this without affectation, without the least latent feeling that
perhaps you are not so very insignificant after all. Yet, even
where men have come well to understand how infinitely little they
are as regards the estimation of mankind, you will find them, if
they live alone, cherishing some vain fancy that some few people,
some distant friends, are sometimes thinking of them. You will
find them arranging their papers, as though fancying that surely
somebody would like some day to see them; and marshalling their
sermons, as though in the vague notion that at some future time
mortals would be found weak enough to read them. It is one of the
things slowly learnt by repeated lessons and lengthening experience,
that nobody minds very much about you, my reader. You remember the
sensitive test which Dr. Johnson suggested as to the depth of one
mortal's feeling for another. How does it affect his appetite?
Multitudes in London, he said, professed themselves extremely
distressed at the hanging of Dr. Dodd; but how many on the morning
he was hung took a materially worse breakfast than usual? Solitary
dreamer, fancying that your distant friends feel deep interest in
your goings-on, how many of them are there who would abridge their
dinner if the black-edged note arrived by post which will some day
chronicle the last fact in your worldly history?
You get, living alone, into little particular ways of your own.
You know how, walking along a crowded street, you cannot keep a
straight line: at every step you have to yield a little to right or
left to avoid the passers by. This is no great trouble: you do it
almost unconsciously, and your journey is not appreciably lengthened.
Even so, living in a family, walking along the path of life in the
same track with many more, you find it needful scores of times each
day to give up your own fancies and wishes and ways, in deference
to those of others. You cannot divide the day in that precise
fashion which you would yourself like best. You must, in deciding
what shall be the dinner-hour, regard what will suit others as well
as you. You cannot sit always just in the corner or in the chair
you would prefer. Sometimes you must tell your children a story
when you are weary, or busy; but you cannot find it in your heart
to cast a shadow of disappointment on the eager little faces that
come and ask you. You have to stop writing many a time, in the
middle of a sentence, to open your study door at the request of a
little voice outside; and to admit a little visitor who can give
no more definite reason for her visit than that she has come to see
you, and tell you she has been a good girl. And all this is well
for you It breaks in hour by hour upon your native selfishness. And
it cosfs you not the slightest effort to give up your own wish to
that of your child. Even if to middle age you retain the innocent
taste for sweetmeats, would you not have infinitely greater pleasure
in seeing your little boy or girl eating up the contents of your
parcel, than in eating them yourself? It is to me a thoroughly
disgusting sight to see, as we sometimes do, the wife and children
of a family kept in constant terror of the selfish bashaw at the
head of the house, and ever on the watch to yield in every petty
matter to his whims and fancies. Sometimes, where he is a hard-wrought
and anxious man, whose hard work earns his children's bread, and
whose life is their sole stay, it is needful that he should be
deferred to in many things, lest the overtasked brain and overstrained
nervous system should break down or grow unequal to their task. But
I am not thinking of such cases. I mean cases in which the head
of the family is a great fat, bullying, selfish scoundrel; who
devours sullenly the choice dishes at dinner, and walks into all
the fruit at dessert, while his wife looks on in silence, and the
awe-stricken children dare not hint that they would like a little
of what the brutal hound is devouring. I mean cases in which the
contemptible dog is extremely well dressed, while his wife and
children's attire is thin and bare; in which he liberally tosses
about his money in the billiard-room, and goes off in autumn for
a tour on the Continent by himself, leaving them to the joyless
routine of their unvaried life. It is sad to see the sudden hush
that falls upon the little things when he enters the house; how
their sports are cut short, and they try to steal away from the
room. Would that I were the Emperor of Russia, and such a man my
subject! Should not he taste the knout? Should not I make him howl?
That would be his suitable punishment: for he will never feel what
worthier mortals would regard as the heavier penalty by far, the
utter absence of confidence or real affection between him and his
children when they grow up. He will not mind that there never was
a day when the toddling creatures set up a shout of delight at
his entrance, and rushed at him and scaled him and searched in his
pockets, and pulled him about; nor that the day will never come
when, growing into men and women, they will come to him for sympathy
and guidance in their little trials and perplexities. Oh, woful to
think that there are parents, held in general estimation too, to
whom their children would no more think of going for kindly sympathy,
than they would think of going to Nova Zembla for warmth!
But this is an excursus: I would that my hand were wielding a
stout horsewhip rather than a pen! Let me return to the point of
deviation, and say that a human being, if he be true-hearted, by
living in a family, insensibly and constantly is gently turned from
his own stiff track; and goes through life sinuously, so to speak.
But the lonely man settles into his own little ways. He is like
the man who walks through the desert without a soul to elbow him
for miles. He fixes his own hours; he sits in his own corner, in
his peculiar chair; he arranges the lamp where it best suits himself
that it should stand; he reads his newspaper when he pleases, for
no one else wants to see it; he orders from the club the books
that suit his own taste. And all this quite fitly: like the Duke
of Argyle's attacks upon Lord Derby, these things please himself,
and do harm to nobody. It is not selfishness not to consult the
wishes of other people, if there be no other people whose wishes
you can consult. And, though with great suffering to himself, I
believe that many a kind-hearted, precise old bachelor, stiffened
into his own ways through thirty solitary years would yet make an
effort to give them up, if he fancied that to yield a little from
them was needful to the comfort of others. He would give up the corner
by the fire in which he Las sat through the life of a generation:
he would resign to another the peg on which his hat has hung through
that long time. Still, all this would cost a painful effort; and
one need hardly repeat the common-place, that if people intend ever
to get married, it is expedient that they should do so before they
have settled too rigidly into their own ways.
It is a very touching thing, I think, to turn over the repositories
of a lonely man after he is dead. You come upon so many indications
of all his little ways and arrangements. In the case of men who
have been the heads of large families, this work is done by those
who have been most nearly connected with them, and who knew their
ways before; and such men, trained hourly to yield their own wishes
in things small and great, have comparatively few of those little
peculiar ways in which so much of their individuality seems to
make its touching appeal to us after they are gone. But lonely men
not merely have very many little arrangements of their own, but
have a particular reserve in exhibiting these: there is a strong
sensitiveness about them: you know how they would have shrunk in
life from allowing any one to turn over their papers, or even to
look into the arrangements of their wardrobe and their linen-press.
I remember once, after the sudden death of a reserved old gentleman,
being one of two or three who went over all his repositories. The
other people who did so with me were hard-headed lawyers, and did
not seem to mind much; but I remember that it appeared to me a
most touching sight we saw. All the little ways into which he had
grown in forty lonely years; all those details about his property
(a very large one), which in life he had kept entirely to himself--all
these we saw. I remember, lying on the top of the documents contained
in an iron chest, a little scrap of paper, the back of an ancient
letter, on which was written a note of the amount of all his wealth.
There you saw at once a secret which in life he would have confided
to no one. I remember the precise arrangement of all the little
piles of papers, so neatly tied up in separate parcels. I remember
the pocket-handkerchiefs, of several different kinds, each set
wrapped up by itself in a piece of paper. It was curious to think
that he had counted and sorted those, handkerchiefs; and now he
was so far away. What a contrast, the little cares of many little
matters like that, and the solemn realities of the unseen world!
I would not on any account have looked over these things alone.
I should have had an awe-stricken expectation that I should be
interrupted. I should have expected a sudden tap on the shoulder,
and to be asked what I was doing there. And doubtless, in many such
cases, when the repositories of the dead are first looked into by
strangers, some one far away would be present, if such things could
be.
Solitary men, of the class which I have in my mind, are generally
very hard-wrought men, and are kept too busy to allow very much
time for reverie. Still, there is some. There are evening hours
after the task is done, when you sit by the fire, or walk up and
down your study, and think that you are missing a great deal in
this lonely life; and that much more might be made of your stay in
this world, while its best years are passing over. You think that
there are many pleasant people in the world, people whom you would
like to know, and who might like you if they knew you. But you and
they have never met; and if you go on in this solitary fashion, you
and they never will meet. No doubt here is your comfortable room;
there is the blazing fire and the mellow lamp and the warmly-curtained
windows; and pervading the silent chamber, there is the softened
murmur of the not distant sea. The backs of your books look out at
you like old friends; and after you are married, you won't be able
to afford to buy so many. Still, you recall the cheerful society
in which you have often spent such hours, and you think it might
be well if you were not so completely cut off from it. You fancy
you hear the hum of lively conversation, such as gently exhilarates
the mind without tasking it; and again you think what a loss it
is to live where you hardly ever hear music, whether good or bad.
You think of the awkward shyness and embarrassment of manner which
grows upon a man who is hardly ever called to join in general
conversation. Yes, He knew our nature best who said that it is
not good that man should be alone. We lean to our kind. There is
indeed a solitariness which is the condition of an individual soul's
being, which no association with others can do away; but there is
no reason why we should add to that burden of personality which the
Bishop of Oxford, in one of his most striking sermons, has shown to
be truly 'an awful gift.' And say, youthful recluse (I don't mean
you, middle-aged bachelor, I mean really young men of five or six
and twenty), have you not sometimes, sitting by the fireside in
the evening, looked at the opposite easy chair in the ruddy glow,
and imagined that easy chair occupied by a gentle companion--one who
would bring out into double strength all that is good in you--one
who would sympathize with you and encourage you in all your work--one
who would think you much wiser, cleverer, handsomer, and better
than any mortal has ever yet thought you--the Angel in the House,
in short, to use the strong expression of Mr. Coventry Patmore?
Probably you have imagined all that: possibly you have in some
degree realized it all. If not, in all likelihood the fault lies
chiefly with yourself.
It must be a dismal thing for a solitary man to be taken ill: I mean
so seriously ill as to be confined to bed, yet not so dangerously
ill as to make some relation or friend come at all sacrifices to
be with you. The writer speaks merely from logical considerations:
happily he never experienced the case. But one can see that in
that lonely life, there can be none of those pleasant circumstances
which make days in bed, when acute pain is over, or the dangerous
turning-point of disease is happily past, as quietly enjoyable days
as any man is ever likely to know. No one should ever be seriously
ill (if he can help it) unless he be one of a considerable household.
Even then, indeed, it will be advisable to be ill as seldom as may
be. But to a person who when well is very hard-worked, and a good
deal worried, what restful days those are of which we are thinking!
You have such a feeling of peace and quietness. There you lie,
in lazy luxury, when you are suffering merely the weakness of a
serious illness, but the pain and danger are past. All your wants
are so thoughtfully and kindly anticipated. It is a very delightful
sensation to lift your head from the pillow, and instantly to find
yourself giddy and blind from loss of blood, and just drop your
head down again. It is not a question, even for the most uneasily
exacting conscience, whether you are to work or not: it is plain
you cannot. There is no difficulty on that score. And then you
are weakened to that degree that nothing worries you. Things going
wrong or remaining neglected about the garden or the stable, which
would have annoyed you when well, cannot touch you here. All you
want is to lie still and rest. Everything is still. You faintly
hear the door-bell ring; and though you live in a quiet country
house where that phenomenon rarely occurs, you feel not the least
curiosity to know who is there. You can look for a long time quite
contentedly at the glow of the fire on the curtains and on the
ceiling. You feel no anxiety about the coming in of the post; but
when your letters and newspapers arrive, you luxuriously read them,
a very little at a time, and you soon forget all you have read.
You turn over and fall asleep for a while; then you read a little
more. Your reviving appetite makes simple food a source of real
enjoyment. The children come in, and tell you wonderful stories of
all that has happened since you were ill. They are a little subdued
at first, but soon grow noisy as usual; and their noise does not
in the least disturb you. You hear it as though it were miles off.
After days and nights of great pain, you understand the blessing
of ease and rest: you are disposed to be pleased with everything,
and everybody wants to please you. The day passes away, and the
evening darkness comes before you are aware. Everything is strange,
and everything is soothing and pleasant. The only disadvantage is,
that you grow so fond of lying in bed, that you shrink extremely
from the prospect of ever getting up again.
Having arrived at this point, at 10.45 on this Friday evening, I
gathered up all the pages which have been written, and carried them
to the fireside, and sitting there, I read them over; and I confess,
that on the whole, it struck me that the present essay was somewhat
heavy. A severe critic might possibly say that it was stupid. I
fancied it would have been rather good when it was sketched out;
but it has not come up to expectation. However, it is as good as
I could make it; and I trust the next essay may be better. It is
a chance, you see, what the quality of any composition shall be.
Give me a handle to turn, and I should undertake upon every day
to turn it equally well. But in the working of the mental machine,
the same pressure of steam, the same exertion of will, the same
strain of what powers you have, will not always produce the same
result. And if you, reader, feel some disappointment at looking
at a new work by an old friend, and finding it not up to the mark
you expected, think how much greater his disappointment must have
been as the texture rolled out from the loom, and he felt it was
not what he had wished. Here, to-night, the room and the house are
as still as in my remembrance of the Solitary Days which are gone.
But they will not be still to-morrow morning; and they are so now
because sleep has hushed two little voices, and stayed the ceaseless
movements of four little pattering feet. May those Solitary Days
never return. They are well enough when the great look-out is
onward; but, oh! how dreary such days must be to the old man whose
main prospect is of the past! I cannot imagine a lot more completely
beyond all earthly consolation, than that of a man from whom wife
and children have been taken away, and who lives now alone in the
dwelling once gladdened by their presence, but now haunted by their
memory. Let us humbly pray, my reader, that such a lot may never
be yours or mine.
CHAPTER VIII.
CONCERNING GLASGOW DOWN THE WATER.
Upon any day in the months of June, July, August, and September, the
stranger who should walk through the handsome streets, crescents,
and terraces which form the West End of Glasgow, might be led to
fancy that the plague was in the town, or that some fearful commercial
crash had brought ruin upon all its respectable families,--so
utterly deserted is the place. The windows are all done up with
brown paper: the door-plates and handles, ere-while of glittering
brass, are black with rust: the flights of steps which lead to the
front-doors of the houses have furnished a field for the chalked
cartoons of vagabond boys with a turn for drawing. The more fashionable
the terrace or crescent, the more completely is it deserted: our
feet waken dreary echoes as we pace the pavement. We naturally
inquire of the first policeman we meet, What is the matter with
Glasgow,--has anything dreadful happened? And we receive for answer
the highly intelligible explanation, that the people are all Down
the Water.
We are enjoying (shall we suppose) our annual holiday from the
turmoil of Westminster Hall and the throng of London streets; and
we have taken Glasgow on our way to the Highlands. We have two or
three letters of introduction to two or three of the merchant-princes
of the city; and having heard a great deal of the splendid hospitalities
of the Western metropolis of the North, we have been anticipating
with considerable satisfaction stretching our limbs beneath their
mahogany, and comparing their cuisine and their cellar with the
descriptions of both which we have often heard from Mr. Allan
M'Collop, a Glasgow man who is getting on fairly at the bar. But
when we go to see our new acquaintances, or when they pay us a
hurried visit at our hotel, each of them expresses his deep regret
that he cannot ask us to his house, which he tells us is shut up,
his wife and family being Down the Water. No explanation is vouchsafed
of the meaning of the phrase, which is so familiar to Glasgow folk
that they forget how oddly it sounds on the ear of the stranger. Our
first hasty impression, perhaps, from the policeman's sad face (no
cold meat for him now, honest man), was that some sudden inundation
had swept away the entire wealthier portion of the population,--at
the same time curiously sparing the toiling masses. But the pleasant
and cheerful look of our mercantile friend, as he states what has
become of his domestic circle, shows us that nothing very serious
is amiss. At length, after much meditation, we conclude that the
people are at the sea-side; and as that lies down the Clyde from
Glasgow, when a Glasgow man means to tell us that his family and
himself are enjoying the fresh breezes and the glorious scenery of
the Frith of Clyde, he says they are Down the Water.
Everybody everywhere of course longs for the country, the sea-side,
change of air and scene, at some period during the year. Almost every
man of the wealthier and more cultivated class in this country has
a vacation, longer or shorter. But there never was a city whence the
annual migration to the sea-side is so universal or so protracted
as it is from Glasgow. By the month of March in each year, every
house along the coast within forty miles of Glasgow is let for the
season at a rent which we should say must be highly remunerative.
Many families go to the coast early in May, and every one is down
the water by the first of June. Most people now stay till the end
of September. The months of June and July form what is called 'the
first season;' August and September are 'the second season.' Until
within the last few years, one of these 'seasons' was thought to
furnish a Glasgow family with vigour and buoyancy sufficient to
face the winter, but now almost all who can afford it stay at the
sea-side during both. And from the little we have seen of Glasgow,
we do not wonder that such should be the case. No doubt Glasgow is
a fine city on the whole. The Trongate is a noble street; the park
on the banks of the Kelvin, laid out by Sir Joseph Paxton, furnishes
some pleasant walks; the Sauchyhall-road is an agreeable promenade;
Claremont, Crescent and Park Gardens consist of houses which would
be of the first class even in Belgravia or Tyburnia; and from the
West-end streets, there are prospects of valley and mountain which
are worth going some distance to see. But the atmosphere, though
comparatively free from smoke, wants the exhilarating freshness of
breezes just arrived from the Atlantic. The sun does not set in
such glory beyond Gilmore-hill, as behind the glowing granite of
Goatfell; and the trunks of the trees round Glasgow are (if truth
must be spoken) a good deal blacker than might be desired, while
their leaves are somewhat shrivelled up by the chemical gales of
St. Rollox. No wonder, then, that the purest of pure air, the bluest
of blue waves, the most picturesque of noble hills, the most purple
of heather, the greenest of ivy, the thickest of oak-leaves, the
most fragrant of roses and honeysuckle, should fairly smash poor
old Glasgow during the summer months, and leave her not a leg to
stand on.
The ladies and children of the multitudinous families that go down
the water, remain there permanently, of course: most of the men
go up to business every morning and return to the sea-side every
night. This implies a journey of from sixty to eighty miles daily;
but the rapidity and the cheapness of the communication, render
the journey a comparatively easy one. Still, it occupies three or
four hours of the day; and many persons remain in town two or three
nights weekly, smuggling themselves away in some little back parlour
of their dismantled dwellings. But let us accept our friend's
invitation to spend a few days at his place down the water, and
gather up some particulars of the mode of life there.
There are two ways of reaching the coast from Glasgow. We may
sail all the way down the Clyde, in steamers generally remarkably
well-appointed and managed; or we may go by railway to Greenock,
twenty-three miles off, and catch the steamer there. By going
by railway we save an hour,--a great deal among people with whom
emphatically time is money,--and we escape a somewhat tedious sail
down the river. The steamer takes two hours to reach Greenock,
while some express trains which run all the way without stopping,
accomplish the distance in little more than half an hour. The sail
down the Clyde to Greenock is in parts very interesting. The banks
of the river are in some places richly wooded: on the north side
there are picturesque hills; and the huge rock on which stands the
ancient castle of Dumbarton, is a striking feature. But we have
never met any Glasgow man or woman who did not speak of the sail
between Glasgow and Greenock as desperately tedious, and by all means
to be avoided. Then in warm summer weather the Clyde is nearly as
filthy as the Thames; and sailing over a sewer, even through fine
scenery, has its disadvantages. So we resolve to go with our friend
by railway to Greenock, and thus come upon the Clyde where it has
almost opened into the sea. Quite opened into the sea, we might say:
for at Greenock the river is three miles broad, while at Glasgow
it is only some three hundred yards.
'Meet me at Bridge-street station at five minutes to four,' says
Mr. B--, after we have agreed to spend a few days on the Clyde.
There are a couple of hours to spare, which we give to a basin of
very middling soup at McLerie's, and to a visit to the cathedral,
which is a magnificent specimen of the severest style of Gothic
architecture. We are living at the Royal Hotel in George Square,
which we can heartily recommend to tourists; and when our hour
approaches, Boots brings us a cab. We are not aware whether there
is any police regulation requiring the cabs of Glasgow to be extremely
dirty, and the horses that draw them to be broken-winded, and lame
of not more than four nor less than two legs. Perhaps it is merely
the general wish of the inhabitants that has brought about the
present state of things. However this may be, the unhappy animal
that draws us reaches Bridge-street station at last. As our carriage
draws up we catch a glimpse of half-a-dozen men, in that peculiar
green dress which railway servants affect, hastening to conceal
themselves behind the pillars which decorate the front of the building,
while two or three excited ticket-porters seize our baggage, and
offer to carry it up-stairs. But our friend with Scotch foresight
and economy, has told us to make the servants of the Company do
thein work. 'Hands off,' we say to the ticket-porters; and walking
up the steps we round a pillar, and smartly tapping on the shoulder
one of the green-dressed gentlemen lurking there, we indicate
to him the locality of our port-manteau. Sulkily he shoulders it,
and precedes us to the booking-office. The fares are moderate;
eighteen-pence to Greenock, first class: and we understand that
persona who go daily, by taking season tickets, travel for much
less. The steamers afford a still cheaper access to the sea-side,
conveying passengers from Glasgow to Rothesay, about forty-five
miles, for sixpence cabin and three-pence deck. The trains start
from a light and spacious shed, which has the very great disadvantage
of being at an elevation of thirty or forty feet above the ground
level. Railway companies have sometimes spent thousands of pounds
to accomplish ends not a tenth part so desirable as is the arranging
their stations in such a manner as that people in departing, and
still more in arriving, shall be spared the annoyance and peril of
a break-neck staircase like that at the Glasgow railway station. It
is a vast comfort when cabs can draw up alongside the train, under
cover, so that people can get into them at once, as at Euston-square.
The railway carriages that run between Glasgow and Greenock have a
rather peculiar appearance. The first-class carriages are of twice
the usual length, having six compartments instead of three. Each
compartment holds eight passengers; and as this accommodation is
gained by increasing the breadth of the carriages, brass bars are
placed across the windows, to prevent any one from putting out his
head. Should any one do so, his head would run some risk of coming
in collision with the other train; and although, from physiological
reasons, tome heads might receive no injury in such a case, the
carriage with which they came in contact would probably suffer.
The expense of painting is saved by the carriages being built of
teak, which when varnished has a cheerful light-oak colour. There
is a great crowd of men on the platform, for the four o'clock train
is the chief down-train of the day. The bustle of the business-day
is over; there is a general air of relief and enjoyment. We meet our
friend punctual to the minute; we take our seat on the comfortable
blue cushions; the bell rings; the engine pants and tugs; and we
are off 'down the water.'
We pass through a level country on leaving Glasgow: there are the
rich fields which tell of Scotch agricultural industry. It is a
bright August afternoon: the fields are growing yellow; the trees
and hedges still wear their summer green. In a quarter of an hour
the sky suddenly becomes overcast. It is not a cloud: don't be afraid
of an unfavourable change of weather; we have merely plunged into
the usual atmosphere of dirty and ugly Paisley. Without a pause,
we sweep by, and here turn off to the right. That line of railway
from which we have turned aside runs on to Dumfries and Carlisle;
a branch of it keeps along the Ayrshire coast to Ardrossan and Ayr.
In a little while we are skimming the surface of a bleak, black
moor; it is a dead level, and not in the least interesting: but,
after a plunge into the mirk darkness of a long tunnel, we emerge
into daylight again; and there, sure enough, are the bright waters
of the Clyde. We are on its south side; it has spread out to the
breadth of perhaps a couple of miles. That rocky height on its north
shore is Dumbarton Castle; that great mass beyond is Ben Lomond,
at whose base lies Loch Lomond, the queen of Scottish lakes, now
almost as familiar to many a cockney tourist as a hundred years since
to Rob Roy Macgregor. We keep close by the water's edge, skirting
a range of hills on which grow the finest strawberries in Scotland.
Soon, to the right, we see many masts, many great rafts of timber,
many funnels of steamers; and there, creeping along out in the middle
of the river, is the steamer we are to join, which left Glasgow
an hour before us. We have not stopped since we left Glasgow;
thirty-five minutes have elapsed, and now we sweep into a remarkably
tasteless and inconvenient station. This is Greenock at last; but,
as at Glasgow, the station is some forty feet above the ground. A
railway cart at the foot of a long stair receives the luggage of
passengers, and then sets off at a gallop down a dirty little lane.
We follow at a run; and, a hundred and fifty yards off, we come
on a long range of wharf, beside which lie half-a-dozen steamers,
sputtering out their white steam with a roar, as though calling
impatiently for their passengers to come faster. Our train has
brought passengers for a score of places on the Frith; and in the
course of the next hour and a half, these vessels will disperse
them to their various destinations. By way of guidance to the
inexperienced, a post is erected on the wharf, from which arms
project, pointing to the places of the different steamers. The idea
is a good one, and if carried out with the boldness with which it
was conceived, much advantage might be derived by strangers. But a
serious drawback about these indicators is, that they are invariably
pointed in the wrong direction, which renders them considerably less
useful than they might otherwise be. Fortunately we have a guide,
for there is not a moment to lose. We hasten on board, over an
awkward little gangway, kept by a policeman of rueful countenance,
who punches the heads of several little boys who look on with awe.
Bareheaded and bare-footed girls offer baskets of gooseberries
and plums of no tempting appearance. Ragged urchins bellow 'Day's
Penny Paper! Glasgow Daily News!' In a minute or two, the ropes
are cast off, and the steamers diverge as from a centre to their
various ports.
We are going to Dunoon. Leaving the ship-yards of Greenock echoing
with multitudinous hammerings, and rounding a point covered with
houses, we see before us Gourock, the nearest to Greenock of the
places 'down the water.' It is a dirty little village on the left
side of the Frith. A row of neat houses, quite distinct from the
dirty village, stretches for two miles along the water's edge.
The hills rise immediately behind these. The Frith is here about
three miles in breadth. It is Renfrewshire on the left hand; a few
miles on, and it will be Ayrshire. On the right are the hills of
Argyleshire. And now, for many miles on either side, the shores of
the Frith, and the shores of the long arms of the sea that run up
among those Argyleshire mountains, are fringed with villas, castles,
and cottages--the retreats of Glasgow men and their families. It
is not, perhaps, saying much for Glasgow to state that one of its
greatest advantages is the facility with which one can get away
from it, and the beauty of the places to which one can get. But
true it is, that there is hardly a great city in the world which
is so well off in this respect. For six-pence, the artisan of
Bridgeton or Calton can travel forty miles in the purest air, over
as blue a sea, and amid as noble hills, as can be found in Britain.
The Clyde is a great highway: a highway traversed, indeed, by a
merchant navy scarcely anywhere surpassed in extent; but a highway,
too, whose gracious breezes, through the summer and autumn time,
are ever ready to revive the heart of the pale weaver, with his
thin wife and child, arid to fan the cheek of the poor consumptive
needlewoman into the glow of something like country health and
strength.
After Greenock is passed, and the river has grown into the Frith,
the general features of the scene'remain very much the same for
upwards of twenty miles. The water varies from three to seven or
eight miles in breadth; and then suddenly opens out to a breadth
of twenty or thirty miles. Hills, fringed with wood along their
base, and gradually passing into moorland as they ascend, form, the
shores on either side. The rocky islands of the Great and Little
Cumbrae occupy the middle of the Frith, about fourteen or fifteen
miles below Greenock: to the right lies the larger island of Bute;
and further on the still larger island of Arran. The hills on the
Argyleshire side of the Frith are generally bold and precipitous:
those on the Ayrshire side are of much less elevation. The character
of all the places'down the water' is almost identical: they consist
of a row of houses, generally detached villas or cottages, reaching
along the shore, at only a few yards' distance from the water,
with the hills arising immediately behind. The beach is not very
convenient for bathing, being generally rocky; though here and
there we find a Btrip of yellow sand. Trees and shrubs grow in the
richest way down to the water's edge. The trees are numerous, and
luxuriant rather than large; oaks predominate; we should say few of
them are a hundred years old. Ivy and honeysuckle grow in profusion;
for several miles along the coast, near Largs, there is a perpendicular
wall of rock from fifty to one hundred feet in height, which follows
the windings of the shore at a distance of one hundred and fifty
yards from the water, enclosing between itself and the sea a long
ribbon of fine soil, on which shrubs, flowers, and fruit grow
luxuriantly; and this natural rampart, which advances and retreats
as we pursue the road at its base, like the bastions and curtains
of some magnificent feudal castle, is in many places clad with ivy,
so fresh and green that we can hardly believe that for months in
the year it is wet with the salt spray of the Atlantic. Here and
there, along the coast, are places where the land is capable of
cultivation for a mile or two inland; but, as the rule, the hill
ascends almost from the water's edge, into granite and heather.
Let us try to remember the names of the places which reach along
the Frith upon either hand: we believe that a list of them will
show that not without reason it is said that Glasgow is unrivalled
in the number of her sea-side retreats. On the right hand, as we
go down the Frith, there are Helensburgh, Row, Roseneath, Shandon,
Gareloch-head, Cove, Kilcreggan, Lochgoil-head, Arrochar, Ardentinny,
Strone, Kilmun, Kirn, Dunoon, Inellan, Toward, Port Bonnatyne,
Rothesay, Askog, Colintrave, Tynabruach. Sometimes these places
form for miles one long range of villas. Indeed, from Strone to
Toward, ten or twelve miles, the coast is one continuous street.
On the left hand of the Frith are Gourock, Ashton, Inverkip, Wemyss
Bay, Skelmorlie, Largs, Fairlie: then comes a bleak range of sandy
coast, along which stand Ardrossan, Troon, and Ayr. In the island
of Cumbrae is Millport, conspicuously by the tall spire which marks
the site of an Episcopal chapel and college of great architectural
beauty, built within the last few years. And in Arran are the
villages of Lamlash and Brodick. The two Cumbrae islands constitute
a parish. A simple-minded clergyman, not long deceased, who held
the cure for many years, was wont, Sunday by Sunday, to pray (in the
church service) for 'the islands of the Great and Little Cumbrae,
and also for the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland.'
But all this while the steam has been fiercely chafing through the
funnel as we have been stopping at Gourock quay. We are away at
last, and are now crossing the Frith towards the Argyleshire side.
A mile or two down, along the Ayrshire side, backed by the rich woods
of Ardgowan, tall and spectral-white, stands the Cloch lighthouse.
We never have looked at it without thinking how many a heart-broken
emigrant must be remembering that severely simple white tower as
almost the last thing he saw in Scotland when he was leaving it
for ever. The Frith opens before us as we advance: we are running
at the rate (quite usual among Clyde steamers) of sixteen or
seventeen miles an hour. There, before us, is Cumbrae: over Bute
and over Cumbrae look the majestic mountains of Arran; that great
granite peak is Goat-fell. And on a clear day, far out, guarding
the entrance to the Frith, rising sheer up from the deep sea, at
ten miles' distance from the nearest land, looms Ailsa, white with
sea-birds, towering to the height of twelve or thirteen hundred
feet. It is a rocky islet of about a mile in circumference, and
must have been thrown up by volcanic agency; for the water around
it is hundreds of feet in depth.
Out in the middle of the Frith we can see the long, low, white
line of buildings on either side of it, nestling at the foot of
the hills. We are drawing near Dunoon. That opening on the right
is the entrance to Loch Long and Loch Goyle; and a little further
on we pass the entrance to the Holy Loch, on whose shore is
the ancient burying-place of the family of Argyle. How remarkably
tasteful many of these villas are! They are generally built in the
Elizabethan style: they stand in grounds varying from half an acre
up to twenty or thirty acres, very prettily laid out with shrubbery
and flowers; a number (we can see, for we are now skirting the
Argyleshire coast at the distance of only a few hundred yards) have
conservatories and hot-houses of more or less extent: flagstaffs
appear to be much affected (for send a landsman to the coast, and
he is sure to become much more marine than a sailor): and those
pretty bow-windows, with the crimson fuchsias climbing up them--those
fantastic gables and twisted chimneys--those shining evergreens
and cheerful gravel walks--with no lack of pretty girls in round
hats, and sportive children rolling about the trimly-kept grass
plots--all seen in this bright August sunshine--all set off against
this blue smiling expanse of sea--make a picture so gay and inviting,
that we really do not wonder any more that Glasgow people should
like to 'go down the water.'
Here is Dunoon pier. Several of the coast places have, like Dunoon,
a long jetty of wood running out a considerable distance into the
water, for the accommodation of the steamers, which call every
hour or two throughout the day. Other places have deep water close
in-shore, and are provided with a wharf of stone. And several of
the recently founded villages (and half of those we have enumerated
have sprung up within the last ten years) have no landing-place
at which steamers can touch; and their passengers have to land
and embark by the aid of a ferry-boat. We touch the pier at last:
a gangway is hastily thrown from the pier to the steamer, and in
company with many others we go ashore. At the landward end of the
jetty, detained there by a barrier of twopence each of toll, in
round hats and alpaca dresses, are waiting our friend's wife and
children, from whom we receive a welcome distinguished by that
frankness which is characteristic of Glasgow people. But we do not
intend so far to imitate the fashion of some modern tourists and
biographers, as to give our readers a description of our friend's
house and family, his appearance and manners. We shall only say of
him what will never single him out--for it may be said of hundreds
more--that he is a wealthy, intelligent, well-informed, kind-hearted
Glasgow merchant. And if his daughters did rather bore us by
their enthusiastic descriptions of the sermons of 'our minister,'
Mr. Macduff, the still grander orations of Mr. Caird, and the
altogether unexampled eloquence of Dr. Gumming, why, they were only
showing us a thoroughly Glasgow feature; for nowhere in Britain,
we should fancy, is there so much talk about preaching and preachers.
In sailing down the Frith, one gets no just idea of the richness
and beauty of its shores. We have said that a little strip of fine
soil,--in some places only fifty or sixty yards in breadth,--runs
like a ribbon, occasionally broadening out to three or four times
that extent, along the sea-margin; beyond this ribbon of ground come
the wild moor and mountain. In sailing down the Frith, our eye is
caught by the large expanse of moorland, and we do not give due
importance to the rich strip which bounds it, like an edging of
gold lace (to use King James's comparison) round a russet petticoat.
When we land we understand things better. We find next the sea,
at almost any point along the Frith, the turnpike road, generally
nearly level, and beautifully smooth. Here and there, in the
places of older date, we find quite a street of contiguous houses;
but the general rule is of detached dwellings of all grades, from
the humblest cottage to the most luxurious villa. At considerable
intervals, there are residences of a much higher class than even
this last, whose grounds stretch for long distances along the shore.
Such places are Ardgovvan, Kelly, Skelmorlie Castle, and Kelburne,
on the Ayrshire side; and on the other shore of the Frith, Roseneath
Castle, Toward Castle, and Mountstuart. [Footnote: Ardgowan, residence
of Sir Michael Shaw Stewart; Kelly, Mr. Scott; Skelmorlie, the Earl
of Eglinton; Kelburne, the Earl of Glasgow; Roseneath, the Duke of
Argyle; Toward, Mr. Kirkwall Finlay Mountstuart, the Marquis of
Bute.] And of dwellings of a less ambitious standing than these
really grand abodes, yet of a mark much above that suggested by
the word villa, we may name the very showy house of Mr. Napier, the
eminent maker of marine steam-engines, on the Gareloch, a building
in the Saracenic style, which cost we are afraid to say how many
thousand pounds; the finely-placed castle of Wemyss, built from
the design of Billings; and the very striking piece of baronial
architecture called Knock Castle, the residence of Mr. Steel, a
wealthy shipbuilder of Greenock. The houses along the Frith are,
in Scotch fashion, built exclusively of stone, which is obtained
with great facility. Along the Ayrshire coast, the warm-looking
red sandstone of the district is to be had everywhere, almost on
the surface. One sometimes sees a house rising, the stone being
taken from a deep quarry close to it: the same crane often serving
to lift a block from the quarry, and to place it in its permanent
position upon the advancing wall. We have said how rich is vegetation
all along the Frith, until we reach the sandy downs from Ardrossan
to Ayr. All evergreens grow with great rapidity: ivy covers dead
walls very soon. To understand in what luxuriance vegetable life
may be maintained close to the sea-margin, one must walk along the
road which leads from the West Bay at Dunoon towards Toward. We
never saw trees so covered with honeysuckle; and fuchsias a dozen
feet in height are quite common. In this sweet spot, in an Elizabethan
house of exquisite design, retired within grounds where fine taste
has done its utmost, resides, during the summer vacation (and the
summer vacation is six months!), Mr. Buchanan, the Professor of
Logic in the University of Glasgow. It must be a very fair thing
to teach logic at Glasgow, if the revenue of that chair maintains
the groves and flowers, and (we may add) the liberal hospitalities,
of Ardflllane.
One pleasing circumstance about the Frith of Clyde, which we remark
the more from its being unhappily the exception to the general rule
in Scotland, is the general neatness and ecclesiastical character
of the churches. The parish church of Dunoon, standing on a wooded
height, rising from the water, with its grey tower looking over
the trees, is a dignified and commanding object. The churches of
Roseneath and Row, which have been built within a year or two, are
correct and elegant specimens of ecclesiastical Gothic: indeed they
are so thoroughly like churches, that John Knox would assuredly have
pulled them down had they been standing in his day. And here and
there along the coast the rich Glasgow merchants and the neighbouring
proprietors have built pretty little chapels, whose cross-crowned
gables, steep-pitched roofs, dark oak wood-work, and stained windows,
are pleasant indications that old prejudice lias given way among
cultivated Scotchmen; and that it has come to be understood that
it is false religion as well as bad taste and sense to make God's
house the shabbiest, dirtiest, and most uncomfortable house in the
parish. Some of these sea-side places of worship are crowded in
summer by a fashionable congregation, and comparatively deserted
in winter when the Glasgow folks are gone.
A very considerable number of the families that go 'down the
water' occupy houses which are their own property. There must be,
one would think, a special interest about a house which is one's
own. A man must become attached to a spot where he himself planted
the hollies and yews, and his children have marked their growth year
by year. Still, many people do not like to be tied to one place,
and prefer varying their quarters each season. Very high rents are
paid for good houses on the Frith of Clyde. From thirty to fifty
pounds a month is a common charge for a neat villa at one of the
last founded and most fashionable places. A little less is charged
for the months of August and September than for June and July; and
if a visitor takes a house for the four months which constitute
the season, he may generally have it for May and October without
further cost, Decent houses or parts of houses (flats as they are
called), may be had for about ten pounds a month; and at those places
which approach to the character of a town, as Largs, Eothesay, and
Dunoon, lodgings may be obtained where attendance is provided by
the people of the house.
A decided drawback about the sea-side places within twenty miles
from Greenock, is their total want of that fine sandy beach, so firm
and dry and inviting when the tide is out, which forms so great an
attraction at Ardrossan, Troon, and Ayr. At a few points, as for
instance the West Bay at Dunoon, there is a beautiful expanse of
yellow sand: but as a rule, where the shore does not consist of
precipitous rocks, sinking at once into deep water, it is made of
great rough stones, which form a most unpleasant footing for bathers.
In front of most villas a bathing place is formed by clearing the
stones away. Bathing machines, we should mention, are quite unknown
upon the Frith of Clyde.
So much for the locality which is designated by the phrase, Down
the Water: and now we can imagine our readers asking what kind of
life Glasgow people lead there. Of course there must be a complete
breaking up of all city ways and habits, and a general return to
a simpler and more natural mode of living. Our few days at Dunoon,
and a few days more at two other places on the Frith, were enough
to give us some insight into the usual order of things. By seven
or half-past seven o'clock in the morning the steam is heard by
us, as we are snug in bed, fretting through the waste-pipe of the
early boat for Glasgow; and with great complacency we picture to
ourselves the unfortunate business-men, with whom we had a fishing
excursion last night, already up, and breakfasted, and hurrying
along the shore towards the vessel which is to bear them back to
the counting-house and the Exchange. Poor fellows! They sacrifice
a good deal to grow rich. At each village along the shore the
steamer gets an accession to the number of her passengers; for the
most part of trim, close-shaved, well-dressed gentlemen, of sober
aspect and not many words; though here and there comes some whiskered
and moustached personage, with a shirt displaying a pattern of
ballet-dancers, a shooting coat of countless pockets, and trousers
of that style which, in our college days, we used to call loud. A
shrewd bank-manager told us that he always made a mental memorandum
of such individuals, in case they should ever come to him to borrow
money. Don't they wish they may get it! The steamer parts with her
entire freight at Greenock, whence an express train rapidly conveys
our friends into the heat and smoke of Glasgow. Before ten o'clock
all of them are at their work. For us, who have the day at our
own disposal, we have a refreshing dip in the sea at rising, then
a short walk, and come in to breakfast with an appetite foreign
to Paper Buildings. It is quite a strong sensation when the post
appears about ten o'clock, bearing tidings from the toiling world
we have left behind. Those families who have their choice dine at
two o'clock--an excellent dinner hour when the day is not a working
one: the families whose male members are in town, sometimes postpone
the most important engagement of the day till their return at six
or half-past six o'clock. As for the occupations of the day, there
are boating and yachting, wandering along the beach, lying on the
heather looking at Arran through the sun-mist, lounging into the
reading-room, dipping into any portion of The Times except the
leading articles, turning over the magazines, and generally enjoying
the blessing of rest. Fishing is in high favour, especially among
the ladies. Hooks baited with muscles are sunk to the ground by
leaden weights (the fishers are in a boat), and abundance of whitings
are caught when the weather is favourable. We confess we don't
think the employment ladylike. Sticking the muscles upon the hooks
is no work for fair fingers; neither is the pulling the captured
fish off the hooks. And, even in the pleasantest company, we cannot
see anything very desirable in sitting in a boat, all the floor of
which is covered by unhappy whitings and codlings flapping about
in their last agony. Many young ladies row with great vigour and
adroitness. And as we walk along the shore in the fading twilight,
we often hear, from boats invisible in the gathering shadows, music
mellowed by the distance into something very soft and sweet. The
lords of the creation have come back by the late boats; and we
meet Pater-familias enjoying his evening walk, surrounded by his
children, shouting with delight at having their governor among them
once more. No wonder that, after a day amid the hard matter-of-fact
of business life, he should like to hasten away to the quiet fireside
and the loving hearts by the sea.
Few are the hard-wrought men who cannot snatch an entire day from
business sometimes: and then there is a pic-nic. Glasgow folk
have even more, we believe, than the average share of stiff dinner
parties when in town: we never saw people who seemed so completely
to enjoy the freshness and absence of formality which characterize
the well-assorted entertainment al fresco. We were at one
or two of these; and we cannot describe the universal gaiety and
light-heartedness, extending to grave Presbyterian divines and
learned Glasgow professors; the blue sea and the smiling sky; the
rocky promontory where our feast was spread; its abundance and
variety; the champagne which flowed like water; the joviality and
cleverness of many of the men; the frankness and pretty faces of
all of the women. [Footnote: We do not think, from what we hare
seen, that Glasgow is rich in beauties; though pretty faces are
very common. Times are improved, however, since the days of the lady
who said, on being asked if there were many beauties in Glasgow,
'Oh no; very few; there are only THREE OF US.'] We had a pleasant
yachting excursion one day; and the delight of a new sensation was
well exemplified in the intense enjoyment of dinner in the cramped
little cabin where one could hardly turn, And great was the sight
when our host, with irrepressible pride, produced his preserved
meats and vegetables, as for an Arctic voyage, although a messenger
sent in the boat which was towing behind could have procured them
fresh in ten minutes.
A Sunday at the sea-side, or as Scotch people prefer calling
it, a Sabbath, is an enjoyable thing. The steamers that come down
on Saturday evening are crammed to the last degree. Houses which
are already fuller than they can hold, receive half-a-dozen new
inmates,--how stowed away we cannot even imagine. We cannot but
reject as apocryphal the explanation of a Glasgow tout, that on
such occasions poles are projected from the upper windows, upon
which young men of business roost until the morning. Late walks,
and the spooniest of flirtations characterize the Saturday evening.
Every one, of course, goes to church on Sunday morning; no Glasgow
man who values his character durst stop away. We shall not soon
forget the beauty of the calm Sunday on that beautiful shore: the
shadows of the distant mountains; the smooth sea; the church-bells,
faintly heard from across the water; the universal turning-out of
the population to the house of prayer, or rather of preaching. It
was almost too much for us to find Dr. Gumming here before us, giving
all his old brilliancies to enraptured multitudes. We had hoped
he was four hundred and odd miles off; but we resigned ourselves,
like the Turk, to what appears an inevitable destiny. This gentleman,
we felt, is really one of the institutions of the country, and no
more to be escaped than the income-tax.
Morning service over, most people take a walk. This would have been
regarded in Scotland a few years since as a profanation of the day.
But there is a general air of quiet; people speak in lower tones;
there are no joking and laughing. And the Frith, so covered with
steamers on week-days, is to-day unruffled by a single paddle-wheel.
Still it is a mistake to fancy that a Scotch Sunday is necessarily
a gloomy thing. There are no excursion trains, no pleasure trips
in steamers, no tea-gardens open: but it is a day of quiet domestic
enjoyment, not saddened but hallowed by the recognized sacredness
of the day. The truth is, the feeling of the sanctity of the Sabbath
is so ingrained into the nature of most Scotchmen by their early
training, that they could not enjoy Sunday pleasuring. Their
religious sense, their superstition if you choose, would make them
miserable on a Sunday excursion.
The Sunday morning service is attended by a crowded congregation:
the church is not so full in the afternoon. In some places there
is evening service, which is well attended. We shall not forget
one pleasant walk, along a quiet road bounded by trees as rich and
green as though they grew in Surrey, though the waves were lapping
on the rocks twenty yards off, and the sun was going down behind
the mountains of Cowal, to a pretty little chapel where we attended
evening worship upon our last Sunday on the Clyde.
Every now and then, as we are taking our saunter by the shore after
breakfast, we perceive, well out in the Frith, a steamer, decked
with as many flags as can possibly be displayed about her rigging.
The strains of a band of music come by starts upon the breeze; a
big drum is heard beating away when we can hear nothing else; and a
sound of howling springs up at intervals. Do not fancy that these
yells imply that anything is wrong; t/tat is merely the way in
which working folk enjoy themselves in this country. That steamer
has been hired for the day by some wealthy manufacturer, who is
giving his 'hands' a day's pleasure-sailing. They left Glasgow at
seven or eight o'clock: they will be taken probably to Arran, and
there feasted to a moderate extent; and at dusk they will be landed
at the Broomielaw again. We lament to say that very many Scotch
people of the working class seem incapable of enjoying a holiday
without getting drunk and uproarious. We do not speak from hearsay,
but from what we have ourselves seen. Once or twice we found
ourselves on board a steamer crowded with a most disagreeable mob
of intoxicated persons, among whom, we grieve to say, we saw many
women. The authorities of the vessel appeared entirely to lack
both the power and the will to save respectable passengers from
the insolence of the 'roughs.' The Highland fling may be a very
picturesque and national dance, but when executed on a crowded
deck by a maniacal individual, with puffy face and blood-shot eyes,
swearing, yelling, dashing up against peaceable people, and mortally
drunk, we should think it should be matter less of assthetical than
of police consideration. Unless the owners of the Clyde steamers
wish to drive all decent persons from their boats, they must take
vigorous steps to repress such scandalous goings-on as we have
witnessed more than once or twice. And we also take the liberty
to suggest that the infusion of a little civility into the manner
and conversation of some of the steam-boat officials on the quay
at Greenock, would be very agreeable to passengers, and could not
seriously injure those individuals themselves.
What sort of men are the Glasgow merchants? Why, courteous reader,
there are great diversities among them. Almost all we have met
give us an impression of shrewdness and strong sense; some, of
extraordinary tact and cleverness--though these last are by no means
among the richest men. In some cases we found extremely unaffected
and pleasing address, great information upon general topics--in
short, all the characteristics of the cultivated gentleman. In
others there certainly was a good deal of boorishness; and in one
or two instances, a tendency to the use of oaths which in this
country have long been unknown in good society. The reputed wealth
of some Glasgow men is enormous, though we think it not unlikely
that there is a great deal of exaggeration as to that subject. We
did, however, hear it said that one firm of iron merchants realized
for some time profits to the extent of nearly four hundred thousand
a year. We were told of an individual who died worth a million, all
the produce of his own industry and skill; and one hears incidentally
of such things as five-hundred-pound bracelets, thousand-guinea
necklaces, and other appliances of extreme luxury, as not unknown
among the fair dames of Glasgow.
And so, in idle occupations, and in gleaning up particulars as to
Glasgow matters according to our taste wherever we go, our sojourn upon
the Frith of Clyde pleasantly passed away. We left our hospitable
friends, not without a promise that when the Christmas holidays
come we should visit them once more, and see what kind of thing is
the town life of the winter time in that warm-hearted city. And
meanwhile, as the days shorten to chill November,--as the clouds
of London smoke drift by our windows,--as the Thames runs muddy
through this mighty hum and bustle away to the solitudes of its
last level,--we recall that cheerful time with a most agreeable
recollection of the kindness of Glasgow friends,--and of all that
is implied in Glasgow Down the Water.
CHAPTER IX.
CONCERNING MAN AND HIS DWELLING-PLACE
When my friend Smith's drag comes round to his door, as he and I
are standing on the steps ready to go out for a drive, how cheerful
and frisky the horses look! I think I see them, as I saw them
yesterday, coming round from the stable-yard, with their glossy
coats and the silver of their harness glancing in the May sunshine,
the May sunshine mellowed somewhat by the green reflection of two
great leafy trees. They were going out for a journey of twenty
miles. They were, in fact, about to begin their day's work, and
they knew they were; yet how buoyant and willing they looked! There
was not the faintest appearance of any disposition to shrink from
their task, as if it were a hard and painful one. No; they were
eager to be at it: they were manifestly enjoying the anticipation
of the brisk exertion in the midst of which they would be in five
minutes longer. And by the time we have got into our places, and
have wrapped those great fur robes comfortably about our limbs,
the chafing animals have their heads given them; and instantly they
fling themselves at their collars, and can hardly be restrained
from breaking into a furious gallop. Happy creatures, you enjoy
your work; you wish nothing better than to get at it!
And when I have occasionally beheld a ploughman, bricklayer,
gardener, weaver, or blacksmith, begin his work in the morning, I
have envied him the readiness and willingness with which he took
to it. The plough-man, after he has got his horses harnessed to the
plough, does not delay a minute: into the turf the shining share
enters, and away go horses, plough and man. It costs the ploughman
no effort to make up his mind to begin. He does not stand irresolute,
as you and I in childish days have often done when taken down to
the sea for our morning dip, and when trying to get courage to take
the first plunge under water. And the bricklayer lifts and places
the first brick of his daily task just as easily as the last one.
The weaver, too, sits down without mental struggle at his loom,
and sets off at once. How different is the case with most men whose
work is mental; more particularly how different is the case with
most men whose work is to write--to spin out their thoughts into
compositions for other people to read or to listen to! How such
men, for the most part, shrink from their work--put it off as long
as may be; and even when the paper is spread out and the pen all
right, and the ink within easy reach, how they keep back from the
final plunge! And after they have begun to write, how they dally
with their subject; shrink back as long as possible from grappling
with its difficulties; twist about and about, talking of many
irrelevant matters, before they can summon up resolution to go at
the real point they have got to write about! How much unwillingness
there is fairly to put the neck to the collar!
Such are my natural reflections, suggested by my personal feelings
at this present time. I know perfectly well what I have got to do.
I have to write some account, and attempt some appreciation, of
a most original, acute, well-expressed, and altogether remarkable
book--the book, to wit, which bears the comprehensive title of Man
and his Dwelling-Place. It is a metaphysical book; it is a startling
book; it is a very clever book; and though it is published anonymously,
I have heard several acquaintances say, with looks expressive of
unheard-of stores of recondite knowledge, that they have reason to
believe that it is written by, this and that author, whose name is
already well known to fame. It may be so, but I did not credit it
a bit the more because thus assured of it. In most cases the people
who go about dropping hints of how much they know on such subjects,
know nothing earthly about the matter; but still the premises (as
lawyers would say) make it be felt that the book is a serious one to
meddle with. Not that in treating such a volume, plainly containing
the careful and deliberate views and reflections of an able and
well-informed man, I should venture to assume the dignified tone
of superiority peculiar to some reviewers in dissecting works which
they could not have written for their lives. There are not a score
of men in Britain who would be justified in reviewing such a book
as this de haut en has. I intend the humbler task of giving my
readers some description of the work, stating its great principle,
and arguing certain points with its eminently clever author; and
under the circumstances in which this article is written, it discards
the dignified and undefined We, and adopts the easier and less
authoritative first person singular. The work to be done, therefore,
is quite apparent: there is no doubt about that. But the writer is
most unwilling to begin it. Slowly was the pen taken up; oftentimes
was the window looked out of. I am well aware that I shall not settle
steadily to my task till I shall have had a preliminary canter, so
to speak. Thus have I seen school-hoys, on a warm July day, about
to jump from a sea-wall into the azure depths of ocean. But after
their garments were laid aside, and all was ready for the plunge,
long time sat they upon the tepid stones, and paddled with idle
feet in the water.
How shall I better have that preliminary and moderate exercitation
which serves to get up the steam, than by talking for a little
about the scene around me? Through diamond-shaped panes the sunshine
falls into this little chamber; and going to the window you look
down upon the tops of tall trees. And it is pleasant to look down
upon the tops of tall trees. The usual way of looking at trees,
it may be remarked, is from below. But this chamber is high up in
the tower of a parish church far in the country. Its furniture is
simple as that of the chamber of a certain prophet, who lived long
ago. There are some things here, indeed, which he had not; for
yesterday's Times lies upon the floor drying in the morning sunbeams,
and Fraser's Magazine for May is on a chair by the window. Why
does that incomparable monthly act blisteringly upon the writer's
mind? It never did so till May, 1859. Why does he put it for the
time out of sight? Why, but because, for once, he has read in that
Magazine an article--by a very eminent man, too--written in what
he thinks a thoroughly mistaken spirit, and setting out views which
he thinks to be utterly false and mischievous. Not such, the writer
knows well, are the views of his dear friend the Editor; not such
are the doctrines which Fraser teaches to a grateful world. In the
latter pages of his review of Mill on Liberty, Mr. Buckle spoke
golely for himself; he did not express the opinions which this
Magazine upholds, nor commit for one moment the staff of men who
write in it; and, as one insignificant individual who has penned a
good many pages of Fraser, I beg to express my keen disapprobation
of Mr. Buckle's views upon the subject of Christianity. They may
be right, but I firmly believe they are wrong; they may be true,
but I think them false. I repudiate any share in them: let their
author bear their responsibility for himself. Alas, say I, that
so able a man should sincerely think (I give him credit for entire
sincerity) that man's best refuge and most precious hope is vain
delusion! Very jarringly to my mind sound those eloquent periods,
so inexpressibly sad and dreary, amid pages penned in many quiet
parsonages, by many men who for the truth of Christianity would,
God helping them, lay down their lives. So, you May magazine, get
meanwhile out of sight: I don't want to think of you. Rather let
me stay this impatient throbbing of heart by looking down on the
green tops of those great silent trees.
Thick ivy frames this mullioned window, with its three lance-shaped
lights. Seventy feet below, the grassy graves of the churchyard swell
like green waves. The white headstones gleam in the sun. Ancient
oaks line the lichened wall of the churchyard: their leaves not
yet to thick as they will be a month hereafter. Beyond the wall,
I see a very verdant field, between two oaks; six or seven white
lambs are lying there, or frisking about. The silver gleam of
a river bounds the field; and beyond are thick hedges, white with
hawthorn blossoms. In the distance there is a great rocky hill,
which bounds the horizon. There is not a sound, save when a little
flaw of air brushes a twig against the wall some feet below me.
The smoke of two or three scattered cottages rises here and there.
The sky is very bright blue, with many fleecy clouds. Quiet, quiet!
And all this while the omnibuses, cabs, carriages, drays, horses,
men, are hurrying, sweltering, and fretting along Cheapside!
Man and his Dwetting-Place! Truly a comprehensive subject. For man's
dwelling-place is the universe; and remembering this, it is plain
that there is not much to be said which might not be said under
that title. But, of course, there are sweeping views and opinions
which include man and the universe, and which colour all beliefs
as to details. And the author of this remarkable book has arrived
at such a sweeping view. He holds, that where-as we fancy that we
are living creatures, and that inanimate nature is inert, or without
life, the truth is just the opposite of this fancy. He holds that
man wants life, and that his dwelling-place possesses life. We are
dead, and the world is living. No doubt it would be easy to laugh
at all this; but I can promise the thoughtful reader that, though
after reading the book he may still differ from its author, he will
not laugh at him. Very moderately informed folk are quite aware of
this--that the fact of any doctrine seeming startling at the first
mention of it, is no argument whatever against its truth. Some
centuries since you could hardly have startled men more than by
saying that the earth moves, and the sun stands still. Nay, it is not
yet forty years since practical engineers judged George Stephenson
mad, for saying that a steam-engine could draw a train of carriages
along a rail-way at the rate of fourteen miles an hour. It is
certainly a startling thing to be told that I am dead, and that the
distant hill out there is living. The burden of proof rests with
the man who propounds the theory; the prima facie case is against
him. Trees do not read newspapers; hills do not write articles.
We must try to fix the author's precise meaning when he speaks of
life; perhaps he may intend by it something quite different from
that which we understand. And then we must see what he has to say
in support of a doctrine which at the first glance seems nothing
short of monstrous and absurd.
No: I cannot get on. I cannot forget that May magazine that is lying
in the corner. I must be thoroughly done with it before I can fix
my thoughts upon the work which is to be considered. Mr. Buckle has
done a service to my mind, entirely analogous to that which would
be done to a locomotive engine by a man who should throw a handful
of sand into its polished machinery. I am prepared, from personal
experience, to meet with a flat contradiction his statement that
a man does you no harm by trying to cast doubt and discredit upon
the doctrines you hold most dear. Mr. Buckle, by his article, has
done me an injury. It is an injury, irritating but not dangerous.
For the large assertions, which if they stated truths, would show
that the religion of Christ is a miserable delusion, are unsupported
by a tittle of proof: and the general tone in regard to Christianity,
though sufficiently hostile, and very eloquently expressed, appears
to me uncommonly weak in logic. But as Mr. Buckle's views have
been given to the world, with whatever weight may be derived from
their publication in this magazine, it is no more than just and
necessary that through the same channel there should be conveyed
another contributor's strong disavowal of them, and keen protest
against them. I do not intend to argue against Mr. Buckle's
opinions. This is not the time or place for such an undertaking.
And Mr. Buckle, in his article, has not argued but dogmatically
asserted, and then called hard names at those who may conscientiously
differ from him. Let me suggest to Mr. Buckle that such names can
very easily be retorted. Any man who would use them, very easily
could. Mr. Buckle says that any man who would punish by legal means
the publication of blasphemous sentiments, should be regarded as
a noxious animal. It is quite easy for me to say, and possibly to
prove, that the man who advocates the free publication of blasphemous
sentiments, is a noxious animal. So there we are placed on an
equal footing; and what progress has been made in the argument of
the question in debate? Then Mr. Buckle very strongly disapproves
a certain judgment of, as I believe, one of the best judges who
ever sat on the English Bench: I mean Mr. Justice Coleridge. That
judge on one occasion sentenced to imprisonment a poor, ignorant
man, convicted of having written certain blasphemous words upon
a gate. I am prepared to justify every step that was taken in the
prosecution and punishment of that individual. That, however, is
not the point at issue. Even supposing that the magistrates who
committed, and the judge who sentenced, that miserable wretch,
had acted wrongly and unjustly, could not Mr. Buckle suppose that
they had acled conscientiously? What right had he to speak of Mr.
Justice Coleridge as a 'stony-hearted man?' What right had he to
say that the judge and the magistrates, in doing what they honestly
believed to be right, were 'criminals,' who had 'committed a great
crime?' What right had he to say that their motives were 'the pride
of their power and the wickedness of their hearts?' What right had
he to call one of the most admirable men in Britain 'this unjust
and unrighteous judge?' And where did Mr. Buckle ever see anything
to match the statement, that Mr. Justice Coleridge grasped at the
opportunity of persecuting a poor blasphemer in a remote county,
where his own wickedness was likely to be overlooked, while he durst
not have done as much in the face of the London press? Who will
believe that Mr. Justice Coleridge is distinguished for his 'cold
heart and shallow understanding?' But I feel much more comfortable
now, when I have written upon this page that I, as one humble
contributor to this Magazine, utterly repudiate Mr. Buckle's
sentiments with regard to Sir J. T. Coleridge, and heartily condemn
the manner in which he has expressed them.
If there be any question which ought to be debated with scrupulous
calmness and fairness, it is the question whether it is just that
human laws should prevent and punish the publication of views
commonly regarded as blasphemous. I deny Mr. Buckle's statement,
that all belief is involuntary. I say that in a country like this,
every man of education is responsible for his religious belief; but
of course responsible only to his Maker. Thus, on totally different
grounds from Mr. Buckle, I agree with him in thinking that no
human law should interfere with a man's belief. I am not prepared,
without much longer thought than I have yet given to the subject,
to agree with Mr. Buckle and Mr. Mill, that human law should never
interfere with the publication of opinions, no matter how blasphemous
they may be esteemed by the great majority of the nation to which
they are published. I might probably say that I should not interfere
with the publication of any book, however false and mischievous
I might regard the religious doctrines it taught, provided the
book were written in the interest of truth--provided its author
manifestly desired to set out doctrines which he regarded as true
and important. But if the book set out blasphemous doctrine in
such a tone and temper as made it evident that the writer's main
intention was to irritate and distress those who held the belief
regarded as orthodox, I should probably suppress or punish the
publication of such a book. Sincere infidelity is a sad thing, with
little of the propagandist spirit. Even if it should think that
those Christian doctrines which afford so much comfort and support
to men are fond delusions, I think its humane feeling would be,--Well,
I shall not seek to shatter hopes which I cannot replace. I know
that such was the feeling of the most amiable of unbelievers--David
Hume. I know how he regularly attended church, anxious that he might
not by his example dash in humble minds the belief which tended
to make them good and happy, though it was a belief which he could
not share. My present nolion is, that laws ought to punish coarse
and abusive blasphemy. They may let thoughtful and philosophic
scepticism alone. It will hardly reach, it will never distress,
the masses. But if a blackguard goes up to a parsonage door, and
bellows out blasphemous remarks about the Trinity; or if a man who
is a blockhead as well as a malicious wretch writes blasphemous
words upon a parsonage gate, I cannot for an instant recognize in
these men the champions of freedom of religious thought and speech.
Even Mr. Buckle cannot think that their purpose is to teach the
clergymen important truth. They don't intend to proselytize. Their
object is to insult and annoy and shock. And I think it is right to
punish them. They are not punished for setting out their peculiar
opinions. They are punished for designedly and maliciously injuring
their neighbours. Mr. Justice Coleridge punished the blasphemer in
Cornwall, not because he held wrong views, not because he expressed
wrong views. He might have expressed them in a decent way as long
as he liked, and no one would have interfered with him. He was
punished because, with malicious and insulting intention, he wrote
blasphemous words where he thought they would cause pain and horror.
He was punished for that: and rightly. Mr. Buckle seeks to excite
sympathy for the man, by mixing up with the question whether or
no his crime deserved punishment, the wholly distinct question,
whether or no the man was so far sane as to deserve punishment
for any crime whatever. These two questions have no connexion; and
it is unfair to mingle them. The question of the man's sanity or
insanity was for the jury to decide. The jury decided that he was
so sane as to be responsible. Mr. Buckle's real point is, that
however sane the man might have been, it was wicked to punish
him; and I do not hesitate to say, for myself, that looking to the
entire circumstances of the case, the magistrates who committed
that nuisanee of his neighbourhood, and the judge who sent him to
jail, did no more than their duty.
There are several statements made by Mr. Buckle which must not be
regarded as setting forth the teaching of the Magazine in which
they were made. Mr. Buckle says that no man can be sure that any
doctrine is divinely revealed: that whoever says so must be 'absurdly
and immodestly confident in his own powers.' I deny that. Mr. Buckle
says that it is part of Christian doctrine that rich men cannot be
saved. I deny that. Christ's statement as to the power of worldly
possessions to concentrate the affections upon this world, went
not an inch further than daily experience goes. What said Samuel
Johnson when Garrick showed him his grand house? 'Ah, David, these
are the things that make death terrible!' Mr. Buckle says that
Christianity gained ground in early ages because its doctrines were
combated. They were not combated. Its professors were persecuted,
which is quite another thing. Mr. Buckle says that the doctrine of
Immortality was known to the world before Christianity was heard
of, or any other revealed religion. I deny that. Greek and Roman
philosophers of the highest class regarded that doctrine as a delusion
of the vulgar. Did Mr. Buckle ever read the letter of condolence
which Sulpicius wrote to Cicero after the death of Cicero's daughter?
A beautiful letter, beautifully expressed; stating many flimsy and
wretched reasons for drying one's tears; but containing not a hint
of any hope of meeting in another world. And the same may be said
of Cicero's reply. As for Mr. Buckle's argument for Immortality,
I think it extremely weak and inconclusive. It certainly goes to
prove, if it proves anything, that my cousin Tom, who lately was
called to the bar, is quite sure to be Lord Chancellor; and that
Sam Lloyd, who went up from our village last week to a merchant's
counting-house in Liverpool, is safe to rival his eminent namesake
in wealth. Mr. Buckle's argument is just this: that if your heart
is very much set upon a thing, you are perfectly sure to get it.
Of course everybody has read the soliloquy in Addison's Cato, where
Mr. Buckle's argument is set forth. I deem it not worth a rush.
Does any man's experience of this life tend to assure him, that
because some people (and not all people) would like to see their
friends again after they die, therefore they shall? Do things
usually turn out just as we particularly wish that they should turn
out? Has not many a young girl felt, like Cato, a 'secret dread
and inward horror' lest the pic-nic day should be rainy? Did that
ensure its being fine? Was not I extremely anxious to catch the
express train yesterday, and did not I miss it? Does not every
child of ten years old know, that this is a world in which things
have a wonderful knack of falling out just in the way least wished
for? If I were an infidel, I should believe that some spiteful imp
of the perverse had the guidance of the affairs of humanity. I know
better than that: but for my knowledge I have to thank Revelation.
But is it philosophical, is it common sense, in a man who rejects
Revelation, and who must be guided in his opinions of a future
life by the analogy of the present, to argue that because here the
issue all but constantly defeats our wishes and hopes, therefore an
end on which (as he says) human hearts are very much set shallcertainly
be attained hereafter? 'If the separation were final,' says Mr.
Buckle, in a most eloquent and pathetic passage, 'how could we
stand up and live?' Fine feeling, indeed, but impotent logic. When
a man has worked hard and accumulated a little competence, and then
in age loses it all in some swindling bank, and sees his daughters,
tenderly reared, reduced to starvation, I doubt not he may think
'How can I live?' but will all this give him his fortune back again?
Has not many a youthful heart, crushed down by bitter disappointment,
taken up the fancy that surely life would now be impossible; but did
the fancy, by the weight of a feather, affect the fact? I remember,
indeed, seeing Mr. Buckle's question put with a wider reach of
meaning. Poor Uncle Tom, torn from his family, is sailing down the
Mississippi, and finding comfort as he reads his well-worn Bible.
How could that poor negro weigh the arguments on either side, and
be sure that the blessed Faith, which was then his only support,
was true? With better logic than Mr. Buckle's, he drew his best
evidence from his own consciousness. 'It fitted him so well: it was
so exactly what he needed. It must be true, or how could he live?'
Having written all this, I feel that I can now think without
distraction of Man and his Dwelling-Place, I have mildly vented
my indignation; and I now, in a moral sense, extend my hand to Mr.
Buckle. Had he come up that corkscrew stair an hour or two ago,
I am not entirely certain that I might not have taken him by the
collar and shaken him. And had I found him standing on a chair in
the green behind the church, and indoctrinating my simple parishioners
with his peculiar notions, I have an entire conviction that I should
have forgotten my theoretical assent to the doctrine of religious
toleration, and by a gentle hint to my sturdy friends, procured
him an invigorating bath in that gleaming river. I have got rid of
that feeling now. And although Mr. Buckle is the last man who would
find fault with any honest opposition, I yet desire to express my
regret if I have written any word that passes the limit of goodnatured
though sturdy conflict. I respect Mr. Buckle's earnestness and
moral courage: I heartily admire his eloquence: I give him credit
for entire sincerity in the opinions he holds, though I think them
sadly mistaken.
So now for Man and his Dwelling-Place. Twice already has the writer
put his mind at that book, but it has each time swerved, like a
middling hunter from a very stiff fence, and taken a circle round
the field. Now at last the thing matt really be done.
If you, my reader, are desirous of discovering a book which shall
entirely knock up your previous views upon all possible subjects,
read this Essay Towards the Interpretation of Nature. It does,
indeed, interpret Nature, and Man too, in a fashion which, to the
best of my knowledge, is thoroughly original. And the book is dis
tinguished not more by originality than by piety, earnestness, and
eloquence. Its author is an enthusiastic Christian; and indeed his
peculiar views in metaphysics and science are founded upon his
interpretation of certain passages in the New Testament. It is
from the sacred volume that he derives his theory that man is at
present dead. The work appears likely to appeal to a limited circle
of readers; it will be understood and appreciated by few. Though
its style is clear, the abstruseness of the subjects discussed and
the transcendental scope of its author, make the train of thought
often difficult to follow. Possibly the fault is not in the book,
but in the reader: possibly it may result from the book having been
read rapidly and while pressed by many other concerns; but there
seems to me a certain want of clearness and sharpness of presentment
about it. The great principle maintained is indeed set forth with
unmistakable force; but, it is hard to say how, there appears in
details a certain absence of method, and what in Scotland is called
a drumliness of style. There is a good deal of repetition too; but
for that one is rather thankful than otherwise; for the great idea
of the deadness of man and the life and spirituality of nature grows
much better defined, and is grasped more completely and intelligently,
as we come upon it over and over again, put in many different
ways and with great variety of illustration. It is a humiliating
confession for a reviewer to make, but, to say the truth, I do not
know what to make of this book. If its author should succeed in
indoctrinating the race with his views, he will produce an intellectual
revolution. Every man who thinks at all will be constrained for the
remainder of his days (I must not say of his life) to think upon
all subjects quite differently from what he has ever hitherto
thought. As for readers for amusement, and for all readers who do
not choose to read what cannot be read without some mental effort,
they will certainly find the first half-dozen pages of this work
quite sufficient for them. Without pretending to follow the author's
views into the vast number of details into which they reach, I
shall endeavour in a short compass to draw the great lines of them.
There is an interesting introduction, which gradually prepares us
for the announcement of the startling fact, that all men hitherto
have been entirely mistaken in their belief both as to themselves
and the universe which surrounds them. It is first impressed upon
us that things may be in themselves very different indeed from
that which they appear to us: that phenomenon may be something far
apart from actual being. Yet though our conceptions, whether given
by sense or intellect, do not correspond with the truth of things,
still they are the elements from which truth is to be gathered.
The following passage, which occurs near the beginning of the
introduction, is the sharp end of the wedge:--
All advance in knowledge is a deliverance of man from himself.
Slowly and painfully we learn that he is not the measure of truth,
that the fact may be very different from the appearance to him.
The lesson is hard, but the reward is great. So he escapes from
illusion and error, from ignorance and failure. Directing his
thoughts and energies no longer according to his own impressions,
but according to the truth of things, he finds himself in possession
of an unimaginable power alike of understanding and of acting. To
a truly marvellous extent he is the lord of nature.
But the conditions of this lordship are inexorable. They are the
surrender of prepossessions, the abandonment of assumption, the
confession of ignorance: the open eye and the humble heart. Hence
in all passing from error to truth we learn something respecting
ourselves, as well as something respecting the object of our study.
Simultaneously with our better knowledge we recognize the reason
of our ignorance, and perceive what defect on our part has caused
us to think wrongly.
Either the world is such as it appears to us, or it is not. If
it be not, there must be some condition affecting ourselves which
modifies the impression we receive ffom it. And this condition must
be operative upon all mankind: it must relate to man as a whole
rather than to individual men.
Thus does the author lay down the simple, general principle from
which he is speedily to draw conclusions so startling. Nothing can
be more innocuous than all this. Every one must agree in it. Now
come the further steps.
The study of nature leads to the conclusion that there is a
defectiveness in man which modifies his perception of all external
things; and that thus in so far as the actual fact of the universe
differs from our impression of it, the actual fact is better, higher,
more complete, than our impression of it. There are qualities,
there is a glory about the universe, which our defective condition
prevents our seeing or discerning. The universe, or nature, is not
in itself such as it is to man's feeling; and man's feeling of it
differs from the fact liy defect. All that we discern in the universe
is there: and a great deal besides.
Now, we think of nature as existing in a certain way which we
call physical. We call the world the physical world. This mode of
existence involves inertness. That which is physical does not act,
except passively, as it is acted upon. Inertness is inaction. That
which is inert, therefore, differs from that which is not inert by
defect. The inert wants something of being active.
Next, we have a conception of another mode of being besides
the inert. We conceive of being which possesses a spontaneous and
primary activity. This kind of being is called spiritual. This
kind of being has shaken off the reproach of inertness. It can act,
and originate action. The physical thus differs from the spiritual
(as regards inertness) by defect. The physical wants something of
being spiritual.
So far, my reader, we do not of necessity start back from anything
our author teaches us. Quite true, we think of matter, a kind
of being which can do nothing of itself. Quite true, we think of
spirit, a kind of being which can do. And no doubt that which is
able to do is (quoad hoc) a higher and more noble kind of being
than that which cannot do, but only be done to. But remember here,
I do not admit that in this point lies the differentia between
matter and spirit. I do not grant that by taking from matter the
reproach of inertness, you would make it spirit. The essential
difference seems to me not to lie there. We could conceive of
matter as capable of originating action, and yet as material. This
is by the bye--but now be on your guard. Here is our author's great
discovery--
It is man's defectiveness which makes him feel the world as thus
defective. Nature is really not inert, though it appears so to man.
We have been wont to think that nature, the universe, is inert or
physical; that man is not-inert, or spiritual. Now, there is no
doubt at all that there is inertness somewhere. Here are the two
things, Man and Nature; with which thing does the inertness lie?
Our author maintains that it lies with man, not with nature. Science
has proved to us that nature is not-inert. As there is inertness
somewhere, and as it is not in nature, of course the conclusion
is that it is in man. Inertness is in the phenomenon; that is,
in nature as it. appears to us. There cannot be any question that
nature seems to us to be inert. But the author of this book declares
that this inertness, though in the phenomenon, is not in the fact.
Nature LOOKS inert; it is not-inert. How does the notion of inertness
come at all, then? Now comes the very essence of the new theory;
I give it in its author's words:--
The inertness is introduced by man. He perceives defect without
him, only because there is defect within him.
To be inert has the same meaning as to be dead. So we speak of
nature, thinking it to be inert, as 'dead matter.' To say that man
introduces inertness into nature implies a deadness in him: it is
to say that he wants life. This is the proposition which is affirmed.
This condition which we call our life, is not the true life of man.
The Book that has had greater influence upon the world than all
others, differs from all others, in affirming that man wants life,
and in making that statement the basis of all that it contains
respecting the past and present and future of mankind.
Science thus pays homage to the Bible. What that book has declared
as if with authority, so long ago, she has at last decyphered on
the page of nature. This is not man's true life.
And who is there who can doubt, looking at man as lie is now, and
then thinking of what he is to be in another world, that there is
about him, now, great defect? There is truly much wanting which it
is hoped will one day be supplied. What shall we call this lacking
thing--this one thing lacking whose absence is felt in every fibre
of our being? Our author chooses to call it life; I am doubtful with
how much felicity or naturalness of expression. Of course we all
know that in the New Testament life does not mean merely existence
continued; eternal life does not mean merely existence continued for
ever: it means the highest and purest form of our being continued
for ever;--happiness and holiness continued for ever. We know, too,
that holy Scripture describes the step taken by any man in becoming
an earnest believer in Christ, as 'passing from death to life;' we
remember such a text as 'This is life eternal, that they may know
Thee, the only true God, and-Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.'
We know that a general name for the Gospel, which grasps its grand
characteristics, is 'The Word of Life;' and that, in religious phrase,
Christianity is concerned with the revealing, the implanting, the
sustaining, the crowning, of a certain better life. Nor is it
difficult to trace out such analogies between natural and spiritual
death, between natural and spiritual life, as tend to prove that
spiritual life and death are not spoken of in Scripture merely
as the strongest words which could be employed, but that there is
a further and deeper meaning in their constant use. But I do not
see any gain in forcing figurative language into a literal use.
Everybody knows what life and death, in ordinary language, imply.
Life means sensibility, consciousness, capacity of acting, union with
the living. Death means senselessness, helplessness, separation.
No doubt we may trace analogies, very close and real, between
the natural and the spiritual life and death. But still they are
no more than analogies. You do not identify the physical with the
spiritual. And it is felt by all that the use of the words in a
spiritual sense is a figurative use. To the common understanding,
a man is living, when he breathes and feels and moves. He is dead
when he ceases to do all that. And it is a mere twisting of words
from their understood sense to say that in reality, and without a
figure, a breathing, feeling, moving man is dead, because he lacks
some spiritual quality, however great its value may be. It may be
a very valuable quality; it may be worth more than life; but it
is not life, as men understand it; and as words have no meaning at
all except that which men agree to give these arbitrary sounds, it
matters not at all that this higher quality is what you may call
true life, better life, real life. If you enlarge the meaning of the
word life to include, in addition to what is generally understood
by it, a higher power of spiritual action and discernment, why, all
that can be said is, that you understand by life something quite
different from men in general. If I choose to enlarge the meaning
of the word black to include white, of course I might say with
truth (relatively to myself) that white forms the usual clothing
of clergymen. If I extend the meaning of the word fast to include
slow, I might boldly declare that the Great Northern express is
a slow train. And the entire result of such use of language would
be, that no mortal would understand what I meant.
Thus it is that I demur to any author's right to tell me that such
and such a thing is, or is not, 'the true life of man.' And when
he says 'that man wants life, means that the true life of man is
of another kind from this,' I reply to him, Tell me what is the
blessing man needs; Tell me, above all, where and how he is to get
it: but as to its name, I really do not care what you call it, so
you call it by some name that people will understand. Call it so
that people will know what you mean--Salvation, Glory, Happiness,
Holiness, Redemption, or what else you please. Do not mystify
us by saying we want life, and then, when we are startled by the
perfectly intelligible assertion, edge off by explaining that by
life you mean something quite different from what we do. There is
no good in that. If I were to declare that this evening, before
I sleep, I shall cross the Atlantic and go to America, my readers
would think the statement a sufficiently extraordinary one; but if,
after thus surprising them, I went on to explain that by the Atlantic
I did not mean the ocean, nor by America the western continent, but
that the Atlantic meant the village green, and America the squire's
house on the other side of it, I should justly gain credit for a
very silly mystification. As Nicholas Nickleby very justly remarked,
If Dotheboy's Hall is not a hall, why call it one? Mr. Squeers, in
his reply, no doubt stated the law of the case: If a man chooses
to call his house an island, what is to hinder him? If the author
of Man and his Dwelling-Place means to tell us only that we want
some spiritual capacity, which it pleases him to call life, but
which not one man in a million understands by that word, is he
not amusing himself at our expense by telling us we want life? We
know what we mean by being dead: our author means something quite
different. Let him speak for himself:
That man wants life means that the true life of man is of another
kind from this. It corresponds to that true, absolute Being which
he as he now is cannot know.
He cannot know it because he is out of relation with it. THIS IS
HIS DEADNESS. To know it is to have life.
Yes, reader--this is his deadness! Something, that is, which no
plain mortal would ever understand by the word. When I told you,
a long time ago, that this book taught that man is dead and nature
living, was this what the words conveyed to you?
Still, though there may be something not natural in the word, the
author's meaning is a broad and explicit one. For the want of that
which he calls our true life (he maintains) utterly distorts and
deforms this world to our view. Here is his statement as to the
things which surround us:
There is not a physical world and a spiritual world besides; but
the spiritual world which alone is is physical to man, the physical
being the mode in which man, by his defectiveness, perceives the
spiritual. We feel a physical world to be: that which is is the
spiritual world.
The phenomenon, that is, is physical: the fact is spiritual. A
tree looks to us material, because we want life: if we had life,
we should see that it is spiritual. Really, there is no such thing
as matter. Our own defectiveness makes us fancy that to be material
which in truth is spirilual. So I was misinterpreting the author,
when I said that all that we see in nature is there, and a great
deal more. The defect in us, it appears, not only subtracts from
nature, it transforms it. Not merely do we fail to discern that
which is in nature, we do actually discern that which is not in
nature.
And to be delivered from all this deadness and delusion, what we
have to do is to betake ourselves to the Saviour. Christianity is
a system which starts from the fundamental principle that man is
dead, and proposes to make him alive. Under its working man gains
true life, otherwise called eternal life; and in gaining that life
he finds himself ipso facto conveyed into a spiritual world. This
world ceases to be physical to him, and becomes spiritual.
Such are the great lines of the new theory as to Man and his
Dwelling-Place. Thus does our author interpret Nature. I trust and
believe that I have not in any way misrepresented or caricatured
his opinions. His Introduction sets out in outline the purport of
the entire book. The remainder of the volume is given to carrying
out these opinions into detail, as they are suggested by or as they
affect the entire system of things. It is divided into four Hooks.
Book I. treats Of Science; Book II. Of Philosophy; Book III.
Of Religion; Book IV. Of Ethics; and the volume is closed by four
dialogues between the Writer and Reader, in which, in a desultory
manner, the principles already set forth are further explained and
enforced.
Early in the first chapter of the Book Of Science, the author
anticipates the obvious objection to his use of the terms Life
and Death. I do not think he succeeds in justifying the fashion in
which he employs them. But let him speak for himself:
It may seem unnatural to speak of a conscious existence as a state
of death. But what is affirmed is, that a sensational existence such
as ours is not the life of MAN; that a consciousness of physical
life does itself imply a deadness. The affirmations that we are
living men, and that man has not true and absolute life, are not
opposed. Life is a relative term. Our possession of a conscious
life in relation to the things that we feel around us, is itself
the evidence of man's defect of life in a higher and truer sense.
Let a similitude make the thought more clear. Are not we, as
individuals, at rest, steadfast in space; evidently so to our own
consciousness, demonstrably so in relation to the objects around
us? But is man at rest in space? By no means. We are all partakers
of a motion. Nay, if we were truly at rest, we could not have
this relative steadfastness, we should not beat rest to the things
around us: they would fleet and slip away. Our relative rest, and
consciousness of steadfastness, depend upon our being not at rest.
There are moving things, to which he only can be steadfast who is
moving too. Even Buch is the life of which we have consciousness.
We have a life in relation to these physical things, because man
wants life. True life in man would alter his relation to them. They
could not be the realities any more: he could not have a life in
them. As rest to moving things is not truly rest, but motion; so
life to inert things is not truly life, but deadness.
Very ingeniously thought out: very skilfully put, with probably the
only illustration which would go on all fours. But to me all this
is extremely unsatisfactory: and unsatisfactory in a much farther
sense than merely that it is using terms in a non-natural sense.
I know, of course, that to look at Nature through blue spectacles
will make Nature blue: but I cannot see that to look at Nature through
dead eyes should make Nature dead. I see no proof that Nature, in
fact, is living and active, though it admittedly looks inert and
dead. And I can discover nothing more than a daring assertion,
in the statement that we are dead, and that we project our own
deadness upon living nature. I cannot see how to the purest and most
elevated of beings, a tree should look less solid than it does to
me. I cannot discover how greater purity of heart, and more entire
faith in Christ, should turn this material world into a world
of spirit. I doubt the doctrine that spirit in itself, as usually
understood (apart from its power of originating action) is a higher
and holier existence than matter. It seems to me that very much
from a wrong idea that it is, come those vague, unreal, intangible
notions as to the Christian Heaven, which do so much to make it a
chilly, unattractive thing, to human wishes and hopes. It is hard
enough for us to feel the reality of the things beyond the grave,
without having the additional stumbling-block cast in our way, of
being told that truly there is nothing real there for us to feel.
As for the following eloquent passage, in which our author subsequently
returns to the justification of his great doctrine, no more need
be said than that it is rhetoric, not logic:--
That man has not his true life, must have taken him long to learn.
All our prepossessions, all our natural convictions, are opposed
to that belief. If these activities, these powers, these capacities
of enjoyment and suffering, this consciousness of free will, this
command of the material world, be not life, what is life? What more
do we want to make us truly man? This is the feeling that has held
men captive, and biased all their thoughts so that they could not
perceive what they themselves were saying.
Yet the sad undercurrent has belied the boast. From all ages and
all lands the cry of anguish, the prayer for life unconscious of
itself, has gone up to heaven. In groans and curses, in despair
and cruel rage, man pours out his secret to the universe; writing
it in blood, and lust, and savage wrong, upon the fair bosom of
the earth; he alone not knowing what he does. If this be the life
of man, what is his death?
No doubt this would form a very eloquent and effective paragraph
in a popular sermon. But in a philosophic treatise, where an author
is tied to the severely precise use of terms, and where it will
not do to call a thing death merely because it is very bad, nor
to call a thing life merely because it is vry good, the argument
appears to have but little weight.
You must see, intelligent reader, that one thing which we are
entitled to require our author to satisfactorily prove, is the fact
that Nature is not inert, as it appears to man. If you can make
it certain that Nature is living and active, then, no doubt, some
explanation will be needful as to how it comes to look so different
to us; though, even then, I do not see that it necessarily follows
that the inertness is to be supposed to exist in ourselves. But
unless the author can prove that Nature is not inert, he has no
foundation to build on. He states three arguments, from which he
derives the grand principle:--
1. Inertness necessarily belongs to all phenomena. That which is
only felt to be, and does not truly or absolutely exist, must have
the character of inaction. It must be felt as passive A phenomenon
must be inert because it is a phenomenon. We cannot argue from
inertness in that which appears to us, to inertness in that which
is. Of whatsoever kind the essence of nature may be, if it be
unknown, the phenomenon must be equally inert. We have no ground,
therefore, in the inertness which we feel, for affirming of nature
that it is inert. We must feel it so, by virtue of our known relation
to it, as not perceiving its essence.
2. The question, therefore, rests entirely upon its own evidence.
Since we have no reason, from the inertness of the phenomenal, for
inferring the inertness of the essential, can we know whether that
essential be inert or not? We can know. Inertness, as being absolute
inaction, cannot belong to that which truly is. Being and absolute
inaction are contraries. Inertness, therefore, must be a property
by which the phenomenal differs from the essential or absolute.
3. Again, nature does act: it acts upon us, or we could not perceive
it at all. The true being of nature is active therefore. That we
feel it otherwise shows that we do not feel it as it is. We must
look for the source of nature's apparent or felt inertness in
man's condition. Never should man have thought to judge of nature
without remembering his own defectiveness.
Such are the grounds upon which rests the belief, that nature is
not inert. It appears to me that there is little force in them.
To a great extent they are mere assumptions and assertions; and
anything they contain in the nature of argument is easily answered.
First: Why must every phenomenon be felt as inert? Why must a
'phenomenon be inert because it is a phenomenon?' I cannot see why.
We know nothing but phenomena; that is, things as they appear to
us. Where did we get the ideas of life and activity, if not from
phenomena? Many things appear to us to have life and activity. That
is, there are phenomena which are not inert.
Secondly: Wherefore should we conclude that the phenomenon differs
essentially from the fact? The phenomenon is the fact-as-discerned-by-us.
And granting that our defectiveness forbids our having a full and
complete discernment of the fact, why should we doubt that our
discernment is right so far as it goes? It is incomparably more
likely that things (not individual things, but the entire system,
I mean) are what they seem, than that they are not. Why believe
that we are gratuitously and needlessly deluded? God made the
universe; he placed us in it; he gave us powers whereby to discern
it. Is it reasonable to think that he did so in a fashion so
blundering or so deceitful that we can only discern it wrong? And
if nature seems inert, is not the rational conclusion that it is
so?
Thirdly: Why cannot 'inertness, as being absolute inaction, belong
to that which truly is?' Why cannot a thing exist without doing
anything? Is not that just what millions of things actually do? Or
if you intend to twist the meaning of the substantive verb, and to
say that merely to be is to do something,--that simply to exist is
a certain form of exertion and action,--I shall grant, of course,
that nothing whatever that exists is in that sense inert; but I shall
affirm that you use the word inert in quite a different sense from
the usual one. And in that extreme and non-natural sense of the
word, the phenomenon is no more inert than is the essence. Certainly
things seem to us to be: and if just to be is to be active, then
no phenomenon is inert; no single thing discerned by us appears to
be inert.
Fourthly: I grant that 'nature does act upon us, or we could not
perceive it at all.' But then I maintain that this kind of action
is not action as men understand the word. This kind of action is
quite consistent with the general notion of inertness. A thing may
be inert, as mankind understand the word; and also active, as the
author of this book understands the word. To discern this sort of
activity and life in nature we have no need to 'pass from death to
life' ourselves. We simply need to have the thing pointed out to
us, and it is seen at once. It is playing with words to say that
nature acts upon us, or we could not perceive it. No doubt, when
you stand before a tree, and look at it, it does act in so far as
that it depicts itself upon your retina; but that action is quite
consistent with what we understand by inertness. It does not
matter whether you say that your eye takes hold of the tree, or
that the tree takes hold of your eye. When you hook a trout, you
may say either that you catch the fish, or that the fish catches
you. Is the alternative worth fighting about? Which is the natural
way of speaking: to say that the man sees the tree, or that the tree
shows itself to the man? All the activity which our author claims
for nature goes no farther than that. Our reply is that that is
not activity at all. If that is all he contends for, we grant it at
once; and we say that it is not in the faintest degree inconsistent
with the fact of nature's being inert, as that word is understood.
You come and tell me that Mr. Smith has just passed your window
flying. I say no; I saw him; he was not flying, but walking. Ah, you
reply, I hold that walking is an indicate flying; it is a rudimentary
flying, the lowest form of flying; and therefore I maintain that he
flew past the window. My friend, I answer, if it be any satisfaction
to you to use words in that way, do so and rejoice; only do not
expect any human being to understand what you mean; and beware of
the lunatic asylum.
Why, I ask again, are we to cry down man for the sake of crying up
nature? Why are we to depreciate the dweller that we may magnify the
dwelling-place? Is not, man (to say the least) one of the works of
God? Did not God make, both man and nature? And does not Revelation
(which our author holds in so deep reverence) teach that man was
the last and noblest of the handiworks of the Creator? And thus it
is that I do not hesitate to answer such a question as that which
follows, and to answer it contrariwise to what the author expects.
It is from the human soul that glory and meaning are projected
upon inanimate nature. To Newton, and to Newton's dog, the outward
creation was physically the same; to the apprehension of Newton
and of Newton's dog, how different! Hear the author:--
To this clear issue the case is brought: Man does introduce into
nature something from himself: either the inertness, the negative
qualily, the defect, or the beauty, the meaning, the glory. Either
that whereby the world is noble comes from ourselves, or that
whereby it is mean; that which it has, or that which it wants. Can
it be doubtful which it is?
Not in the least! Give me the rational and immortal man, made in
God's image, rather than the grandest oak which the June sunbeams
will be warming when you read this, my friend--rather than the most
majestic mountain which by and bye will be purple with the heather.
Reason, immortality, love, and faith, are things liker God than ever
so many cubic feet of granite, than ever so many loads of timber.
'Behold,' says Archer Butler, 'we stand alone in the universe!
Earth, air, and ocean can show us nothing so awful as we!'
You fancy, says our author, that Nature is inert, because it goes
on in so constant and unvarying a course. You know, says he, what
conscious exertion it costs you to produce physical changes; you can
trace no such exertion in Nature. You would believe, says he, that
Nature is active, but for the fact that her doings are all conformed
to laws that you can trace. But invariableness, he maintains, is
no proof of inaction. RIGHT ACTION is invariable; RIGHT ACTION is
absolutely conformed to law. Why, therefore, should not the secret
of nature's invariableness be, not passiveness, but rightness?' The
unchanging uniformity of Nature's course proves her holiness--her
willing, unvarying obedience to the Divine law. 'The invariableness
of Nature bespeaks Holiness as its cause.'
May we not think upon all this (not dogmatically) in some such
fashion as this?
Which is likelier:
1. That Nature has it in her power to vary from the well-known laws
of Nature; that she could disobey God if she pleased; but that she
is so holy that she could not think of such a thing, and so through
all ages has never swerved once. Or,
2. That Nature is bound by laws which she has not the power to
disobey; that she is what she looks, an inanimate, passive, inert
thing, actuated, as her soul and will, by the will of the Creator?
And to aid in considering which alternative is the likelier, let it
be remembered that Revelation teaches that this is a fallen world;
that experience proves that this world is not managed upon any
system of optimism; that in this creation things are constantly
going wrong; and especially, that all history gives no account of
any mere creature whose will was free to do either good or ill; and
yet who did not do ill frequently. Is it likely that to all this
there is one entire exception; one thing, and that so large a
thing as all inanimate nature, perfectly obedient, perfectly holy,
perfectly right-and all by its own free will? I grant there is
something touching in the author's eloquent words:--
Because she is right, Nature is ours: more truly ours than we
ourselves. We turn from the inward ruin to the outward glory, and
marvel at the contrast. But we need not marvel: it is the difference
of life and death: piercing the dimness even of man's darkened
sense, jarring upon his fond illusion like waking realities upon
a dream. Without is living holiness, within is deathly wrong.
Let the reader, ever remembering that in such cases analogy is not
argument but illustration--that it makes a doctrine clearer, but
does not in any degree confirm it--read the chapter entitled 'Of
the illustration from Astronomy.' It will tend to make the great
doctrine of Man and his Dwelling-Place comprehensible; you will
see exactly what it is, although you may not think it true. As
astronomy has transferred the apparent movements of the planets
from them to ourselves, so, says our author, has science transferred
the seeming inertness of Nature from it to us. The phenomenon of
Nature is physical and inert: the being is spiritual and active
and holy. And if we now seem to have an insuperable conviction that
Man is not inert and that Nature is inert, it is not stronger than
our apparent consciousness that the earth is unmoving. Man lives
under illusion as to himself and as to the universe. Reason, indeed,
furnishes him with the means of correcting that illusion; but in
that illusion is his want of life.
Strong in his conviction of the grand principle which he has
established, as he conceives, in his first book, the author, in
his second book, goes crashing through all systems of philosophy.
His great doctrine makes havock of them all. All are wrong; though
each may have some grain of truth in it. The Idealists are right
in so far as that there is no such thing as Matter. Matter is the
vain imagination of man through his wrong idea of Nature's inertness.
But the Idealists are wrong if they fancy that because there is
no Matter, there is nothing but Mind, and ideas in Mind. Nature,
though spiritual, has a most real and separate existence. Then the
sceptics are right in so far as they doubt what our author thinks
wrong; but they are wrong in so far as they doubt what our author
thinks right. Positivism is right in so far as it teaches that we
see all things relatively to ourselves, and so wrongly; but it is
wrong in teaching that what things are in themselves is no concern
of ours, and that we should live on as though things were what they
seem.
If it were not that the reader of Man and his Dwelling-Place is
likely, after the shock of the first grand theory, that Man is dead
and the Universe living, to receive with comparative coolness any
further views set out in the book, however strange, I should say
that probably, the third Book, 'Of Religion,' would startle him more
than anything else in the work. Although this Book stands third in
the volume, it is first both in importance and in chronology. For
the author tells us that his views Of Religion are not deduced from
the theoretical conceptions already stated, but have been drawn
immediately from the study of Scripture, and that from them the
philosophical ideas are mainly derived. And indeed it is perfectly
marvellous what doctrines men will find in Scripture, or deduce
from Scripture. Is there not something curious in the capacity of
the human mind, while glancing along the sacred volume, to find
upon its pages both what suits its prevailing mood and its firm
conviction at the time? You feel buoyant and cheerful: you open
your Bible and read it; what a cheerful, hopeful book it is! You are
depressed and anxious: you open your Bible; surely it was written
for people in your present frame of mind! It is wonderful to what
a degree the Psalms especially suit the mood and temper of all
kinds of readers in every conceivable position. I can imagine the
poor suicide, stealing towards the peaceful river, and musing on a
verse of a psalm. I can imagine the joyful man, on the morning of
a marriage day which no malignant relatives have embittered, finding
a verse which will seem like the echo of his cheerful temper. And
passing from feeling to understanding, it is remarkable how, when
a man is possessed with any strong belief, he will find, as he
reads the Bible, not only many things which appear to him expressly
to confirm his view, but something in the entire tenor of what he
reads that appears to harmonize with it. I doubt not the author
of Man and his Dwelling-Place can hardly open the Bible at random
without chancing upon some passage which he regards as confirmatory
of his opinions. I am quite sure that to ordinary men his opinions
will appear flally to conflict with the Bible's fundamental
teaching. It has already been indicated in this essay in what sense
the statements of the New Testament to the following effect are to
be understood:--
The writers of the New Testament declare man to be dead. They speak
of men as not having life, and tell of a life to be given them. If,
therefore, our thoughts were truly conformed to the New Testament,
how could it seem a strange thing to us that this state of man should
be found a state of death; how should its very words, reaffirmed
by science, excite our surprise? Would it not have appeared to us
a natural result of the study of nature to prove man dead? Might
we not, if we had truly accepted the words of Scripture, have
anticipated that it should be so? For, if man be rightly called
dead, should not that condition have affected his experience, and
ought not a discovery of that fact to be the issue of his labours
to ascertain his true relation to the universe? Why does it seem
a thing incredible to us that man should be really, actually dead:
dead in such a sense as truly to affect his being, and determine
his whole state? Why have we been using words which affirm him dead
in our religious speech, and feel startled at finding them proved
true in another sphere of inquiry?
It is indeed true--it is a thing to be taken as a fundamental truth
in reading the Bible--that in a certain sense man is dead, and is
to be made alive; and the analogy which obtains between natural
death and what in theological language is called spiritual death,
is in several respects so close and accurate that we feel that it
is something more than a strong figure when the New Testament says
such things as 'You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses
and sins.' But it tends only to confusion to seek to identify
things so thoroughly different as natural and spiritual death. It
is trifling with a man to say to him 'You are dead!' and having
thus startled him, to go on to explain that you mean spiritually
dead. 'Oh,' he will reply, 'I grant you that I may be dead in that
sense, and possibly that is the more important sense, but it is
not the sense in which words are commonly understood.' I can see,
of course, various points of analogy between ordinary death and
spiritual death. Does ordinary death render a man insensible to
the presence of material things? Then spiritual death renders him
heedless of spiritual realities, of the presence of God, of the
value of salvation, of the closeness of eternity. Does natural death
appear in utter helplessness and powerlessness? So does spiritual
death render a man incapable of spiritual action and exertion. Has
natural death its essence in the entire separation it makes between
dead and living? So has spiritual death its essence in the separation
of the soul from God. But, after all, these things do but show an
analogy between natural death and spiritual: they do not show that
the things are one; they do not show that in the strict unfigurative
use of terms man's spiritual condition is one of death. They show
that man's spiritual condition is very like death; that is all. It
is so like as quite to justify the assertion in Scripture: it is not
so identical as to justify the introduction of a new philosophical
phrase. It is perfectly true that Christianity is described in
Scripture as a means for bringing men from death to life; but it
is also described, with equal meaning, as a means for bringing men
from darkness to light. And it is easy to trace the analogy between
man's spiritual condition and the condition of one in darkness--between
man's redeemed condition and the condition of one in light; but surely
it would be childish to announce, as a philosophical discovery,
that all men are blind, because they cannot see their true interests
and the things that most concern them. They are not blind in the
ordinary sense, though they may be blind in a higher; neither are
they dead in the ordinary sense, though they may be in a higher.
And only confusion, and a sense of being misled and trifled with,
can follow from the pushing figure into fact and trying to identify
the two.
Stripping our author's views of the unusual phraseology in which
they are disguised, they do, so far as regards the essential fact
of man's loss and redemption, coincide exactly with the orthodox
teaching of the Church of England. Man is by nature and sinfulness
in a spiritual sense dead; dead now, and doomed to a worse death
hereafter. By believing in Christ he at once obtains some share of
a better spiritual life, and the hope of a future life which shall
be perfectly holy and happy. Surely this is no new discovery. It
is the type of Christianity implied in the Liturgy of the Church,
and weekly set out from her thousands of pulpits. The startling
novelties of Man and his Dwelling-Place are in matters of detail.
He holds that fearful thing, Damnation, which orthodox views push
off into a future world, to be a present thing. It is now men are
damned. It is now men are in hell. Wicked men are now in a state
of damnation: they are now in hell. The common error arises from
our thinking damnation a state of suffering. It is not. It is a
state of something worse than suffering, viz., of sin:--
We find it hard to believe that damnation can he a thing men
like. But does not--what every being likes depend on what it is?
Is corruption less corruption, in man's view, because worms like
it? Is damnation less damnation, in God's view, because men like
it? And God's view is simply the truth. Surely one object of a
revelation must be to show us things from God's view of them, that
is. as they truly are. Sin truly is damnation, though to us it is
pleasure. That sin is pleasure to us, surely is the evil part of
our condition.
And indeed it is to be admitted that there is a great and
much-forgotten truth implied here. It is a very poor, and low, and
inadequate idea of Christianity, to think of it merely as something
which saves from suffering--as something which saves us from hell,
regarded merely as a place of misery. The Christian salvation is
mainly a deliverance from sin. The deliverance is primarily from
moral evil; and only secondarily from physical or moral pain. 'Thou
shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their
sins.' No doubt this is very commonly forgotten. No doubt the vulgar
idea of salvation and perdition founds on the vulgar belief that
pain is the worst of all things, and happiness the best of all
things. It is well that the coarse and selfish type of religion
which founds on the mere desire to escape from burning and to lay
hold of bliss, should be corrected by the diligent instilling of
the belief, that sin is worse than sorrow. The Saviour's compassion,
though ever ready to well out at the sight of suffering, went forth
most warmly at the sight of sin.
Here I close the book, not because there is not much more in it
that well deserves notice, but because I hope that what has here
been said of it will induce the thoughtful reader to study it for
himself, and because I have space to write no more. It is a May
afternoon; not that on which the earliest pages of my article were
written, but a week after it. I have gone at the ox-fence at last,
and got over it with several contusions. Pardon me, unknown author,
much admired for your ingenuity, your earnestness, your originality,
your eloquence, if I have written with some show of lightness
concerning your grave book. Very far, if you could know it, was
any reality of lightness from your reviewer's feeling. He is non
ignarus mali: he has had his full allotment of anxiety and care;
and he hails with you the prospect of a day when human nature shall
cast off its load of death, and when sinful and sorrowful man shall
be brought into a beautiful conformity to external nature. Would
that Man were worthy of his Dwelling-place as it looks upon this
summer-like day! Open, you latticed window: let the cool breeze
come into this somewhat feverish room. Again, the tree-tops; again
the white stones and green graves; again the lambs, somewhat larger;
again the distant hill. Again I think of Cheapside, far away. Yet
there is trouble here. Not a yard of any of those hedges but has
worried its owner in watching that it be kept tight, that sheep or
cattle may not break through. Not a gate I see but screwed a few
shillings out of the anxious farmer's pocket, and is always going
wrong. Not a field but either the landlord squeezed the tenant in
the matter of rent, or the tenant cheated the landlord. Not the
smoke of a cottage but marks where pass lives weighted down with
constant care, and with little end save the sore struggle to keep
the wolf from the door. Not one of these graves, save perhaps the
poor friendless tramp's in the corner, but was opened and closed to
the saddening of certain hearts. Here are lives of error, sleepless
nights, over-driven brains; wayward children, unnatural parents,
though of these last, God be thanked, very few. Yes, says Adam
Bede, 'there's a sort of wrong that can never be made up for.' No
doubt we are dead: when shall we be quickened to a better life?
Surely, as it is, the world is too good for man. And I agree, most
cordially and entirely, with the author of this book, that there
is but one agency in the universe that can repress evil here, and
extinguish it hereafter.
CHAPTER X.
LIFE AT THE WATER CURE
[Footnote: A Month at Malvern, under the Water Cure. By R. J. Lane,
A. E. R. A. Third Edition. Reconsidered--Rewritten, London: John
Mitchell. 1855.
Spirits and Water. By R. J. L. London: John Mitchell. 1855.
Confessions of a Water-Patient. By Sir E. B. Lytton, Bart.
Hints to the Side, the Lame, and the Lazy: or, Passages in the Life
of a Hydropathist. By a Veteran. London: John Ollivier. 1848.]
All our readers, of course, have heard of the Water Cure; and many
of them, we doubt not, have in their own minds ranked it among
those eccentric medical systems which now and then spring up. are
much talked of for a while, and finally sink into oblivion. The
mention of the Water Cure is suggestive of galvanism, homoepathy,
mesmerism, the grape cure, the bread cure, the mud-bath cure, and
of the views of that gentleman who maintained that almost all the
evils, physical and moral, which assail the constitution of man,
are the result of the use of salt as an article of food, and may be
avoided by ceasing to employ that poisonous and immoral ingredient.
Perhaps there is a still more unlucky association with life pills,
universal vegetable medicines, and the other appliances of that
coarser quackery which yearly brings hundreds of gullible Britons
to their graves, and contributes thousands of pounds in the form
of stamp-duty to the revenue of this great and enlightened country.
It is a curious phase of life that is presented at a Water
Cure establishment. The Water Cure system cannot be carried out
satisfactorily except at an establishment prepared for the purpose.
An expensive array of baths is necessary; so are well-trained bath
servants, and an experienced medical man to watch the process of
cure: the mode of life does not suit the arrangements of a family,
and the listlessness of mind attendant on the water-system quite
unfits a man for any active employment. There must be pure country
air to breathe, a plentiful supply of the best water, abundant means
of taking exercise--Sir E. B. Lytton goes the length of maintaining
that mountains to climb are indispensable;--and to enjoy all these
advantages one must go to a hydropathic establishment. It may
be supposed that many odd people are to be met at such a place;
strong-minded women who have broken through the trammels of the
Faculty, and gone to the Water Cure in spite of the warnings of
their medical men, and their friends' kind predictions that they
would never live to come back; and hypochondriac men, who have tried
all quack remedies in vain, and who have come despairingly to try
one which, before trying it, they probably looked to as the most
violent and perilous of all. And the change of life is total. You
may have finished your bottle of port daily for twenty years, but
at the Water Cure you must perforce practise total abstinence. For
years you may never have tasted fair water, but here you will get
nothing else to drink, and you will have to dispose of your seven
or eight tumblers a day. You may have been accustomed to loll in
bed of a morning till nine or ten o'clock; but here you must imitate
those who would thrive, and 'rise at five:' while the exertion is
compensated by your having to bundle off to your chamber at 9.30 p.
M. You may long at breakfast for your hot tea, and if a Scotchman,
for your grouse pie or devilled kidneys; but you will be obliged
to make up with the simpler refreshment of bread and milk, with the
accompaniment of stewed Normandy pippins. You may have been wont
to spend your days in a fever of business, in a breathless hurry
and worry of engagements to be met and matters to be seen to; but
after a week under the Water Cure, you will find yourself stretched
listlessly upon grassy banks in the summer noon, or sauntering
all day beneath the horse-chestnuts of Sudbrook, with a mind as
free from business cares as if you were numbered among Tennyson's
lotos-eaters, or the denizens of Thomson's Castle of Indolence. And
with God's blessing upon the pure element He has given us in such
abundance, you will shortly (testibus Mr. Lane and Sir E. B. Lytton)
experience other changes as complete, and more agreeable. You will
find that the appetite which no dainty could tempt, now discovers
in the simplest fare a relish unknown since childhood. You will
find the broken rest and the troubled dreams which for years have
made the midnight watches terrible, exchanged for the long refreshful
sleep that makes one mouthful of the night. You will find the
gloom and depression and anxiety which were growing your habitual
temper, succeeded by a lightness of heart and buoyancy of spirit
which you cannot account for, but which you thankfully enjoy. We
doubt not that some of our readers, filled with terrible ideas as
to the violent and perilous nature of the Water Cure, will give
us credit for some strength of mind when we tell them that we have
proved for ourselves the entire mode of life; we can assure them
that there is nothing so very dreadful about it; and we trust they
may not smile at us as harmlessly monomaniacal when we say that,
without going the lengths its out-and-out advocates do, we believe
that in certain states of health much benefit may really be
derived from the system, Sir E. B. Lytton's eloquent Confessions
of a Water-Patient have been before the public for some years. The
Hints to the Sick, the Lame, and the Lazy, give us an account of
the ailments and recovery of an old military officer, who, after
suffering severety from gout, was quite set up by a few weeks at a
hydropathic establishment at Marienberg on the Rhine; and who, by
occasional recurrence to the same remedy, is kept in such a state
of preservation that, though advanced in years, he 'is able to go
eight miles within two hours, and can go up hill with most young
fellows.' The old gentleman's book, with its odd woodcuts, and a
certain freshness and incorrectness of style--we speak grammatically--in
keeping with the character of an old soldier, is readable enough.
Mr. Lane's books are far from being well written; the Spirits and
Water, especially, is extremely poor stuff. The Month at Malvern
is disfigured by similar faults of style; but Mr. Lane has really
something to tell us in that work: and there is a good deal
of interest at once in knowing how a man who had been reduced to
the last degree of debility of body and mind, was so effectually
restored, that now for years he has, on occasion, proved himself
equal to a forty-miles' walk among the Welsh mountains on a warm
summer day; and also in remarking the boyish exhilaration of spirits
in which Mr. Lane writes, which he tells us is quite a characteristic
result of 'initiation into the excitements of the Water Cure.'
Mr. Lane seems to have been in a very bad way. He gives an appalling
account of the medical treatment under which he had suffered for
nearly thirty years. In spite of it all he found, at the age of
forty-five, that his entire system was showing signs of breaking up.
He was suffering from neuralgia, which we believe means something
like tic-douloureux extending over the whole body; he was threatened
with paralysis, which had advanced so far as to have benumbed his
right side; his memory was going; his mind was weakened; he was,
in his own words, 'no use to anybody:' there were deep cracks
round the edge of his tongue; his throat was ulcerated; in short,
he was in a shocking state, and never likely to be better. Like many
people in such sad circumstances, lie had tried all other remedies
before thinking of the Water Cure; he had resorted to galvanism,
and so forth, but always got worse. At length, on the 13th of May,
1845, Mr. Lane betook himself to Malvern, where Dr. Wilson presides
over one of the largest cold-water establishments in the kingdom.
In those days there were some seventy patients in residence, but
the new-comer was pleased to find that there was nothing repulsive
in the appearance of any of his confreres,--a consideration
of material importance, inasmuch as the patients breakfast, dine,
and sup together. Nothing could have a more depressing effect upon
any invalid, than to be constantly surrounded by a crowd of people
manifestly dying, or afflicted with visible and disagreeable disease.
The fact is, judging from our own experience, that the people who
go to the Water Cure are for the most part not suffering from real
and tangible ailments, but from maladies of a comparatively fanciful
kind,--such as low spirits, shattered nerves, and lassitude, the
result of overwork. And our readers may be disposed to think, with
ourselves, that the change of air and scene, the return to a simple
and natural mode of life, and the breaking off from the cares
and engagements of business, have quite as much to do with their
restoration as the water-system, properly so called.
The situation of Malvern is well adapted to the successful use of
the water system. Sir E. B. Lytton tells us that 'the air of Malvern
is in itself hygeian: the water is immemorially celebrated for its
purity: the landscape is a perpetual pleasure to the eye.' The
neighbouring hills offer the exercise most suited to the cure:
Priessnitz said 'One must have mountains:' and Dr. Wilson told Mr.
Lane, in answer to a remark that the Water Cure had failed at Bath
and Cheltenham, that 'no good and difficult cures can be made in low
or damp situations, by swampy grounds, or near the beds of rivers.'
The morning after his arrival, Mr. Lane fairly entered upon the
Water System: and his diary for the following month shows us that
his time was fully occupied by baths of one sort or another, and
by the needful exercise before and after these. The patient is
gradually brought under the full force of hydropathy: some of the
severer appliances--such as the plunge-bath after packing, and the
douche--not being employed till he has been in some degree seasoned
and strung up for them. A very short time sufficed to dissipate
the notion that there is anything violent or alarming about the
Water Cure; and to convince the patient that every part of it is
positively enjoyable. There was no shock to the system: there was
nothing painful: no nauseous medicines to swallow; no vile bleeding
and blistering. Sitz-baths, foot-baths, plunge-baths, douches, and
wet-sheet packings, speedily began to do their work upon Mr. Lane;
and what with bathing, walking, hill-climbing, eating and drinking,
and making up fast friendships with some of his brethren of the
Water Cure, he appears to have had a very pleasant time of it. He
tells us that he found that--
The palliative and soothing effects of the water treatment are
established immediately; and the absence of all irritation begets
a lull, as instantaneous in its effects upon the frame as that
experienced in shelter from the storm.
A sense of present happiness, of joyous spirits, of confidence in
my proceedings, possesses me on this, the third day of my stay. I
do nut say that it is reasonable to experience this sudden accession,
or that everybody is expected to attribute it to the course of
treatment so recently commenced. I only say, so it is; and I look
for a confirmation of this happy frame of mind, when supported by
renewed strength of body.
To the same effect Sir E. B. Lytton:
Cares and griefs are forgotten: the sense of the present absorbs
the past and future: there is a certain freshness and youth which
pervade the spirits, and live upon the enjoyment of the actual
hour.
And the author of the Hints to the Sick, &c.:
Should my readers find me prosy, I hope that they will pardon an
old fellow, who looks back to his Water Cure course as one of the
most delightful portions of a tolerably prosperous life.
When shall we find the subjects of the established system of medical
treatment growing eloquent on the sudden accession of spirits
consequent on a blister applied to the chest; the buoyancy of heart
which attends the operation of six dozen leeches; the youthful
gaiety which results from the 'exhibition' of a dose of castor oil?
It is no small recommendation of the water system, that it makes
people so jolly while under it.
But it was not merely present cheerfulness that Mr. Lane experienced:
day by day his ailments were melting away. When he reached Malvern
he limped painfully, and found it impossible to straighten his
right leg, from a strain in the knee. In a week he 'did not know
that he had a knee.' We are not going to follow the detail of his
symptoms: suffice it to say that the distressing circumstances
already mentioned gradually disappeared; every day he felt stronger
and better; the half-paralysed side got all right again; mind and
body alike recovered their tone: the 'month at Malvern' was followed
up by a course of hydropathic treatment at home, such as the
exigencies of home-life will permit; and the upshot of the whole
was, lhat from being a wretched invalid, incapable of the least
exertion, mental or physical, Mr. Lane was permanently brought to
a state of health and strength, activity and cheerfulness. All this
improvement he has not the least hesitation in ascribing to the
virtue of the Water Cure; and after eight or ten years' experience
of the system and its results, his faith in it is stronger than
ever.
In quitting Malvern, the following is his review of the sensations
of the past month:--
I look back with astonishment at the temper of mind which has
prevailed over the great anxieties that, heavier than my illness,
had been bearing their weight upon me. Weakness of body had been
chiefly oppressive, because by it I was deprived of the power of
alleviating those anxieties; and now, with all that accumulation
of mental pressure, with my burden in full cry, and even gaining
upon me during the space thus occupied, I have to reflect upon time
passed in merriment, and attended by never-failing joyous spirits.
To the distress of mind occasioned by gathering ailments, was added
the pain of banishment from home; and yet I have been translated
to a life of careless ease. Any one whose knowledge of the solid
weight that I carried to this place would qualify him to estimate
the state of mind in which I left my home, might well be at a
loss to appreciate the influences which had suddenly soothed and
exhilarated my whole nature, until alacrity of mind and healthful
gaiety became expansive, and the buoyant spirit on the surface was
stretched to unbecoming mirth and lightness of heart.
So much for Mr. Lane's experience of the Water Cure. As to its
power in acute disease we shall speak hereafter; but its great
recommendations in all cases where the system has been broken down
by overwork, are (if we are to credit its advocates) two: first, it
braces up body and mind, and restores their healthy tone, in a way
that nothing else can; and next, the entire operation by which all
this is accomplished, is a course of physical and mental enjoyment.
But by this time we can imagine our readers asking with some
impatience, what is the Water Cure? What is the precise nature of
all those oddly-named appliances by which it produces its results?
Now this is just what we are going to explain; but we have artfully
and deeply sought to set out the benefits ascribed to the system
before doing so, in the hope that that large portion of the human
race which reads Fraser may feel the greater interest in the
details which follow, when each of the individuals who compose it
remembers, that these sitzes and douches are not merely the things
which set up Sir E. B. Lytton, Mr. Lane, and our old military
friend, but are the things which may some day be called on to revive
his own sinking strength and his own drooping spirits. And as the
treatment to which all water patients are subjected appears to
be much the same, we shall best explain the nature of the various
baths by describing them as we ourselves found them.
Our story is a very simple one. Some years since, after many terms
of hard College work, we found our strength completely break down.
We were languid and dispirited; everything was an effort: we felt
that whether study in our case had 'made the mind' or not, it had
certainly accomplished the other result which Festus ascribes to
it, and 'unmade the body.' We tried sea-bathing, cod-liver oil,
and everything else that medical men prescribe to people done up
by over study; but nothing did much good. Finally, we determined
to throw physic to the dogs, and to try a couple of months at
the Water Cure. It does cost an effort to make up one's mind to
go there, not only because the inexperienced in the matter fancy
the water system a very perilous one, but also because one's
steady-going friends, on hearing of our purpose, are apt to shake
their heads,--perhaps even to tap their foreheads,--to speak
doubtfully of our common sense, and express a kind hope--behind
our backs, especially--that we are not growing fanciful and
hypochondriac, and that we may not end in writing testimonials in
favour of Professor Holloway. We have already said that to have
the full benefit of the Water Cure, one must go to a hydropathic
establishment. There are numbers of these in Germany, and all along
the Rhine; and there are several in England, which are conducted in
a way more accordant with our English ideas. At Malvern we believe
there are two; there is a large one at Ben Rhydding, in Yorkshire;
one at Sudbrook Park, between Richmond and Ham; and another at Moor
Park, near Farnham. Its vicinity to London led us to prefer the
one at Sudbrook; and on a beautiful evening in the middle of May
we found our way down through that garden-like country, so green
and rich to our eyes, long accustomed to the colder landscapes of
the north. Sudbrook Park is a noble place. The grounds stretch for
a mile or more along Richmond Park, from which they are separated
only by a wire fence; the trees are magnificent, the growth of centuries,
and among them are enormous hickories, acacias, and tulip-trees;
while horse-chestnuts without number make a very blaze of floral
illumination through the leafy month of June. Richmond-hill, with
its unrivalled views, rises from Sudbrook Park; and that eerie-looking
Ham House, the very ideal of the old English manor-house, with
its noble avenues which make twilight walks all the summer day, is
within a quarter of a mile. As for the house itself, it is situated
at the foot of the slope on whose summit Lord John Russell's house
stands; it is of great extent, and can accommodate a host of
patients, though when we were there, the number of inmates was less
than twenty. It is very imposing externally; but the only striking
feature of its interior is the dining-room, a noble hall of forty
feet in length, breadth, and height. It is wainscoted with black
oak, which some vile wretch of a water doctor painted white, on
the ground that it darkened the room. As for the remainder of the
house, it is divided into commonplace bed-rooms and sitting-rooms,
and provided with bathing appliances of every conceivable kind.
On arriving at a water establishment, the patient is carefully
examined, chiefly to discover if anything be wrong about the heart,
as certain baths would have a most injurious effect should that
be so. The doctor gives his directions to the bath attendant as
to the treatment to be followed, which, however, is much the same
with almost all patients. The newcomer finds a long table in the
dining-hall, covered with bread and milk, between six and seven
in the evening; and here he makes his evening meal with some wry
faces. At half-past nine p. m. he is conducted to his chamber, a
bare little apartment, very plainly furnished. The bed is a narrow
little thing, with no curtains of any kind. One sleeps on a mattress,
which feels pretty hard at first. The jolly and contented looks
of the patients had tended somewhat to reassure us; still, we had
a nervous feeling that we were fairly in for it, and could not
divest ourselves of some alarm as to the ordeal before us; so we
heard the nightingale sing for many hours before we closed our eyes
on that first night at Sudbrook Park.
It did not seem a minute since we had fallen asleep, when we were
awakened by some one entering our room, and by a voice which said,
'I hef come tu pack yew.' It was the bath-man, William, to whose
charge we had been given, and whom we soon came to like exceedingly;
a most good-tempered, active, and attentive little German. We were
very sleepy, and inquired as to the hour; it was five a.m. There
was no help for it, so we scrambled out of bed and sat on a chair,
wrapped in the bed-clothes, watching William with sleepy eyes. He
spread upon our little bed a very thick and coarse double blanket;
he then produced from a tub what looked like a thick twisted cable,
which he proceeded to unroll. It was a sheet of coarse linen, wrung
out of the coldest water. And so here was the terrible wet sheet
of which we had heard so much. We shuddered with terror. William
saw our trepidation, and said, benevolently, 'Yew vill soon like
him mosh.' He spread out the wet sheet upon the thick blanket,
and told us to strip and lie down upon it. Oh! it was cold as ice!
William speedily wrapped it around us. Awfully comfortless was the
first sensation. We tried to touch the cold damp thing at as few
points as possible. It would not do. William relentlessly drew
the blanket tight round us; every inch of our superficies felt the
chill of the sheet. Then he placed above us a feather bed, cut out
to fit about the head, and stretched no end of blankets over all.
'How long are we to be here?' was our inquiry. 'Fifty minutes,'
said William, and disappeared. So there we were, packed in the wet
sheet, stretched on our back, our hands pinioned by our sides, as
incapable of moving as an Egyptian mummy in its swathes. 'What on
earth shall we do,' we remember thinking, 'if a fire breaks out?'
Had a robber entered and walked off with our watch and money, we
must have lain and looked at him, for we could not move a finger.
By the time we had thought all this, the chilly, comfortless feeling
was gone; in ten minutes or less, a sensation of delicious languor
stole over us: in a little longer we were fast asleep. We have
had many a pack since, and we may say that the feeling is most
agreeable when one keeps awake; body and mind are soothed into an
indescribable tranquillity; the sensation is one of calm, solid
enjoyment. In fifty minutes William returned. He removed the blankets
and bed which covered us, but left us enveloped in the sheet and
coarse blanket. By this time the patient is generally in a profuse
perspiration. William turned us round, and made us slip out of bed
upon our feet; then slightly loosing the lower part of our cerements
so that we could walk with difficulty, he took us by the shoulders
and guided our unsteady steps out of our chamber, along a little
passage, into an apartment containing a plunge bath. The bath was
about twelve feet square; its floor and sides covered with white
encaustic tiles; the water, clear as crystal against that light
background, was five feet deep. In a trice we were denuded of our
remaining apparel, and desired to plunge into the bath, head first.
The whole thing was done in less time than it has taken to describe
it: no caloric had escaped: we were steaming like a coach horse
that has done its ten miles within the hour on a summer-day; and
it certainly struck us that the Water Cure had some rather violent
measures in its repertory. We went a step or two down the ladder,
and then plunged in overhead. 'One plunge more and out,' exclaimed
the faithful William; and we obeyed. We were so thoroughly heated
beforehand, that we never felt the bath to be cold. On coming
out, a coarse linen sheet was thrown over us, large enough to have
covered half-a-dozen men, and the bath-man rubbed us, ourselves
aiding in the operation, till we were all in a glow of warmth. We
then dressed as fast as possible, postponing for the present the
operation of shaving, drank two tumblers of cold water, and took a
rapid walk round the wilderness (an expanse of shrubbery near the
house is so called), in the crisp, fresh morning air. The sunshine
was of the brightest; the dew was on the grass; everybody was early
there; fresh-looking patients were walking in all directions at
the rate of five miles an hour; the gardeners were astir; we heard
the cheerful sound of the mower whetting his scythe; the air was
filled with the freshness of the newly-cut grass, and with the
fragrance of lilac and hawthorn blossom; and all this by half-past
six a.m.! How we pitied the dullards that were lagging a-bed on
that bright summer morning! One turn round the wilderness occupies
ten minutes: we then drank two more tumblers of water, and took a
second turn of ten minutes. Two tumblers more, and another turn;
and then, in a glow of health and good humour, into our chamber
to dress for the day. The main supply of water is drunk before
breakfast; we took six tumblers daily at that time, and did not take
more than two or three additional in the remainder of the day. By
eight o'clock breakfast was on the table in the large hall, where
it remained till half-past nine. Bread, milk, water, and stewed
pippins (cold), formed the morning meal. And didn't we polish it
off! The accession of appetite is immediate.
Such is the process entitled the Pack and Plunge. It was the
beginning of the day's proceedings during the two months we spent
at Sudbrook. We believe it forms the morning treatment of almost
every patient; a shallow bath after packing being substituted for the
plunge in the case of the more nervous. With whatever apprehension
people may have looked forward to being packed before having
experienced the process, they generally take to it kindly after
a single trial. The pack is perhaps the most popular part of the
entire cold water treatment.
Mr. Lane says of it:--
What occurred during a full hour after this operation (being packed)
I am not in a condition to depose, beyond the fact that the sound,
sweet, soothing sleep which I enjoyed, was a matter of surprise
and delight. I was detected by Mr. Bardon, who came to awake me,
smiling, like a great fool, at nothing; if not at the fancies which
had played about my slumbers. Of the heat in which I found myself,
I must remark, that it is as distinct from perspiration, as from
the parched and throbbing glow of fever. The pores are open, and
the warmth of the body is soon communicated to the sheet; until--as
in this my first experience of the luxury--a breathing, steaming
heat is engendered, which fills the whole of the wrappers, and is
plentifully shown in the smoking state which they exhibit as they
are removed. I shall never forget the luxurious ease in which
I awoke on this morning, and looked forward with pleasure to the
daily repetition of what had been quoted to me by the uninitiated
with disgust and shuddering.
Sir E. B. Lytton says of the pack:--
Of all the curatives adopted by hydropathists, it is unquestionably
the safest--the one that can be applied without danger to the
greatest variety of cases; and which, I do not hesitate to aver,
can rarely, if ever, be misapplied in any case where the pulse is
hard and high, and the skin dry and burning. Its theory is that
of warmth and moisture, those friendliest agents to inflammatory
disorders.
I have been told, or have read (says Mr. Lane), put a man into the
wet sheet who had contemplated suicide, and it would turn him from
his purpose. At least I will say, let me get hold of a man who has
a pet enmity, who cherishes a vindictive feeling, and let me introduce
him to the soothing process. I believe that his bad passion would
not linger in its old quarters three days, and that after a week
his leading desire would be to hold out the hand to his late enemy.
Of the sensation in the pack, Sir E. B. Lytton tells us:--
The momentary chill is promptly succeeded by a gradual and vivifying
warmth, perfectly free from the irritation of dry heat; a delicious
sense of ease is usually followed by a sleep more agreeable than
anodynes ever produced. It seems a positive cruelty to be relieved
from this magic girdle, in which pain is lulled, and fever cooled,
and watchfulness lapped in slumber.
The hydropathic breakfast at Sudbrook being over, at nine o'clock
we had a foot-bath. This is a very simple matter. The feet are
placed in a tub of cold water, and rubbed for four or five minutes
by the bath-man. The philosophy of this bath is thus explained:--
The soles of the feet and the palms of the hands are extremely
sensitive, having abundance of nerves, as we find if we tickle
them. If the feet are put often into hot water, they will become
habitually cold, and make one more or less delicate and nervous.
On the other hand, by rubbing the feet often in cold water, they
will become permanently warm. A cold foot-bath will stop a violent
fit of hysterics. Cold feet show defective circulation.
At half-past ten in the forenoon we were subjected to by far the
most trying agent in the water system--the often-mentioned douche.
No patient is allowed to have the douche till he has been acclimated
by at least a fortnight's treatment. Our readers will understand
that from this hour onward we are describing not our first Sudbrook
day, but a representative day, such as our days were when we had got
into the full play of the system. The douche consists of a stream
of water, as thick as one's arm, falling from a height of twenty-four
feet. A pipe, narrowing to the end, conducts the stream for the first
six feet of its fall, and gives it a somewhat slanting direction.
The water falls, we need hardly say, with a tremendous rush, and
is beaten to foam on the open wooden floor. There were two douches
at Sudbrook: one, of a somewhat milder nature, being intended for
the lady patients. Every one is a little nervous at first taking
this bath. One cannot be too warm before having it: we always took
a rapid walk of half an hour, and came up to the ordeal glowing
like a furnace. The faithful William was waiting our arrival, and
ushered us into a little dressing-room, where we disrobed. William
then pulled a cord, which let loose the formidable torrent, and
we hastened to place ourselves under it. The course is to back
gradually till it falls upon the shoulders, then to sway about till
every part of the back and limbs has been played upon: but great
care must be taken not to let the stream fall upon the head, where
its force would probably be dangerous. The patient takes this bath
at first for one-minute; the time is lengthened daily till it
reaches four minutes, and there it stops. The sensation is that
of a violent continuous force assailing one; we are persuaded that
were a man blindfolded, and so deaf as not to hear the splash of the
falling stream, he could not for his life tell what was the cause
of the terrible shock he was enduring. It is not in the least like
the result of water: indeed it is unlike any sensation we ever
experienced elsewhere. At the end of our four minutes the current
ceases; we enter the dressing-room, and are rubbed as after the
plunge-bath. The reaction is instantaneous: the blood is at once
called to the surface. 'Red as a rose were we:' we were more than
warm; we were absolutely hot.
Mr. Lane records some proofs of the force with which the douche
falls:--
In a corner of one dressing-room is a broken chair. What does it
mean? A stout lady, being alarmed at the fall from the cistern,
to reduce the height, carefully placed what was a chair, and stood
upon it. Down came the column of water--smash went the chair to
bits--and down fell the poor lady prostrate. She did not douche
again for a fortnight.
Last winter a man was being douched, when an icicle that had been
formed in the night was dislodged by the first rush of water, and
fell on his back. Bardon, seeing the bleeding, stopped the douche,
but the douchee had not felt the blow as anything unusual. He had
been douched daily, and calculated on such a force as he experienced.
Although most patients come to like the douche, it is always to be
taken with caution. That it is dangerous in certain conditions of
the body, there is no doubt. Sir E. B. Lytton speaks strongly on
this point:--
Never let the eulogies which many will pass upon the douche tempt
you to take it on the sly, unknown to your adviser. The douche is
dangerous when the body is unprepared--when the heart is affected--when
apoplexy may be feared.
After having douched, which process was over by eleven, we had till
one o'clock without further treatment. We soon came to feel that
indisposition to active employment which is characteristic of the
system; and these two hours were given to sauntering, generally alone,
in the green avenues and country lanes about Ham and Twickenham;
but as we have already said something of the charming and thoroughly
English scenes which surround Sudbrook, we shall add nothing further
upon that subject now--though the blossoming horse chestnuts and
the sombre cedars of Richmond Park, the bright stretches of the
Thames, and the quaint gateways and terraces of Ham House, the
startled deer and the gorse-covered common, all picture themselves
before our mind at the mention of those walks, and tempt us sorely.
At one o'clock we returned to our chamber, and had a head-bath. We
lay upon the ground for six minutes, if we remember rightly, with
the back of our head in a shallow vessel of water.
Half-past one was the dinner hour. All the patients were punctually
present; those who had been longest in the house occupying the
seats next those of Dr. and Mrs. Ellis, who presided at either end
of the table. The dinners were plain, but abundant; and the guests
brought with them noble appetites, so that it was agreed on all
hands that there never was such beef or mutton as that of Sudbrook.
Soup was seldom permitted: plain joints were the order of the day,
and the abundant use of fresh vegetables was encouraged. Plain
puddings, such as lice and sago, followed; there was plenty of water
to drink. A number of men-servants waited, among whom we recognized
our friend William, disguised in a white stock. The entertainment
did not last long. In half an hour the ladies withdrew to their
drawing-room, and the gentlemen dispersed themselves about the
place once more.
Of the Malvern dinners, Mr. Lane writes as follows:--
At the head of the table, where the doctor presides, was the leg of
mutton, which, I believe, is even' day's head dish. I forget what
Mr. Wilson dispensed, but it was something savoury of fish. I
saw veal cutlets with bacon, and a companion dish; maccaroni with
gravy, potatoes plain boiled, or mashed and browned, spinach, and
other green vegetables. Then followed rich pudding, tapioca, and
some other farinaceous ditto, rhubarb tarts, &c. So much for what
I have heard of the miserable diet of water patients.
Dinner being dispatched, there came the same listless sauntering
about till four o'clock, when the pack and plunge of the morning were
repeated. At half-past six we had another head-bath. Immediately
after it there was supper, which was a fac simile of breakfast.
Then, more sauntering in the fading twilight, and at half-past Bine
we paced the long corridor leading to our chamber, and speedily
were sound asleep. No midnight tossings, no troubled dreams; one
long deep slumber till William appeared next morning at five, to
begin the round again.
Such was our life at the Water Cure: a contrast as complete as
might be to the life which preceded and followed it. Speaking for
ourselves, we should say that there is a great deal of exaggeration
in the accounts we have sometimes read of the restorative influence of
the system. It wrought no miracle in our case. A couple of months
at the sea-side would probably have produced much the same effect.
We did not experience that extreme exhilaration of spirits which
Mr. Lane speaks of. Perhaps the soft summer climate of Surrey,
in a district rather over-wooded, wanted something of the bracing
quality which dwells in the keener air of the Malvern hills. Yet
the system strung us up wonderfully, and sent us home with much
improved strength and heart. And since that time, few mornings have
dawned on which we have not tumbled into the cold bath on first
rising, and, following the process by a vigorous rubbing with
towels of extreme roughness, experienced the bracing influence of
cold water alike on the body and the mind.
We must give some account of certain other baths, which have
not come within our course latterly, though we have at different
times tried them all. We have mentioned the sitz-bath; here is its
nature:--
It is not disagreeable, but very odd: and exhibits the patient in
by no means an elegant or dignified attitude. For this bath it is
not necessary to undress, the coat only being taken off, and the
shirt gathered under the waistcoat, which is buttoned upon it; and
when seated in the water, which rises to the waist, a blanket is
drawn round and over the shoulders. Having remained ten minutes in
this condition, we dried and rubbed ourselves with coarse towels, and
after tea minutes' walk, proceeded to supper with a good appetite.
The soothing and tranquillizing effect of the sitz is described as
extraordinary:--
In sultry weather, when indolence seems the only resource, a sitz
of ten minutes at noon will suffice to protect against the enervating
effect of heat, and to rouse from listlessness and inactivity.
If two or three hours have been occupied by anxious conversation,
by many visitors, or by any of the perplexities of daily occurrence,
a sitz will effectually relieve the throbbing head, anil fit one
for a return (if it must be so) to the turmoil and bustle.
If an anxious letter is to be mentally weighed, or an important
letter to be answered, the matter and the manner can he under
no circumstances so adequately pondered as in the sitz. How this
quickening of the faculties is engendered, and by what immediate
action it is produced, I cannot explain, and invite others to test
it by practice.
I have in my own experience proved the sitz to be cogitatory,
consolatory, quiescent, refrigeratory, revivificatory, or all these
together.
Thus far Mr. Lane. The Brause-bad is thus described by our old
military friend:--
At eleven o'clock I went to the Brause-bad. This is too delightful:
it requires a day or two of practice to enable the patient to enjoy
it thoroughly. The water at Marienberg is all very cold, and one
must never stand still for above a few seconds at a time, and must
be ever employed in rubbing the parts of the body which are exposed
to the silvery element. The bath is a square room, eight feet by
six. The shower above consists of a treble row of holes, drilled in
a metal vessel, about one foot long, and at an elevation of eight
feet from the floor. There is, besides, a lateral gush of water, in
bulk about equal to three ordinary pumps, which bathes the middle
man. When I entered the bath, I held my hands over my head, to break
the force of the water; and having thus seasoned my knowledge-box,
I allowed the water to fall on my back and breast alternately,
rubbing most vigorously with both hands: the allotted time for
this aquatic sport is four minutes, but I frequently begged the
bademeister to allow me a minute or two more. At my sortie, the
bademeister threw over me the dry sheet, and he and his assistants
rubbed me dry to the bone, and left me in full scarlet uniform.
After this bath I took at least three glasses of water, and a most
vigorous walk.
One of the least agreeable processes in the water system is being
sweated. Mr. Lane describes his sensations as follows:--
At five o'clock in walked the executioner who was to initiate me into
the sweating process. There was nothing awful in the commencement.
Two dry blankets were spread upon the mattress, and I was enveloped
in them as in the wet sheet, being well and closely tucked in
round the neck, and the head raised on two pillows. Then came my
old friend the down bed, and a counterpane.
At first I felt very comfortable, but in ten minutes the irritation
of the blanket was disagreeable, and endurance was nly only resource;
thought upon other subjects out of the question. In half-an-hour
I wondered when it would begin to act. At six, in came Bardon to
give me water to drink. Another hour, and I was getting into a state.
I had for ten minutes followed Bardon's directions by slightly
moving my hands and legs, and the profuse perspiration was a relief;
besides, I knew that I should be soon fit to be bathed, and what a
tenfold treat! He gave me more water; and in a quarter of an hour
he returned, when. I stepped, in a precious condition, into the
cold bath, Bardon using more water on my head and shoulders than
usual, more rubbing and spunging, and afterwards more vigorous dry
rubbing. I was more than pink, and hastened to get out and compare
notes with Sterling.
By the sweating process, the twenty-eight miles of tubing which
exist in the pores of the skin are effectually relieved; and--in
Dr. Wilson's words--'you lose a little water, and put yourself
in a state to make flesh.' The sweating process is known at water
establishments as the 'blanket-pack.'
We believe we have mentioned every hydropathic appliance that is
in common use, with the exception of what is called the 'rub in a
wet sheet.' This consists in having a sheet, dripping wet, thrown
round one, and in being vehemently rubbed by the bath-man, the
patient assisting. The effect is very bracing and exhilarating on a
sultry summer day; and this treatment has the recommendation that
it is applied and done with in the course of a few minutes; nor
does it need any preliminary process. It is just the thing to get
the bath-man to administer to a friend who has come down to visit
one, as a slight taste of the quality of the Water Cure.
One pleasing result of the treatment is, that the skin is made
beautifully soft and white. Another less pleasing circumstance
is, that when there is any impurity lurking in the constitution, a
fortnight's treatment brings on what is called a crisis, in which
the evil is driven off in the form of an eruption all over the
body. This result never follows unless where the patient has been
in a most unhealthy state. People who merely need a little bracing
up need not have the least fear of it. Our own two months of water
never produced the faintest appearance of such a thing.
Let us sum up the characteristics of the entire system. In the
words of Sir E. B. Lytton:--
The first point which impressed me was the extreme and utter
innocence of the water-cure in skilful hands--in any hands, indeed,
not thoroughly new to the system.
The next thing that struck me was the extraordinary ease with
which, under this system, good habits are acquired and bad habits
are relinquished.
That which, thirdly, impressed me, was no less contrary to all my
preconceived opinions. I had fancied that, whether good or bad,
the system must be one of great hardship, extremely repugnant and
disagreeable. I wondered at myself to find how soon it became so
associated with pleasurable and grateful feelings as to dwell upon
the mind as one of the happiest passages of existence.
We have left ourselves no space to say anything of the effect of
the Water Cure in acute disease. It is said to work wonders in the
case of gout, and all rheumatic complaints: the severe suffering
occasioned by the former vexatious malady is immediately subdued,
and the necessity of colchicum and other deleterious drugs is
obviated. Fever and inflammation, too, are drawn off by constant
packing, without being allowed to run their usual course. Our readers
may find remarkable cures of heart arid other diseases recorded at
pages 24, 72, 114, and 172, of the Month at Malvern. We quote the
account of one case:--
I was introduced to a lady, that I might receive her own report
of her cure. She had been for nine years paralysed, from the waist
downwards; pale and emaciated; and coming to Malvern, she had no
idea of recovering the use of her limbs, but merely bodily health.
In five months she became ruddy, and then her perseverance in being
packed twice every day was rewarded. The returning muscular power
was advanced to perfect recovery of the free use of her limits.
She grew stout and strong, and now walks ten miles daily.
We confess we should like to have this story confirmed by some
competent authority. It appears to verge on the impossible: unless,
indeed, the fact was that the lady was some nervous, fanciful
person, who took up a hypochondriac idea that she was paralysed,
and got rid of the notion by having her constitution braced up.
We have already said a good deal of the enjoyable nature of the
water system; we make a final quotation from our military friend:--
I have given some account of my daily baths, and on reading over
what I have written, I feel quite ashamed of the coldness of the
recital of all my delight, the recollection of which makes my mouth
water. The reader will observe that I am a Scotchman (proverbially
a matter-of-fact race), an old fellow, my enemy would say a slow
coach. I might enlarge on my ecstatic delight in my baths, my healthy
glow, my light-heartedness, my feelings of elasticity, which made
me fancy I could trip along the sward like a patent Vestris. I might
go much farther, I might indulge in poetic rapture--most unbecoming
my mature age--and after all, fall far short of the reality. The
reader will do well to allow a large percentage of omitted ecstatic
delineation in consequence of want of ardour on the part of the
writer. This is in fact due to justice.
See how old patients describe the Water Cure! This is, at all events,
a different strain from that of people who have been victimized by
ordinary quacks and quack medicines, and who bestow their imprecations
on the credulity which has at once ruined their constitutions and
emptied their pockets.
We trust we have succeeded in persuading those who have glanced
over these pages, that the Water Cure is by no means the violent
thing which they have in all probability been accustomed to consider
it. There is no need for being nervous about going to it. There
is nothing about it that is half such a shock to the system as are
blue pill and mercury, purgatives and drastics, leeches and the
lancet. Almost every appliance within its range is a source of
positive enjoyment; the time spent under it is a cheerful holiday
to body and mind. We take it to be quackery and absurdity to maintain
that all possible diseases can be cured by the cold water system;
but, from our own experience, we believe that the system and its
concomitants do tend powerfully to brace and re-invigorate, when
mental exertion has told upon the system, and even threatened to
break it down. But really it is no new discovery that fresh air
and water, simple food and abundant exercise, change of scene and
intermission of toil and excitement, tend to brace the nerves and
give fresh vigour to the limbs. In the only respect in which we
have any confidence in the Water Cure, it is truly no new system
at all. We did not need Priessnitz to tell us that the fair element
which, in a hundred forms, makes so great a part of Creation's
beauty--trembling, crystal-clear, upon the rosebud; gleaming in the
sunset river; spreading, as we see it to-day, in the bright blue
summer sea; fleecy-white in the silent clouds, and gay in the
evening rainbow,--is the true elixir of health and life, the most
exhilarating draught, the most soothing anodyne; the secret of
physical enjoyment, and mental buoyancy and vigour.
CHAPTER XI
CONCERNING FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.
[Footnote: Friends in Council: a Series of Readings and Discourse
thereon. A. New Series. Two Volumes. London: John W. Parker and
Son, West Strand, 1859.]
There is a peculiar pleasure in paying a visit to a friend whom you
never saw in his own house before. Let it not be believed that in
this world there is much difficulty in finding a new sensation. The
genial, unaffected, hard-wrought man, who does not think it fine
to appear to care nothing for anything, will find a new sensation
in many quiet places, and in many simple ways. There is something
fresh and pleasant in arriving at an entirely new railway station,
in getting out upon a platform on which you never before stood;
in finding your friend standing there looking quite at home in a
place quite strange to you; in taking in at a glance the expression
of the porter who takes your luggage and the clerk who receives
your ticket, and reading there something of their character and
their life; in going outside, and seeing for the first time your
friend's carriage, whether the stately drag or the humbler dog-cart,
and beholding horses you never saw before, caparisoned in harness
heretofore unseen; in taking your seat upon cushions hitherto
impressed by you, in seeing your friend take the reins, and then
in rolling away over a new road, under new trees, over new bridges,
beside new hedges, looking upon new landscapes stretching far away,
and breaking in upon that latent idea common to all people who have
seen very little, that they have seen almost all the world. Then
there is something fresh and pleasant in driving for the first time
up the avenue, in catching the first view of the dwelling which is
to your friend the centre of all the world, in walking up for the
first time to your chamber (you ought always to arrive at a country
house for a visit about three quarters of an hour before dinner),
and then in coming down and finding yourself in the heart of
his belongings; seeing his wife and children, never seen before;
finding out his favourite books, and coming to know something of
his friends, horses, dogs, pigs, and general way of life; and then
after ten days, in going away, feeling that you have occupied a new
place and seen a new phase of life, henceforward to be a possession
for ever.
But it is pleasanter by a great deal to go and pay a visit to a
friend visited several times (not too frequently) before: to arrive
at the old railway station, quiet and country-like, with trees
growing out of the very platform on which you step; to see your
friend's old face not seen for two years; to go out and discern
the old drag standing just where you remember it, and to smooth
down the horses' noses as an old acquaintance; to discover a look
of recognition on the man-servant's impassive face, which at your
greeting expands into a pleased smile; to drive away along the
old road, recognizing cottages and trees; to come in sight of the
house again, your friend's conversation and the entire aspect of
things bringing up many little remembrances of the past; to look
out of your chamber window before dinner and to recognize a large
beech or oak which you had often remembered when you were far away,
and the field beyond, and the hills in the distance, and to know
again even the pattern of the carpet and the bed curtains; to go
down to dinner, and meet the old greeting; to recognize the taste
of the claret; to find the children a little bigger, a little shy
at first, but gradually acknowledging an old acquaintance; and then,
when your friend and you are left by yourselves, to draw round the
fire (such visits are generally in September), and enjoy the warm,
hearty look of the crimson curtains hanging in the self-same folds
as twenty-four months since, and talk over many old things.
We feel, in opening the new volumes of Friends in Council, as we
should in going to pay a visit to an old friend living in the same
pleasant home, and at the same pleasant autumnal season in which
we visited him before. We know what to expect. We know that there
may be little variations from what we have already found, little
changes wrought by time; but, barring great accident or disappointment,
we know what kind of thing the visit will be. And we believe that
to many who have read with delight the previous volumes of this
work, there can hardly be any pleasanter anticipation than that
of more of the same wise, kindly, interesting material which they
remember. A good many years have passed since the first volume of
Friends in Council was published; a good many years even since the
second: for, the essays and discourses now given to the public form
the third published portion of the work. Continuations of successful
works have proverbially proved failures; the author was his own
too successful rival; and intelligent readers, trained to expect
much, have generally declared that the new production was, if not
inferior to its predecessor, at all events inferior to what its
predecessor had taught them to look for. But there is no falling off
here. The writing of essays and conversations, set in a framework
of scenery and incident, and delineating character admirably though
only incidentally, is the field of literature in which the author
stands without a rival. No one in modern days can discuss a grave
subject in a style so attractive; no one can convey so much wisdom
with so much playfulness and kindliness; no one can evince so much
earnestness unalloyed by the least tinge of exaggeration. The order
of thought which is contained in Friends in Council, is quarried
from its authors best vein. Here, he has come upon what gold-diggers
call a pocket: and he appears to work it with little effort. However
difficult it might be for others to write an essay and discourse
on it in the fashion of this book, we should judge that its author
does so quite easily. It is no task for suns to shine. And it will
bring back many pleasant remembrances to the minds of many readers,
to open these new volumes, and find themselves at once in the same
kindly atmosphere as ever; to find that the old spring is flowing
yet. The new series of Friends in Council is precisely what the
intelligent reader must have expected. A thoroughly good writer
can never surprise us. A writer whom we have studied, mused over,
sympathized with, can surprise us only by doing something eccentric,
affected, unworthy of himself. The more thoroughly we have
sympathized with him; the more closely we have marked not only the
strong characteristics which are already present in what he writes,
but those little matters which may be the germs of possible new
characteristics; the less likely is it that we shall be surprised
by anything he does or says. It is so with the author of Friends
in Council. We know precisely what to expect from him. We should
feel aggrieved if he gave us anything else. Of course there will
be much wisdom and depth of insight; much strong practical sense:
there will be playfulness, pensiveness, pathos; great fairness and
justice; much kindness of heart; something of the romantic element;
and as for Style, there will be language always free from the
least trace of affectation; always clear and comprehensible; never
slovenly; sometimes remarkable for a certain simple felicity;
sometimes rising into force and eloquence of a very high order:
a style, in short, not to be parodied, not to be caricatured, not
to be imitated except by writing as well. The author cannot sink
below our expectations; cannot rise above them. He has already
written so much, and so many thoughtful readers have so carefully
studied what he has written, that we know the exact length of his
tether, and he can say nothing for which we are not prepared. You
know exactly what to expect in this new work. You could not, indeed,
produce it; you could not describe it, you could not say beforehand
what it will be; but when you come upon it, you will feel that it
is just what you were sure it would be. You were sure, as you are
sure what will be the flavour of the fruit on your pet apple-tree,
which you have tasted a hundred times. The tree is quite certain
to produce that fruit which you remember and like so well; it is
its nature to do so. And the analogy holds further. For, as little
variations in weather or in the treatment of the tree--a dry season,
or some special application to the roots--may somewhat alter the
fruit, though all within narrow limits; so may change of circumstances
a little affect an author's writings, but only within a certain
range. The apple-tree may produce a somewhat different apple; but
it will never producn an orange, neither will it yield a crab.
So here we are again among our old friends. We should have good
reason to complain had Dunsford, Ellesmere, or Milverton been absent;
and here they are again just as before. Possibly they are even
less changed than they'should have been after thirteen or fourteen
years, considering what their age was at our first introduction to
them. Dunsford, the elderly country parson, once fellow and tutor
of his college, still reports the conversations of the friends;
Milverton and Ellesmere are, in their own way, as fond of one
another as ever; Dunsford is still judicious, kind, good, somewhat
slow, as country parsons not unnaturally become; Ellesmere is
still sarcastic, keen, clever, with much real worldly wisdom and
much affected cynicism overlying a kind and honest heart. As for
Milverton, we should judge that in him the author of the work has
unconsciously shown us himself; for assuredly the great characteristics
of the author of Friends in Council must be that he is laborious,
thoughtful, generous, well-read, much in earnest, eager for
the welfare of his fellow-men, deeply interested in politics and
in history, impatient of puritanical restraints, convinced of the
substantial importance of amusement. Milverton, we gather, still
lives at his country-seat in Hampshire, and takes some interest
in rustic concerns. Ellesmere continues to rise at the bar; since
we last met him has been Solicitor-General, and is now Sir John,
a member of the House of Commons, and in the fair way to a Chief
Justiceship. The clergyman's quiet life is going on as before. But
in addition to our three old friends we find an elderly man, one
Mr. Midhurst, whose days have been spent in diplomacy, who is of a
melancholy disposition, and takes gloomy views of life, but who is
much skilled in cookery, very fat, and very fond of a good dinner.
Also Mildred and Blanche, Milverton's cousins, two sisters, have
grown up into young women of very different character: and they
take some share in the conversations, and, as we shall hereafter
see, a still more important part in the action of the story.
We feel that we are in the midst of a real group of actual human
beings:--just what third-rate historians fail to make us feel when
telling us of men and women who have actually lived. The time and
place are very varied; hut through the greater portion of the book
the party are travelling over the Continent. A further variation
from the plan of the former volumes, besides the introduction of new
characters, is, that while all the essays in the preceding series
were written by Milverton, we have now one by Ellesmere, one by
Dunsford, and one by Mr. Midhurst, each being in theme and manner
very characteristic of its author. But, as heretofore, the writer
of the book holds to his principle of the impolicy of 'jading anything
too far,' and thinks with Bacon that 'it is good, in discourse
and speech of conversation, to vary and intermingle speech of the
present occasion with arguments, tales with reasons, asking of
questions with telling of opinions, and jest with earnest.' The
writer likewise holds by that system which his own practice has done
so much to recommend--of giving locality and time to all abstract
thought, and thus securing in the case of the majority of readers
an interest and a reality in no other way to be attained. Admirable
as are the essays contained in the work, but for their setting in
something of a story, and their vivification by being ascribed to
various characters, and described as read and discussed in various
scenes, they would interest a very much smaller class of readers
than now they do. No doubt much of the skill of tho dramatist is
needed to secure this souce of interest. It can be secured only
where we feel that the characters are living men and women, and the
attempt to secure it has often proved a miserable failure. But it
is here that the author of Friends in Council succeeds so well. Not
only do we know precisely what Dunsford, Milverton, and Ellesmere
are like; we know exactly what they ought and what they ought not
to say. The author ran a risk in reproducing those old friends. We
had a right to expect in each of them a certain idiosyncrasy; and
it is not easy to maintain an individuality which does not dwell
in mere caricature and exaggeration, but in the truthful traits of
actual life. We feel we have a vested interest in the characters of
the three friends: not even their author has the right essentially
to alter them; we should feel it an injury if he did. But he has
done what he intended. Here we have the selfsame men. Not a word
is said by one of them that ought to have been said by another.
And here it may be remarked, that any one who is well read in the
author's writings, will not fail here and there to come upon what
will appear familiar to him. Various thoughts, views, and even
expressions, occur which the author has borrowed from himself. It
is easy to be seen that in all this there is no conscious repetition,
but that veins of thought and feeling long entertained have cropped
out to the surface again.
We do not know whether or not the readers of Friends in Council
will be startled at finding that these volumes show us the grave
Milverton and the sarcastic Ellesmere in the capacity of lovers,
and leave them in the near prospect of being married--Ellesmere to
the bold and dashing Mildred; Milverton to the quiet Blanche. The
gradual tending of things to this conclusion forms the main action
of the book. The incidents are of the simplest character: there
is a plan but no plot, except as regards these marriages. Wearied
and jaded with work at home, the three friends of the former
volumes resolve on going abroad for awhile. Midhurst and the girls
accompany them: and the story is simply that at various places to
which they came, one friend read an essay or uttered a discourse
(for sometimes the essays are supposed to have been given extempore),
and the others talked about it. But the gradual progress of matters
towards the weddings (it may be supposed that the happy couples are
this September on their wedding tours) is traced with much skill
and much knowledge of the fashion in which such things go; and it
supplies a peculiar interest to the work, which will probably tide
many young ladies over essays on such grave subjects as Government
and Despotism. Still, we confess that we had hardly regarded Ellesmere
and Milverton as marrying men. We had set them down as too old,
grave, and wise, for at least the preliminary stages. We have not
forgotten that Dunsford told us [Footnote: Friends in Council,
Introduction to Book II.] that in the summer of 1847 he supposed
no one but himself would speak of Milverton and Ellesmere as young
men; and now of course they are twelve years older, and yet about
to be married to girls whom we should judge to be about two or three
and twenty. And although it is not an unnatural thing that Ellesmere
should have got over his affection for the German Gretchen, whose
story is so exquisitely told in the Companions of my Solitude, we
find it harder to reconcile Milverton's marriage with our previous
impression of him. Yet perhaps all this is truthful to life. It is
not an unnatural thing that a man who for years has settled down
into the belief that he has faded, and that for him the romantic
interest has gone from life, should upon some fresh stimulus gather
himself up from that idea, and think that life is not so far gone
after all. Who has not on a beautiful September day sometimes chidden
himself for having given in to the impression that the season was
so far advanced, and clung to the belief that it is almost summer
still?
In a preliminary Address to the Reader, the author explains that
the essay on War, which occupies a considerable portion of the
first volume, was written some time ago, and intends no allusion
to recent events in Europe. The Address contains an earnest protest
against the maintenance of large standing armies; it is eloquent
and forcible, and it affords additional proof how much the author
has thought upon the subject of war, and how deeply he feels upon
it. Then comes the Introduction proper, written, of course, by
Dunsford. It sets out with the praise of conversation, and then it
sums up what the 'Friends' have learned in their longer experience
of life:--
We 'Friends in Council' are of course somewhat older men than when
we first began to meet in friendly conclave; and I have observed as
men go on in life they are less and less inclined to be didactic.
They have found out that nothing is, didactically speaking, true.
They long for exceptions, modifications, allowances. A boy is clear,
sharp, decisive in his talk. He would have this. He would do that.
He hates this; he loves that: and his loves or his hatreds admit
of no exception. He is sure that the one thing is quite right, and
the other quite wrong. He is not troubled with doubts. He knows.
I see now why, as men go on in life, they delight, in anecdotes.
These tell so much, and argue, or pronounce directly, so little.
The three friends were sauntering one day in Milverton's garden,
all feeling much overwrought and very stupid. Ellesmere proposed
that for a little recreation they should go abroad. Milverton pleads
his old horror of picture-galleries, and declares himself content
with the unpainted pictures he has in his mind:--
It is curious, but I have been painting two companion pictures
ever since we have been walking about in the garden. One consists
of some dilapidated garden architecture, with overgrown foliage of
all kinds, not forest foliage, but that of rare trees such as the
Sumach and Japan-cedar, which should have been neglected for thirty
years. Here and there, instead of the exquisite parterre, there
should be some miserable patches of potatoes and beans, and some
squalid clothes hung out to dry. Two ill-dressed children, but of
delicate features, should be playing about an ugly neglected pool
that had once been the basin to the fountain. But the foliage
should be the chief thing, gaunt, grotesque, rare, beautiful, like
an unkempt, uncared-for, lovely mountain girl. Underneath this
picture:--'Property in the country, in chancery.'
The companion picture, of course, should be:--'Property in town,
in chancery.' It should consist of two orthree hideous, sordid,
window-broken, rat-deserted, paintless, blackened houses, that
should look as if they had once been too good company for the
neighbourhood, and had met with a fall in life, not deplored by any
one. At the opposite corner should be a flaunting new gin-palace.
I do not know whether I should have the heart to bring any children
there, but I would if I could.
The reader will discern that the author of Friends in Council has
lost nothing of his power of picturesque description, and nothing
of his horror of the abuses and cruelties of the law. And the
passage may serve to remind of the touching, graphic account of
the country residence of a reduced family in the Companions of my
Solitude. [Footnote: Chap. iv.] Ellesmere assures Milverton that
he shall not be asked to see a single picture; and that if Milverton
will bring Blanche and Mildred with him, he will himself go and see
seven of the chief sewers in seven of the chief towns. The appeal
to the sanitarian's feelings is successful; the bargain is struck;
and we next find the entire party sauntering, after an early German
dinner, on the terrace of some small town on the Rhine,--Dunsford
forgets which. Milverton, Ellesmere, and Mr. Midhurst arc smoking,
and we commend their conversation on the soothing power of tobacco
to the attention of the Dean of Carlisle. Dean Close, by a bold
figure, calls tobacco a 'gorging fiend.' Milverton holds that smoking
is perhaps the greatest blessing that we owe to the discovery of
America. He regards its value as abiding in its power to soothe
under the vexations and troubles of life. While smoking, you cease
to live almost wholly in the future, which miserable men for the
most part do. The question arises, whether the sorrows of the old
or the young are the most acute? It is admitted that the sorrows
of children are very overwhelming for the time, but they are not
of that varied, perplexed, and bewildering nature which derives
much consolation from smoke. Ellesmere suggests, very truthfully,
that the feeling of shame for having done anything wrong, or even
ridiculous, causes most acute misery to the young. And, indeed,
who does not know, from personal experience, that the sufferings of
children of even four or five years old are often quite as dreadful
as those which come as the sad heritage of after years? We look
back on them now, and smile at them as we think how small were
their causes. Well, they were great to us. We were little creatures
then, and little things were relatively very great. 'The sports of
childhood satisfy the child:' the sorrows of childhood overwhelm
the poor little thing. We think a sympathetic reader would hardly
read without a tear as well as a smile, an incident in the early
life of Patrick Fraser Tytler, recorded in his recently published
biography. When five years old he got hold of the gun of an elder
brother, and broke the spring of its lock. What anguish the little
boy must have endured, what a crushing sense of having caused an
irremediable evil, before he sat down and printed in great letters
the following epistle to his brother, the owner of the gun--'Oh,
Jamie, think no more of guns, for the main-spring of that is broken,
and my heart is broken!' Doubtless the poor little fellow fancied
that for all the remainder of his life he would never feel as
he had felt before he touched the unlucky weapon. Doubtless the
little heart was just as full of anguish as it could hold. Looking
back over many years, most of us can remember a child crushed and
overwhelmed by some sorrow which it thought could never be got
over, and can feel for our early self as though sympathizing with
another personality.
The upshot of the talk which began with tobacco was, that Milverton
was prevailed upon to write an essay on a subject of universal interest
to all civilized beings, an essay on Worry. He felt, indeed, that
he. should be writing it at a disadvantage; for an essay on worry
can be written with full effect only by a thoroughly worried man.
There was no worry at all in that quiet little town on the Rhine;
they had come there to rest, and there was no intruding duty that
demanded that it should be attended to. And probably there is no
respect in which that great law of the association of ideas, that
like suggests like, holds more strikingly true than in the power of
a present state of mind, or a present state of outward circumstances,
to bring up vividly before us all such states in our past history.
We are depressed, we are worried: and when we look back, all our
departed days of worry and depression appear to start up and press
themselves upon our view to the exclusion of anything else, so
that we are ready to think that we have never been otherwise than
depressed and worried all our life. But when more cheerful times
come, they suggest only such times of cheerfulness, and no effort
will bring back the worry vividly as when we felt it. It is not
selfishness or heartlessness; it is the result of an inevitable
law of mind that people in happy circumstances should resolutely
believe that it is a happy world after all; for looking back, and
looking around, the mind refuses to take distinct note of anything
that is not somewhat akin to its present state. Milverton wrote an
excellent essay on Worry on the evening of that day; but he might
possibly have written a better one at Worth-Ashton on the evening
of a day on which he had discovered that his coachman was stealing
the corn provided for the carriage horses, or galloping these
animals about the country at the dead of night to see his friends.
We must have a score of little annoyances stinging us at once
to have the undiluted sense of being worried. And probably a not
wealthy man, residing in the country, and farming a few acres of
ground by means of somewhat unfaithful and neglectful servants, may
occasionally find so many things going wrong at once, and so many
little things demanding to be attended to at once, that he shall
experience worry in as high a degree as it can be felt by mortal.
Thus truthfully does Milverton's essay begin:--
The great characteristic of modern life is Worry.
If the Pagan religion still prevailed, the new goddess, in whose
honour temples would be raised and to whom statues would be erected in
all the capitals of the world, would he the goddess Worry. London
would be the chief seat and centre of her sway. A gorgeous statue,
painted and enriched after the manner of the ancients (for there
is no doubt that they adopted this practice, however barbarous it
may seem to us), would he set up to the goddess in the West-end of
the town: another at Temple Bar, of less ample dimensions and less
elaborate decoration, would receive the devout homage of worshippers
who came to attend their lawyers in that quarter of the town: while
a statue, on which the cunning sculptor should have impressed the
marks of haste, anxiety, and agitation, would be sharply glanced
up at, with as much veneration as they could afford to give to it,
by the eager men of business in the City.
The goddess Worry, however, would be no local deity, worshipped
merely in some great town, like Diana of the Ephesians; but, in the
market-places of small rural communities, her statue, made somewhat
like a vane, and shitting with every turn of the wind, would be
regarded with stolid awe by anxious votaries belonging to what is
called the farming interest. Familiar too and household would be
her worship: and in many a snug home, where she might be imagined
to have little potency, small and ugly images of her would be found
as household gods--the Lares and Penates--near to the threshold,
and ensconced above the glowing hearth.
The poet, always somewhat inclined to fable, speaks of Love as
ruling
The court, the camp, the grove,
And men below, and heaven above;
but the dominion of Love, as compared with that of Worry, would
be found, in the number of subjects, as the Macedonian to the
Persian--in extent of territory, as the county of Rutland to the
empire of Russia.
Not verbally accurate is the quotation from the Lay of the Last
Minstrel, we may remark; but we may take it for granted that no
reader who has exceeded the age of twenty-five will fail to recognize
in this half-playful and half-earnest passage the statement of a
sorrowful fact. And the essay goes on to set forth many of the causes
of modern worry with all the knowledge and earnestness of a man
who has seen much of life, and thought much upon what he has seen.
The author's sympathies are not so much with the grand trials of
historical personages, such as Charles V., Columbus, and Napoleon,
as with the lesser trials and cares of ordinary men; and in the
following paragraph we discern at once the conviction of a clear
head and the feeling of a kind heart:--
And the ordinary citizen, even of a well-settled state, who, with
narrow means, increasing taxation, approaching age, failing health,
and augmenting cares, goes plodding about his daily work thickly
bestrewed with trouble and worry (all the while, perhaps, the thought
of a sick child at home being in the background of his mind), may
also, like any hero of renown in the midst of his world-wide and
world-attracting fortune, be a beautiful object for our sympathy.
There is indeed no more common error, than to estimate the extent
of suffering by the greatness of the causes which have produced
it; we mean their greatness as regards the amount of notice which
they attract. The anguish of an emperor who has lost his empire,
is probably not one whit greater than that of a poor lady who loses
her little means in a swindling Bank, and is obliged to take away
her daughter from school and to move into an inferior dwelling.
Nor is it unworthy of remark, in thinking of sympathy with human
beings in suffering, that scrubby-looking little men, with weak hair
and awkward demeanour, and not in the least degree gentleman-like,
may through domestic worry and bereavement undergo distress quite
as great as heroic individuals six feet four inches in height, with
a large quantity of raven hair, and with eyes of remarkable depth
of expression. It is probable, too, that in the lot of ordinary
men a ceaseless and countless succession of little worries does
a great deal more to fret away the happiness of life than is done
by the few great and overwhelming misfortunes which happen at long
intervals. You lose your child, and your sorrow is overwhelming;
but it is a sorrow on which before many months you look back with
a sad yet pleasing interest, and it is a sorrow which you know
you are the better for having felt. But petty unfaithfulness,
carelessness, and stupidity on the part of your servants; little
vexations and cross-accidents in your daily life; the ceaseless
cares of managing a household and family, and possibly of making
an effort to maintain appearances with very inadequate means;--all
those little annoying things which are not misfortune but worry,
effectually blister away the enjoyment of life while they last,
and serve no good end in respect to mental and moral discipline.
'Much tribulation,' deep and dignified sorrow, may prepare men for
'the kingdom of God;' but ceaseless worry, for the most part, does
but sour the temper, jaundice the views, and embitter and harden
the heart.
'The grand source of worry,' says our author, 'compared with which
perhaps all others are trivial, lies in the complexity of human
affairs, especially in such an era of civilization as our own.'
There can be no doubt of it. In these modern days, we are encumbered
and weighed down with the appliances, physical and moral, which
have come to be regarded as essential to the carry lag forward of
our life. We forget how many thousands of separate items and articles
were counted up, as having been used, some time within the last
few years, by a dinner-party of eighteen persons, at a single
entertainment. What incalculable worry in the procuring, the keeping
in order, the using, the damage, the storing up, of that enormous
complication of china, glass, silver, and steel! We can well imagine
how a man of simple tastes arid quiet disposition, worried even
to death by his large house, his numerous servants and horses, his
quantities of furniture and domestic appliances, all of a perishable
nature, and all constantly wearing out and going wrong in various
degrees, might sigh a wearied sigh for the simplicity of a hermit's
cave and a hermit's fare, and for 'one perennial suit of leather.'
Such a man as the Duke of Buccleuch, possessing enormous estates,
oppressed by a deep feeling of responsibility, and struggling to
maintain a personal supervision of all his intricate and multitudinous
belongings, must day by day undergo an amount of worry which the
philosopher would probably regard as poorly compensated by a dukedom
and three hundred thousand a year. He would be a noble benefactor
of the human race who should teach men how to combine the simplicity
of the savage life with the refinement and the cleanliness of the
civilized. We fear it must be accepted as an unquestionable fact,
that the many advantages of civilization are to be obtained only
at the price of countless and ceaseless worry. Of course, we must
all sometimes sigh for the woods and the wigwam; but the feeling
is as vain as that of the psalmist's wearied aspiration, 'Oh that
I had wings like a dove: then would I flee away and be at rest!'
Our author says,
The great Von Humboldt went into the cottages of South American
Indiana, and, amongst an unwrinkled people, could with difficulty
discern who was the father and who was the son, when he saw the
family assembled together.
And how plainly the smooth, cheerful face of the savage testified to
the healthfulness, in a physical sense; of a life devoid of worry!
If you would see the reverse of the medal, look at the anxious
faces, the knit brows, and the bald heads, of the twenty or thirty
greatest merchants whom you will see on the Exchange of Glasgow or
of Manchester. Or you may find more touching proof of the ageing
effect of worry, in the careworn face of the man of thirty with
a growing family and an uncertain income; or the thin figure and
bloodless cheek which testify to the dull weight ever resting on
the heart of the poor widow who goes out washing, and leaves her
little children in her poor garret under the care of one of eight
years old. But still, the cottages of Humboldt's 'unwrinkled
people' were, we have little doubt, much infested with vermin, and
possessed a pestilential atmosphere; and the people's freedom from
care did but testify to their ignorance, and to their lack of moral
sensibility. We must take worry, it is to be feared, along with
civilization. As you go down in the scale of civilization, you
throw off worry by throwing off the things to which it can adhere.
And in these days, in which no man would seriously think of preferring
the savage life, with its dirt, its stupidity, its listlessness,
its cruelty, the good we may derive from that life, or any life
approximating to it, is mainly that of a sort of moral alterative
and tonic. The thing itself would not suit us, and would do us no
good; but we may be the better for musing upon it. It is like a
refreshing shower-bath, it is like breathing a cool breeze after the
atmosphere of a hot-house, to dwell for a little, with half-closed
eyes, upon pictures which show us all the good of the unworried
life, and which say nothing of all the evil. We know the thing is
vain: we know it is but an idle fancy; but still it is pleasant
and refreshful to think of such a life as Byron has sketched as
the life of Daniel Boone. Not in misanthropy, but from the strong
preference of a forest life, did the Kentucky backwoodsman keep
many scores of miles ahead of the current of European population
setting onwards to the West. We shall feel much indebted to any
reader who will tell us where to find anything more delightful than
the following stanzas, to read after an essay on modern worry:--
He was not all alone: around him grew
A sylvan tribe of children of the chase;
Whose young, unwakened world was ever new,
Nor sin, nor sorrow, yet had left a trace
On her unwrinkled brow; nor could you view
A frown on Nature's or on human face:
The free-born forest found and kept them free,
And fresh as is a torrent or a tree.
And tall, and strong, and swift of foot were they,
Beyond the dwarfing city's pale abortions:
Because their thoughts had never been the prey
Of care or gain: the green woods were their portions.
No sinking spirits told them they grew grey,
No fashion made them apes of her distortions;
Simple they were, not savage, and their rifles,
Though very true, were yet not used for trifles.
Motion was in their days, rest in their slumbers,
And cheerfulness the handmaid of their toil:
Nor yet too many, nor too few their numbers,
Corruption could not make their hearts her soil:
The lust which stings, the splendour which encumbers,
With the free foresters divide no spoil:
Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes,
Of this unsighing people of the woods.
The essay on Worry is followed by an interesting conversation on
the same subject, at the close of which we are heartily obliged to
Blanche for suggesting one pleasant thought; to wit, that children
for the most part escape that sad infliction; it is the special
heritage of comparatively mature years. And Milverton replies:--
Yes; I have never been more struck with that than when observing
a family in the middle class of life going to the sea-side. There
is the anxious mother wondering how they shall manage to stow away
all the children when they get down. Visions of damp sheets oppress
her. The cares of packing sit upon her soul. Doubts of what will
become of the house when it is left, are a constant drawback from
her thoughts of enjoyment; and she confides to the partner of her
cares how willingly, if it were not for the dear children, she
would stay at tome. He, poor man, has not an easy time of it. He
is meditating over the expense, and how it is to be provided for.
He knows, if he has any knowledge of the world, that the said
expense will somehow or other exceed any estimate he and his wife
have made of it. He is studying the route of the journey, and is
perplexed by the various modes of going. This one would be less
expensive, but would take more time; and then time always turns
into expense on a journey. In a word, the old birds are as full
of care and trouble as a hen with ducklings; but the young birds!
Some of them have never seen the sea before, and visions of unspeakable
delight fill their souls--visions that will almost be fulfilled.
The journey, and the cramped accommodation, and the packing, and
the everything out of place, are matters of pure fun and anticipated
joy to them.
We have lingered all this while upon the first chapter of the
work: the second contains an essay and conversation on War. Of this
chapter we shall say no more than that it is earnest and sound in
its views, and especially worthy of attentive consideration at the
present time. The third chapter is one which will probably be turned
to with interest by many readers; it bears the taking title of A
Love Story. Dunsford, a keen though quiet observer, has discovered
that Ellesmere has grown fond of Mildred, though the lawyer was
not likely to disclose his love. Dunsford suspects that Mildred's
affections are get on Milverton, as he has little doubt those
of Blanche are. Both girls are very loving to Dunsford, whom they
call their uncle, though he is no relation, and the old clergyman
determines to have an explanation with Mildred. He manages to walk
alone with her through the unguarded orchards which lie along the
Rhine; and there, somewhat abruptly, he begins to moralize on the
grand passion. Mildred remarks what a happy woman she would have
been whom Dunsford had loved; when the lucky thought strikes him
that he would tell her his own story, never yet told to any one.
And then he tells it, very simply and very touchingly. Like most
true stories of the kind, it has little incident; but it constituted
the romance, not yet outlived, of the old--gentleman's existence.
He and a certain Alice were brought up together. Like many of the
most successful students, Dunsford hated study, and was devoted to
music and poetry, to nature and art. But he knew his only chance
of winning Alice was to obtain some success in life, and he devoted
himself to study. Who does not feel for the old man recalling the
past, and, as he remembered those laborious days, saying to the
girl by his side, "Always reverence a scholar, my dear; if not for
the scholarship, at least for the suffering and the self-denial
which have been endured to gain the scholar's proficiency." His
only pleasure was in correspondence with Alice. He succeeded at
last. He took his degree, being nearly the first man of his year
in both of the great subjects of examination; and he might now come
home with some hope of having made a beginning of fortune. A gay
young fellow, a cousin of Alice, came to spend a few days; and of
course this lively, thoughtless youth, without an effort, carried
off the prize of all poor Dunsford's toils. You never win the thing
on which your heart is set and your life staked; it falls to some
one else who cares very little about it. It is poor compensation
that you get something you care little for which would have made
the happiness of another man. Dunsford discovers one evening, in
a walk with Alice, the frustration of all his hopes:--
Alice and I were alone again, and we walked out together in the
evening. We spoke of my future hopes and prospects. I remember that
I was emboldened to press her arm. She returned the pressure, and
for a moment there never was, perhaps, a happier man. Had I known
more of love, I should have known that this evident return of
affection was anything but a good sign; "and," continued she, in
the unconnected manner that you women sometimes speak, "I am so
glad that you love dear Henry. Oh, if we could but come and live
near you when you get a curacy, how happy we should all be." This
short sentence was sufficient. There was no need of more explanation.
I knew all that had happened, and felt as if I no longer trod upon
the firm earth, for it seemed a quicksand under me.
The agony of that dull evening, the misery of that long night! I
have sometimes thought that unsuccessful love is almost too great
a burden to be put upnn such a poor creature as man. But He knows
best; and it must have been intended, for it is so common.
The next day I remember I borrowed Henry's horse, and rode madly
about, bounding through woods (I who had long forgotten to ride)
and galloping over open downs. If the animal had not been wiser
and more sane than I was, we should have been dashed to pieces many
times. And so by sheer exhaustion of body I deadened the misery
of my mind, and looked upon their happy state with a kind of
stupefaction. In a few days I found a pretext for quitting my home,
and I never saw your mother again, for it was your mother, Mildred,
and you are not like her, but like your father, and still I love
you. But the great wound has never been healed. It is a foolish
thing, perhaps, that any man should so doat upon a woman, that
he should never afterwards care for any other, but so it has been
with me; and you cannot wonder that a sort of terror should come
over me when I see anybody in love, and when I think that his or
her love is not likely to be returned.
Who would have thought that Dunsford, with his gaiters, lying on the
grass listening cheerfully to the lively talk of his two friends,
or sitting among his bees repeating Virgil to himself, or going
about among his parishioners, the ideal of prosaic content and
usefulness, had still in him this store of old romance? In asking
the question, all we mean is to remark an apparent inconsistency:
we have no doubt at all of the philosophic truth of the representation.
Probably it is only in the finer natures that such early fancies
linger with appreciable effect. We do not forget the perpetually
repeated declarations of Mr. Thackeray; we did not read Mr. Gilfits
Love Story for nothing; we remember the very absurd incident
which is told of Dr. Chalmers, who in his last years testified
his remembrance of an early sweet-heart by sticking his card with
two wafers behind a wretched little silhouette of her. And it is
conceivable that the tenderest and most beautiful reminiscences of
a love of departed days may linger with a man who has grown grey,
fat, and even snuffy. But it is only in the case of remarkably
tidy, neat, and clever old gentlemen that such feelings are likely
to attract much sympathy from their juniors. Possibly this world
has more of such lingering romance than is generally credited.
Possibly with all but very stolid and narrow natures, no very strong
feeling goes without leaving some trace.
Pain and grief
Are transitory things no less than joy;
And though they leave us not the men we were,
Yet they do leave us.
Possibly it is not without some little stir of heart that most
thoughtful aged persons can revisit certain spots, or see certain
days return. And the affection which would have worn itself
down into dull common-place in success, by being disappointed and
frustrated, lives on in memory with diminished vividness but with
increasing beauty, which the test of actual fact can never make
prosaic. Dunsford tells Mildred what was his great inducement to
make this continental tour. Not the Rhine; not the essays nor the
conversations of his friends. At the Palace of the Luxemburg there
is a fine picture, called Les illusions perdues. It is one of the
most affecting pictures Dunsford ever saw. But that is not its
peculiar merit. One girl in the picture is the image of what Alice
was.
The chief thing I had to look forward to in this journey we are
making was, thsit we might return by way of Paris, and that I might
see that picture again. You must contrive that we do return that
way. Ellesmere will do anything to please you, and Milverton is
always perfectly indifferent as to where he goes, so that he is not
asked to see works of art, or to accompany a party of sight-seers
to a cathedral. We will go and see this picture together once; and
once I must see it alone.
And a very touching sight it would be to one who knew the story,
the grey-haired old clergyman looking, for a long while, at that
young face. It would be indeed a contrast, the aged man, and the
youthful figure in the picture. Dunsford never saw Alice again after
his early disappointment: he never saw her as she grew matronly
and then old; and so, though now in her grave, she remained in his
memory the same young thing forever. The years which had made him
grow old, had wrought not the slightest change upon her. And Alice,
old and dead, was the same on the canvas still.
Dunsford's purpose in telling his love-story, was to caution Mildred
against falling in love with Milverton. She told him there was no
danger. Once, she frankly said, she had long struggled with her
feelings, not only from natural pride, but for the sake of Blanche,
who loved Milverton better and would be less able to control
her love. But she had quite got over the struggle; and though now
intensely sympathizing with her cousin, she felt she never could
resolve to marry him. So the conversation ended satisfactorily;
and then a short sentence shows us a scene, beautiful, vivid, and
complete:--
We walked home silently amidst the mellow orchards glowing ruddily
in the rays of the setting sun.
The next chapter contains an Essay and conversation on Criticism:
but its commencement shows us Dunsford still employed in the interests
of his friends. He tells Milverton that Blanche is growing fond of
him. We can hardly give Milverton credit for sincerity or judgment
in being "greatly distressed and vexed." For once, he was shamming. All
middle-aged men are much flattered and pleased with the admiration
of young girls. Milverton declared that the thing must be put a
stop to; that "the idea of a young and beautiful girl throwing her
affections away upon a faded widower like himself, was absurd."
However, as the days went on, Milverton began to be extremely
attentive to Blanche; asked her opinion about things quite beyond
her comprehension; took long walks with her, and assured Dunsford
privately that "Blanche had a great deal more in her than most
people supposed, and that she was becoming an excellent companion."
Who does not recognize the process by which clever men persuade
themselves into the belief that they are doing a judicious thing
in marrying stupid women?
The chapter which follows that on Criticism, contains a conversation
on Biography, full of interesting suggestions which our space renders
it impossible for us to quote; but we cannot forego the pleasure
of extracting the following paragraphs. It is Milverton who speaks:--
During Walter's last holidays, one morning after breakfast he took
a walk with me. I saw something was on the boy's mind. At last he
suddenly asked me, "Do sons often write the lives of fathers?"--"Often,"
I replied, "but I do not think they are the best kind of biographers,
for you see, Walter, sons cannot well tell the faults and weaknesses
of their fathers, and so filial biographies are often rather insipid
performances."--"I don't know about that," he said, "I think I could
write yours. I have made it already into chapters." "Now then, my
boy," I said, "begin it: let us have the outline at least." Walter
then commenced his biography.
"The first chapter," he said, "should be you and I and Henry walking
amongst the trees and settling which should be cut down, and which
should be transplanted." "A very pretty chapter," I said, "and a
great deal might be made of it." "The second chapter," he continued,
"should be your going to the farm, and talking to the pigs." "Also
a very good chapter, my dear." "The third chapter," he said, after
a little thought, "should be your friends. I would describe them
all, and what they could do." There, you see, Ellesmere, you would
come in largely, especially as to what you could do. "An excellent
chapter," I exclaimed, and then of course I broke out into some
paternal admonition about the choice of friends, which I know will
have no effect whatever, but still one cannot help uttering these
paternal admonitions.
"Now then," I said, "for chapter four." Here Walter paused, and
looked about him vaguely for a minute or two. At length he seemed
to have got hold of the right idea, for he burst out with the words,
"My going back to school;" and that, it seemed, was to be the end
of the biography.
Now, was there ever so honest a biographer? His going hack to
school was the "be-all and end-all here" with him, and he resolved
it should be the same with his hero, and with everybody concerned
in the story.
Then see what a pleasant biographer the boy is! He does not drag
his hero down through the vale of life, amidst declining fortune,
breaking health, dwindling away of friends, and the usual dreariness
of the last few stages. Neither does the biography end with the
death of his hero; and by the way, it is not very pleasant to have
one's children contemplating one's death, even for the sake of
writing one's life; but the biographer brings the adventures of his
hero to an end by his own going back to school. How delightful it
would be if most biographers planned their works after Walter's
fashion: just gave a picture of their hero at his farm, or
his business; then at his pleasure, as Walter brought me amongst
my trees; then, to show what manner of man he was, gave some
description of his friends; and concluded by giving an account of
their own going back to school--a conclusion that is greatly to be
desired for many of them.
When we begin to copy a passage from this work, we find it very
difficult to stop. But the thoughtful reader will not need to have
it pointed out to him how much sound wisdom is conveyed in that
playful form. And here is excellent advice as to the fashion in
which men may hope to get through great intellectual labour: says
Ellesmere,--
I can tell you in a--very few words how all work is done. Getting
up early, eating vigorously, saying "No" to intruders resolutely,
doing one thing at a time, thinking over difficulties at odd times,
that is, when stupid people are talking in the House of Commons,
or speaking at the Bar, not indulging too much in affections of
any kind which waste the time and energies, carefully changing the
current of your thoughts before you go to bed, planning the work of
the day in the quarter of an hour before you get up, playing with
children occasionally, and avoiding fools as much as possible: that
is the way to do a great deal of work.
Milverton remarks, with justice, that some practical advices as
to the way in which a working man might succeed in avoiding fools
were very much to be desired, inasmuch as that brief direction
contains the whole art of life; and suggests with equal justice
that the taking of a daily bath should be added to Ellesmere's
catalogue of appliances which aid in working.
We cannot linger upon the remaining pages which treat of Biography,
nor upon two interesting chapters concerning Proverbs. It may be
noticed, however, that Ellesmere insists that the best proverb in
the world is the familiar English, one, 'Nobody knows where the
shoe pinches hut the wearer;' while Milverton tells us that the
Spanish language is far richer in proverbs than that of any other
nation. But we hasten to an essay which will be extremely fresh and
interesting to all readers. We have had many essays by Milverton:
here is one by Ellesmere. He had announced some time before his
purpose of writing an essay on The Arts of Self-Advancement, and
Mildred, whom Ellesmere took a pleasure in annoying by making a
parade of mean, selfish, and cynical views, discerned at once that
in such an essay he would have an opportunity of bringing together
a crowd of these, and declared before Ellesmere began to write
it that it would be a nauseous essay.' The essay is finished at
length. The friends are now at Salzburg; and on a very warm day
they assembled in a sequestered spot whence they could see the
snowy peaks of the Tyrolese Alps. Ellesmere begins by deprecating
criticism of his style, declaring that anything inaccurate or
ungrammatical is put in on purpose. Then he begins to read:--
In the first place, it is desirable to be born north of the Tweed
(I like to begin at the beginning of things); and if that cannot be
managed, you must at least contrive to be born in a moderately-sized
town--somewhere. You thus get the advantage of being favoured by
a small community without losing any individual force. If I had
been born in Affpuddle--Milverton in Tolpuddle--and Dunsford in
Tollerporcorum (there are such places, at least I saw them once
arranged together in a petition to the House of Commons), the men
of Affpuddle, Tolpuddle, and Tollerporcorum would have been proud
of us, would have been true to us, and would have helped to push
our fortunes. I see, with my mind's eye, a statue of Dunsford raised
in Tollerporcorum. You smile, I observe; but it is the smile of
ignorance, for let me tell you, it is of the first importance not
to be born vaguely, as in London, or in some remote country-house.
If you cannot, however, be born properly, contrive at least to be
connected with some small sect or community, who may consider your
renown as part of their renown, and be always ready to favour and
defend you.
After this promising introduction Ellesmere goes on to propound
views which in an extraordinary way combine real good sense and
sharp worldly wisdom with a parade of all sorts of mean shifts and
contemptible tricks where-by to take advantage of the weakness,
folly, and wickedness of human nature. Very characteristically he
delights in thinking how he is shocking and disgusting poor Mildred:
of course Dunsford and Milverton understand him. And the style is
as characteristic as the thought. It is unquestionably Ellesmere
to whose essay we are listening; Milverton could not and would
not have produced such a discourse. We remember to have read in
a review, published several years since, of the former series of
Friends in Council, that it was judicious in the author of that
work, though introducing several friends as talking together, to
represent all the essays as written by one individual; because,
although he could keep up the individuality of the speakers through
a conversation, it was doubtful whether he could have succeeded in
doing so through essays purporting to. be written by each of them.
We do not know whether the author ever saw the challenge thus thrown
down to him: but it is certain that in the present series he has
boldly attempted the thing, and thoroughly succeeded. And it may be
remarked that not one of Ellesmere's propositions can be regarded
as mere vagaries--every one of them contains truth, though truth
put carefully in the most disagreeable and degrading way. Who does
not know how great an element of success it is to belong to a sect
or class which regard your reputation as identified with their own,
and cry you up accordingly? It is to be admitted that there is the
preliminary difficulty of so far overcoming individual envies and
jealousies as to get your class to accept you as their representative;
but once that end is accomplished the thing is done. As to being
born north of the Tweed, a Scotch Lord Chancellor and a Scotch Bishop
of London are instructive instances. And however much Scotchmen may
abuse one another at home, it cannot be denied that all Scotchmen
feel it a sacred duty to stand up for every Scotchman who has
attained to eminence oeyond the boundaries of his native land.
Scotland, indeed, in the sense in which Ellesmere uses the phrase,
is a small community; and a community of very energetic, self-denying,
laborious, and determined men, with very many feelings in common
which they have in common only with their countrymen, and with an
invincible tendency in all times of trouble to remember the old
cry of Highlandmen, shoulder to shoulder! Let the ambitious reader
muse on what follows:--
Let your position be commonplace, whatever you are yourself. If you
are a genius, and contrive to conceal the fact, you really deserve
to get on in the world, and you will do so, if only you keep on
the level road. Remember always that the world is a place where
second-rate people mostly succeed: not fools, nor first-rate people.
Cynically put, no doubt, but admirably true. A great blockhead will
never be made an archbishop; but in ordinary times a great genius
stands next to him in the badness of his chance. After all, good
sense and sound judgment are the essentially needful things in all
but very exceptional situations in life--and for these commend us
to the safe, steady-going, commonplace man. It cannot be denied
that the great mass of mankind stand in doubt and fear of people who
are wonderfully clever. What an amount of stolid, self-complacent,
ignorant, stupid, conceited respectability, is wrapped up in
the declaration concerning any person, that he is "too clever by
half!" How plainly it teaches that the general belief is that too
ingenious machinery will break down in practical working, and that
most men will do wrong who have the power to do it!
The following propositions are true in very large communities, but
they will not hold good in the country or in little towns:--
Remember always that what is real and substantive ultimately has
its way in this world.
You make good bricks for instance: it is in vain that your enemies
prove that you are a heretic in morals, politics, and religion;
insinuate that you beat your wife; and dwell loudly on the fact that
you failed in making picture-frames. In so far as you are a good
brick-maker, you have all the power that depends on good brick-making;
and the world will mainly look to j-our positive qualities as a
brick-maker.
After having gone on with a number of maxims of a very base, selfish,
and suspicious nature, to the increasing horror of the girls who
are listening, Ellesmere passes from the consideration of modes of
action to a much more important matter:--
Those who wish for self-advancement should remember, that the art
in life is not so much to do a thing well, as to get a thing that
has been moderately well done largely talked about. Some foolish
people, who should have belonged to another planet, give all their
minds to doing their work well. This is an entire mistake. This is
a grievous loss of power. Such a method of proceeding may be very
well in Jupiter, Mars, or Saturn, but is totally out of place in
this puffing, advertising, bill-sticking part of creation. To rush
into the battle of life without an abundance of kettle-drums and
trumpets is a weak and ill-advised adventure, however well-armed
and well-accoutred you may be. As I hate vague maxims, I will at
once lay down the proportions in which force of any kind should be
used in this world. Suppose you have a force which may be represented
by the number one hundred: seventy-three parts at least of that
force should be given to the trumpet; the remaining twenty-seven
parts may not disadvantageously be spent in doing the thing which
is to be trumpeted. This is a rule unlike some rules in grammar,
which are entangled and controlled by a multitude of vexatious
exceptions; but it applies equally to the conduct of all matters
upon earth, whether social, moral, artistic, literary, political,
or religious.
Ellesmere goes on to sum up the personal qualities needful to
success; and having sketched out the character of a mean, crafty,
sharp, energetic rascal, he concludes by saying that such a one will
not fail to succeed in any department of life--provided always he
keeps for the most part to one department, and does not attempt
to conquer in many directions at once. I only hope that, having
protited by this wisdom of mine, he will give me a share of the
spoil.
Thus the essay ends; and then the discourse thereon begins--
MILVERTON. Well, of all the intolerable wretches and black-guards--'
MR. MIDHURST. A conceited prig, too!
UUNSFORD. A wicked, designing villain!
ELLESMERE. Any more: any more? Pray go on, gentlemen; and have
you, ladies, nothing to say against the wise man of the world that
I have depicted?
And yet the upshot of the conversation was, that though given in
a highly disagreeable and obtrusively base form, there was much
truth in what Ellesmere had said. It is to be remembered that he
did not pretend to describe a good man, but only a successful one.
And it is to be remembered likewise that prudence verges toward
baseness: and that the difference between the suggestions of each
lies very much in the fashion in which these suggestions are put
and enforced. As to the use of the trumpet, how many advertising
tailors and pill-makers could testify to the soundness of Ellesmere's
principle? And beyond the Atlantic it finds special favor. When
Barnum exhibited his mermaid, and stuck up outside his show-room
a picture of three beautiful mermaids, of human size, with flowing
hair, basking upon a summer sea, while inside the show-room he had
the hideous little contorted figure made of a monkey with a fish's
tail attached to it, probably the proportion of the trumpet to the
thing trumpeted was even greater than seventy-three to twenty-seven.
Dunsford suggests, for the comfort of those who will not stoop to
unworthy means for obtaining success, the beautiful saying, that
"Heaven is probably a place for those who have failed on earth."
And Ellesmere, adhering to his expressed views, declares--
If you had attended to them earlier in life, Dunsford would now be
Mr. Dean; Milverton would be the Right Honorable Leonard Milverton,
and the leader of a party; Mr. Midhurst would be chief cook
to the Emperor Napoleon; the bull-dog would have been promoted to
the parlor; I, but no man is wise for himself, should have been
Lord Chancellor; Walter would be at the head of his class without
having any more knowledge than he has at present; and as for you
two girls, one. would be a Maid of Honor to the Queen, and the
other would have married the richest man in the county.
We have not space to tell how Ellesmere planned to get Mr. Midhurst
to write an essay on the Miseries of Human Life; nor how at Treves,
upon a lowering day, the party, seated in the ancient amphitheatre,
heard it read; nor how fully, eloquently, and not unfairly, the
gloomy man, not without a certain solemn enjoyment, summed up his
sad catalogue of the ills that flesh is heir to; nor how Milverton
agreed in the evening to speak an answer to the essay, and show
that life was not so miserable after all; nor how Ellesmere, eager
to have it answered effectively, determined that Milverton should
have the little accessories in his favor, the red curtains drawn,
a blazing wood-fire, and plenty of light; nor how before the answer
began, he brought Milverton a glass of wine to cheer him; nor how
Milverton endeavored to show that in the present system misery was
not quite predominant, and that much good in many ways came out
of ill. Then we have some talk about Pleasantness; and Dunsford is
persuaded to write and read an essay on that subject, which he read
one morning, 'while we were sitting in the balcony of an hotel, in
one of the small towns that overlook the Moselle, which was flowing
beneath in a reddish turbid stream.' In the conversation which
follows Milverton says,
It is a fault certainly to which writers are liable, that of
exaggerating the claims of their subject.
And how truly is that said! Indeed we can quite imagine a very
earnest man feeling afraid to think too much and long about any
existing evil, for fear it should greaten on his view into a thing
so large and pernicious, that he should be constrained to give all
his life to the wrestling with that one thing; and attach to it an
importance which would make his neighbors think him a monomaniac.
If you think long and deeply upon any subject, it grows in magnitude
and weight: if you think of it too long, it may grow big enough
to exclude the thought of all things beside. If it be an existing
and prevalent evil you are thinking of, you may come to fancy that
if that one thing could be done away, it would be well with the
human race,--all evil would go with it. We can sympathize deeply
with that man who died a short while since, who wrote volume after
volume to prove that if men would only leave off stooping, and learn
to hold themselves upright, it would be the grandest blessing that
ever came to humanity. We can quite conceive the process by which
a man might come to think so, without admitting mania as a cause.
We confess, for ourselves, that so deeply do we feel the force of
the law Milverton mentions, there are certain evils of which we are
afraid to think much, for fear we should come to be able to think
of nothing else, and of nothing more.
Then a pleasant chapter, entitled Lovers' Quarrels, tells us how
matters are progressing with the two pairs. Milverton and Blanche
are going on most satisfactorily; but Ellesmere and Mildred are
wayward and hard to keep right. Ellesmere sadly disappointed Mildred
by the sordid views he advanced in his essay, and kept advancing
in his talk; and like a proud and shy man of middle age when in
love, he was ever watching for distant slight indications of how his
suit might be received, and rendered fractious by the uncertainty
of Mildred's conduct and bearing. And probably women have little
notion by what slight and hardly thought-of sayings and doings
they may have repressed the declaration and the offer which might
perhaps have made them happy. Day by day Dunsfbrd was vexed by
the growing estrangement between two persons who were really much
attached; and this unhappy state of matters might have ended in a
final separation but for the happy incident recorded in the chapter
called Rowing down the River Moselle. The party had rowed down the
river, talking as usual of many things:--
It was just at this point of the conversation that we pulled in
nearer to the land, as Walter had made signs that he wished now to
get into the boat. It was a weedy rushy part of the river that we
entered. Fixer saw a rat or some other creature, which he was wild
to get at. Eliesmere excited him to do so, and the dog sprang out
of the boat. In a minute or two Fixer became entangled in the weeds,
and seemed to be in danger of sinking. Ellesmere, without thinking
what he was about, made a hasty effort to save the dog, seized
hold of him, but lost his own balance and fell out of the boat. In
another moment Mildred gave me the end of her shawl to hold, which
she had wound round herself, and sprang out too. The sensible
diplomatist lost no time in throwing his weighty person to the other
side of the boat. The two boatmen did the same. But for this move,
the boat would, in all probability, have capsized, and we should
all have been lost. Mildred was successful in clutching hold
of Ellesmere; and Milverton and I managed to haul them close to
the boat and to pull them in. Ellesmere had uot relinquished hold
of Fixer. All this happened, as such accidents do, in almost less
time than it takes to describe them. And now came another dripping
creature splashing into the boat; for Master Walter, who can swim
like a duck, had plunged in directly he saw the accident, but too
late to be of any assistance.
Things are now all right; and Ellesmere next day announces to his
friends that Mildred and he are engaged. Two chapters, on Government
and Despotism respectively, give us the last thoughts of the Friends
abroad; then we have a pleasant picture of them all in Milverton's
farmyard, under a great sycamore, discoursing cheerfully of country
cares. The closing chapter of the book is on The Need for Tolerance.
It contains a host of thoughts which we should be glad to extract;
but we must be content with a wise saying of Milverton's:--
For a man who has been rigidly good to be supremely tolerant,
would require an amount of insight which seems to belong only to
the greatest genius.
For we hardly sympathize with that which we have not in some
measure experienced; and the great thing, after all, which makes
us tolerant of the errors of other men, is the feeling that under
like circumstances we should have ourselves erred in like manner;
or, at all events, the being able to see the error in such a light
as to feel that there is that within ourselves which enables us at
least to understand how men should in such a way have erred. The
sins on which we are most severe are those concerning which our
feeling is, that we cannot conceive how any man could possibly have
done them. And probably such would be the feeling of a rigidly
good man concerning every sin.
So we part, for the present, from our Friends, not without the hope
of again meeting them. We have been listening to the conversation
of living men; and, in parting, we feel the regret that we should
feel in quitting a kind friend's house after a pleasant visit,
not, perhaps, to be renewed for many a day. And this is a changing
world. We have been breathing the old atmosphere, and listening
to the old voices talking in the old way. We have had new thought
and new truth, but presented in the fashion we have known and enjoyed
for years. Happily we can repeat our visit as often as we please,
without the fear of worrying or wearying; for we may open the book
at will. And we shall hope for new visits likewise. Milverton will
be as earnest and more hopeful, Ellesmere will retain all that
is good, and that which is provoking will now be softened down.
No doubt by this time they are married. Where have they gone? The
continent is unsettled, and they have often already been there.
Perhaps they have gone to Scotland? No doubt they have. And perhaps
before the leaves are sere we may find them out among the sea lochs
of the beautiful Frith of Clyde, or under the shadow of Ben Nevis.
CHAPTER XII.
CONCERNING THE PULPIT IN SCOTLAND.
Nearly forty years since, Dr. Chalmers, one of the parish ministers
of Glasgow, preached several times in London. He was then in the
zenith of his popularity as a pulpit orator. Canning and Wilberforce
went together to hear him upon one occasion; and after sitting
spell-bound under his eloquence, Canning said to Wilberforce when
the sermon was done, 'The tarlan beats us; we have no preaching
like that in England.'
In October 1855, the Rev. John Caird, incumbent of the parish of
Errol, in Perthshire, preached before the Queen and Court at the
church of Crathie. Her Majesty was so impressed by the discourse
that she commanded its publication; and the Prince Consort, no mean
authority, expressed his admiration of the ability of the preacher,
saying that 'he had not heard a preacher like him for ssven years,
and did not expect to enjoy a like pleasure for as long a period to
come.' So, at all events, says a paragraph in The Times of December
12th, 1855.
It is somewhat startling to find men of cultivated taste, who are
familiar with the highest class preaching of the English Church,
expressing their sense of the superior effect of pulpit oratory
of a very different kind. No doubt Caird and Chalmers are the best
of their class; and the overwhelming effect which they and a few
other Scotch preachers have often produced, is in a great degree
owing to the individual genius of the men, and not to the school
of preaching they belong to. Yet both are representatives of what
may be called the Scotch school of preaching: and with all their
genius, they never could have carried away their audience as they
have done, had they been trammelled by those canons of taste to
which English preachers almost invariably conform. Their manner
is just the regular Scotch manner, vivified into tenfold effect
by their own peculiar genius. Preaching in Scotland is a totally
different thing from what it is in England. In the former country
it is generally characterized by an amount of excitement in delivery
and matter, which in England is only found among the most fanatical
Dissenters, and is practically unknown in the pulpits of the national
church. No doubt English and Scotch preaching differ in substance to
a certain 'extent.' Scotch sermons are generally longer, averaging
from forty minutes to an hour in the delivery. There is a more
prominent and constant pressing of what is called evangelical
doctrine. The treatment of the subject is more formal. There is an
introduction; two or three heads of discourse, formally announced;
and a practical conclusion; and generally the entire Calvinistic
system is set forth in every sermon. But the main difference
lies in the manner in which the discourses of the two schools are
delivered. While English sermons are generally read with quiet
dignity, in Scotland they are very commonly repeated from memory,
and given with great vehemence and oratorical effect, and abundant
gesticulation. Nor is it to be supposed that when we say the
difference is main ly in manner, we think it a small one. There
is only one account given by all who have heard the most striking
Scotch preachers, as to the proportion which their manner bears
in the effect produced. Lockhart, late of The Quarterly, says of
Chalmers, 'Never did the world possess any orator whose minutest
peculiarities of gesture and voice have more power in increasing
the effect of what he says; whose delivery, in other words, is the
first, and the second, and the third excellence in his oratory,
more truly than is that of Dr. Chalmers.' The same words might be
repeated of Caird, who has succeeded to Chalmers's fame. A hundred
little circumstances of voice and manner--even of appearance and
dress--combine to give his oratory its overwhelming power. And where
manner is everything, difference in manner is a total difference.
Nor does manner affect only the less educated and intelligent class
of hearers. It cannot be doubted that the unparalleled impression
produced, even on such men as Wilberforce, Canning, Lockhart,
Lord Jeffrey, and Prince Albert, was mainly the result of manner.
In point of substance and style, many English preachers are quite
superior to the best of the Scotch. In these respects, there are no
preachers in Scotland who come near the mark of Melvill, Manning,
Arnold, or Bishop Wilberforce. Lockhart says of Chalmers,
I have heard many men deliver sermons far better arranged in point
of argument; and I have heard very many deliver sermons far more
uniform in elegance, both of conception and of style; but most
unquestionably, I have never heard, either in England or Scotland,
or in any other country, a preacher whose eloquence is capable of
producing an effect so strong and irresistible as his.
[Footnote: Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, vol. iii. p. 267.]
The best proof how much Chalmers owed to his manner, is, that in
his latter days, when he was no longer able to give them with his
wonted animation and feeling, the very same discourses fell quite
flat on his congregation.
It is long since Sydney Smith expressed his views as to the chilliness
which is the general characteristic of the Anglican pulpit. In the
preface to his published sermons, he says:
The English, generally remarkable for doing very good things in a
very bad manner, seem to have reserved the maturity and plenitude
of their awkwardness for the pulpit. A clergyman clings to his
velvet cushion with either hand, keeps his eye rivetted on his
book, speaks of the ecstacies of joy and fear with a voice and a
face which indicates neither; and pinions his body and soul into
the same attitude of limb and thought, for fear of being thought
theatrical and affected. The most intrepid veteran of us all
dares no more than wipe his face with his cambric sudarium; if by
mischance his hand slip from its orthodox gripe of the velvet, he
draws it back as from liquid brimstone, and atones for the indecorum
by fresh inflexibility and more rigorous sameness. Is it wonder,
then, that every semi-delirious sectary who pours forth his animated
nonsense with the genuine look and voice of passion, should
gesticulate away the congregation of the most profound and learned
divine of the established church, and in two Sundays preach him
bare to the very sexton? Why are we natural everywhere but in the
pulpit? No man expresses warm and animated feelings anywhere else,
with his mouth only, but with his whole body; he articulates with
every limb, and talks from head to foot with a thousand voices.
Why this holoplexia on sacred occasions only? Why call in the aid
of paralysis to piety? Is sin to be taken from men, as Eve was from
Adam, by casting them into a deep slumber? Or from what possible
perversion of common sense are we all to look like field preachers
in Zembla, holy lumps of ice, numbed into quiescence and stagnation
and mumbling?
Now in Scotland, for very many years past, the standard style of
preaching has been that which the lively yet gentle satirist wished
to see more common in England. Whether successfully or not, Scotch
preachers aim at what Sydney Smith regarded as the right way of
preaching--'to rouse, to appeal, to inflame, to break through every
barrier, up to the very haunts and chambers of the soul.' Whether
this end be a safe one to propose to each one of some hundreds of
men of ordinary ability and taste, may be a question. An unsuccessful
attempt at it is very likely to land a man in gross offence against
common taste and common sense, from which he whose aim is less
ambitious is almost certainly safe. The preacher whose purpose is
to preach plain sense in such a style and manner as not to offend
people of education and refinement, if he fail in doing what he
wishes, may indeed be dull, but will not be absurd and offensive.
But however this may be, it is curious that this impassioned
and highly oratorical school of preaching should be found among a
cautious, cool-headed race like the Scotch. The Scotch are proverbial
for long heads, and no great capacity of emotion. Sir Walter Scott,
in Rob Roy, in describing the preacher whom the hero heard in the
crypt of Glasgow Cathedral, says that his countrymen are much more
accessible to logic than rhetoric; and that this fact determines
the character of the preaching which is most acceptable to them.
If the case was such in those times, matters are assuredly quite
altered now. Logic is indeed not overlooked: but it is brilliancy
of illustration, and, above all, great feeling and earnestness, which
go down. Mr. Caird, the most popular of modern Scotch preachers,
though possessing a very powerful and logical mind, yet owes his
popularity with the mass of hearers almost entirely to his tremendous
power of feeling and producing emotion. By way of contrast to
Sydney Smith's picture of the English pulpit manner, let us look
at one of Chalmers's great appearances. Look on that picture, and
then on this:
The Doctor's manner during the whole delivery of that magnificent
discourse was strikingly animated: while the enthusiasm and energy
he threw into some of his bursts rendered them quite overpowering.
One expression which he used, together with his action, his look, and
the tones of his voice, made a most vivid and indelible impression
on my memory... While uttering these words, which he did with peculiar
emphasis, accompanying them with a flash from his eye and a slump
of his foot, he threw his right arm with clenched fist right across
the book-board, and brandished it full in the face of the Town
Council, sitting in state before him. The words seem to startle,
like an electric shock, the whole audience.
Very likely they did: but we should regret to see a bishop, or even
a dean, have recourse to such means of producing an impression. We
shall give one other extract descriptive of Chalmers's manner:
It was a transcendently grand, a glorious burst. The energy of his
action corresponded. Intense emotion beamed from his countenance.
I cannot describe the appearance of his face better than by saving
it was lighted up almost into a glare. The congregation were intensely
excited, leaning forward in the pews like a forest bending under
the power of the hurricane,--looking steadfastly at the preacher,
and listening in breathless wonderment. So soon as it was concluded,
there was (as invariably was the case at the close of the Doctor's
bursts) a deep sigh, or rather gasp for breath, accompanied by a
movement throughout the whole audience.
[Footnote: Life of Chalmers, vol. i. pp. 462, 3, and 467, 8. It
should be mentioned that Chahners, notwithstanding this tremendous
vehemence, always read his sermons.]
There is indeed in the Scotch Church a considerable class of most
respectable preachers who read their sermons, and who, both for
matter and manner, might be transplanted without remark into the
pulpit of any cathedral in England. There is a school, also, of
high standing and no small popularity, whose manner and style are
calm and beautiful; but who, through deficiency of that vehemence
which is at such a premium in Scotland at present, will never draw
crowds such as hang upon the lips of more excited orators. Foremost
among such stands Mr. Robertson, minister of Strathmartin, in
Forfarshire. Dr. McCulloch, of Greenock, and Dr. Veitch, of St.
Cuthbert's, Edinburgh, are among the best specimens of the class.
But that preaching which interests, leads onward, and instructs,
has few admirers compared with that which thrills, overwhelms,
and sweeps away. And from the impression made on individuals so
competent to judge as those already mentioned, it would certainly
seem that, whether suited to the dignity of the pulpit or not, the
deepest oratorical effect is made by the latter, even on cultivated
minds. Some of the most popular preachers in England have formed
themselves on the Scotch model. Melvill and M'Neile are examples:
so, in a different walk, is Ryle, so well known by his tracts.
We believe that Melvill in his early days delivered his sermons
from memory, and of late years only has taken to reading, to the
considerable diminution of the effect he produces. We may here
remark, that in some country districts the prejudice of the people
against clergymen reading their sermons is excessive. It is indeed to
be admitted that it is a more natural thing that a speaker should
look at the audience he is addressing, and appear to speak from
the feeling of the moment, than that he should read to them what
he has to say; but it is hard to impose upon a parish minister,
burdened with pastoral duty, the irksome school-boy task of committing
to memory a long sermon, and perhaps two, every week. The system
of reading is spreading rapidly in the Scotch Church, and seems
likely in a few years to become all but universal. Caird reads his
sermons closely on ordinary Sundays, but delivers entirely from
memory in preaching on any particular occasion.
It may easily be imagined that when every one of fourteen or
fifteen hundred preachers understands on entering the church that
his manner must be animated if he looks for preferment, very many
will have a very bad manner. It is wonderful, indeed, when we look
to the average run of respectable Scotch preachers, to find how
many take kindly to the emotional style. Often, of course, such
a style is thoroughly contrary to the man's idiosyncracy. Still,
he must seem warm and animated; and the consequence is frequently
loud speaking without a vestige of feeling, and much roaring when
there is nothing whatever in what is said to demand it. Noise
is mistaken for animation. We have been startled on going into a
little country kirk, in which any speaking above a whisper would
have been audible, to find the minister from the very beginning of
the service, roaring as if speaking to people a quarter of a mile
off. Yet the rustics were still, and appeared attentive. They
regarded their clergyman as 'a powerfu' preacher;' while the most
nervous thought, uttered in more civilized tones, would have been
esteemed 'unco weak.' We are speaking, of course, of very plain
congregations; but among such 'a powerful preacher' means a preacher
with a powerful voice and great physical energy.
Let not English readers imagine, when we speak of the vehemence of
the Scotch pulpit, that we mean only a gentlemanly degree of warmth
and energy. It often amounts to the most violent melo-dramatic
acting. Sheil's Irish speeches would have been immensely popular
Scotch sermons, so far as their style and delivery are concerned.
The physical energy is tremendous. It is said that when Chalmers
preached in St. George's, Edinburgh, the massive chandeliers, many
feet off, were all vibrating. He had often to stop, exhausted, in
the midst of his sermon, and have a psalm sung till he recovered
breath. Caird begins quietly, but frequently works himself up to
a frantic excitement, in which his gestulation is of the wildest,
and his voice an absolute howl. One feels afraid that he may burst
a bloodvessel. Were his hearers cool enough to criticise him, the
impression would be at an end; but he has wound them up to such
a pitch that criticism is impossible. They must sit absolutely
passive, with nerves tingling and blood pausing: frequently many
of the congregation have started to their feet. It may be imagined
how heavily the physical energies of the preacher are drawn upon by
this mode of speaking. Dr. Bennie, one of the ministers of Edinburgh,
and one of the most eloquent and effective of Scotch pulpit
orators, is said to have died at an age much short of fifty, worn
out by the enthusiastic animation of his style. There are some little
accessories of the Scotch pulpit, which in England are unknown: such
as thrashing the large Bible which lies before the minister--long
pauses to recover breath--much wiping of the face--sodorific results
to an unpleasant degree, necessitating an entire change of apparel
after preaching.
The secret of the superior power over a mixed congregation of the
best Scotch, as compared with most English preachers, is that the
former are not deterred by any considerations of the dignity of
the pulpit, from any oratorical art which is likely to produce an
effect. Some times indeed, where better things might be expected,
the most reprehensible clap-trap is resorted to. An English preacher
is fettered and trammelled by fear of being thought fanatical and
methodistical,--and still worse, ungentlemanlike. He knows, too,
that a reputation as a 'popular preacher' is not the thing which
will conduce much to his preferment in his profession. The Scotch
preacher, on the other hand, throws himself heart and soul into his
subject. Chalmers overcame the notion that vehemence in the pulpit
was indicative of either fanaticism or weakness of intellect:
he made ultra-animation respectable: and earnestness, even in an
excessive degree, is all in favour of a young preacher's popularity;
while a man's chance of the most valuable preferments (in the way
of parochial livings) of the Scotch church, is in exact proportion
to his popularity as a preacher. The spell of the greatest preachers
is in their capacity of intense feeling. This is reflected on the
congregation. A congregation will in most cases feel but a very
inferior degree of the emotion which the preacher feels. But intense
feeling is contagious. There is much in common between the tragic
actor and the popular preacher; but while the actor's power
is generally the result of a studied elocution, the preacher's is
almost always native. A teacher of elocution would probably say
that the manner of Chalmers, Guthrie, or Caird was a very bad one;
but it suits the man, and no other would produce a like impression.
In reading the most effective discourses of the greatest preachers,
we are invariably disappointed. We can see nothing very particular
in those quotations from Chalmers which are recorded as having so
overwhelmingly impressed those who heard them. It was manner that
did it all. In short, an accessory which in England is almost
entirely neglected, is the secret of Scotch effect. Nor is it any
derogation from an orator's genius to say that his power lies much
less in what he says than in how he says it. It is but saying that
his weapon can be wielded by no other hand than his own. Manner
makes the entire difference between Macready and the poorest stroller
that murders Shakspeare. The matter is the Baine in the case of
each. Each has the same thing to say; the enormous difference lies
in the manner in which each says it. The greatest effects recorded
to have been produced by human language, have been produced by
things which, in merely reading them, would not have appeared so
very remarkable. Hazlitt tells us that nothing so lingered on his
ear as a line from Home's Douglas, as spoken by young Betty:--
And happy, in my mind, was he that died.
We have heard it said that Macready never produced a greater effect
than by the very simple words 'Who said that?' It is perhaps a
burlesque of an acknowledged fact, to record that Whitfield could
thrill an audience by saying 'Mesopotamia!' Hugh Miller tells us
that he heard Chahners read a piece which he (Miller) had himself
written. It produced the effect of the most telling acting; and
its author never knew how fine it was till then. We remember well
the feeling which ran through us when we heard Caird say, 'As we
bend over the grave, where the dying are burying the dead.' All
this is the result of that gift of genius; to feel with the whole
soul and utter with the whole soul. The case of Gavazzi shows
that tremendous energy can carry an audience away, without its
understanding a syllable of what is said. Inferior men think by
loud roaring and frantic gesticulation to produce that impression
which genius alone can produce. But the counterfeit is wretched;
and with all intelligent people the result is derision and disgust.
Many of our readers, we daresay, have never witnessed the service
of the Scotch Church. Its order is the simplest possible. A psalm
is sung, the congregation sitting. A prayer of about a quarter of
an hour in length is offered, the congregation standing. A chapter
of the Bible is read; another psalm sung; then comes the sermon. A
short prayer and a psalm follow; and the service is terminated by
the benediction. The entire service lasts about an hour and a half.
It is almost invariably conducted by a single clergyman. In towns,
the churches now approximate pretty much to the English, as regards
architecture. It is only in country places that one finds the true
bareness of Presbytery. The main difference is that there is no
altar; the communion table being placed in the body of the church.
The pulpit occupies the altar end, and forms the most prominent
object; symbolizing very accurately the relative estimation of the
sermon in the Scotch service. Whenever a new church is built, the
recurrence to a true ecclesiastical style is marked; and vaulted
roofs, stained glass, and dark oak, have, in large towns, in a
great degree, supplanted the flat-roofed meetinghouses which were
the Presbyterian ideal. The preacher generally wears the English
preaching gown. The old Geneva gown covered with frogs is hardly
ever seen; but the surplice would still stir up a revolution. The
service is performed with much propriety of demeanour; the singing
is often so well done by a good choir, that the absence of the
organ is hardly felt. Educated Scotchmen have come to lament the
intolerant zeal which led the first Reformers in their country to
such extremes. But in the country we still see the true genius of
the Presbytery. The rustics walk into church with their hats on;
and replace them and hurry out the instant the service is over. The
decorous prayer before and after worship is unknown. The minister,
in many churches wears no gown. The stupid bigotry of the people
in some of the most covenanting districts is almost incredible.
There are parishes in which the people boast that they have never
suffered so Romish a thing as a gown to appear in their pulpit; and
the country people of Scotland generally regard Episcopacy as not
a whit better than Popery. It has sometimes struck us as curious,
that the Scotch have always made such endeavours to have a voice in
the selection of their clergy. Almost all the dissenters from the
Church of Scotland hold precisely the same views both of doctrine
and church government as the Church, and have seceded on points
connected with the existence of lay patronage. In England much
discontent may sometimes be excited by an arbitrary appointment to
a living; but it would be vain to endeavour to excite a movement
throughout the whole country to prevent the recurrence of such
appointments. Yet upon precisely this point did some three or
four hundred ministers secede from the Scotch Church in 1843; and
to maintain the abstract right of congregations to a share in the
appointment of their minister, has the 'Free Church' drawn from the
humbler classes of a poor country many hundred thousand pounds. No
doubt all this results in some measure from the self-sufficiency
of the Scotch character; but besides this, it should be remembered
that to a Scotchman it is a matter of much graver importance who
shall be his clergyman than it is to an Englishman. In England,
if the clergyman can but read decently, the congregation may find
edification in listening to and joining in the beautiful prayers
provided by the Church, even though the sermon should be poor
enough. But in Scotland everything depends on the minister. If he
be a fool, he can make the entire service as foolish as himself.
For prayers, sermon, choice of passages of Scripture which are
read, everything, the congregation is dependent on the preacher.
The question, whether the worship to which the people of a parish
are invited weekly shall be interesting and improving, or shall
be absurd and revolting, is decided by the piety, good sense, and
ability of the parish priest. Coleridge said he never knew the value
of the Liturgy till he had heard the prayers which were offered in
some remote country churches in Scotland.
We have not space to inquire into the circumstances which have given
Scotch preaching its peculiar character. We may remark, however,
that the sermon is the great feature of the Scotch service; it is
the only attraction; and pains must be taken with it. The prayers
are held in very secondary estimation. The preacher who aims
at interesting his congregation, racks his brain to find what
will startle and strike; and then the warmth of his delivery adds
to his chance of keeping up attention. Then the Scotch are not a
theatre-going people; they have not, thus, those stage-associations
with a dramatic manner which would suggest themselves to many minds.
Many likewise expect that excitement in the church, which is more
suited to the atmosphere of the play-house. Patrons of late years
not unfrequently allow a congregation to choose its own minister;
the Crown almost invariably consults the people; the decided taste
of almost all songregations is for great warmth of manner; and the
supply is made to suit the demand.
As for the solemn question, how far Scotch preaching answers the
great end of all right preaching, it is hard to speak. No doubt
it is a great thing to arouse the somewhat comatose attention of
any audience to a discourse upon religion, and any means short of
clap-trap and indecorum are justified if they succeed in doing so.
No man will be informed or improved by a sermon which sets him
asleep. Yet it is to be feared that, in the prevailing rage for what
is striking and new, some eminent preachers sacrifice usefulness
to glitter. We have heard discourses concerning which, had we been
asked when they were over, What is the tendency and result of all
this?--what is the conclusion it all leads to?--we should have been
obliged to reply, Only that Mr. Such-a-one is an uncommonly clever
man. The intellectual treat, likewise, of listening to first-class
pulpit oratory, tends to draw many to church merely to enjojr it.
Many go, not to be the better for the truth set forth, but to be
delighted by the preacher's eloquence. And it is certain that many
persons whose daily life exhibits no trace of religion, have been
most regular and attentive hearers of the most striking preachers.
We may mention an instance in point. When Mr. Caird was one of the
ministers of Edinburgh, he preached in a church, one gallery of
which is allotted to students of the University. A friend of ours
was one Sunday afternoon in that gallery, when he observed in the
pew before him two very rough-looking fellows, with huge walking-sticks
projecting from their great-coat pockets, and all the unmistakable
marks of medical students. It was evident they were little accustomed
to attend any place of worship. The church, as usual, was crammed
to suffocation, and Mr. Caird preached a most stirring sermon.
As he wound up one paragraph to an overwhelming climax, the whole
congregation bent forward in eager and breathless silence. The
medical students were under the general spell. Half rising from their
seats they gazed at the preacher with open mouths. At length the
burst was over, and a long sigh relieved the wrought-up multitude.
The two students sank upon their seat, and looked at one another
fixedly: and the first expressed his appreciation of the eloquence
of what he had heard by exclaiming half aloud to his companion,
'Damn it, that's it.'
The doctrine preached in Scotch pulpits is now almost invariably
what is termed evangelical. For a long time, now long gone by,
many of the clergy preached morality, with very inadequate views
of Christian doctrine. We cannot but notice a misrepresentation of
Dr. Hanna, in his Life of Chalmers. Without saying so, he leaves
an impression that all the clergy of the Moderate or Conservative
party in the Church held those semi-infidel views which Chalmers
entertained in his early days. The case is by no means so. Very
many ministers, not belonging to the movement party, held truly
orthodox opinions, and did their pastoral work as faithfully as ever
Chalmers did after his great change of sentiment. It is curious to
know that while party feeling ran high in the Scotch Church, it was
a shibboleth of the Moderate party to use the Lord's Prayer in the
Church service. The other party rejected that beautiful compendium
of all supplication, on the ground that, it was not a Christian
prayer, no mention being made in it of the doctrine of the atonement.
It is recorded that on one occasion a minister of what was termed
the 'High-fiying' party was to preach for Dr. Gilchrist, of the
Canongate Church in Edinburgh. That venerable clergyman told his
friend before service that it was usual in the Canongate Church
to make use of the Lord's Prayer at every celebration of worship.
The friend looked somewhat disconcerted, and said, 'Is it absolutely
necessary that I should give the Lord's Prayer?' 'Not at all,' was
Dr. Gilchrist's reply, 'not at all, if you can give us anything
better!'
Mr. Caird's sermon preached at Crathie has been published by royal
command. It is no secret that the Queen arid Prince, after hearing
it, read it in manuscript, and expressed themselves no less impressed
in reading it by the soundness of its views, than they had been in
listening to it by its extraordinary eloquence. Our perusal of it
has strongly confirmed us in the views we have expressed as to the
share which Mr. Caird's manner has in producing the effect with
which his discourses tell upon any audience. The sermon is indeed
an admirable one; accurate, and sometimes original in thought:
illustrated with rare profusion of imagery, all in exquisite taste,
and expressed in words scarcely one of which could be allered
or displaced but for the worse. But Mr. Caird could not publish
his voice and manner, and in warning these, the sermon wants the
first, second, and third things which conduced to its effect when
delivered. In May, 1854, Mr. Caird preached this discourse in the
High Church, Edinburgh, before the Commissioner who represents
her Majesty at the meetings of the General Assembly of the Scotch
Church, and an exceedingly crowded and brilliant audience. Given
there, with all the fkill of the most accomplished actor, yet with
a simple earnestness which prevented the least suspicion of anything
like acting, the impression it produced is described as something
marvellous. Hard-headed Scotch lawyers, the last men in the world
to be carried into superlatives, declared that never till then did
they understand what effect could be produced by human speech. But
we confess that now we have these magic words to read quietly at
home, we find it something of a task to get through them. A volume
just published by Dr. Guthrie of Edinburgh, the greatest pulpit
orator of the 'Free Church,' contains many sermons much more likely
to interest a reader.
The sermon is from the text, 'Not slothful in business; fervent
in spirit, serving the Lord.' [Footnote: Romans xii. 11.] It sets
out thus:--
To combine business with religion, to keep up a spirit of serious
piety amid the stir and distraction of a busy and active life,--this
is one of the most difficult parts of a Christian's trial in this
world. It is comparatively easy to be religious in the church--to
collect our thoughts and compose our feelings, and enter, with an
appearance of propriety and decorum, into the offices of religious
worship, amidst the quietude of the Sabbath, and within the still
and sacred precincts of the house of prayer. But to be religious
in the world--to be pious and holy and earnest-minded in the
counting-room, the manufactory, the market-place, the field, the
farm--to cany our good and solemn thoughts and feelings into the
throng and thoroughfare of daily life,--this is the great difficulty
of our Christian calling. No man not lost to all moral influence
can help feeling his worldly passions calmed, and some measure of
seriousness stealing over his mind, when engaged in the performance
of the more awful and serious rites of religion; but the atmosphere of
the domestic circle, the exchange, the street, the city's throng,
amidst coarse work and cankering cares and toils, is a very different
atmosphere from that of a communion-table. Passing from one to the
other has often seemed as the sudden transition from a tropical to
a polar climate--from balmy warmth and sunshine to murky mist and
freezing cold. And it appears sometimes as difficult to maintain
the strength and steadfastness of religious principle and feeling
when we go forth from the church to the world, as it would be to
preserve an exotic alive in the open air in winter, or to keep the
lamp that burns steadily within doors from being blown out if you
take it abroad unsheltered from the wind.
The preacher then speaks of the shifts by which men have evaded
the task of being holy, at once in the church and in the world; in
ancient times by flying from the world altogether, in modern times
by making religion altogether a Sunday thing. In opposition to
either notion the text suggests,--
That piety is not for Sundays only, but for all days; that
spirituality of mind is not appropriate to one set of actions, and
an impertinence and intrusion with reference to others; but like
the act of breathing, like the circulation of the blood, like
the silent growth of the stature, a process that may be going on
simultaneously with all our actions--when we are busiest as when we
are idlest; in the church, in the world; in solitude, in society;
in our grief and in our gladness; in our toil and in our rest;
sleeping, waking; by day, by night; amidst all the engagements and
exigencies of life.
The burden of the discourse is to prove that this is so; that
religion is compatible with the business of Common Life. This
appears, first, because religion, as a science, sets out doctrines
easy to be understood by the humblest intellects; and as an art,
sets out duties which may be practised simultaneously with all
other work. It is the art of being and of doing good: and for this
art every profession and calling affords scope and discipline.
When a child is learning to write, it matters not of what words the
copy set to him is composed, the thing desired being that, whatever
he writes, he learns to write well. When a man is learning to be
a Christian, it matters not what his particular work in life may
be, the work he does is but the copy-line set to him; the main
thing to be considered is that he learn to live well.
The second consideration by which Mr. Caird supports his thesis is,
that religion consists, not so much in doing spiritual or sacred
acts, as in doing secular acts from a sacred or spiritual motive.
'A man may be a Christian thinker and writer as much when giving
to science, or history, or biography, or poetry a Christian tone
and spirit, as when composing sermons or writing hymns.'
The third and most eloquent division of the discourse illustrates
the thesis from the Mind's Power of acting on Lattat Principles.
Though we cannot, in our worldly work, be always consciously thinking
of religion, yet unconsciously, insensibly, we may be acting under
its ever present control. For example, the preacher, amidst all
his mental exertions, has underneath the outward workings of his
mind, the latent thought of the presence of his auditory.
Like a secret atmosphere it surrounds and bathes his spirit as he
goes on with the external work. And have not yon, too, my friends,
an Auditor--it may he, a 'great cloud of witnesses'--but at least
one all glorious Witness and Listener ever present, ever watchful,
as the discourse of life proceeds? Why, then, in this case too,
while the outward business is diligently prosecuted, may there not
be on your spirit a latent and constant impression of that awful
inspection? What worldly work so absorbing as to leave no room
in a believer's spirit for the hallowing thought of that glorious
Presence ever near?
We shall give but one extract more, the final illustration of
this third head of discourse. It is a very good specimen of one of
those exciting and irresistible bursts by which Caird sweeps away
his audience. Imagine the following sentences given, at first
quietly, but with great feeling, gradually waxing in energy and
rapidity; and at length, amid dead stillness and hushed breaths,
concluded as with a torrent's rush:--
Or, have we not all felt that the thought of anticipated happiness
may blend itself with the work of our busiest hours? The labourer's
coming, released from toil--the schoolboy's coming holiday, or the
hard-wrought business man's approaching season of relaxation--the
expected return of a long absent and much loved friend; is not
the thought of these, or similar joyous events, one which often
intermingles with, without interrupting, our common work? When a
father goes forth to his 'labour till the evening,' perhaps often,
very often, in the thick of his toils the thought of home may start
up to cheer him. The smile that is to welcome him, as he crosses his
lowly threshold when the work of the day is over, the glad faces,
and merry voices, arid sweet caresses of little ones, as they
shall gather round him in the quiet evening hours, the thought of
all this may dwell, a latent joy, a hidden motive, deep down in
his heart of hearts, may come rushing in a sweet solace at every
pause of exertion, and act like a secret oil to smooth the wheels
of labour. The heart has a secret treasury, where our hopes and
joys are often garnered, too precious to be parted with, even for
a moment.
And why may not the highest of all hopes and joys possess the same
all-pervading influence? Have we, if our religion is real, no
anticipation of happiness in the glorious future? Is there no 'rest
that remaineth for the people of God,' no home and loving heart
awaiting us when the toils of our hurried day of life are ended?
What is earthly rest or relaxation, what the release from toil
after which we so often sigh, but the faint shadow of the saint's
everlasting rest, the rest of the soul in God? What visions of earthly
bliss can ever, if our Christian faith be not a form, compare with
'the glory soon to be revealed?' What glory of earthly reunion with
the rapture of that hour when the heavens shall yield an absent
Lord to our embrace, to be parted from us no more for ever! And if
all this be most sober truth, what is there to except this joyful
hope from that law to which, in all other deep joys, our minds are
subject? Why may we not, in this case too, think often, amidst our
worldly work, of the House to which we are going, of the true and
loving heart that heats for us, and of the sweet and joyous welcome
that awaits us there? And even when we make them not, of set purpose,
the subject of our thoughts, is there not enough of grandeur in
the objects of a believer's hope to pervade his spirit at all times
with a calm and reverential joy? Do not think all this strange,
fanatical, impossible. If it do seem so, it can only be because your
heart is in the earthly, but not in the higher and holier hopes.
No, my friends! the strange thing is, not that amidst the world's
work we should be able to think of our House, but that we should
ever be able to forget it; and the stranger, sadder still, that while
the little day of life is passing--morning, noontide, evening--each
stage more rapid than the last; while to many the shadows are already
fast lengthening, and the declining sun warns them that 'the night
is at hand, wherein no man can work,' there should be those amongst
us whose whole thoughts are absorbed in the business of the world,
and to whom the reflection never occurs, that soon they must go
out into eternity, without a friend, without a home!
The discourse thus ends in orthodox Scotch fashion, with a practical
conclusion.
We think it not unlikely that the sermon has been toned down a good
deal before publication, in anticipation of severe criticism. Some
passages which were very effective when delivered, hate probably
been modified so as to bring them more thoroughly within the limits
of severe good taste. We think Mr. Caird has deserved the honours
done him by royalty; and we willingly accord him his meed, as a man
of no small force of intellect, of great power of illustration by
happy analogies, of sincere piety, and of much earnestness to do
good. He is still young--we believe considerably under forty--and
much may be expected of him.
But we have rambled on into an unduly long gossip about Scotch
preaching, and must abruptly conclude. We confess that it would
please us to see, especially in the pulpits of our country churches, a
little infusion of its warmth, rejecting anything of its extravagance.
CHAPTER XIII
CONCERNING FUTURE YEARS.
Does it ever come across you, my friend, with something of a start,
that things cannot always go on in your lot as they are going now?
Does not a sudden thought sometimes flash upon you, a hasty, vivid
glimpse, of what you will be long hereafter, if you are spared in
this world? Our common way is too much to think that things will
always go on as they are going. Not that we clearly think so: not
that we ever put that opinion in a definite shape, and avow to
ourselves that we hold it: but we live very much under that vague,
general impression. We can hardly help it. When a man of middle
age inherits a pretty country seat, and makes up his mind that he
cannot yet afford to give up business and go to live at it, but
concludes that in six or eight years he will be able with justice
to his children to do so, do you think he brings plainly before
him the changes which must be wrought on himself and those around
him by these years? I do not speak of the greatest change of all,
which may come to any of us so very soon: I do not think of what
may be done by unlooked-for accident: I think merely of what must
be done by the passing on of time. I think of possible changes
in taste and feeling, of possible loss of liking for that mode of
life. I think of lungs that will play less freely, and of limbs
that will suggest shortened walks, and dissuade from climbing hills.
I think how the children will have outgrown daisy-chains, or even
got beyond the season of climbing trees. The middle-aged man enjoys
the prospect of the time when he shall go to his country house;
and the vague, undefined belief surrounds him, like an atmosphere,
that he and his children, his views and likings, will be then just
such as they are now. He cannot bring it home to him at how many
points change will be cutting into him, and hedging him in, and paring
him down. And we all live very much under that vague impression.
Yet it is in many ways good for us to feel that we are going
on--passing from the things which surround us--advancing into the
undefined future, into the unknown land. And I think that sometimes
we all have vivid flashes of such a conviction. I dare say, my
friend, you have seen an old man, frail, soured, and shabby, and
you have thought, with a start, Perhaps there is Myself of Future
Years.
We human beings can stand a great deal. There is great margin
allowed by our constitution, physical and moral. I suppose there
is no doubt that a man may daily for years eat what is unwholesome,
breathe air which is bad, or go through a round of life which is
not the best or the right one for either body or mind, and yet be
little the worse. And so men pass through great trials and through
long years, and yet are not altered so very much. The other day,
walking along the street, I saw a man whom I had not seen for ten
years. I knew that since I saw him last he had gone through very
heavy troubles, and that these had sat very heavily upon him. I
remembered how he had lost that friend who was the dearest to him
of all human beings, and I knew how broken down he had been for many
months after that great sorrow carne. Yet there he was, walking
along, an unnoticed unit, just like any one else; and he was looking
wonderfully well. No doubt he seemed pale, worn, and anxious: but
he was very well and carefully dressed; he was walking with a brisk,
active step; and I dare say in feeling pretty well reconciled to
being what he is, and to the circumstances amid which he is living.
Still, one felt that somehow a tremendous change had passed over
him. I felt sorry for him, and all the more that he did not seem
to feel sorry for himself. It made me sad to think that some day I
should be like him; that perhaps in the eyes of my juniors I look
like him already, careworn and ageing. I dare say in his feeling
there was no such sense of falling off. Perhaps he was tolerably
content. He was walking so fast, and looking so sharp, that I am
sure ho had no desponding feeling at the time. Despondency goes with
slow movements and with vague looks. The sense of having materially
fallen off is destructive to the eagle-eye. Yes, he was tolerably
content. We can go down-hill cheerfully, save at the points where it
is sharply brought home to us that we are going down-hill. Lately
I sat at dinner opposite an old lady who had the remains of striking
beauty. I remember how much she interested me. Her hair was false,
her teeth were false, her complexion was shrivelled, her form had
lost the round symmetry of earlier years, and was angular and stiff;
yet how cheerful and lively she was! She had gone far down-hill
physically; but either she did not feel her decadence, or she had
grown quite reconciled to it. Her daughter, a blooming matron,
was there, happy, wealthy, good; yet not apparently a whit more
reconciled to life than the aged grandame. It was pleasing, and
yet it was sad, to see how well we can make up our mind to what is
inevitable. And such a sight brings up to one a glimpse of Future
Years. The cloud seems to part before one, and through the rift you
discern your earthly track far away, and a jaded pilgrim plodding
along it with weary step; and though the pilgrim does not look like
you, yet you know the pilgrim is yourself.
This cannot always go on. To what is it all tending? I am not
thinking now of an out-look so grave, that this is not the place to
discuss it. But I am thinking how everything is going on. In this
world there is no standing still. And everything that belongs
entirely to this world, its interests and occupations, is going on
towards a conclusion. It will all come to an end. It cannot go on
forever. I cannot always be writing sermons as I do now, and going
on in this regular course of life. I cannot always be writing
essays. The day will come when I shall have no more to say, or when
the readers of the Magazine will no longer have patience to listen
to me in that kind fashion in which they have listened so long.
I foresee it plainly, this evening.--even while writing my first
essay for the Atlantic Monthly, the time when the reader shall
open the familiar cover, and glance at the table of contents, and
exclaim indignantly, 'Here is that tiresome person again with the
four initials: why will he not cease to weary us?' I write in sober
sadness, my friend: I do not intend any jest. If you do not know
that what I have written is certainly true, you have not lived very
long. You have not learned the sorrowful lesson, that all worldly
occupations and interests are wearing to their close. You cannot
keep up the old thing, however much you may wish to do so. You
know how vain anniversaries for the most part are. You meet with
certain old friends, to try to revive the old days; but the spirit
of the old time will not come over you. It is not a spirit that
can be raised at will. It cannot go on forever, that walking down
to church on Sundays, and ascending those pulpit steps; it will
change to feeling, though I humbly trust it may be long before it
shall change in fact. Don't you all sometimes feel something like
that? Don't you sometimes look about you and say to yourself, That
furniture will wear out: those window-curtains are getting sadly
faded; they will not last a lifetime? Those carpets must be replaced
some day; and the old patterns which looked at you with a kindly,
familiar expression, through these long years, must be among the
old familiar faces that are gone. These are little things, indeed,
but they are among the vague recollections that bewilder our memory;
they are among the things which come up in the strange, confused
remembrance of the dying man in the last days of life. There is an
old fir-tree, a twisted, strange-looking fir-tree, which will be
among my last recollections, I know, as it was among my first. It
was always before my eyes when I was three, four, five years old:
I see the pyramidal top, rising over a mass of shrubbery; I see
it always against a sunset-sky; always in the subdued twilight in
which we seem to see things in distant years. These old friends
will die, you think; who will take their place? You will be an old
gentleman, a frail old gentleman, wondered at by younger men, and
telling them long stories about the days when Lincoln was President,
like those which weary you now about the Declaration of Independence.
It will not be the same world then. Your children will not be always
children. Enjoy their fresh, youth while it lasts, for it will not
last long. Do not skim over the present too fast, through a constant
habit of onward-looking. Many men of an anxious turn are so eagerly
concerned in providing for the future, that they hardly remark the
blessings of the present. Yet it is only because the future will
some day be present, that it deserves any thought at all. And many
men, instead of heartily enjoying present blessings while they are
present, train themselves to a habit of regarding these things as
merely the foundation on which they are to build some vague fabric
of they know not what. I have known a clergyman, who was very fond
of music, and in whose church the music was very fine, who seemed
incapable of enjoying its solemn beauty as a tiling to be enjoyed
while passing, but who persisted in regarding each beautiful strain
merely as a promising indication of what his choir would come at
some future time to be. It is a very bad habit, and one which grows
unless repressed. You, my reader, when you see your children racing
on the green, train yourself to regard all that as a happy end in
itself. Do not grow to think merely that those sturdy young limbs
promise to be stout and serviceable when they are those of a
grown-up man; and rejoice in the smooth little forehead with its
curly hair, without any forethought of how it is to look some day
when over-shadowed (as it is sure to be) by the great wig of the
Lord Chancellor. Good advice: let us all try to take it. Let all
happy things be enjoyed as ends, as well as regarded as means. Yet
it is in the make of our nature to be ever onward-looking; and we
cannot help it. When you get the first number for the year of the.
Magazine which you take in, you instinctively think of it as the
first portion of a new volume; and you are conscious of a certain
though slight restlessness in the thought of a thing incomplete,
and of a wish that you had the volume completed. And sometimes,
thus locking onward into the future, you worry yourself with litile
thoughts and cares. There is that old dog: you Lave had him for
many years; he is growing stiff and frail; what arc you to do when
he dies? When he is gone, the new dog you get will never be like
him; he may be, indeed, a far handsomer and more amiable animal,
but he will not be your old companion; he will not be surrounded
with all those old associations, not merely with your own by-past
life, but with the lives, the faces, and the voices of those who
have left you, which invest with a certain saeredness even that
humble but faithful friend. He will not have been the companion of
your youthful walks, when you went, at a pace which now you cannot
attain. He will just be a common dog; and who that has reached your
years cares for that? The other indeed was a dog too, but that was
merely the substratum on which was accumulated a host of recollections:
it is Auld Lang syne that walks into your study when your shaggy
friend of ten summers comes stiffly in, and after many querulous
turnings lays himself down on the rug before the fire. Do you not
feel the like when you look at many little matters, and then look
into the Future Years? That harness--how will you replace it? It
will be a pang to throw it by, and it will be a considerable expense
too to get a new suit. Then you think how long harness may continue
to be serviceable. I once saw, on a pair of horses drawing a
stage-coach among the hills, a set of harness which was thirty-five
years old. It had been very costly and grand when new; it had belonged
for some of its earliest years to a certain wealthy nobleman. The
nobleman had been for many years in his grave, but there was his
harness still. It was tremendously patched, and the blinkers were
of extraordinary aspect; but it was quite serviceable. There is
comfort for you, poor country parsons! How thoroughly I understand
your feeling about such little things. I know how you sometimes
look at your phaeton or your dog-cart; and even while the morocco
is fresh, and the wheels still are running with their first tires,
how you think you see it after it has grown shabby and old-fashioned.
Yes, you remember, not without a dull kind of pang, that it is
wearing out. You have a neighbour, perhaps, a few miles off, whose
conveyance, through the wear of many years, has become remarkably
seedy; and every time you meet it you think that there you see
your own, as it will some day be. Every dog has his day: but the
day of the rational dog is over-clouded in a fashion unknown to his
inferior fellow-creature; it is overclouded by the anticipation of
the coming day which will not be his. You remember how that great
though morbid man, John Foster, could not heartily enjoy the summer
weather, for thinking how every sunny day that shone upon him was
a downward step towards the winter gloom. Each indication that
the season was progressing, even though progressing as yet only to
greater beauty, filled him with great grief. 'I have seen a fearful
sight to-day,' he would say, 'I have seen a buttercup.' And we know,
of course, that in his case there was nothing like affectation;
it was only that, unhappily for himself, the bent of his mind was
so onward-looking, that he saw only a premonition of the snows of
December in the roses of June. It would be a blessing if we could
quite discard the tendency. And while your trap runs smoothly and
noiselessly, while the leather is fresh and the paint unscratched,
do not worry yourself with visions of the day when it will rattle
and crack, and when you will make it wait for you at the corner
of back-streets when you drive into town. Do not vex yourself by
fancying that you will never have heart to send off the old carriage,
nor by wondering where you shall find the money to buy a new one.
Have you ever read the Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith,
by that pleasing poet and most amiable man, the late David Macbeth
Moir? I have been looking into it lately; and I have regretted
much that the Lowland Scotch dialect is so imperfectly understood
in England, and that even where so far understood its raciness is
so little felt; for great as is the popularity of that work, it
is much less known than it deserves to be. Only a Scotchman can
thoroughly appreciate it. It is curious, and yet it is not curious,
to find the pathos and the polish of one of the most touching and
elegant of poets in the man who has with such irresistible humour,
sometimes approaching to the farcical, delineated humble Scotch life.
One passage in the book always struck me very much. We have in it
the poet as well as the humorist; and it is a perfect example of
what I have been trying to describe in the pages which you have
rend. I mean the passage in which Mansie tells us of a sudden
glimpse which, in circumstances of mortal terror, he once had of
the future. On a certain 'awful night' the tailor was awakened by
cries of alarm, and, looking out, he saw the next house to his own
was on fire from cellar to garret. The earnings of poor Mansie's
whole life were laid out on his stock in trade and his furniture,
and it appeared likely that these would be at once destroyed.
"Then," says he, "the darkness of the latter days came over my
spirit like a vision before the prophet Isaiah; and I could see
nothing in the years to come but beggary and starvation,--myself a
fallen-back old man. with an out-at-the-elbows coat, a greasy hat,
and a bald brow, hirpling over a staff, requeeshting an awmous:
Nanse a broken-hearted beggar-wife, torn down to tatters, and
weeping like Eachel when she thought on better days; and poor wee
Benjie going from door to door with a meal-pock on his back."
Ah, there is exquisite pathos there, as well as humour; but
the thing for which I have quoted that sentence is its startling
truthfulness. You have all done what Mansie Wauch did, I know.
Every one has his own way of doing it, and it is his own especial
picture which each sees; but there has appeared to us, as to
Mansie, (I must recur to my old figure,) as it were a sudden rift
in the clouds that conceal the future, and we have seen the way,
far ahead--the dusty way--and an aged pilgrim pacing slowly along
it; and in that aged figure we have each recognized our own young
self. How often have I sat down on the mossy wall that surrounded
my churchyard, when I had more time for reverie than I have now--sat
upon the mossy wall, under a great oak, whose brandies came low
down and projected far out--and looked at the rough gnarled bark,
and at the passing river, and at the belfry of the little church,
and there and then thought of Mansie Wauch and of his vision of
Future Years! How often in these hours, or in long solitary walks
and rides among the hills, have I had visions clear as that of
Mansie Wauch, of how I should grow old in my country parish! Do not
think that I wish or intend to be egotistical, my friendly reader.
I describe these feelings and fancies because I think this is the
likeliest way in which to reach and describe your own. There was
a rapid little stream that flowed, in a very lonely place, between
the highway and a cottage to which I often went to see a poor old
woman; and when I came out of the cottage, having made sure that
no one saw me, I always took a great leap over the little stream,
which saved going round a little way. And never once, for several
years, did I thus cross it without seeing a picture as clear to the
mind's eye as Mansie Wauch's--a picture which made me walk very
thoughtfully along for the next mile or two. It was curious to
think how one was to get through the accustomed duty after having
grown old and frail. The day would come when the brook could be
crossed in that brisk fashion no more. It must be an odd thing for
the parson to walk as an old man into the pulpit, still his own,
which was his own when he was a young man of six-and-twenty. What
a crowd of old remembrances must be present each Sunday to the
clergyman's mind, who has served the same parish and preached in the
same church for fifty years! Personal identity, continued through
the successive stages of life, is a common-place thing to think
of; but when it is brought home to your own case and feeling, it
is a very touching and a very bewildering thing. There are the same
trees and hills as when you were a boy; and when each of us comes
to his last days in this world, how short a space it will seem
since we were little children! Let us humbly hope, that, in that
brief space parting the cradle from the grave, we may (by help
from above) have accomplished a certain work which will cast its
blessed influence over all the years and all the ages before us.
Yet it remains a strange thing to look forward and to see yourself
with grey hair, and not much even of that; to see your wife an
old woman, and your little boy or girl grown up into manhood or
womanhood. It is more strange still to fancy you see them all going
on as usual in the round of life, and you no longer among them.
You see your empty chair. There is your writing-table and your
inkstand; there are your books, not so carefully arranged as they
used to be; perhaps,--on the whole, less indication than you might
have hoped that they miss you. All this is strange when you bring
it home to your own case; and that hundreds of millions have felt
the like makes it none the less strange to you. The commonplaces
of life and death are not commonplace when they befall ourselves.
It was in desperate hurry and agitation that Mansie Waueh saw his
vision; and in like circumstances you may have yours too. But for
the most part such moods come in leisure--in saunterings through
the autumn woods--in reveries by the winter fire.
I do not think, thus musing upon our occasional glimpses of
the Future, of such fancies as those of early youth--fancies and
anticipations of greatness, of felicity, of fame; I think of the
onward views of men approaching middle-age, who have found their
place and their work in life, and who may reasonably believe that,
save for great unexpected accidents, there will be no very material
change in their lot till that "change come" to which Job looked
forward four thousand years since. There are great numbers of
educated folk who are likely always to live in the same kind of
house, to have the same establishment, to associate with the same
class of people, to walk along the same streets, to look upon
the same hills, as Iong as they live. The only change will be the
gradual one which will be wrought by advancing years.
And the onward view of such people in such circumstances is generally
a very vague one. It is only now and then that there comes the
startling clearness of prospect so well set forth by Mansie Wauch.
Yet sometimes, when such a vivid view comes, it remains for days
and is a painful companion of your solilude. Don't you remember,
clerical reader of thirty-two, having seen a good deal of an old
parson, rather sour in aspect, rather shabby-looking, sadly pinched
for means, and with powers dwarfed by the sore struggle with the
world to maintain his family and to keep up a respectable appearance
upon his limited resources; perhaps with his mind made petty and his
temper spoiled by the little worries, the petty malignant tattle
and gossip and occasional insolence of a little backbiting village?
and don't you remember how for days you felt haunted by a sort of
nightmare that there was what you would be, if you lived so long?
Yes; you know how there have been times when for ten days together
that jarring thought would intrude, whenever your mind was disengaged
from work; and sometimes, when you went to bed, that thought kept
you awake for hours. You knew the impression was morbid, and you
were angry with yourself for your silliness; but you could not
drive it away.
It makes a great difference in the prospect of Future Years, if
you are one of those people who, even after middle age, may still
make a great rise in life. This will prolong the restlessness which
in others is sobered down at forty: it will extend the period during
which you will every now and then have brief seasons of feverish
anxiety, hope, and fear, followed by longer stretches of blank
disappointment. And it will afford the opportunity of experiencing
a vividly new sensation, and of turning over a quite new leaf, after
most people have settled to the jog-trot at which the remainder
of the pilgrimage is to be covered. A clergyman of the Church of
England may be made a bishop, and exchange a quiet rectory for a
palace. No doubt the increase of responsibility is to a conscientious
man almost appalling; but surely the rise in life is great. There
you are, one of four-and-twenty,--selected out of near twenty
thousand. It is possible, indeed, that you may feel more reason
for shame than for elation at the thought. A barrister unknown to
fame, but of respectable stantling, may be made a judge. Such a
man may even, if he gets into the groove, be gradually pushed on
till he reaches an eminence which probably surprises himself as
much as any one else. A good speaker in Parliament may at sixty
or seventy be made a Cabinet Minister. And we can all imagine what
indescribable pride and elation must in such cases possess the
wife and daughters of the man who has attained this decided step
in advance. I can say sincerely that I never saw human beings walk
with so airy tread, and evince so fussily their sense of a greatness
more than mortal, as the wife and the daughter of an amiable but
not able bishop I knew in my youth, when they came to church on the
Sunday morning on which the good man preached for the first time
in his lawn sleeves. Their heads were turned for the time; but they
gradually came right again, as the ladies became accustomed to the
summits of human affairs. Let it be said for the bishop himself,
that there was not a vestige of that sense of elevation about him.
He looked perfectly modest and unaffected. His dress was remarkably
ill put on, and his sleeves stuck out in the most awkward fashion
ever assumed by drapery. I suppose that sometimes these rises in
life come very unexpectedly. I have heard of a man who, when he
received a letter from the Prime Minister of the day offering him
a place of great dignity, thought the letter was a hoax, and did
not notice it for several days. You could not certainly infer from
his modesty what has proved to be the fact, that he has filled his
place admirably well. The possibility of such material changes must
no doubt tend to prolong the interest in life, which is ready to
flag as years go on. But perhaps with the majority of men the level
is found before middle age, and no very great worldly change awaits
them. The path stretches on, with its ups and downs; and they only
hope for strength for the day. But in such men's lot of humble
duty and quiet content there remains room for many fears. All human
beings who are as well off as they can ever be, and so who have
little room for hope, seem to be liable to the invasion of great
fear as they look into the future. It seems to be so with kings,
and with great nobles. Many such have lived in a nervous dread of
change, and have ever been watching the signs of the times with
apprehensive eyes. Nothing that can happen can well make such
better; and so they suffer from the vague foreboding of something
which will make them worse. And the same law readies to those in
whom hope is narrowed down, not by the limit of grand possibility,
but of little,--not by the fact that they have got all that mortal
can get, but by the fact that they have got the little which is
all that Providence seems to intend to give to them. And, indeed,
there is something that is almost awful, when your affairs are all
going happily, when your mind is clear and equal to its work, when
your bodily health is unbroken, when your home is pleasant, when
your income is ample, when your children are healthy and merry and
hopeful,--in looking on to Future Years. The more happy you are, the
more there is of awe in the thought how frail are the foundations
of your earthly happiness,--what havoc may be made of them by the
chances of even a single day. It is no wonder that the solemnity and
awfuluess of the Future have been felt so much, that the languages
of Northern Europe have, as I dare say you know, no word which
expresses the essential notion of Futurity. You think, perhaps,
of shall and will. Well, these words have come now to convey the
notion of Futurity; but they do so only in a secondary fashion.
Look to their etymology, and you will see that they imply Futurity,
but do not express it. I shall do such a thing means I am bound to
do it, I am under an obligation to do it. I will do such a thing
means I intend to do it, It is my present purpose to do it. Of
course, if you are under an obligation to do anything, or if it be
your intention to do anything, the probability is that the thing
will be done; but the Northern family of languages ventures no
nearer than that towards the expression of the bare, awful idea
of Future Time. It was no wonder that Mr. Croaker was able to cast
a gloom upon the gayest circle, and the happiest conjuncture of
circumstances, by wishing that all might be as well that day six
months. Six months! What might that time not do? Perhaps you have
not read a little poem of Barry Cornwall's, the idea of which must
come home to the heart of most of us:--
Touch us gently, Time!
Let us glide adown thy stream
Gently,--as we sometimes glide
Through a quiet dream.
Humble voyagers are we,
Husband, wife, and children three--
One is lost,--an angel, fled
To the azure overhead.
Touch us gently, Time!
We've not proud nor soaring wings:
Our ambition, our content,
Lies in simple things.
Humble voyagers are we,
O'er life's dim, unsounded sea,
Seeking only some calm clime:--
Touch us gently, gentle Time!
I know that sometimes, my friend, you will not have much sleep,
if, when you lay your head on your pillow, you begin to think how
much depends upon your health and life. You have reached now that
time at which you value life and health not so much for their
service to yourself, as for their needfulness to others. There is
a petition familiar to me in this Scotch country, where people make
their prayers for themselves, which seems to me to possess great
solemnity and force, when we think of all that is implied in it.
It is, Spare useful lives! One life, the slender line of blood
passing into and passing out of one human heart, may decide the
question, whether wife and children shall grow up affluent, refined,
happy, yes, and good, or be reduced to hard straits, with all the
manifold evils which grow of poverty in the case of those who have
been reduced to it after knowing other things. You often think, I
doubt not, in quiet hours, what would become of your children, if
you were gone. You have done, I trust, what you can to care for
them, even from your grave: you think sometimes of a poetical figure
of speech amid the dry technical phrases of English law: you know
what is meant by the law of Mortmain; and you like to think that
even your dead hand may be felt to be kindly intermeddling yet in
the affairs of those who were your dearest: that some little sum,
slender, perhaps, but as liberal as you could make it, may come
in periodically when it is wanted, and seem like the gift of a
thoughtful, heart and a kindly hand which are far away. Yes, cut
down your present income to any extent, that you may make some
provision for your children after you are dead. You do not wish
that they should have the saddest of all reasons for taking care
of you, and trying to lengthen out your life. But even after you
have done everything which your small means permit, you will still
think, with an anxious heart, of the possibilities of Future Years.
A man or woman who has children has very strong reason for wishing
to live as long as may be, and has no right to trifle with, health
or life. And sometimes, looking out into days to come, you think
of the little things, hitherto so free from man's heritage of care,
as they may some day be. You see them shabby, and early anxious:
can that be the little boy's rosy face, now so pale and thin? You
see them in a poor room, in which you recognize your study chairs,
with the hair coming out of the cushions, and a carpet which you
remember now threadbare and in holes.
It is no wonder at all that people are so anxious about money. Money
means every desirable material thing on earth, and the manifold
immaterial things which come of material possessions. Poverty is the
most comprehensive earthly evil; all conceivable evils, temporal,
spiritual, and eternal, may come of that. Of course, great temptations
attend its opposite; and the wise man's prayer will be what it was
long ago--'Give me neither poverty nor riches.' But let us have no
nonsense talked about money being of no consequence. The want of
it has made many a father and mother tremble at the prospect of
being taken from their children; the want of it has embittered many
a parent's dying hours. You hear selfish persons talking vaguely
about faith. You find such heartless persons jauntily spending all
they get on themselves, and then leaving their poor children to
beggary, with the miserable pretext that they are doing all this
through their abundant trust in God. Now this is not faith; it is
insolent presumption. It is exactly as if a man should jump from
the top of St. Paul's, and say that he had faith that the Almighty
would keep him from being dashed to pieces on the pavement. There
is a high authority as to such cases--'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord
thy God.' If God had promised that people should never fall into
the miseries of penury under any circumstances, it would be faith
to trust that promise, however unlikely of fulfilment it might seem
in any particular case. But God has made no such promise; and if
you leave your children without provision, you have no right to
expect that they shall not suffer the natural consequences of your
heartlessness and thoughtlessness. True faith lies in your doing
everything you possibly can, and then humbly trusting in God, And
if, after you have done your very best, you must still go, with
but a blank outlook for those you leave, why, then, you may trust
them to the Husband of the widow and Father of the fatherless.
Faith, as regards such matters, means firm belief that God will do
all he has promised to do, however difficult or unlikely. But some
people seem to think that faith means firm belief that God will
do whatever they think would suit them, however unreasonable,
and however flatly in the face of all the established laws of His
government.
We all have it in our power to make ourselves miserable, if we look
far into future years and calculate their probabilities of evil,
and steadily anticipate the worst. It is not expedient to calculate
too far a-head. Of course, the right way in this, as in other things,
is the middle way: we are not to run either into the extreme of
over-carefulness and anxiety on the one hand, or of recklessness
and imprudence on the other. But as mention has been made of faith,
it may safely be said that we are forgetful of that rational trust
in God which is at once our duty and our inestimable privilege,
if we are always looking out into the future, and vexing ourselves
with endless fears as to how things are to go then. There is no
divine promise, that, if a reckless blockhead leaves his children
to starve, they shall not starve. And a certain inspired volume
speaks with extreme severity of the man who fails to provide for
them of his own house. But there is a divine promise which says to
the humble Christian,--'As thy days, so shall thy strength be.' If
your affairs are going on fairly now, be thankful, and try to do
your duty, and to do your best, as a Christian man and a prudent
man, and then leave the rest to God. Your children are about you;
no doubt they may die, and it is fit enough that you should not forget
the fragility of your most prized possessions; it is fit enough
that you should sometimes sit by the fire and look at the merry
faces and listen to the little voices, and think what it would be
to lose them. But it is not needful, or rational, or Christian-like,
to be always brooding on that thought. And when they grow up, it
may be hard to provide for them. The little thing that is sitting
on your knee may before many years be alone in life, thousands of
miles from you and from his early home, an insignificant item in
the bitter price which Britain pays for her Indian Empire. It is
even possible, though you hardly for a moment admit that thought,
that the child may turn out a heartless and wicked man, and prove
your shame and heart-break; all wicked and heartless men have been
the children of somebody; and many of them, doubtless, the children
of those who surmised the future as little as Eve did when she
smiled upon the infant Cain. And the fireside by which you sit, now
merry and noisy enough, may grow lonely,--lonely with the second
loneliness, not the hopeful solitude of youth looking forward, but
the desponding loneliness of age looking back. And it is so with
everything else. Your health may break down. Some fearful accident
may befall you. The readers of the magazine may cease to care for
your articles. People may get tired of your sermons. People may
stop buying your books, your wine, your groceries, your milk and
cream. Younger men may take away your legal business. Yet how often
these fears prove utterly groundless! It was good and wise advice
given by one who had managed, with a cheerful and hopeful spirit,
to pass through many trying and anxious years, to 'take short
views:'--not to vex and worry yourself by planning too far a-head.
And a wiser than the wise and cheerful Sydney Smith had anticipated
his philosophy. You remember Who said, 'Take no thought,'--that is,
no over-anxious and over-careful thought--'for the morrow; for the
morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.' Did you ever
sail over a blue summer sea towards a mountainous coast, frowning,
sullen, gloomy: and have you not seen the gloom retire before you
as you advanced; the hills, grim in the distance, stretch into
sunny slopes when you neared them; and the waters smile in cheerful
light that looked so black when they were far away? And who is
there that has not seen the parallel in actual life? We have all
known the anticipated ills of life--the danger that looked so big,
the duty that looked so arduous, the entanglement that we could not
see our way through--prove to have been nothing more than spectres
on the far horizon; and when at length we reached them, all their
difficulty had vanished into air, leaving us to think what fools we
had been for having so needlessly conjured up phantoms to disturb
our quiet. Yes, there is no doubt of it, a Very great part of all
we suffer in this world is from the apprehension of things that
never come. I remember well how a dear friend, whom I (and many
more) lately lost, told me many times of his fears as to what he
would do in a certain contingency which both he and I thought was
quite sure to come sooner or later. I know that the anticipation
of it caused him some of the most anxious hours of a very anxious,
though useful and honoured life. How vain his fears proved! He was
taken from this world before what he had dreaded had cast its most
distant shadow. Well, let me try to discard the notion which has
been sometimes worrying me of late, that perhaps I have written
nearly as many essays as any one will care to read. Don't let any of
us give way to fears which may prove to have been entirely groundless.
And then, if we are really spared to see those trials we Bometimes
think of, and which it is right that we should sometimes think of,
the strength for them will come at the time. They will not look
nearly so black, and we shall be enabled to bear them bravely.
There is in human nature a marvellous power of accommodation to
circumstances. We can gradually make up our mind to almost anything.
If this were a sermon instead of an essay, I should explain my
theory of how this comes to be. I see in all this something beyond
the mere natural instinct of acquiescence in what is inevitable;
something beyond the benevolent law in the human mind, that it
shall adapt itself to whatever circumstances it may be placed in;
something beyond the doing of the gentle comforter Time. Yes, it
is wonderful what people can go through, wonderful what people can
get reconciled to. I dare say my friend Smith, when his hair began
to fall off, made frantic efforts to keep it on. I have no doubt he
anxiously tried all the vile concoctions which quackery advertises
in the newspapers, for the advantage of those who wish for luxuriant
locks. I dare say for a while it really weighed upon his mind,
and disturbed his quiet, that he was getting bald. But now he has
quite reconciled himself to his lot; and with a head smooth and
sheeny as the egg of the ostrich, Smith goes on through life, and
feels no pang at the remembrance of the ambrosial curls of his
youth. Most young people, I dare say, think it will be a dreadful
thing to grow old: a girl of eighteen thinks it must be an awful
sensation to be thirty. Believe me, not at all. You are brought
to it bit by bit; and when you reach the spot, you rather like the
view. And it is so with graver things. We grow able to do and to
bear that which it is needful that we should do and bear. As is the
day, so the strength proves to be. And you have heard people tell
you truly, that they have been enabled to bear what they never
thought they could have come through with their reason or their
life. I have no fear for the Christian man, so he keeps to the path
of duty. Straining up the steep hill, his heart will grow stout in
just proportion to its steepness. Yes, and if the call to martyrdom
came, I should not despair of finding men who would show themselves
equal to it, even in this commonplace age, and among people who
wear Highland cloaks and knickerbockers. The martyr's strength would
come with the martyr's day. It is because there is no call for it
now, that people look so little like it.
It is very difficult, in this world, to strongly enforce a truth,
without seeming to push it into an extreme. You are very apt, in
avoiding one error, to run into the opposite error; forgetting that
truth and right lie generally between two extremes. And in agreeing
with Sydney Smith, as to the wisdom and the duty of 'taking short
views,' let us take care of appearing to approve the doings of those
foolish and unprincipled people who will keep no out-look into the
future time at all. A bee, you know, cannot see more than a single
inch before it; and there are many men, and perhaps more women,
who appear, as regards their domestic concerns, to be very much
of bees. Not bees in the respect of being busy; but bees in the
respect of being blind. You see this in all ranks of life. You see
it in the artisan, earning good wages, yet with every prospect of
being weeks out of work next summer or winter, who yet will not be
persuaded to lay by a little in preparation for a rainy day. You
see it in the country gentleman, who, having five thousand a year,
spends ten thousand a year; resolutely shutting his eyes to the
certain and not very remote consequences. You see it in the man
who walks into a shop and buys a lot of things which he has not
the money to pay for, in the vague hope that something will turn
up. It is a comparatively thoughtful and anxious class of men who
systematically overcloud the present by anticipations of the future.
The more usual thing is to sacrifice the future to the present; to
grasp at what in the way of present gratification or gain can be
got, with very little thought of the consequences. You see silly
women, the wives of men whose families are mainly dependent on
their lives, constantly urging on their husbands to extravagances
which eat up the little provision which might have been made for
themselves and their children when he is gone who earned their
bread. There is no sadder sight, I think, than that which is not
a very uncommon sight, the care-worn, anxious husband, labouring
beyond his strength, often sorrowfully calculating how he may make
the ends to meet, denying himself in every way; and the extravagant
idiot of a wife, bedizened with jewellery and arrayed in velvet and
lace, who tosses away his hard earnings in reckless extravagance;
in entertainments which he cannot afford, given to people who do not
care a rush for him; in preposterous dress; in absurd furniture; in
needless men-servants; in green-grocers above measure; in resolute
aping of the way of living of people with twice or three times the
means. It is sad to see all the forethought, prudence, and moderation
of the wedded pair confined to one of them. You would say that it
will not be any solid consolation to the widow, when the husband
is fairly worried into his grave at last,--when his daughters have
to go out as governesses, and she has to let lodgings,--to reflect
that while he lived they never failed to have champagne at their
dinner parties; and that they had three men to wait at table on
such occasions, while Mr. Smith, next door, had never more than one
and a maidservant. If such idiotic women would but look forward,
and consider how all this must end! If the professional man spends
all he earns, what remains when the supply is cut off; when the
toiling head and hand can toil no more? Ah, a little of the economy
and management which must perforce be practised after that might
have tended powerfully to pirt off the evil day. Sometimes the
husband is merely the care-worn drudge who provides what the wife
squanders. Have you not known such a thing as that a man should
be labouring under an Indian sun, and cutting down every personal
expense to the last shilling, that he might send a liberal allowance
to his wife in England; while she meanwhile was recklessly spending
twice what was thus sent her; running up overwhelming accounts,
dashing about to public balls, paying for a bouquet what cost the
poor fellow far away much thought to save, giving costly entertainments
at home, filling her house with idle and empty-headed scapegraces,
carrying on scandalous flirtations; till it becomes a happy thing,
if the certain ruin she is bringing on her husband's head is cut
short by the needful interference of Sir Cresswell Cresswell? There
are cases in which tarring and feathering would soothe the moral
sense of the right-minded onlooker. And even where things are not
so bad as in the case of which we have been thinking, it remains
the social curse of this age, that people with a few hundreds a
year determinedly act in various respects as if they had as many
thousands. The dinner given by a man with eight hundred a year, in
certain regions of the earth which I could easily point out, is,
as regards food, wine, and attendance, precisely the same as the
dinner given by another man who has five thousand a year. When will
this end? When will people see its silliness? In truth, you do not
really, as things are in this country, make many people better off
by adding a little or a good deal to their yearly income. For in
all probability they were living up to the very extremity of their
means before they got the addition; and in all probability the
first thing they do, on getting the addition, is so far to increase
their establishment and their expense that it is just as hard a
struggle as ever to make the ends meet. It would not be a pleasant
arrangement, that a man who was to be carried across the straits
from England to France, should be fixed on a board so weighted
that his mouth and nostrils should be at the level of the water,
and thus that he should be struggling for life, and barely escaping
drowning all the way. Yet hosts of people, whom no one proposes to
put under restraint, do as regards their income and expenditure a
precisely analogous thing. They deliberately weight themselves to
that degree that their heads are barely above water, and that any
unforeseen emergency dips their heads under. They rent a house a
good deal dearer than they can justly afford; and they have servants
more and more expensive than they ought; and by many such things
they make sure that their progress through life shall be a drowning
struggle; while, if they would rationally resolve and manfully
confess that they cannot afford to have things as richer folk have
them, and arrange their way of living in accordance with what they
can afford, they would enjoy the feeling of ease and comfort; they
would not be ever on the wretched stretch on which they are now,
nor keeping up the jollow appearance of what is not the fact. But
there are folk who make it a point of honour never to admit that
in doing or not doing anything, they are actuated for an instant by
so despicable a consideration as the question whether or not they
can afford it. And who shall reckon up the brains which this social
calamity has driven into disease, or the early paralytic shocks
which it has brought on?
When you were very young, and looked forward to Future Years, did
you ever feel a painful fear that you might outgrow your early home
affections, and your associations with your native scenes? Did you
ever think to yourself,--Will the day come when I have been years
away from that river's side, and yet not care? I think we have all
known the feeling. O plain church to which I used to go when I was
a child, and where I used to think the singing so very splendid!
O little room where I used to sleep! and you, tall tree,--on whose
topmost branch I cut the initials which perhaps the reader knows,
did I not even then wonder to myself if the time would ever come
when I should be far away from-you,--far away, as now, for many
years, and not likely to go back,--and yet feel entirely indifferent
to the matter? and did not I even then feel a strange pain in the
fear that very likely it might? These things come across the mind
of a little boy with a curious grief and bewilderment. Ah, there is
something strange in the inner life of a thoughtful child of eight
years old! I would rather see a faithful record of his thoughts,
feelings, fancies, and sorrows, for a single week, than know all
the political events that have happened during that space in Spain,
Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, and Turkey. Even amid the great
grief at leaving home for school in your early days, did you not
feel a greater grief to think that the day might come when you
would not care at all; when your home ties and affections would be
outgrown; when you would be quite content to live on, month after
month, far from parents, sisters, brothers, and feel hardly a
perceptible blank when you remembered that they were far away? But
it is of the essence of such fears, that, when the thing comes that
you were afraid of, it has ceased to be fearful; still it is with
a little pang that you sometimes call to remembrance how much you
feared it once. It is a daily regret, though not a very acute one,
(more's the pity,) to be thrown much, in middle life, into the
society of an old friend whom as a boy you had regarded as very
wise, and to be compelled to observe that he is a tremendous fool.
You struggle with the conviction; you think it wrong to give in to
it; but you cannot help it. But it would have been a sharper pang
to the child's heart, to have impressed upon the child the fact,
that 'Good Mr. Goose is a fool, and some day you will understand
that he is.' In those days one admits no imperfection in the people
and the things one likes. Tou like a person; and he is good. That
seems the whole case. You do not go into exceptions and reservations.
I remember how indignant I felt, as a boy, at reading some depreciatory
criticism of the Waverley Novels. The criticism was to the effect
that the plots generally dragged at first, and were huddled up at
the end. But to me the novels were enchaining, enthralling; and
to hint a defect in them stunned one. In the boy's feeling, if a
thing be good, why, there cannot be anything bad about it. But in
the man's mature judgment, even in the people he likes best, and
in the things he appreciates most highly, there are many flaws and
imperfections. It does not vex us much now to find that this is so;
but it would have greatly vexed us many years since to have been
told that it would be so. I can well imagine, that, if you told a
thoughtful and affectionate child, how well he would some day get
on, far from his parents and his home, his wish would be that any
evil might befall him rather than that! We shrink with terror from
the prospect of things which we can take easily enough when they
come. I dare say Lord Chancellor Thurlow was moderately sincere
when he exclaimed in the House of Peers, 'When I forget, my king,
may my God forget me!' And you will understand what Leigh Hunt
meant, when, in his pleasant poem of The Palfrey, he tells us of
a daughter who had lost a very bad and heartless father by death,
that,
The daughter wept, and wept the more,
To think her tears would soon be o'er.
Even in middle age, one sad thought which comes in the prospect
of Future Years is of the change which they are sure to work upon
many of our present views and feelings. And the change, in many
cases, will be to the worse. One thing is certain,--that your temper
will grow worse, if it do not grow better. Years will sour it, if
they do not mellow it. Another certain thing is, that, if you do
not grow wiser, you will be growing more foolish. It is very true
that there is no fool so foolish as an old fool. Let us hope, my
friend, that, whatever be our honest worldly work, it may never
lose its interest. We must always speak humbly about the changes
which coming time will work upon us, upon even our firmest
resolutions and most rooted principles; or I should say for myself
that I cannot even imagine myself the same being, with bent less
resolute and heart less warm to that best of all employments which
is the occupation of my life. But there are few things which,
as we grow older, impress us more deeply than the transitoriness
of thoughts and feelings in human hearts. Nor am I thinking of
contemptible people only, when I say so. I am not thinking of the
fellow who is pulled up in court in an action for breach of promise
of marriage, and who in one letter makes vows of unalterable affection,
and in another letter, written a few weeks or months later, tries
to wriggle out of his engagement. Nor am I thinking of the weak,
though well-meaning lady, who devotes herself in succession to a
great variety of uneducated and unqualified religious instructors;
who tells you one week how she has joined the flock of Mr. A., the
converted prize-fighter, and how she regards him as by far the most
improving preacher she ever heard; and who tells you the next week
that she has seen through the prize-fighter, that he has gone and
married a wealthy Roman Catholic, and that now she has resolved
to wait on the ministry of Mr. B., an enthusiastic individual who
makes shoes during the week and gives sermons on Sundays, and in
whose addresses she finds exactly what suits her. I speak of the
better feelings and purposes of wiser, if not better folk. Let
me think here of pious emotions and holy resolutions, of the best
and purest frames of heart and mind. Oh, if we could all always
remain at our best! And after all, permanence is the great test.
In the matter of Christian faith and feeling, in the matter of all
our worthier principles and purposes, that which lasts longest is
best. This, indeed, is true of most things. The worth of anything
depends much upon its durability,--upon the wear that is in it. A
thing that is merely a fine flash and over only disappoints. The
highest authority has recognized this. You remember Who said to his
friends, before leaving them, that He would have them bring forth
fruit, and much fruit. But not even that was enough. The fairest
profession for a time, the most earnest labour for a time, the
most ardent affection for a time, would not suffice. And so the
Redeemer's words were,--'I have chosen you, and ordained you, that
ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.'
Well, let us trust, that, in the most solemn of all respects, only
progress shall be brought to us by all the changes of Future Years.'
But it is quite vain to think that feelings, as distinguished from
principles, shall not lose much of their vividness, freshness,
and depth, as time goes on. You cannot now by any effort revive
the exultation you felt at some unexpected great success, nor the
heart-sinking of some terrible loss or trial. You know how women,
after the death of a child, determine that every day, as long as
they live, they will visit the little grave. And they do so for
a time, sometimes for a long time; but they gradually leave off.
You know how burying-places are very trimly and carefully kept at
first, and how flowers are hung upon the stone; but these things
gradually cease. You know how many husbands and wives, after their
partner's death, determine to give the remainder of life to the
memory of the departed, and would regard with sincere horror the
suggestion that it was possible they should ever marry again; but
after a while they do. And you will even find men, beyond middle
age, who made a tremendous work at their first wife's death, and
wore very conspicuous mourning, who in a very few months may be
seen dangling after some new fancy, and who in the prospect of their
second marriage evince an exhilaration that approaches to crackiness.
It is usual to speak of such things in a ludicrous manner, but
I confess the matter seems to me anything but one to laugh at. I
think that the rapid dying out of warm feelings, the rapid change
of fixed resolutions, is one of the most sorrowful subjects of
reflection which it is possible to suggest, Ah, my friends, after
we die, it would not be expedient, even if it were possible, to
come back. Many of us would not like to find how very little they
miss us. But still, it is the manifest intention of the Creator
that strong feelings should be transitory. The sorrowful thing is
when they pass and leave absolutely no truce behind them. There
should always be some corner kept in the heart for a feeling which
once possessed it all. Let us look at the case temperately. Let us
face and admit the facts. The healthy body and mind can get over a
great deal; but there are some things which it is not to the credit
of our nature should ever be entirely got over. Here are sober
truth, and sound philosophy, and sincere feeling together, in the
words of Philip van Artevelde:--
Well, well, she's gone,
And I have tamed my sorrow. Pain and grief
Are transitory things, no less than joy;
And though they leave us not the men we were,
Yet they do leave us. You behold me here,
A man bereaved, with something of a blight
Upon the early blossoms of his life,
And its first verdure,--having not the less
A living root, and drawing from the earth
Its vital juices, from the air its powers:
And surely as man's heart and strength are whole,
His appetites regerminate, his heart
Re-opens, and his objects and desires
Spring up renewed.
But though Artevelde speaks truly and well, you remember how Mr.
Taylor, in that noble play, works out to our view the sad sight of the
deterioration of character, the growing coarseness and harshness,
the lessening tenderness and kindliness, which are apt to come
with advancing years. Great trials, we know, passing over us, may
influence us either for the worse or the better; and unless our
nature is a very obdurate and poor one, though they may leave us,
they will not leave us the men we were. Once, at a public meeting,
I heard a man in eminent station make a speech. I had never seen
him before; but I remembered an inscription which I had read,
in a certain churchyard far away, upon the stone that marked the
resting-place of his young wife, who had died many years before.
I thought of its simple words of manly and hearty sorrow. I knew
that the eminence he had reached had not come till she who would
have been proudest of it was beyond knowing it or caring for it.
And I cannot say with what interest and satisfaction I thought I
could trace, in the features which were sad without the infusion
of a grain of sentirnentalism, in the subdued and quiet tone of
the man's whole aspect and manner and address, the manifest proof
that he had not shut down the leaf upon that old page of his
history, that lie had never quite got over that great grief of
earlier years. One felt better and more hopeful for the sight. I
suppose many people, after meeting some overwhelming loss or trial,
have fancied that they would soon die; but that is almost invariably
a delusion. Various dogs have died of a broken heart, but very
few human beings. The inferior creature has pined away at his
master's loss: as for us, it is not that one would doubt the depth
and sincerity of sorrow, but that there is more endurance in our
constitution, and that God has appointed that grief shall rather
mould and influence than kill. It is a much sadder sight than an
early death, to see human beings live on after heavy trial, and sink
into something very unlike their early selves and very inferior to
their early selves. I can well believe that many a human being, if
he eould have a glimpse in innocent youth of what he will be twenty
or thirty years after, would pray in anguish to be taken before
coming to that! Mansie Wauch's glimpse of destitution was bad
enough; but a million times worse is a glimpse of hardened and
unabashed sin and shame. And it would be no comfort--it would be an
aggravation in that view--to think that by the time you have reached
that miserable point, you will have grown pretty well reconciled
to it. That is the worst of all. To be wicked and depraved, and to
feel it, and to be wretched under it, is bad enough; but it is a
great deal worse to have fallen into that depth of moral degradation,
and to feel that really you don't care. The instinct of accommodation
is not always a blessing. It is happy for us, that, though in youth
we hoped to live in a castle or a palace, we can make up our mind
to live in a little parsonage or a quiet street in a country town.
It is happy for us, that, though in youth we hoped to be very
great and famous, we are so entirely reconciled to being little
and unknown. But it is not happy for the poor girl who walks the
Haymarket at night that she feels her degradation so little. It
is not happy that she has come to feel towards her miserable life
so differently now from what she would have felt towards it, had
it been set before her while she was the blooming, thoughtless
creature in the little cottage in the country. It is only by fits
and starts that the poor drunken wretch, living in a garret upon
a little pittance allowed him by his relations, who was once a man
of character and hope, feels what a sad pitch he has come to. If
you could get him to feel it constantly, there would be some hope
of his reclamation even yet.
It seems to me a very comforting thought, in looking on to Future
Years, if you are able to think that you are in a profession or
a calling from which you will never retire. For the prospect of a
total change in your mode of life, and the entire cessation of the
occupation which, for many years employed the greater part of your
waking thoughts, and all this amid the failing powers and nagging
hopes of declining, years, is both a sad and a perplexing prospect
to a thoughtful person. For such a person cannot regard this
great change simply in the light of a rest from toil and worry; he
will know quite well what a blankness, and listlessness, and loss
of interest in life, will come of feeling all at once that you
have nothing at all to do. And so it is a great blessing, if your
vocation be one which is a dignified and befitting one for an old
man to be engaged in, one that beseems his gravity and his long
experience, one that beseems even his slow movements and his white
hairs. It is a pleasant thing to see an old man a judge; his years
become the judgment-seat. But then the old man can hold such an
office only while he retains strength of body and mind efficiently
to perform its duties; and he must do all his work for himself:
and accordingly a day must come when the venerable Chancellor
resigns the Great Seal; when the aged Justice or Baron must give up
his place; and when these honoured Judges, though still retaining
considerable vigour, but vigour less than enough for their hard
work, are compelled to feel that their occupation is gone. And
accordingly I hold that what is the best of all professions, for
many reasons, is especially so for this, that you need never retire
from it. In the Church you need not do all your duty yourself. You
may get assistance to supplement your own lessening strength. The
energetic young curate or curates may do that part of the parish work
which exceeds the power of the ageing incumbent, while the entire
parochial machinery has still the advantage of being directed by
his wisdom and experience, and while the old man is still permitted
to do what he can with such strength as is spared to him, and to feel
that he is useful in the noblest cause yet. And even to extremest
age and frailty,--to age and frailty which would long since have
incapacitated the judge for the Bench--the parish clergyman may
take some share in the much-loved duty in which he has laboured so
long. He may still, though briefly, and only now and then, address
his flock from the pulpit, in words which his very feebleness will
make far more touchingly effective than the most vigorous eloquence
and the richest and fullest tones of his young coadjutors. There
never will be, within the sacred walls, a silence and reverence
more profound than when the withered kindly face looks as of old
upon the congregation, to whose fathers its owner first ministered,
and which has grown up mainly under his instruction,--and when the
voice that falls familiarly on so many ears tells again, quietly
and earnestly, the old story which we all need so much to hear.
And he may still look in at the parish school, and watch the growth
of a generation that is to do the work of life when he is in his
grave; and kindly smooth the children's heads; and tell them how
One, once a little child, and never more than a young man, brought
salvation alike to young and old. He may still sit by the bedside
of the sick and dying, and speak to such with the sympathy and the
solemnity of one who does not forget that the last great realities
are drawing near to both. But there are vocations which are all very
well for young or middle-aged people, but which do not quite suit
the old. Such is that of the barrister. Wrangling and hair-splitting,
browbeating and bewildering witnesses, making coarse jokes to excite
the laughter of common jurymen, and addressing such with clap-trap
bellowings, are not the work for grey-headed men. If such remain at
the bar, rather let them have the more refined work of the Equity
Courts, where you address judges, and not juries; and where you
spare clap-trap and misrepresentation, if for no better reason,
because, you know that these will not stand you in the slightest
stead. The work which best befits the aged, the work for which no
mortal can ever become too venerable and dignified or too weak and
frail, is the work of Christian usefulness and philanthropy. And
it is a beautiful sight to see, as I trust we all have seen, that
work persevered in with the closing energies of life. It is a noble
test of the soundness of the principle that prompted to its first
undertaking. It is a hopeful and cheering sight to younger men,
looking out with something of fear to the temptations and trials
of the years before them. Oh! if the grey-haired clergyman, with
less now, indeed, of physical strength and mere physical warmth,
yet preaches, with the added weight and solemnity of his long
experience, the same blessed doctrines now, after forty years,
that he preached in his early prime; if the philanthropist of half
a century since is the philanthropist still,--still kind, hopeful,
and unwearied, though with the snows of age upon his head, and the
hand that never told its fellow of what it did now trembling as it
does the deed of mercy; then I think that even the most doubtful
will believe that the principle and the religion of such men were
a glorious reality! The sternest of all touchstones of the genuineness
of our better feelings is the fashion in which they stand the wear
of years.
But my shortening space warns me to stop; and I must cease, for
the present, from these thoughts of Future Years,--cease, I mean,
from writing about that mysterious tract before us: who can cease
from thinking of it? You remember how the writer of that little
poem which has been quoted asks Time to touch gently him and his.
Of course he spoke as a poet, stating the case fancifully,--but
not forgetting, that, when we come to sober sense, we must prefer
our requests to an Ear more ready to hear us and a Hand more ready
to help. It is not to Time that I shall apply to lead me through
life into immortality! And I cannot think of years to come without
going back to a greater poet, whom we need not esteem the less
because his inspiration was loftier than that of the Muses, who
has summed up so grandly in one comprehensive sentence all the
possibilities which could befall him in the days and ages before
him. "Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward receive
me to glory!" Let us humbly trust that in that sketch, round and
complete, of all that can ever come to us, my readers and I may be
able to read the history of our Future Years!
CONCLUSION.
And now, friendly reader, who have borne me company so far,
your task is ended. You will have no more of the RECREATIONS OF A
COUNTRY PARSON. Yet do not be alarmed. I trust you have not seen
the writer's last appearance. It is only that the essays which he
hopes yet to write, will not be composed in the comparative leisure
of a country clergyman's quiet life. And not merely is it still a
pleasant change of occupation, to write such chapters as those you
have read: but the author cannot forget that to them he is indebted
for the acquaintance of some of the most valued friends he has in
this world. It was especially delightful to find a little sympathetic
public, whose taste these papers suited; and to which they have
not been devoid of profit and comfort. Nor was it without a certain
subdued exultation that a quiet Scotch minister learned that away
across the ocean he had found an audience as large and sympathetic
as in his own country; and a kind appreciation by the organs of
criticism there, which he could not read without much emotion. Of
course, if I had fancied myself a great genius, it would have seemed
nothing strange that the thoughts I had written down in my little
study in the country manse, should be read by many fellow-creatures
four thousand miles off. But then I knew I was not a great genius:
and so I felt it at once a great pleasure and a great surprise. My
heart smote me when I thought of some flippant words of depreciation
which these essays have contained concerning our American brothers.
They are the last this hand shall ever write: and I never will
forget how simple thoughts, only sincere and not unconsidered,
found their way to hearts, kindly Scotch and English yet, though
beating on the farther side of the Great Atlantic.
After all, a clergyman's great enjoyment is in his duty: and I
think that, unless he be crushed down by a parish of utter misery
and destitution, in which all he can do is like a drop in the ocean
(as that great and good man Dr. Guthrie tells us he was), the town
is to the clergyman better than the country. The crowded city, when
all is said, contains the best of the race. Your mind is stirred
up there, to do what you could not have done elsewhere. The best of
your energy and ability is brought out by the never-ceasing spur.
Yet you will be sensible of various evils in the city clergyman's
life. One is the great evil of over-work. You are always on the
stretch. You never feel that your work is overtaken. The time never
comes, in which you feel that you may sit down and rest: never
comes, at least, save in the autumnal holiday. It is expedient that
a city clergyman should have his mind well stored before going to
his charge: for there he will find a perpetual drain upon his mind,
and very little time for refilling it by general reading. To prepare
two sermons a week, or even one sermon a week, for an educated
congregation (or indeed for any congregation), implies no small
sustained effort. It is not so very hard to write one sermon in one
week; but is very hard to write thirty sermons in thirty successive
weeks. You know how five miles in five hours are nothing: but a
thousand miles in a thousand hours are killing. But every one knows
that the preparation for the pulpit is the least part of a town
clergyman's work. You have many sick to visit regularly: many
frail and old people who cannot come to church. You have schools,
classes, missions. And there is the constant effort to maintain
some acquaintance with the families that attend your church, so
that you and they shall not be strangers. I am persuaded that there
ought to be at least two clergymen to every extensive parish. For
it is not expedient that the clergy should have their minds and
bodies ever on the strain, just to get througr the needful work of
the day. There is no opportunity, then, for the accumulation of
some stock and store of thought and learning. And one important
service which the clergy of a country ought to render it, is the
maintenance of learning, and general culture. Indeed, a man not
fairly versed in literature and science is not capable of preaching
as is needful at the present day. And when always overdriven, a man
is tempted to lower his standard: and instead of trying to do his
work to the very best of his ability, to wish just to get decently
through it. Then, as for other men, they have the great happiness
of knowing when their work is done. When a lawyer has attended to
his cases, he has no more to do that day. So when the doctor has
visited his patients. But to clerical work there is no limit. Your
work is to do all the good you can. There is the parish: there is
the population: and the uneasy conscience is always suggesting thia
and that new scheme of benevolent exertion. The only limit to the
clergyman's duty is his strength: and very often that limit is
outrun. Oh that one could wisely fix what one may safely and rightly
do; and then resolutely determine not to attempt any more! But who
can do that? If your heart be in your work, you are every now and
then knocking yourself up. And you cannot help it. You advise your
friends prudently against overwork; and then you go and work till
you drop.
And a further evil of the town parish is, that a great part of
your work is done by the utmost stretch of body and mind. Much of
it is work of that nature, that when you are not actually doing
it, you wonder how you can do it at all. When you think of it, it
is a very great trial and effort to preach each Sunday to a thousand
or fifteen hundred human beings. And by longer experience, and that
humbler self-estimate which longer experience brings, the trial
is ever becoming greater. It is the utmost strain of human energy,
to do that duty fittingly. You know how easily some men go through
their work. It is constant and protracted; but not a very great
strain at any one time: there is no overwhelming nervous tension.
I suppose even the Chief Justice, or the Lord Chancellor, when in
the morning he walks into Court and takes his seat on the bench,
does so without a trace of nervous tremour. He is thoroughly cool.
He has a perfect conviction that he is equal to his work; that he
is master of it. But preaching is to many men an unceasing nervous
excitement. There is great wear in it. And this is so, I am
persuaded, even with the most eminent men. Preaching is a thing
by itself. When you properly reflect upon it, it is very solemn,
responsible, and awful work. Not long since, I heard the Bishop
of Oxford preach to a very great congregation. I was sitting very
near him, and watched him with the professional interest. I am much
mistaken if that great man was not as nervous as a young parson,
preaching for the first time. Pie had a number of little things in
the pulpit to look after: his cap, gloves, handkerchief, sermon-case:
I remember the nervous way in which he was twitching them about,
and arranging them. No doubt that tremour wore off when he began
to speak; and he gave a most admirable sermon. Still, the strain
had been there, and had been felt. And I do not think that the like
can recur week by week, without considerable wear of the principle
of life within. Now, in preaching to a little country congregation,
there is much less of that wear: to say nothing of the increased
physical effort of addressing many hundreds of people, as compared
with that of addressing eighty or ninety. It is quite possible that
out of the many hundreds, there may not be very many individuals of
whom, intellectually, you stand in very overwhelming awe: and the
height of a crowd of a thousand people is no more than the height
of the tallest man in it. Still, there is always something very
imposing and awe-striking in the presence of a multitude of human
beings.
And yet, if you have physical strength equal to your work, I do not
think that for all the nervous anxiety which attends your charge,
or for all its constant pressure, you would ever wish to leave it.
There is a happiness in such sacred duty which only those who have
experienced it know. And without (so far as you are aware) a shade
of self-conceit, but in entire humility and deep thankfulness, you
will rejoice that God makes you the means of comfort and advantage
to many of your fellow-men. It is a delightful thing to think
that you are of use: and, whether in town or country, the diligent
clergyman may always hope that he is so, less or more.
THE END.
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