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Title: Illustrations of Political Economy, Volume 8 (of 9)
Author: Harriet Martineau
Release date: August 12, 2024 [eBook #74238]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Charles Fox, Paternoster-Row, 1834
Credits: Emmanuel Ackerman, KD Weeks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ILLUSTRATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, VOLUME 8 (OF 9) ***
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Transcriber’s Note:
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. On each title
page, the phrase “A Tale” was printed in a blackletter font, which is
rendered here delimited by ‘=’.
The volume is a collection of three already published texts, each with
its own title page and pagination.
Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please
see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.
ILLUSTRATIONS
OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY.
BY
HARRIET MARTINEAU.
——o——
BRIERY CREEK.
THE THREE AGES.
——o——
_IN NINE VOLUMES._
VOL. VIII.
LONDON:
CHARLES FOX, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
MDCCCXXXIV.
LONDON:
Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES,
Duke-street, Lambeth.
CONTENTS.
---
BRIERY CREEK.
CHAP. PAGE│CHAP. PAGE
1. The Philosopher at Home 1│5. Introductions 94
2. The Gentleman at Home 22│6. A Father’s Hope 122
3. Saturday Morning 46│7. The End of the Matter 142
4. Sunday Evening 65│
│
THE THREE AGES..
│
1. First Age 1│3. Third Age 93
2. Second Age 35│
BRIERY CREEK.
---------------------
CHAPTER I.
THE PHILOSOPHER AT HOME.
The sun,—the bright sun of May in the western world,—was going down on
the village of Briery Creek, and there was scarcely a soul left within
its bounds to observe how the shadows lengthened on the prairie, except
Dr. Sneyd; and Dr. Sneyd was too busy to do justice to the spectacle. It
was very long since letters and newspapers had been received from
England; the rains had interfered with the post; and nothing had been
heard at the settlement for a month of what the minister was planning in
London, and what the populace was doing in Paris. Dr. Sneyd had learned,
in this time, much that was taking place among the worlds overhead; and
he now began to be very impatient for tidings respecting the Old World,
on which he had been compelled to turn his back, at the moment when its
political circumstances began to be the most interesting to him. There
had been glimpses of starlight in the intervals of the shifting spring
storms, and he had betaken himself, not in vain, to his observatory; but
no messenger, with precious leathern bag, had appeared on the partial
cessation of the rains to open, beyond the clouds of the political
hemisphere, views of the silent rise or sure progress of bright moral
truths behind the veil of prejudice and passion which was for a season
obscuring their lustre. Day after day had anxious eyes been fixed on the
ford of the creek; night after night had the doctor risen, and looked
abroad in starlight and in gloom, when the dogs were restless in the
court, or a fancied horse-tread was heard in the grassy road before the
house.
This evening Dr. Sneyd was taking resolution to file the last newspapers
he had received, and to endorse and put away the letters which, having
been read till not an atom more of meaning could be extracted from them,
might now be kept in some place where they would be safer from friction
than in a philosopher’s pocket. The filing the newspapers was done with
his usual method and alacrity, but his hand shook while endorsing the
last of his letters; and he slowly opened the sheet, to look once more
at the signature,—not from sentiment, and because it was the signature
(for Dr. Sneyd was not a man of sentiment),—but in order to observe once
again whether there had been any such tremulousness in the hand that
wrote it as might affect the chance of the two old friends meeting again
in this world: the chance which he was unwilling to believe so slight as
it appeared to Mrs. Sneyd, and his son Arthur, and every body else.
Nothing more was discoverable from the writing, and the key was
resolutely turned upon the letter. The next glance fell upon the
materials of a valuable telescope, which lay along one side of the room,
useless till some glasses should arrive to replace those which had been
broken during the rough journey to this remote settlement. Piece by
piece was handled, fitted, and laid down again. Then a smile passed over
the philosopher’s countenance as his eye settled on the filmy orb of the
moon, already showing itself, though the sun had not yet touched the
western verge of the prairie. It was something to have the same moon to
look at through the same telescopes as when he was not alone in science,
in the depths of a strange continent. The face of the land had changed;
he had become but too well acquainted with the sea; a part of the
heavens themselves had passed away, and new worlds of light come before
him in their stead; but the same sun shone in at the south window of his
study; the same moon waxed and waned above his observatory; and he was
eager to be once more recognising her volcanoes and plains through the
instrument which he had succeeded in perfecting for use. This reminded
him to note down in their proper places the results of his last
observations; and in a single minute, no symptom remained of Dr. Sneyd
having old friends whom he longed to see on the other side of the world;
or of his having suffered from the deferred hope of tidings; or of his
feeling impatient about his large telescope; or of any thing but his
being engrossed in his occupation.
Yet he heard the first gentle tap at the south window, and, looking over
his spectacles at the little boy who stood outside, found time to bid
him come in and wait for liberty to talk. The doctor went on writing,
the smile still on his face, and Temmy,—in other words, Temple Temple,
heir of Temple Lodge,—crept in at the window, and stole quietly about
the room to amuse himself, till his grandfather should be at liberty to
attend to him. While the pen scratched the paper, and ceased, and
scratched again, Temmy walked along the bookshelves, and peeped into the
cylinder of the great telescope, and cast a frightened look behind him
on having the misfortune to jingle some glasses, and then slid into the
low arm-chair to study for the hundredth time the prints that hung
opposite,—the venerable portraits of his grandfather’s two most intimate
friends. Temmy had learned to look on these wise men of another
hemisphere with much of the same respect as on the philosophers of a
former age. His grandfather appeared to him incalculably old, and
unfathomably wise; and it was his grandfather’s own assurance that these
two philosophers were older and wiser still. When to this was added the
breadth of land and sea across which they dwelt, it was no wonder that,
in the eyes of the boy, they had the sanctity of the long-buried dead.
“Where is your grandmamma, Temmy?” asked Dr. Sneyd, at length, putting
away his papers. “Do you know whether she is coming to take a walk with
me?”
“I cannot find her,” said the boy. “I went all round the garden, and
through the orchard——”
“And into the poultry yard?”
“Yes; and every where else. All the doors are open, and the place quite
empty. There is nobody at home here, nor in all the village, except at
our house.”
“All gone to the squirrel-hunt; or rather to meet the hunters, for the
sport must be over by this time; but your grandmamma does not hunt
squirrels. We must turn out and find her. I dare say she is gone to the
Creek to look for the postman.”
Temmy hoped that all the squirrels were not to be shot. Though there had
been far too many lately, he should be sorry if they were all to
disappear.
“You will have your own two, in their pretty cage, at any rate, Temmy.”
Temmy’s tearful eyes, twisted fingers, and scarlet colour, said the “no”
he could not speak at the moment. Grandpapa liked to get at the bottom
of every thing; and he soon discovered that the boy’s father had, for
some reason unknown, ordered that no more squirrels should be seen in
his house, and that the necks of Temmy’s favourites should be wrung.
Temmy had no other favourites instead. He did not like to begin with any
new ones without knowing whether he might keep them; and he had not yet
asked his papa what he might be permitted to have.
“We must all have patience, Temmy, about our favourites. I have had a
great disappointment about one of mine.”
Temmy brushed away his tears to hear what favourites grandpapa could
have. Neither cat, nor squirrel, nor bird had ever met his eye in this
house; and the dogs in the court were for use, not play.
Dr. Sneyd pointed to his large telescope, and said that the cylinder,
without the lenses, was to him no more than a cage without squirrels
would be to Temmy.
“But you will have the glasses by and by, grandpapa, and I——”
“Yes; I hope to have them many months hence, when the snow is thick on
the ground, and the sleigh can bring me my packages of glass without
breaking them, as the last were broken that came over the log road. But
all this time the stars are moving over our heads; and in these fine
spring evenings I should like very much to be finding out many things
that I must remain ignorant of till next year; and I cannot spare a
whole year now so well as when I was younger.”
“Cannot you do something while you are waiting?” was Temmy’s question.
His uncle Arthur would have been as much diverted at it as Dr. Sneyd
himself was; for the fact was, Dr. Sneyd had always twice as much
planned to be done as any body thought he could get through. Temmy did
not know what a large book he was writing; nor how much might be learned
by means of the inferior instruments; nor what a number of books the
philosopher was to read through, nor how large a correspondence was to
be carried on, before the snow could be on the ground again.
“Now let us walk to the creek” was a joyful sound to the boy, who made
haste to find the doctor’s large straw hat. When the philosopher had put
it on, over his thin grey hair, he turned towards one of his many
curious mirrors, and laughed at his own image.
“Temmy,” said he, “do you remember me before I wore this large hat? Do
you remember my great wig?”
“O yes, and the black, three-cornered hat. I could not think who you
were the first day I met you without that wig. But I think I never saw
any body else with such a wig.”
“And in England they would not know what to make of me without it. I was
just thinking how Dr. Rogers would look at me, if he could see me now;
he would call me quite an American,—very like a republican.”
“Are you an American? Are you a republican?”
“I was a republican in England, and in France, and wherever I have been,
as much as I am now. As to being an American, I suppose I must call
myself one; but I love England very dearly, Temmy. I had rather live
there than any where, if it were but safe for me; but we can make
ourselves happy here. Whatever happens, we always find afterwards, or
shall find when we are wiser, is for our good. Some people at home have
made a great mistake about me; but all mistakes will be cleared up some
time or other, my dear; and in the mean while, we must not be angry with
one another, though we cannot help being sorry for what has happened.”
“I think uncle Arthur is very angry indeed. He said one day that he
would never live among those people in England again.”
“I dare say there will be no reason for his living there; but he has
promised me to forgive them for misunderstanding and disliking me. And
you must promise me the same thing when you grow old enough to see what
such a promise means.—Come here, my dear. Stand just where I do, and
look up under the eaves. Do you see anything?”
“O, I see a little bird moving!”
Temmy could not tell what bird it was. He was a rather dull
child—usually called uncommonly stupid—as indeed he too often appeared.
Whither his wits strayed from the midst of the active little world in
which he lived, where the wits of everybody else were lively enough, no
one could tell—if, indeed, he had any wits. His father thought it
impossible that Temple Temple, heir of Temple Lodge and its fifty
thousand acres, should not grow up a very important personage. Mrs.
Temple had an inward persuasion, that no one understood the boy but
herself. Dr. Sneyd did not profess so to understand children as to be
able to compare Temmy with others, but thought him a good little fellow,
and had no doubt he would do very well. Mrs. Sneyd’s hopes and fears on
the boy’s account varied, while her tender pity was unremitting: and
uncle Arthur was full of indignation at Temple for cowing the child’s
spirit, and thus blunting his intellect. To all other observers it was
but too evident that Temmy did not know a martin from a crow, or a
sycamore from a thorn.
“That bird is a martin, come to build under our eaves, my dear. If we
were to put up a box, I dare say the bird would begin to build in it
directly.”
Temmy was for putting up a box, and his grandpapa for furnishing him
with favourites which should be out of sight and reach of Mr. Temple. In
two minutes, therefore, the philosopher was mounted on a high stool,
whence he could reach the low eaves; and Temmy was vibrating on tiptoe,
holding up at arms’ length that which, being emptied of certain
mysterious curiosities, (which might belong either to grandpapa’s
apparatus of science, or grandmamma’s of housewifery,) was now destined
to hold the winged curiosities which were flitting round during the
operation undertaken on their behalf.
Before descending, the doctor looked about him, on the strange sight of
a thriving uninhabited village. Everybody seemed to be out after the
squirrel hunters. When, indeed, the higher ground near the Creek was
attained, Dr. Sneyd perceived that Mr. Temple’s family was at home. On
the terrace was the gentleman himself, walking backwards and forwards in
his usual after-dinner state. His lady (Dr. Sneyd’s only daughter) was
stooping among her flowers, while Ephraim, the black boy, was attending
at her heels, and the figures of other servants popped into sight and
away again, as they were summoned and dismissed by their master. The
tavern, kept by the surgeon of the place, stood empty, if it might be
judged by its open doors, where no one went in and out. Dods was not to
be seen in the brick-ground; which was a wonder, as Dods was a hard-
working man, and his task of making bricks for Mr. Temple’s grand
alterations had been so much retarded by the late rains that it was
expected of Dods that he would lose not a day nor an hour while the
weather continued fair. Mrs. Dods was not at work under her porch, as
usual, at this hour; nor was the young lawyer, Mr. Johnson, flitting
from fence to fence of the cottages on the prairie, to gather up and
convey the news of what had befallen since morning. About the rude
dwelling within the verge of the forest, there was the usual fluttering
of fowls and yelping of dogs; but neither was the half-savage woodsman
(only known by the name of Brawn) to be seen loitering about with his
axe, nor were his equally uncivilized daughters (the Brawnees) at their
sugar troughs under the long row of maples. The Indian corn seemed to
have chosen its own place for springing, and to be growing untended; so
rude were the fences which surrounded it, and so rank was the prairie
grass which struggled with it for possession of the furrows. The expanse
of the prairie was undiversified with a single living thing. A solitary
tree, or a cluster of bushes here and there, was all that broke the
uniformity of the grassy surface, as far as the horizon, where the black
forest rose in an even line, and seemed to seclude the region within its
embrace. There was not such an absence of sound as of motion. The waters
of the Creek, to which Dr. Sneyd and Temmy were proceeding, dashed
along, swollen by the late rains, and the flutter and splash of wild
fowl were heard from their place of assemblage,—the riffle of the Creek,
or the shallows formed by the unevenness of its rocky bottom. There were
few bird-notes heard in the forest; but the horses of the settlement
were wandering there, with bells about their necks. The breezes could
find no entrance into the deep recesses of the woods; but they whispered
in their play among the wild vines that hung from a height of fifty
feet. There was a stir also among the rhododendrons, thickets of which
were left to flourish on the borders of the wood; and with their rustle
in the evening wind were mingled the chirping, humming, and buzzing of
an indistinguishable variety of insects on the wing and among the grass.
“I see grandmamma coming out of Dods’s porch,” cried Temmy. “What has
she been there for, all alone?”
“I believe she has been the round of the cottages, feeding the pigs and
fowls, because the neighbours are away. This is like your grandmamma,
and it explains her being absent so long. You see what haste she is
making towards us. Now tell me whether you hear anything on the other
side of the Creek.”
Temmy heard something, but he could not say what,—whether winds, or
waters, or horses, or insects, or all these. Dr. Sneyd thought he heard
cart wheels approaching along the smooth natural road which led out of
the forest upon the prairie. The light, firm soil of this kind of road
was so favourable for carriages, that they did not give the rumbling and
creaking notice of their approach which is common on the log road which
intersects a marsh. The post messenger was the uppermost person in Dr.
Sneyd’s thoughts just now, whether waggon wheels or horse tread greeted
his ear. He was partly right and partly wrong in his present
conjectures. A waggon appeared from among the trees, but it contained
nobody whom he could expect to be the bearer of letters;—nobody but
Arthur’s assistant Isaac, accompanied by Mr. Temple’s black man Julian,
bringing home a stock of groceries and other comforts from a distant
store, to which they had been sent to make purchases.
The vehicle came to a halt on the opposite ridge; and no wonder, for it
was not easy to see how it was to make further progress. The Creek was
very fine to look at in its present state; but it was anything but
tempting to travellers. The water, which usually ran clear and shallow,
when there was more than enough to fill the deep holes in its bed, now
brought mud from its source, and bore on its troubled surface large
branches, and even trunks of trees. It was so much swollen from the late
rains that its depth was not easily ascertainable; but many a brier
which had lately overhung its course from the bank was now swaying in
its current, and looking lost in a new element. Isaac and Julian by
turns descended the bank to the edge of the water, but could not learn
thereby whether or not it was fordable. Their next proceeding was to
empty the cart, and drive into the flood by way of experiment.—The water
only half filled the vehicle, and the horse kept his footing admirably,
so that it was only to drive back again, and to bring the goods,—some on
the dry seat of the waggon, and some on the backs of Isaac and Julian,
as the one drove, and the other took care of the packages within. Two
trips, it was thought, would suffice to bring over the whole, high and
dry.
“What are you all about here?” asked Mrs. Sneyd, who had come up
unobserved while her husband and grandchild were absorbed in watching
the passage of the Creek. “The goods arriving! Bless me! I hope they
will get over safely. It would be too provoking if poor Arthur should
lose his first batch of luxuries. He has lived so long on Indian corn
bread, and hominy, and wild turkeys, and milk, that it is time he should
be enjoying his meal of wheaten bread and tea.”
“And the cloth for his new coat is there, grandmamma.”
“Yes; and plenty of spice and other good things for your papa. I do not
know what he will say if they are washed away; but I care much more for
your coffee, my dear,” continued she, turning to the doctor. “I am
afraid your observations and authorship will suffer for want of your
coffee. Do try and make Isaac hear that he is to take particular care of
the coffee.”
“Not I, my dear,” replied Dr. Sneyd, laughing. “I would advocate
Arthur’s affairs, if any. But the men seem to be taking all possible
care. I should advise their leaving the goods and cart together on the
other side, but that I rather think, there will be more rain before
morning, so as to make matters worse to-morrow, besides the risk of a
soaking during the night. Here they come! Now for it! How they dash down
the bank! There! They will upset the cart if they do not take care.”
“That great floating tree will upset them. What a pity they did not see
it in time! There! I thought so.”
The mischief was done. The trunk, with a new rush of water, was too much
for the light waggon. It turned over on its side, precipitating driver,
Julian, and all the packages into the muddy stream. The horse scrambled
and struggled till Isaac could regain his footing, and set the animal
free, while Julian was dashing the water from his face, and snatching at
one package after another as they eddied round him, preparatory to being
carried down the Creek.
Dr. Sneyd caught the frightened horse, as he scampered up the briery
bank. Mrs. Sneyd shouted a variety of directions which would have been
excellent, if they could have been heard; while Temmy stood looking
stupid.
“Call help, my dear boy,” said Dr. Sneyd.
“Where? I do not know where to go.”
“Do you hear the popping of guns in the wood? Some of the hunters are
coming back. Go and call them.”
“Where? I do not know which way.”
“In the direction of the guns, my dear. In that quarter, near the large
hickory. I think you will find them there.”
Temmy did not know a hickory by sight; but he could see which way Dr.
Sneyd’s finger pointed; and he soon succeeded in finding the party, and
bringing them to the spot.
“Arthur, I am very sorry,” said the doctor, on seeing his son come
running to view the disaster. “Mortal accidents, my dear son! We must
make up our minds to them.”
“Yes, father, when they are purely accidents: but this is
carelessness,—most provoking carelessness.”
“Indeed, the men did make trial of what they were about,” said the
doctor.
“The great tree came down so very fast!” added Temmy.
“Yes, yes. I am not blaming Isaac. It was my carelessness in not
throwing a bridge over the Creek long ago. Never mind that now! Let us
save what we can.”
It was a sorry rescue. The cart was broken, but it could be easily
mended. The much-longed-for wheaten flour appeared in the shape of a
sack of soiled pulp, which no one would think of swallowing. The coffee
might be dried. The tea was not altogether past hope. Sugar, salt, and
starch, were melted into one mass. Mr. Temple’s spices were supposed to
be by this time perfuming the stream two miles below; his wax candles
were battered, so that they could, at best, be used only as short ends;
and the oil for his hall lamps was diffusing a calm over the surface of
the stream. Mrs. Sneyd asked her husband whether some analogous
appliance could not be found for the proprietor’s ruffled temper, when
he should hear of the disaster.
The news could not be long in reaching him, for the other party of
squirrel-hunters, bringing with them all the remaining women and
children of the village, appeared from the forest, and the tidings
spread from mouth to mouth. As soon as Temmy saw that Uncle Arthur was
standing still, and looking round him for a moment, he put one of his
mistimed questions, at the end of divers remarks.
“How many squirrels have you killed, uncle? I do not think you can have
killed any at all; we saw so many as we came up here! Some were running
along your snake fence, uncle; and grandpapa says they were not of the
same kind as those that run up the trees. But we saw a great many run up
the trees, too. I dare say, half a dozen or a dozen. How many have you
killed, uncle?”
“Forty-one. The children there will tell you all about it.”
“Forty-one! And how many did David kill? And your whole party, uncle?”
Arthur gave the boy a gentle push towards the sacks of dead squirrels,
and Temmy, having no notion why or how he had been troublesome, amused
himself with pitying the slaughtered animals, and stroking his cheeks
with the brushes of more than a hundred of them. He might have gone on
to the whole number bagged,—two hundred and ninety-three,—if his
attention had not been called off by the sudden silence which preceded a
speech from uncle Arthur.
“Neighbours,” said Arthur, “I take the blame of this mischance upon
myself. I will not say that some of you might not have reminded me to
bridge the Creek, before I spent my time and money on luxuries that we
could have waited for a while longer; but the chief carelessness was
mine, I freely own. It seems a strange time to choose for asking a
favour of you——”
He was interrupted by many a protestation that his neighbours were ready
to help to bridge the Creek; that it was the interest of all that the
work should be done, and not a favour to himself alone. He went on:—
“I was going to say that when it happens to you, as now to me, that you
wish to exchange the corn that you grow for something that our prairies
do not produce, you will feel the want of such a bridge as much as I do
now; though I hope through a less disagreeable experience. In self-
defence, I must tell you, however, how little able I have been till
lately to provide any but the barest necessaries for myself and my men.
This will show you that I cannot now pay you for the work you propose to
do.”
He was interrupted by assurances that nobody wanted to be paid; that
they would have a bridging frolic, as they had before had a raising
frolic to build the surgeon’s tavern, and a rolling frolic to clear
Brawn’s patch of ground, and as they meant to have a reaping frolic when
the corn should be ripe. It should be a pic-nic. Nobody supposed that
Arthur had yet meat, bread, and whisky to spare.
“I own that I have not,” said he. “You know that when I began to till my
ground, I had no more capital than was barely sufficient to fence and
break up my fields, and feed me and my two labourers while my first crop
was growing. Just before it ripened, I had nothing left; but what I had
spent was well spent. It proved a productive consumption indeed; for my
harvest brought back all I had spent, with increase. This increase was
not idly consumed by me. I began to pay attention to my cattle, improved
my farm buildings, set up a kiln, and employed a labourer in making
bricks. The fruits of my harvest were thus all consumed; but they were
again restored with increase. Then I thought I might begin to indulge
myself with the enjoyment for which I had toiled so long and so hard. I
did not labour merely to have so much corn in my barns, but to enjoy the
corn, and whatever else it would bring me,—as we all do,—producing,
distributing, and exchanging, that we may afterwards enjoy.”
“Not quite all, Mr. Arthur,” said Johnson, the lawyer. “There is your
brother-in-law, Mr. Temple, who seems disposed to enjoy everything,
without so much as soiling his fingers with gathering a peach. And there
is a certain friend of ours, settled farther east, who toils like a
horse, and lives like a beggar, that he may hoard a roomful of dollars.”
“Temple produces by means of the hoarded industry of his fathers,—by
means of his capital,” replied Arthur. “And the miser you speak of
enjoys his dollars, I suppose, or he would change them away for
something else. Well, friends, there is little temptation for us to
hoard up our wealth. We have corn instead of dollars, and corn will not
keep like dollars.”
“Why should it?” asked Dods the brickmaker. “Who would take the trouble
to raise more corn than he wants to eat, if he did not hope to exchange
it for something desirable?”
“Very true. Then comes the question, what a man shall choose in
exchange. I began pretty well. I laid out some of my surplus in
providing for a still greater next year; which, in my circumstances, was
my first duty. Then I began to look to the end for which I was working;
and I reached forward to it a little too soon. I should have roasted my
corn ears and drank milk a little longer, and expended my surplus on a
bridge, before I thought of wheaten flour and tea and coffee.”
“Three months hence,” said somebody, “you will be no worse off (except
for the corn ears and milk you must consume instead of flour and tea)
than if you had had your wish. Your flour and tea would have been clean
gone by that time, without any return.”
“You grant that I must go without the pleasure,” said Arthur, smiling.
“Never mind that. But you will not persuade me that it is not a clear
loss to have flour spoiled, and sugar and salt melted together in the
creek; unless, indeed, they go to fatten the fish in the holes. Besides,
there is the mortification of feeling that your toil in making this
bridge might have been paid with that which is lost in the purchase of
luxuries which none will enjoy.”
Being vehemently exhorted to let this consideration give him no concern,
he concluded,
“I will take your advice, thank you. I will not trouble myself or you
more about this loss; and I enlarge upon it now only because it may be
useful to us as a lesson how to use the fruits of our labour. I have
been one of the foremost to laugh at our neighbours in the next
settlement for having,—not their useful frolics, like ours of to-
morrow,—but their shooting-matches and games in the wood, when the water
was so bad that it was a grievance to have to drink it. I was as ready
as any one to see that the labour spent on these pastimes could not be
properly afforded, if there were really no hands to spare to dig wells.
And now, instead of asking them when they mean to have their welling
frolic, our wisest way will be to get our bridge up before there is time
for our neighbours to make a laughing-stock of us. When that is done, I
shall be far from satisfied. I shall still feel that it is owing to me
that my father goes without his coffee, while he is watching through the
night when we common men are asleep.
”That is as much Temple’s concern as the young man’s," observed the
neighbours one to another. “Freely as he flings his money about, one
would think Temple might see that the doctor was at least as well
supplied with luxuries as himself.” “Why the young man should be left to
toil and make capital so painfully and slowly, when Temple squanders so
much, is a mystery to every body.” "A quarter of what Temple has spent
in making and unmaking his garden would have enabled Arthur Sneyd’s new
field to produce double, or have improved his team; and Temple himself
would have been all the better for the interest it would have yielded,
instead of his money bringing no return. But Temple is not the man to
lend a helping hand to a young farmer,—be he his brother-in-law or a
mere stranger."
Such were the remarks which Arthur was not supposed to hear, and to
which he did not therefore consider himself called upon to reply.
Seeing his father and mother in eager consultation with the still
dripping Isaac, he speedily completed the arrangements for the next
day’s meeting, toils, and pleasures, and joined the group. Isaac had
but just recollected that in his pocket he brought a packet of
letters and several newspapers, which had found their way, in some
circuitous manner, to the store where he had been trafficking. The
whole were deplorably soaked with mud. It seemed doubtful whether a
line of the writing could ever be made out. But Mrs. Sneyd’s
cleverness had been proved equal to emergencies nearly as great as
this. She had once got rid of the stains of a stand full of ink
which had been overset on a parchment which bore a ten-guinea stamp.
She had recovered the whole to perfect smoothness, and fitness to be
written upon. Many a time had she contrived to restore the writing
which had been discharged from her father’s manuscript chemical
lectures, when spillings from his experiments had occurred scarcely
half an hour before the lecture-room began to fill. No wonder her
husband was now willing to confide in her skill—no wonder he was
anxious to see Temmy home as speedily as possible, that he might
watch the processes of dipping and drying and unfolding, on which
depended almost the dearest of his enjoyments,—intercourse with
faithful friends far away.
---------------------
CHAPTER II.
THE GENTLEMAN AT HOME.
Master Temple Temple was up early, and watching the weather, the next
morning, with far more eagerness than his father would have approved,
unless some of his own gentlemanlike pleasures had been in question. If
Mr. Temple had known that his son and heir cared for the convenience of
his industrious uncle Arthur, and of a parcel of labourers, the boy
would hardly have escaped a long lecture on the depravity of his tastes,
and the vulgarity of his sympathies. But Mr. Temple knew nothing that
passed prior to his own majestic descent to the breakfast-room, where
the silver coffee-pot was steaming fragrantly, and the windows were
carefully opened or scrupulously shut, so as to temper the visitations
of the outward air, while his lady sat awaiting his mood, and trembling
lest he should find nothing that he could eat among the variety of forms
of diet into which the few elements at the command of her cook had been
combined. Mrs. Temple had never been very happy while within reach of
markets and shops; but she was now often tempted to believe that almost
all her troubles would be at an end if she had but the means of
indulging her husband’s fastidious appetite. It was a real misery to be
for ever inventing, and for ever in vain, new cookeries of Indian corn,
beef, lean pork, geese and turkeys, honey and milk. Beyond these
materials, she had nothing to depend upon but chance arrivals of flour,
pickles, and groceries; and awfully passed the day when there was any
disappointment at breakfast. She would willingly have surrendered her
conservatory, her splendid ornaments, the pictures, plate, and even the
library of her house, and the many thousand acres belonging to it, to
give to her husband such an unscrupulous appetite as Arthur’s, or such a
cheerful temper as Dr. Sneyd’s. It was hard that her husband’s ill-
humour about his privations should fall upon her; for she was not the
one who did the deed, whatever it might be, which drove the gentleman
from English society. The sacrifice was quite as great to her as it
could possibly be to him; and there was inexpressible meanness in
Temple’s aggravating, by complaints of his own share, the suffering
which he had himself brought upon her. Temple seemed always to think
himself a great man, however; and always greatest when causing the
utmost sensation in those about him.
This morning, he stalked into the breakfast room in remarkable state. He
looked almost as tall as his wife when about to speak to her, and was as
valiant in his threats against the people who disturbed him by passing
before his window, as his son in planning his next encounter with
Brawn’s great turkey.
“Come away from the window, this moment, Temple. I desire you will never
stand there when the people are flocking past in this manner. Nothing
gratifies them more. They blow those infernal horns for no other purpose
than to draw our attention. Ring the bell, Temple.”
When Marius appeared, in answer to the bell, he was ordered to pull down
that blind; and if the people did not go away directly, to bid them
begone, and blow their horns somewhere out of his hearing.
"They will be gone soon enough, sir. It is a busy day with them. They
are making a frolic to bridge the Creek, because of what happened—"
A terrified glance of Mrs. Temple’s stopped the man in his reference to
what had taken place the evening before. It was hoped that the stock of
coffee might be husbanded till more could arrive, that the idea of
chocolate might be insinuated into the gentleman’s mind, and that the
shortness of the wax candles, and the deficiency of light in the hall at
night, might possibly escape observation.
“The bridge over the Creek being much wanted by every body, sir,”
continued Marius, "every body is joining the frolic to work at it; that
is, if——"
“Not I, nor any of my people. Let me hear no more about it, if you
please. I have given no orders to have a bridge built.”
Marius withdrew. The cow-horns were presently no longer heard—not that
Marius had done any thing to silence them. He knew that the blowers were
not thinking of either him or his master; but merely passing to their
place of rendezvous, calling all frolickers together by the way.
“Temple, you find you can live without your squirrels, I hope,” said the
tender father. “Now, no crying! I will not have you cry.”
“Bring me your papa’s cup, my dear,” interposed his mother; “and
persuade him to try these early strawberries. The gardener surprised us
this morning with a little plate of strawberries. Tell your papa about
the strawberries in the orchard, my dear.”
In the intervals of sobs, and with streaming eyes, Temmy told the happy
news that strawberries had spread under all the trees in the orchard,
and were so full of blossom, that the gardener thought the orchard would
soon look like a field of white clover.
“Wild strawberries, I suppose. Tasteless trash!” was the remark upon
this intelligence.
Before a more promising subject was started, the door opened, and Dr.
Sneyd appeared. Mr. Temple hastened to rise, put away, with a prodigious
crackling and shuffling, the papers he held, quickened Temmy’s motions
in setting a chair, and pressed coffee and strawberries on “the old
gentleman,” as he was wont to call Dr. Sneyd. It was impossible that
there could be much sympathy between two men so unlike; but it
singularly happened that Dr. Sneyd had a slighter knowledge than any
body in the village of the peculiarities of his son-in-law. He was
amused at some of his foibles, vexed at others, and he sighed, at times,
when he saw changes of looks and temper creeping over his daughter, and
thought what she might have been with a more suitable companion; but
Temple stood in so much awe of the philosopher as to appear a somewhat
different person before him and in any other presence. Temmy now knew
that he was safe from misfortune for half an hour; and being unwilling
that grandpapa should see traces of tears, he slipped behind the window
blind, to make his observations on the troop which was gathering in the
distance on the way to the creek. He stood murmuring to himself,—"There
goes Big Brawn and the Brawnees! I never saw any women like those
Brawnees. I think they could pull up a tall tree by the roots, if they
tried. I wonder when they will give me some more honey to taste. There
goes Dods! He must be tired before the frolic begins; for he has been
making bricks ever since it was light. I suppose he is afraid papa will
be angry if he does not make bricks as fast as he can. Papa was so angry
with the rain for spoiling his bricks before! There goes David——" And so
on, through the entire population, out of the bounds of Temple Lodge.
“I came to ask,” said the doctor, “how many of your men you can spare to
this frolic to-day. Arthur will be glad of all the assistance that can
be had, that the work may be done completely at once.”
The reply was, that Arthur seemed an enterprising young man.
"He is: just made for his lot. But I ought not to call this Arthur’s
enterprise altogether. The Creek is no more his than it is yours or
mine. The erection is for the common good, as the disaster last
night"—(a glance from Mrs. Temple to her husband’s face, and a peep from
Temmy, from behind the blind)—“was, in fact, a common misfortune.”
Mr. Temple took snuff, and asked no questions at present.
“I have been telling my wife,” observed the doctor, “that I am
prodigiously tempted to try the strength of my arm myself, to-day.”
"I hope not, my dear sir. Your years——The advancement of science, you
know——Just imagine its being told in Paris, among your friends of the
Institute, that you had been helping to build a bridge! Temple, ring the
bell."
Marius was desired to send Ephraim to receive his master’s commands. In
a few minutes, the door slowly opened, a strange metallic sound was
heard, and a little negro boy, stunted in form and mean in countenance,
stood bowing in the presence.
"Ephraim, go into the park field, and tell Martin to send as many
labourers as he can spare to help to bridge the creek. And as you come
back——"
During this time, Dr. Sneyd had turned on his chair to observe the boy.
He now rose rapidly, and went to convince himself that his eyes did not
deceive him. It was really true that the right ankle and left wrist of
the little lad were connected by a light fetter.
“Who has the key of this chain?” asked Dr. Sneyd of his daughter, who,
blushing scarlet, looked towards her husband.
“Give it me,” said the doctor, holding out his hand.
“Excuse me, my dear sir. You do not know the boy.”
“Very true: but that does not alter the case. The key, if you please.”
After a moment’s hesitation, it was produced from the waistcoat pocket.
Dr. Sneyd set the boy free, bade him make haste to do his master’s
bidding, and quietly doubling the chain, laid it down on a distant
table.
“He never made haste in his life, sir,” protested Mr. Temple. “You do
not know the lad, sir, believe me.”
“I do not: and I am sorry to hear such an account of him. This is a
place where no one can be allowed to loiter and be idle.”
Ephraim showed that he could make haste; for he lost no time in getting
out of the room, when he had received his final orders. At the moment,
and for a few moments more, Dr. Sneyd was relating to his daughter the
contents of the letters received from England the night before. Mr.
Temple meanwhile was stirring the fire, flourishing his handkerchief,
and summoning courage to be angry with Dr. Sneyd.
“Do you know, sir,” said he, at length, "that boy is my servant? Let me
tell you, that for one gentleman to interfere with another gentleman’s
servants is——"
Dr. Sneyd was listening so calmly, with his hands resting on the head of
his cane, that Temple’s words, somehow or other, failed him.
"Such interference is——is——This boy, sir, is my servant."
“Your servant, but not your slave. Do you know, Temple, it is I who
might call you to account, rather than you me. As one of the same race
with this boy, I have a right to call you to account for making property
of that which is no property. There is no occasion, I trust, for you and
me to refer this matter to a magistrate: but, till compelled to do so, I
have a full right to strike off chains wherever I meet with them.”
"You may meet with them in the woods, or as far over the prairie as you
are likely to walk, my dear sir, for this lad is a notorious runaway: he
has escaped three times. Nothing short of such an offence could have
made me do any thing which might appear harsh. If he runs away again, I
assure you I shall be compelled to employ the restraint in question: I
give you warning that I must. So, if you should meet him, thus
restrained, you know——"
"O, yes; I shall know what to do. I shall take off the chain that he may
hie the faster.——I see your conservatory is in great beauty. I imagine
you must have adopted Arthur’s notion about warming it."
“Not Mr. Sneyd’s. O, no; it was Mrs. Temple’s idea.”
“Not originally; it was Arthur who advised me,” declared Mrs. Temple. “I
hope you will soon have some of the benefit of his devices about the
kitchen-garden, father. The gardener has orders to send you some of the
first vegetables and fruit that are ready for gathering; and I am going
to carry my mother some flowers to-day.”
“I was about to ask when you will dine with us,” said Dr. Sneyd. “I
think it had better be when some of the good things you speak of are
ready; for we have few luxuries to offer you. But when will you come?”
Mr. Temple was sorry that his time was now so occupied with
business,—his affairs at the land-office, in addition to all his own
concerns,—that he could form no engagements. Mrs. Temple would answer
for herself and her son.
Dr. Sneyd was not aware of this new occupation of Mr. Temple’s. He was
particularly glad to hear of it, and told it to his wife as a piece of
very good news, as soon as he got home. They both hoped that their
daughter would be all the happier for her husband having something to do
and to think about, beyond his own affairs.
“What is all this?” cried Mr. Temple, returning from bowing out Dr.
Sneyd with much civility. “What accident happened last night, pray?”
On being told of the upsetting of the waggon, he was not the less angry
for his internal consciousness that he caused himself to be treated like
a child, by being unable to bear cross accidents. His horse was ordered
instantly, his morning gown exchanged for his pretty riding equipments,
and his wife and son left to gaze from one window and another to learn,
if possible, what was to happen next, and to reason with one another
about their lesser troubles, after the manner of tender mothers and
confiding children. Temmy saw very clearly that it could do no good to
cry whenever squirrels were mentioned, and that it must be much
pleasanter to papa to see his boy smile, and to hear him answer
cheerfully, than——The child’s memory could supply the contrast. This
same papa was all the time in great trouble without reasoning. He
pursued his way to the Creek as if he had been in mortal terror of the
groom who followed at his heels.
“Aside the devil turned for envy,” says Milton. Such a pang has since
been the lot of many a splenetic descendant of the arch-fiend, on
witnessing happiness that he not only could not share, but could not
sympathize in. Such a pang exasperated Mr. Temple on casting his first
glance over the scene of the frolic. He despised every body there, from
Arthur, now brandishing his rule, now lending a hand to place a heavy
beam, to the youngest of Dods’s children, who thought she was helping by
sticking corn-cobs into the crevices of the logs. He despised Brawn, the
woodsman, with his round shoulders, enormous bush of hair, and hands
that looked as if they could lift up a house. He despised the daughters,
Black Brawnee and Brown Brawnee, as they were called. He was never very
easy when he fell in with these girls in the depths of the forest,
tapping their row of maple trees, and kneeling at the troughs beneath;
or on the flowery prairie, lining the wild bees to their haunt in the
hollow tree. He felt himself an object of ridicule to these daughters of
the forest, and so insignificant in respect of all the qualifications
which they valued, that none of his personal accomplishments gave him
any comfortable feeling of confidence in their presence; and the
merriment with which they now pursued as sport a toil which would have
been death to him, irritated him to a degree which they were amused to
witness. He despised the whole apparatus of festivity: the pig roasting
in the shade, and the bustle of the women preparing the various messes
of corn, and exhibiting their stores of salt beef. He pronounced the
whole vulgar,—so excessively vulgar,—that he could not endure that a son
of Dr. Sneyd’s should be assisting in the fête. The axe and mattock
sounded in a very annoying way; the buzz of voices and of laughter were
highly discreditable to the order of the place; and the work was so
rough that, in all probability, he should be obliged to witness some
wounds or bruises if he did not get away. So he hastened to conceal his
envy from himself, and to express his contempt as plainly as possible.
He raised himself in his stirrups, and called out his men by name. They
came forth unwillingly, having but just arrived to join the frolic, and
suspecting that their capricious master meant to send them home again. A
glance of mutual condolence between two of them was observed by Mr.
Temple, and did no good to their cause. They were ordered to return
instantly to their work in the park-field, and to appear no more near
the Creek this day.
“We will do some of their work in the park-field to-morrow, Mr. Temple,”
said Arthur, “if you will let us have the benefit of their labour now.”
Under a sense of infinite obligation, Mr. Temple explained that he
permitted none but his own people,—no vagabond woodsmen,—no workmen who
came hither because they were driven out of the civilized world,—to
touch his land. And, after the losses of the preceding evening, he could
not think of giving his men a holiday,—losses of which Arthur had not
even had the grace to apprize him. Arthur was surprized. He could not
have supposed that such a piece of news could have been long in
travelling through the village of Briery Creek, considering that
Temple’s man had been one of the waggoners, Temple’s son a witness of
the whole, and the entire population of the place on the spot before the
adventure was finished. Why was it more Arthur’s duty than any one’s
else to carry him the disagreeable news?
"Your not having done it, Mr. Sneyd, is of a piece with your conduct
about the cattle-marks, sir,—of a piece with the whole of your conduct
since you entered upon your speculations in my neighbourhood. My men
shall know the story of the cattle-marks, sir, and then we shall see
which of them will stir a finger to help you with your bridge."
“What about the cattle-marks?” asked Arthur, with a perplexed look. “If
you told me, I am afraid I have forgotten.”
“You could have given me the earliest intelligence, I fancy, sir. If I
mistake not, you have entered, at the land-office, your design of
marking your sheep and pigs with three slanting slits in the right ear.”
This was true.
"And your determination was not made known,—it was not, in fact,
taken,—till the fifteenth of last month."
“I dare say not. I planned it just before my second visit to the land-
office, which was about the middle of last month.”
“Very well, sir; the fifteenth was your day. Now, I have evidence to
prove that on the thirteenth I informed my son, who, I understand,
informed Dr. Sneyd, that it was my intention to mark my cattle with
three slanting slits in the right ear.”
“Well! what then?”
"Why, just that circumstances have so fallen out as to defeat your
design, sir, which I will not stop to characterize. I have a connexion
with the land-office, sir, which you were perhaps not aware of; and my
sheep and pigs will run no risk of being confounded with yours. It is
very well to ask—‘What then?’ I should like to know whether my sheep and
pigs do not far out-number yours: and how was any one to distinguish the
one from the other, straying in the woods and prairies, if all were
marked with three slanting slits in the right ear?"
Arthur would not stoop to reply to the insinuations of his brother-in-
law. He did, for a moment, condescend to lose his temper, and would
probably have frightened the intruder off the ground by an exhibition of
passion, if the Brawnees and their father, and a few others who had
nothing to hope or fear from Temple, had not relieved him by a timely
burst of laughter. Dods dared not laugh, for he was brickmaker to
Temple; and much building remained to be done about the lodge. Others,
among whom the gentleman’s money was distributed in profusion, appeared
not to observe what was going on. Arthur only observed, before
recommencing his labours,—
“I am surprised to hear all this, Mr. Temple. I thought your cattle had
been much too proud to stray about the woods like the beasts of poor,
common settlers like us. I am sure when I grow rich enough to have
stables, and styes, and pens, such as you can command, my horses will
never be heard tinkling their bells in the forest in the evening, and
nobody will run over a pig of mine in the prairie.”
“And yet you can spare time to build bridges, Mr. Sneyd; and you can
contribute materials for a market-house and a cheese dairy. It is not to
every body that you complain of poverty.”
“To no one do I complain of poverty. I am not poor. Nobody present is
poor. There was but one short period when any of us could be justly
called so; and that was when each of us had barely enough to supply his
own actual wants.”
“That did not last long,” said Dods. “In a young settlement like ours,
two years ago, every act of labour tells. Ah! there goes my gentleman! I
thought so. He never stays to be reminded what a barbarous place he has
got into.”
“Whatever brought him here,” observed Brawn, “is more than any of us can
tell. I have seen new settlers enough in my day, my life having lain
among new clearings. Many a rough farmer, many a pale mechanic, have I
seen; the one looking gloomily into the waste before him, and the other
sinking under the toil that was too new to him. And many a trader has
passed through with his stores, and many a speculator come to gamble in
land, and go away again. But a beau like this, with a power of money to
spend, without caring to earn any, is a thing I have heard tell of far
to the east, but never thought to see. It makes one waken one’s ears to
hear what travellers tell of the reason.”
Arthur could have told the reason, as his neighbours knew; and it was
probably the hope that he might forget his discretion that made the
gossips of Briery Creek betake themselves to conjectures in his hearing
as often as he was believed to have received provocation from Temple. He
was never known, however, to deny or confirm anything that was said. It
was pretty well understood that Temple had come here because he had made
his former place of residence too hot to hold him; but whether he had
libelled or slain anybody, made himself odious as an informer, enriched
himself by unfair means, or been unfortunate in a duel, it still
remained for some accidental revelation to make known.
“How is it, Dods, that you think every act of labour tells in a young
settlement?” asked Arthur, on resuming work after a large destruction of
roast pig. “I have always understood that labour is worth more the more
it is divided; and nowhere is there less division of labour than in a
young settlement.”
“Very true. I hold that we are both right, because we are speaking of
different states of affairs. Before people have enough of anything to
change away, and while each man works for himself, each touch of his
finger, if one may say so, supplies some want of his own. No need, in
such days, to trouble your head about whether your work will sell! You
want a thing; you make it, and use it; and thereby feel how much your
work is worth. But the case is different when you have more of a thing
than you want, and would fain change it away. You cannot change it away
unless others have also something more than they want to use themselves.
Then they begin to club their labour together, and divide the work among
them, and try by what means they can get the most done; by such division
of labour they do get the most done, but it does not follow that the
workmen flourish accordingly, as they do when each works for himself.”
“Because it becomes more difficult to calculate how much of each sort of
production will be wanted. The matter becomes perplexed by the wishes of
so many being concerned. If we could understand those wishes, the more
we can get produced, the better it would be for everybody.”
“I have tried both the periods we speak of,” said Dods. "Brickmaking was
a fine business indeed in the part of England where I lived when trade
was brisk, and manufacturers building country-houses, and speculators
running up rows of cottages for weavers. But a sudden change knocked me
up when I least expected it. I went on one summer making bricks as
before;—for what should I know of the changes that were taking place on
the other side of the world, and that spread through our manufacturers,
and weavers, and builders, till they reached me? The first I knew of it
was, my not selling a brick for the whole season, and seeing house after
house deserted, till it was plain that my unbaked bricks must melt in
the winter rains, and those in the kilns crumble in the storms, before
my labour would be wanted again in that line. As for my little capital,
it melted and crumbled away with the bricks it was locked up in. Here
mine was, for a long while, the only brick house. I made not a brick too
much; so that there was no waste."
“And the same may be said of the work you do for Mr. Temple. There may
be an exact calculation how many bricks are wanted, so that you can
proportion your supply exactly to the demand.”
“And use the advantage of division of labour too, sir. No fear of a glut
coming unawares, when I have the whole of our little range under my own
eye. One of my boys may dig the clay, and another barrow the bricks to
the kiln, and the eldest tend the fires, while I am moulding, and no
fear of our all being thrown out at once by an unexpected glut; and the
more disastrously, perhaps, for our having turned our mutual help to the
best account.”
“I rather think your labour is stimulated rather than relaxed by the
high wages you get here, Mr. Dods.”
"Why, yes. That seems the natural effect of high wages, whatever people
may say of the desperate hard work of such poor creatures as the Glasgow
weavers, or the Manchester spinners. I say, look to the Irish, who have
very poor wages. Do they work hard? I say, look to the labourers in
India. They have miserable wages. Do they work hard? The difference
between these and the Lancashire spinners seems to me to be, that in
India and Ireland, some sort of subsistence,—rice and potatoes, poor
enough,—is to be had for little labour, and little more can be gained by
greater labour; while the Lancashire poor can only get a bare
subsistence by excessive labour, and therefore they labour excessively.
Put a poor diet of rice within reach of the Lancashire spinner, with the
knowledge that he can get nothing better, and he will do as little work
as will procure him a bare subsistence of rice. But try all three with
high wages, in circumstances where they may add one comfort after
another to their store, and you will see whether they will relax in
their toils till they have got all that labour can obtain."
“I say, look to the reason of the case, and it will tell the same story
as the facts. If a man is lazy, and loves idleness more than the good
things which industry will bring, there is an end of the matter, as far
as he is concerned. He is an exception to common rules. But, as long as
there is no end to the comforts and luxuries which most men prefer to
idleness, there will be no end of exertion to obtain them. I believe you
and your sons work harder than you did two years ago, though you have
ten times as many comforts about you.”
"And my wife, too, I assure you. At first, we used to sit down tired
before the end of the day, and if we had bread enough for supper, and
blankets to spread on the floor of our log-house, were apt to think we
could do no more that day, But when we had wherewith to get salt beef,
we thought we could work a little harder for something pleasanter to
drink with it than the brackish water which was used by us all at first,
for want of a sweeter draught. In like manner, when we once had a brick
cottage, there was no end of our toil to get things to put into
it;—first, bedsteads, and seats, and a table; and then crockery, and
hardware, and matting for the floors; and now my wife has set her mind
upon carpets, and a looking-glass for her customers to fancy her
handiwork by. She says ladies always admire her gowns and bonnets most
when they see them on themselves. It was but this morning that my wife
vowed that a handsome looking-glass was a necessary of life to her. We
should all have laughed enough at the idea of such a speech two years
ago."
“And with the wish, your wife brings the power to obtain these
comforts.”
"The wish would be worth little without the power; which makes it a
merciful arrangement that the wish only grows with the power. If my wife
had longed for a looking-glass before she was able to set about earning
one with her mantua-making and milliner’s work, she would have been
suffering under a useless trouble. No: it is a good thing that while
people are solitary, producing only for themselves, there is no demand
for other people’s goods——"
"I should say ‘desire.’ There is no demand till the power and the will
are joined. If your wife had pined for a mirror two years ago, there
would have been no demand for it on her part. To-morrow, if she offers a
travelling trader a smart assortment of caps,—or, what is the same
thing, if she sells her caps to the women of Briery Creek, and gives the
trader the money for his mirror,—she makes a real and effective demand.
It seems to me a blessed arrangement, too, that there is always somewhat
wherewith to supply this demand, and exactly enough to supply it."
“Ay, sir; if we were but sharp-sighted enough to take care that the
quality was as exactly fitted to human wishes as the quantity. Since we
none of us produce more than we want, just for the pleasure of toiling,
it is as plain as possible that every man’s surplus constitutes a
demand. Well! every man’s surplus is also his neighbour’s supply. The
instrument of demand that every man brings is also his instrument of
supply; so that, in point of quantity, there is always a precise
provision made for human wants.”
"Yes; and if mistakes are made as to the kinds of articles that are
wished for, there is always the consolation that such mistakes will
correct one another, as long as there can never be too much of
everything. If what we have just said be true, there being too much of
one thing proves that there must be too little of another; and the
production of the one will be slackened, and that of the other
quickened, till they are made equal. If your wife makes up more caps by
half than are wanted, caps will be ruinously cheap. The Brawnees will
give much less maple sugar for their caps——"
The Brawnees never wore caps, Arthur was reminded.
“But they will, in time, take my word for it, if they remain among us.
Well! your wife will refuse to sell her caps at so great a loss. She
will lay them by till the present generation of caps is worn out, and go
and tap the maple trees for herself, rather than pay others dearly for
it. In this case, the glut is of caps; and the deficiency is of maple
sugar.”
“My wife’s gains must depend on her own judgment in adapting her
millinery to the wants of her customers. If she makes half as many caps
again as are needed, she deserves to lose, and to have to go out sugar-
making for herself.”
"Yes: calculation may avail in a small society like this. In a larger
and more complicated society, the most that prudence can do is to watch
the changes of wants and wishes, as shown by variations of price. This
would avail for all practical purposes, if wants and wishes were left to
themselves. They are so at Briery Creek, and therefore every trader at
Briery Creek has fair play. But it is not so where bounties, and
prohibitions, and unequal taxation are made to interfere among buyers
and sellers: where such disturbing influences exist, the trader has not
fair play; and it would be a miracle indeed if he could adapt his supply
to the demand,—or, in other words, be satisfied in his own demand. What
is moving in the wood there, Dods? What takes all our people away from
their work when it is so nearly finished?"
“It must be some rare sight,” observed Dods. “Every one, look ye, man,
woman, and child, skipping over the new bridge while half of it is
prettily gravelled, and the other half still bare and slippery. See how
they scramble over the heap of gravel left in the middle! I suppose I
must follow where they lead, and bring you the news, sir.”
Before Dods had time to complete his first passage over the new bridge,
the news told itself. A company of soldiers, on their way to occupy a
military post near, emerged from the green depths of the forest, and
appeared to be making straight for the ford, without looking to the
right hand or to the left. Their pleasure was instantly visible when,
their attention being attracted by a shout from the throng of settlers,
they perceived a substantial bridge, finished except the gravelling,
overhanging the stream through which they had expected to be compelled
to wade. They received with hearty good-will their commander’s
directions to pay toll of their labour for their passage. Never was a
public work finished in a more joyous style. The heap of gravel was
levelled in a trice; and, by particular desire, a substantial handrail
was fixed for the benefit of careless children, or of any whose nerves
might be affected by the sight of the restless waters below. Temple was
riding along a ridge whence he could look down, and hoped to observe how
much the work was retarded by his labourers being withdrawn. When he saw
that no help of his was wanted,—that the erection was now complete, the
refuse logs being piled up out of the way, the boughs carried off for
fuel, the tools collected, and preparations made for the crowning
repast,—he put spurs to his horse, and cast hard words at his groom for
allowing him to forget that he was likely to be late home to dinner.
Arthur, meantime, was engaged with the commander, who explained that his
men and he would be glad of the advantage of attending divine service on
the Sunday, if there was any place within reach of their post where they
might do so. The only place of worship at present in Briery Creek was
Dr. Sneyd’s house, where he had conducted service since his arrival, for
the benefit of all who wished to attend. The commander was very anxious
to be permitted, with his company, to join the assemblage; Arthur had no
doubt of his father’s willingness. The question was, where they should
assemble, Dr. Sneyd’s house not being large enough for so many. One
proposed the verge of the forest; but Dr. Sneyd was not, at his age,
made to abide changes of weather like the hardy settlers about him.
Arthur’s barn was too far off for the convenience of all parties. Nobody
was disposed to ask from Mr. Temple any favour which, being graciously
granted for one Sunday, might be withdrawn before the next. Could the
market-house be made fit for the purpose? It was a rude building,
without seats, and occupied with traffic till the Saturday evening; but
the neighbours promised to vacate it in time to have it
cleared,—prepared with log seats, and some sort of pulpit,—and made a
temple meet for the worship of the heart.
Dr. Sneyd’s afternoon walk brought him to the spot in time to promise to
do his part. His blessing was ready for the work newly completed, and
for the parting cup with which the men of peace dismissed the men of
war, in a spirit of mutual good-will.
---------------------
CHAPTER III.
SATURDAY MORNING.
The settlers at Briery Creek followed the old custom of the mother
country, of holding their market on a Saturday. Saturday was an anxious
day to some, a joyous day to others, and a busy day to all. Many a
mother bent her steps to the market-house, doubting whether she should
be able to meet with the delicate food she desired for her baby just
weaned, or for her invalid husband, getting up from the fever, and
following her cookery with eager eyes. Many a child held its mother’s
apron, and watched her bargaining, in the hope that some new and
tempting article of food would be carried home, after a long sameness;
or that the unexpected cheapness of her purchases would enable her to
present him with the long-promised straw hat, or, at least, a pocket-
full of candy from the Brawnees’ sugar pans. The whole village was early
astir; and Dr. Sneyd, when he preferred a stroll along the bank of the
creek to a turn in the market-house with his lady, could distinguish
from a distance the solitariness of the farm-yards and dwellings, and
the convergence of driver, drover, rider, and walking trader, towards
the point of attraction.
Arthur was the centre of all observation. He offered more for sale than
anybody else: he bought more; and he had the largest division of the
market-house, excepting always the corner reserved for the passing
trader, who could spread out riches far transcending what even Arthur
could boast. To such, the young farmer left it to exhibit bear and
beaver skins, leather, and store of salted venison, if he came from the
North or West; and hardware, cotton, cloth and silk goods, books and
stationery, if he was on his way from the East. Any of these, or all in
their turn, Arthur bought; but his sales, various as they were
considered, were confined to a few articles of food. He traded, not for
wealth of money, but of comfort. His purchases were of two kinds,
neither of which were destined for sale, as were those of the trader to
whom he yielded precedence in the market-house. He bought implements to
replace those which were worn out; and this kind of purchase was a
similar sort of expenditure to that of the seed-corn which was put into
the ground, and the repairs bestowed upon his fences and barn;—it was an
expenditure of capital—capital consumed for purposes of reproduction
with increase. With the surplus left after thus replacing his former
capital, and perpetually adding to it, Arthur purchased articles of
unproductive consumption; some for his house, which was becoming so much
prettier than a bachelor could want, that the gossips of Briery Creek
began to speculate on whom he had chosen to share the occupancy; some
for his table, as the sugar of the Brawnees; some for his person, as the
stout leggings which Dods occupied himself in making in rainy weather;
and some for his friends, as when he could lay hold of a political
journal for his father, or of a fur tippet for his mother, or of a set
of pencils for Temmy to sketch with when he came to the farm. (Arthur
seldom went to Mr. Temple’s; but he found time to give Temmy many a
drawing-lesson at the farm.) Now that Arthur had not only a growing
capital, but a surplus after replacing it—a revenue, which furnished him
with more comforts perpetually, he was unwilling that his sister should
feel so hurt as he knew she did at her husband not having assisted him
with capital, from the time that he took his farm in the shape of a
patch of prairie. In the early days of his enterprise, he would have
been truly thankful for such an addition to his small stock of dollars
as would have enabled him to cultivate a larger extent of ground, and
live less hardly while his little property was growing faster; but now
that he had surmounted his first difficulties, and was actually
justified in enlarging his unproductive expenditure, he wished Mrs.
Temple to forget that her husband had declined assisting her brother,
and be satisfied that the rich man had not been able to hinder the
prosperity he would not promote.
The prosperity of the whole village would have increased more rapidly
than it did, if all the inhabitants had been as careful in their
consumption as Arthur. Not only did Temple expend lavishly in caprices
as well as luxuries, and the surgeon-tavern-keeper tempt many a labourer
and small proprietor to spend that in whisky which ought to have been
laid out (if not productively) in enjoyments that were innocent,—but
there was a prevalence of wasteful habits, against which Arthur and his
establishment might have served as a sufficient example. The merit of
the order which was observable on his farm was partly due to himself,
partly to Mrs. Sneyd, (who kept a maternal eye on all his interests,)
and partly to Isaac’s wife, who superintended his dairy and dwelling-
house.
On this market morning,—after a day of extraordinary fatigue,—the slate
of the place at six o’clock might have shamed many a farm-house in a
region where there is a superabundance instead of a dearth of female
service. Isaac’s wife had no maid to help her but her own little maidens
of four and three years old; yet, by six o’clock, when her employer was
driving his market-cart to the place of traffic, the milk was duly set
by in the pans, the poultry were fed, the tallow with which she was
about to make candles was preparing while she made the beds, and the
little girls were washing up the breakfast things in the kitchen—the
elder tenderly wiping the cups and basins which the younger had washed
in the wooden bowl which her mother had placed and filled for her in the
middle of the floor, as the place whence it was most certain that it
could fall no lower. The pigs were in their proper place, within a
fence, which had a roof in one corner for their shelter in bad weather.
The horses and cattle were all properly marked, and duly made musical
with bells, when turned out into the woods. There was a well of pure
water, so guarded, that the children and other young animals could not
run into it unawares; and all the wild beasts of the forest had tried
the strength of the fences in vain. Arthur had not, therefore, had to
pay for the luxurious feasts of his enemies of the earth or air, or for
any of that consumption which may, in a special sense, be called
unproductive, since it yields neither profit to the substance nor
pleasure to the mind. If a similar economy had pervaded the settlement,
its gross annual produce would have more rapidly increased, and a larger
revenue would have been set at liberty to promote the civilization of
the society in improving the comfort of individuals.
Brawn and his daughters could never be made to attend to this. The
resources which they wasted would have tilled many an acre of good land,
or have built a school-house, or have turned their habitation of logs
into a respectable brick tenement, with grassy field and fruitful
garden. They preferred what they called ease and liberty; and the waste
they caused might be considered as revenue spent on a pleasure,—a very
unintelligible pleasure,—of their own choice. As long as they supported
themselves without defrauding their neighbours, (and fraud was the last
thing they could have been made to understand,) no one had a right to
interfere with their methods of enjoyment any more than with Temple’s
conservatory, or Dr. Sneyd’s library, or Mrs. Dods’s passion for mirrors
and old china; but it was allowable to be sorry for so depraved a taste,
and to have a very decided opinion of its injuriousness to society, and
consequent immorality. This very morning there was dire confusion in
their corner of the settlement. For some days the girls had been bee-
hunting, being anxious to bring the first honey of the season into the
market. In order to make up for the time spent on the new bridge, they
were abroad at sunrise this day to track the wild bees in their earliest
flight; but after such a fashion, that it would have answered better to
them to be at home and asleep. Yet they succeeded in their object. The
morning was just such as to tempt all things that fly from the hollow
tree, from which the mists had drawn off, leaving a diamond token on
every leaf. The sun began to shine warm through the summer haze, and the
wild flowers of the prairie to look up and brighten at his presence. As
the brown sisters threaded the narrow ways of the woods, bursting
through the wild vines, and bringing a shower of dew on their heads from
sycamore and beech, many a winged creature hummed, or buzzed, or flitted
by,—the languid drone, or the fierce hornet, or white butterflies in
pairs, chasing one another into the loftiest and greenest recess of the
leafy canopy. Presently came the honey-bee, winging its way to the sunny
space—the natural herb-garden, to which the girls were hastening; and
when there, what a hovering, and buzzing, and sipping, and flitting was
going on! The bee-women laughed in anticipation of their sport as they
drew on their leathern mittens, and applied themselves to catch a loaded
bee in each hand. They agreed on their respective stations of
experiment, and separating, let fly their prisoners, one by one,
tracking the homeward course of each, with a practised eye, through a
maze of boughs, and flickering lights and shadows, and clustered stems,
which would have perplexed the vision of a novice. The four bees being
let fly from different stations, the point at which their lines of
flight must intersect each other was that at which the honeycomb might
be surely found; and a rich store it was,—liquid, clear, and
fragrant,—such as would assuredly make the mouth water of every little
person in the village who had advanced beyond a milk diet. Another and
another hollow tree was found thus to give forth sweetness from its
decay, till the bee-women shook back the lank hair from before their
eyes, gathered up such tatters of their woollen garments as they had not
left on the bushes by the way, and addressed themselves to return. On
their walk it was that they discovered that they had lost more this
morning than many such a ramble as theirs could repay.
A vast cluttering and screaming of fowls was the first thing that drew
off their attention from their fragrant load. Some of the poor poultry
that their father had been plucking alive (as he was wont to do six
times a year) had evidently made their escape from his hands half
plucked, and were now making short flights, higher and farther from
home, so that it was more probable that they would join their wild
acquaintance, the turkeys or the prairie fowl, than return to roost
among the logs. Next appeared,—now entangling its hind legs among the
vines, now poking its snout into a ground-squirrel’s nest, and now
scuttling away from pursuit,—a fine young porker, which had been shut up
from its rambles for some time past. The sisters gave chase to their own
property; but all in vain: their pursuit only drove the animal farther
into the wood, and they hastened home to give notice of the disaster.
They could see nothing of Brawn about the house, but could not look
farther for him till they had discovered the meaning of the light smoke
which issued from the door and the crevices of the log-wall. Black
Brawnee’s best gown was burning before the fire,—the splendid cotton
gown, with a scarlet ground and a pattern of golden flowers, which, to
the astonishment of every body, she had taken a fancy to buy of a
passing trader, and which she had washed and hung up to dry in
preparation for the market: it was smouldering away, leaving only a
fragment to tell the tale. Next came a moan from an enclosure behind the
cottage, and there lay a favourite young colt with two legs so broken
that it was plain the poor animal would never more stand. How it
happened could not be learned from the dumb beast, nor from the two or
three other beasts that were huddled together in this place, where they
had no business to be. It seemed as if, in some grand panic, the animals
had tumbled over one another, leaving the colt to be the chief sufferer.
But where was Brawn himself? He was moaning, too, in a hollow place in
the wood, where he had made a false leap, and fallen so as to sprain his
ankle, while in pursuit of the runaway porker.
“What brought ye here?” asked the brown damsel, as she raised her father
with one application of strength.
“What carried the porker into the forest?” he asked, in reply.
“Ask him. We did not give him room,” said one.
“No need,” retorted the other. “Who left the gate open?”
“That did we both, this morning, for the cause that there is no
fastening.”
“No latch; but a fastening there is. I knotted the rope last night, and
so might you this morning. The loss of the porker comes of losing the
lamb.”
“My lamb!” was repeated, with every variety of lamentation, by both the
damsels. It was too true. For want of a latch, the gate of the enclosure
was tied with a rope. The damsels found the tying too troublesome, and
merely pulled it after them. Little by little it had swung open. A
sharp-set wild cat had stolen in to make choice of a meal, and run out
again with the pet lamb. The master had followed the lamb, and the
porker made the best of his opportunity, and followed the master. Then
ensued the hue and cry which drove the beasts over the poor colt; and,
meantime, the scarlet gown, one sleeve of which had been puffed into the
fire by Brawn’s hasty exit, was accelerating the smoking of the dried
beef which hung from the rafters. A vast unproductive consumption for
one morning!
The damsels made nothing of carrying their father home, and, after
bathing his ankle, laying him down on his back to study the rafters till
they should return from the market. It was a much harder task to go to
market; the one without her scarlet and yellow gown, and the other with
grief for her lamb lying heavy at her heart.
They found their pigs very trying to their tempers this morning. Instead
of killing them, and carrying them to market in that quiet state, as
usual, the damsels had resolved to make the attempt to drive them; as,
from the abundance of pork in all its forms in the market just now, a
sale was very uncertain. To drive pigs along a high road is not a very
easy task; what then must it be in a wild country, where it is difficult
even to follow their vagaries, and nearly impossible to reclaim them?
The Brawnees agreed that to prevent such vagaries offered the only hope
of getting to market in time; and one therefore belled the old hog which
was to be her special charge, while the other was to promote to the
utmost the effect of the bell-music on the younger members of the drove.
The task was not made easier by the poor beasts having been very ill-
fed. There was little in the coarse, sour prairie grass to tempt them;
but patches of juicy green were but too visible here and there where
travellers had encamped, feeding their beasts with hay, and leaving the
seeds of the perennial verdure which was to spring up after the next
rains. Nothing could keep the old hog and the headlong train from these
patches, whether they lay far or near; insomuch that the sisters were
twenty times tempted to leave their swine to their own devices, and sell
no pork that day. But the not selling involved the not buying; and this
thought generated new efforts of patience and of skill. When they
arrived at the scene of exchange, and cast a glance on Mrs. Dods’s
display of cotton garments set off with here and there a muslin cap, and
paraphernalia of pink and green; or on a pile of butter which they were
not neat-handed enough to rival; or into wicker baskets of crockery, or
upon the trader’s ample store of blankets, knives, horn spoons, and
plumes of red and blue feathers, they felt that it would indeed have
been cruel to be compelled to quit the market without any of the
articles that were offered to their choice. Nobody, however, inquired
for their pigs. One neighbour was even saucy enough to laugh at their
appearance.
“You had better buy a load of my pumpkins,” said Kendall, the surgeon
and tavern-keeper. “Your swine will be more fit for market next week, if
you feed them on my fine pumpkins in the meanwhile.”
“When we want pumpkins,” said one of them, “we will go to those that
have ground to grow them on. You have not bought a field, and grown
pumpkins since yesterday, I suppose?”
“By no means. I have a slip of a garden, let me tell you; and, though it
is but a slip, it is of rare mellow mould, where the vines strike at
every joint as they run. My wife has kept enough for pies for all the
travellers that may pass before next spring. One load is bespoken at
four dollars; and you will take the other, if you are wise. There are a
few gourds with them, too.”
“Gourds! Who cares for gourds?”
“Who can do without gourds, say I? I am sure we, at the tavern, could
not, so dear as crockery is at this place. Cut off the top, and you have
a bottle; cut off top and tail, and you have a funnel; cut it in two,
and you have cups; slice off one side, and you have a ladle. Take my
gourds, I advise you, and set yonder crockery-man at defiance, with his
monstrous prices and brittle ware.”
“We have no drunken guests to break our cups and bottles; and as for
prices, how do you know that they are a matter of concern to us? If we
take your load, it shall be the pumpkins without the gourds.”
“You will take the pumpkins, then?”
“If you take the sum out in pork or honey. We want our dollars for the
crockery-man.”
“Pork, no! I think we shall all grunt soon. We are pretty sure to have
no Jews come our way. We all have bacon for the morning meal; and a pig
for dinner, and salt pork for supper. When one whistles to the birds,
there comes a squeal instead of a chirp; and as sure as one walks in the
dark, one stumbles over a pig. Our children learn to grunt before they
set about speaking. No pork for me! We have a glut of pigs.”
“Honey, then. Your wife wants honey for her pumpkin-pies; and I have
heard that you set out mead sometimes at your tavern.”
“And till you cheapen your sugar, we want honey to sweeten our
travellers’ coffee, and treat the children with. How much honey will you
give me for my load?”
The damsel was checked in her answer by her sister, who perceived that
many eyes were turned towards their fragrant store, and that no other
bee-hunters seemed to be in the market. A dollar a gallon was the price
announced by the sisters, after a consultation. Mr. Kendall shook his
head, and stood aside for awhile. The truth was, he was full as much in
want of honey for his purposes as an apothecary, as his wife for her
coffee and pies. He was resolved to get some, at whatever price, and
waited to put in his word at the first favourable opportunity.
Arthur was no less determined upon a purchase of sweets. His mother
began to be in distress about her preserves. Her fruit was all ripe, and
craving to be preserved; but the destined sugar had gone to sweeten the
waters in the Creek. She entreated her son to bring her some honey. None
could be found in the woods near the farm. Every body was hay-making, or
about to make hay, and could not go out bee-hunting. The Brawnees were
the only resource.
“I want some of your honey,” said he, catching the eye of the damsel of
the burned gown, over the group which intervened.
“You shall have it, and no one else,” was her reply.
She was again checked by her sister, who knew her disposition to serve
Arthur, at the expense of her own interests, and those of every body
else.
“What will you give?” asked the more prudent one.
“Pigs; we can agree on the price.”
The one sister shook her head; the other suddenly discovered that it
would be a good plan to improve and enlarge their wealth of swine while
swine were cheap. She offered her five gallons of honey for one fat pig;
which offer caused her sister much consternation, and made Kendall hope
that the honey would be his, after all.
“No, no,” said Arthur. "Your terms are not fair——"
"Then I will get another gallon or two before the sun goes down, to make
up——"
“I mean altogether the other way,” replied Arthur. “I do not want to
force my pigs upon you; but if you take them, you shall have them cheap,
since there is but a poor demand for them to-day. You shall have two of
those pigs for your five gallons; and if your sister thinks that not
enough, the difference shall be made up in fresh butter.”
While the bargain was being discussed, one sister controlling the
generosity of the other, and her admiration of Arthur’s generosity,
while Arthur was thinking of nothing but fair play, Kendall wandered
away discontented, seeing that his chance was over.
“You do not happen to have any honey to sell, Mrs. Dods?” said he, as he
passed the stall of cottons and muslins.
“O, dear, no, Mr. Kendall. It is what I want above every thing. Really,
it is impossible to persuade an eye to look at my caps to-day, though
the pattern has never been introduced here before. There is no use in my
attempting to deal with ladies who dress in such a strange style as
Brawn’s daughters. Nothing would look becoming on them; or I am sure I
would make a sacrifice even on this tasty new thing, to get something to
sweeten my husband’s toddy with. Indeed I expect to be obliged to make a
sacrifice, at all events, to-day; as I beg you will tell Mrs. Kendall.
There being such a profusion of pigs, and so little honey to-day, seems
to have put us all out as to our prices.”
“How happens it, Mrs. Dods?”
"In the first place, they say, there was never such a season known for
young pigs. The price has fallen so that the plenty does more harm than
good to the owners; as is the complaint of farmers, you know, when the
crops are better than ordinary, and they cannot enlarge their market at
will. Then, again, there seems to have been miscalculation;—no one
appears to have been aware that every body would bring pigs, and nobody
any honey, except those slovenly young women."
“Ah! both causes of glut in full operation!” exclaimed Kendall. “The
caprice of seasons, and the miscalculation of man!”
“And of woman too, Mr. Kendall. If you will believe me, I have been at
work early and late, after my fashions, this week; ay, I declined going
to see the bridge finished, and put off our wedding-day treat, for the
sake of getting my stock into pretty order by to-day; and I have
scarcely had a bid yet, or even a word from a neighbour, till you came.
I did not calculate on the demand for honey, and the neglect of every
thing else. Every body is complaining of the same thing.”
"It seems strange, Mrs. Dods, that while we all want to sell, and all to
buy, we cannot make our wants agree. I bring my demand to Mr. Arthur,—my
load of pumpkins and request of honey or sugar. He wants no pumpkins,
and has no honey. I bring the same to you. You want no pumpkins, and
offer me caps. Now I might perhaps get dollars for my pumpkins; but I
want only one cap——"
"You do want one, then! Here is a pretty thing, that would just suit
your wife——"
“Let me go on. I bring my demand to those dark girls: and the best of it
is, they do want pumpkins, and could let me have honey; but the young
farmer comes between, with his superfluity of pigs, to offer a better
bargain; so that I suffer equally from the glut of pork and the dearth
of honey.”
“We are all suffering, so that any stranger would say that there is a
glut of every thing but honey. Neither millinery, nor blankets, nor
knives, nor flower-seeds are selling yet. But I believe there is no glut
of any thing but pigs. If we could put them out of the market, and put
honey out of people’s heads, I have little doubt we should exchange, to
our mutual satisfaction, as many articles as would set against each
other, till few would be left.”
“I hope to see this happen before night, and then I may be rid of my
pumpkins, and carry home a cap at a price we should neither of us
grumble at, and keep the rest of my dollars for honey hereafter.”
“Next week. No doubt, there will be a fine supply of it next week.
Perhaps a glut: for a glut often follows close upon a scarcity.”
"Which should make us careful to husband our stocks till we are sure we
can renew them; like the wise Joseph in Egypt.—That puts a thing into my
head. I have a good mind to take the girls’ offer of pigs for my
pumpkins. Who knows but there may be a scarcity of pork after all this
plenty—which is apt to make people wasteful? If they will, they shall
have half a load for two of their lean animals; and I will keep the
other half load to feed them upon."
“Ah! that is always the way people’s wishes grow with opportunity. This
morning, you thought of no such thing as keeping pigs; and now, before
night, you will have two.”
“To be sure, Mrs. Dods. Very natural! The demand always grows as wealth
grows, you know. When the farmer makes his land yield double by good
tillage, he demands double the commodities he demanded before; and if
nature gives us a multitude of pigs, a new demand will open in the same
way.”
"And there is a double supply at the same time,—of corn by the farmer,
and of pigs by the porkseller. Well! in either case, there is a better
chance opened for my caps. The more wealth there is, the better hope of
a sale of millinery. You must not forget that, Mr. Kendall. You promised
to take one of my caps, you know."
“Why, so I did; but how to pay for it, I am sure I don’t know. I am not
going to sell my load for money, you see.”
“Well, I will tell you how. Get three lean pigs, and part with a few
more pumpkins. I will take a pig for this pretty cap. I am somewhat of
your opinion that pigs will soon be worth more than they are now.”
“And so you help to quicken the demand.”
"Yes. My boys will manage to keep the animal,—behind the house, or in
the brickfield. And it would be a thousand pities your wife should not
have this cap. I had her before my mind’s eye while making it, I do
assure you;—and it will soon lose its bloom if it goes into my window,
or upon my shelves again."
The negotiation was happily concluded; and, by the end of the day, when
pigs and honey were put out of the question, a brisk traffic took place
in the remaining articles, respecting which the wishes of the buyers and
sellers agreed better than they had done about the disproportioned
commodities. All had come with a demand; and each one’s instrument of
demand was his neighbour’s means of supply: so that the market would
have been entirely cleared, if they had but known one another’s wishes
well enough to calculate what kinds of produce they should bring. If
this had been done, there would have been more honey; and if, from a
caprice of nature, there had been still more pigs than usual, the only
consequence would have been that the demander of pork would have
received more of it to his bargain, or that the supplier of pigs would
have kept back some of his pork, to be an additional future instrument
of demand. In this case, no one would have lost, and some one would have
gained.
As it was, Arthur was a loser. He paid much more for honey than would
probably be necessary the next week. But he thought himself in another
sense a gainer,—in proportion to the pleasure of obliging his mother.
The Brawnees carried home two thirds of a load of pumpkins, two fat
pigs, and a cherished store of fresh butter, in the place of their five
gallons of honey and three lean swine. They were decidedly gainers;
though not, perhaps, to the extent they might have been if they had been
unscrupulous about pressing their customer hard. Any one but Arthur
would have been made to yield more wealth than this; but they were well
content with having pleased him, and repaired in part the losses of the
morning.
Other parties left little to be removed in preparation for the Sunday.
Having carried home their purchases first, they returned for the small
remainder of their stock; and the evening closed with a sort of minor
frolic, the children running after the stray feathers their mothers were
sweeping away, and the men ranging logs for seats, and providing a
platform and desk for the use of Dr. Sneyd. One or two serious people
were alarmed at the act of thus turning a house of merchandise into a
temple of worship; but the greater number thought that the main
consideration was to gather together as many worshippers as could be
collected in the heart of their wilderness. Such an accession as was now
promised to their congregation seemed to mark an era in the history of
their community.
---------------------
CHAPTER IV.
SUNDAY EVENING.
Temmy was fond of feeling his grandfather’s hand upon his shoulder any
day of the week; but on the Sunday evening, in particular, it was
delightful to the boy to share the leisure of the family. Many a tale of
old times had Mrs. Sneyd then to tell; many a curious secret of things
in earth, air, and heaven, had the doctor to disclose; and uncle Arthur
was always ready to hear of the doings of the last week, and to promise
favours for the time to come. It was seldom that Temmy could enjoy a
whole evening of such pleasures;—only when Mr. Temple chose to make an
excursion, and carry his lady with him, or to go to bed at eight o’clock
because his ennui had by that time become intolerable. Usually, Temmy
could be spared only for an hour or two, and was sure to be fetched away
in the midst of the most interesting of all his grandmamma’s stories, or
the most anxious of the doctor’s experiments.
This evening,—the evening of the day of opening the market-house for
worship,—the poor boy had given up all hope of getting beyond the
boundaries of the Lodge. Mr. Temple was, as he said, very ill; as every
body else would have said,—in a very intolerable humour. He could not
bear sunshine or sound. His wife must sit behind closed shutters, and
was grievously punished for her inability to keep the birds from
singing. Temmy must not move from the foot of the sofa, except to ring
the bell every two minutes, and carry scolding messages every quarter of
an hour; in return for which he was reproved till he cried for moving
about, and opening and shutting the door. At length, to the great joy of
every body, the gentleman went to bed, having drunk as much wine as his
head would bear, and finding no relief to his many ailments from that
sort of medicine. This final measure was accomplished just in time for
the drawing-room windows to be thrown open to the level rays of the sun,
and the last breath of the closing flowers. The wine was carried away,
and Ephraim called for to attend his young master to Dr. Sneyd’s. Temmy
was to explain why Mrs. Temple could not leave home this evening, and he
might stay till Dr. Sneyd himself should think it time for him to
return. Without the usual formalities of pony, groom, and what not,
Temmy was soon on the way, and in another half-hour had nearly forgotten
papa’s terrible headache under the blessed influence of grandpapa’s ease
of heart.
Uncle Arthur was sitting astride on the low window-sill of the study,
with Temmy hanging on his shoulder, when a golden planet showed itself
above the black line of the forest. The moon had not risen, so that
there was no rival in the heaven; and when the evening had darkened a
little more, Temmy fancied that this bright orb cast a faint light upon
his grandfather’s silver hairs, and over uncle Arthur’s handsome,
weather-browned face. Temmy had often heard that his father had much
beauty; and certainly his picture seemed to have been taken a great many
times; yet the boy always forgot to look for this beauty except when
some of these pictures were brought out, while he admired uncle Arthur’s
dark eyes, and beautiful smile and high forehead, more and more every
time he saw him. It was very lucky that uncle Arthur looked so well
without combing his eye-brows, and oiling his hair, and using three
sorts of soap for his hands, and three different steel instruments, of
mysterious construction, for his nails; for the young farmer had no time
for such amusements. It was also well that he was not troubled with
fears for his complexion from the summer’s sun, or from the evening air
in the keenest night of winter. This was lucky, even as far as his good
looks were concerned, for, if he looked well by candle-light, he looked
better in the joyous, busy noon; and more dignified still when taking
his rest in the moonlight; and, as Temmy now thought, noblest of all
while under the stars. If papa could see him now, perhaps he would not
laugh so very much as usual about uncle Arthur’s being tanned, and
letting his hair go as it would.
“Shall we mount to the telescopes, father?” asked Arthur. “The boy will
have time to enjoy them to-night. I will take care of him home, if
Ephraim dares not stay.”
Dr. Sneyd rose briskly, observing that it would indeed be a pity to lose
such an evening. Temmy grasped his grandmamma’s hand, hoping that she
was going too. He scarcely knew why, but he felt the observatory to be a
very awful place, particularly at night, when only a faint bluish light
came in through the crevices of the shifting boards; or a stray beam,
mysteriously bright, fell from the end of the slanting telescope, and
visibly moved on the floor. Grandpapa was rather apt to forget Temmy
when he once got into the observatory, and to leave him shivering in a
dark corner, wondering why every body spoke low in this place, and
afraid to ask whether the stars really made any music which mortal ears
might listen for. When grandpapa did remember the boy, he was not aware
that he was uneasy and out of breath, but would call him here and send
him there, just as he did in the study in broad daylight. It had been
very different with grandmamma, the only time she had mounted hither
with him. She had held his hand all the while, and found out that, tall
as he was grown, he could see better by sitting on her knee; and she had
clasped him round the waist, as if she had found out that he trembled.
Perhaps she had heard his teeth chatter, though grandpapa did not. Temmy
hoped they would not chatter to-night, as he did not wish that uncle
Arthur should hear them; but Mrs. Sneyd was not to be at hand. She
declared that she should be less tired with walking to the lodge than
with mounting to the observatory. She would go and spend an hour with
her daughter, and have some talk with Ephraim by the way.
There needed no excuse for Temmy’s being out of breath, after mounting
all the stairs in the house, and the ladder of the observatory to boot;
and the planet which he was to see being still low in the sky was reason
enough for uncle Arthur to hold him up to the end of the telescope. He
did not recover his breath, however, as the moments passed on. This was
a larger instrument than he had ever looked through before, and his
present impressions were quite different from any former experience. The
palpable roundness of the orb, the unfathomable black depth in which it
moved solitary, the silence,—all were as if new to him.
“You see it?” asked Arthur.
“O, yes.”
Another long silence, during which the boy breathed yet more heavily.
“You see it still?”
“No, uncle Arthur.”
“My dear boy, why did you not tell me? We must overtake it. There! there
it is once more! You must not let it travel out of sight again.”
“How can I stop it?” thought Temmy, and he would fain have pressed his
hands before his eyes, as the silent vision traversed the space more
brightly and more rapidly, it seemed to him, every moment. Arthur showed
him, however,—not how to stop the planet, but how to move the instrument
so as not to lose sight of it: he then put a stool under him, and told
him he could now manage for himself. Dr. Sneyd had something to show his
son on the other side of the heavens.
If Temmy had had the spheres themselves to manage, he could scarcely
have been in a greater trepidation. He assured himself repeatedly that
friends were at hand, but his head throbbed so that he could scarcely
hear their whispers, and the orb now seemed to be dancing as he had seen
the reflection of the sun dance in a shaken basin of water. He would
look at something else. He jerked the telescope, and flash went one
light after another before his eyes, as if the stars themselves were
going out with a blaze. This would never do. He must look at something
earthly. After another jerk to each side, which did not serve his
purpose, he pushed it up, and saw—something which might belong to any of
the worlds in being,—for Temmy knew no more about it than that it was
most horrible. An enormous black object swept across the area of vision,
again and again, as quick as lightning. It would not leave off. Temmy
uttered a shriek of terror, and half slipped, half tumbled from his
stool.
“What has the boy found? What can be the matter?” asked grandpapa.
Arthur presently laughed, and told Temmy he was very clever to have
found what he should have thought it very difficult to discover from
this place—Arthur’s own mill;—the new windmill on the mound, whose sails
were now turning rapidly in the evening breeze. It was some comfort to
learn that his panic was not much to be wondered at. Uncle Arthur knew
what it was to take in too near a range with a large telescope. He had
done so once, and had been startled with an apparition of two red cheeks
and two staring blue eyes, apparently within half an inch of the end of
his own nose.
“Here, Temmy,” said Dr. Sneyd, “try whether you can read in this book.”
“Shall I go and get a candle, grandpapa?”
“No, no. I want to see whether a little star yonder will be our candle.
Lay the book in this gleam of light, and try whether you can read.”
Many strange things were still whisking before Temmy’s eyes, but he
could make out the small print of the book. He was then shown the star
that gave the light,—one of the smallest in a bright constellation. He
heartily wished that nobody would ask him to look at any more stars to-
night, and soon managed to slip away to the little table, and show that
he was amused with turning a greater and a lesser light upon the book,
and showing with how little he could read the title-page, and with how
much the small type of the notes. The next pleasant thing that happened
was the lamp being lighted.
“Father,” said Arthur, “you seldom have me for an assistant now. I am
neither tired nor busy to-night, and the sky is clear. Suppose we make a
long watch.”
Dr. Sneyd was only too happy. He produced a light in one of his magical
ways, and hung the shade on the lamp, while Arthur arranged his pens and
paper, and laid his watch on the table. Dr. Sneyd took his place at the
best telescope now in readiness, after various screwings and
unscrewings, and shiftings of the moveable boards. Arthur meanwhile was
cutting a pencil, with which he invited Temmy to draw beside him. Uncle
Arthur thought Temmy would draw very well if he chose. In a little while
nothing was to be heard but the brief directions of Dr. Sneyd to his
secretary, and the ticking of the watch on the table.
Temmy was fast asleep, with his head resting on his drawing, when he was
called from below, to go home.
“Just see him down the ladder,” said Dr. Sneyd.
“No, thank you, grandpapa; I can always get down.” In truth, Temmy
always went down much more quickly than he came up.
The next time a cloud came in the way, Dr. Sneyd observed,
"Temple is ruining that boy. He will leave him no nerve,—no sense. What
will his many thousand acres be worth to him without?"
“Do you think he will ever have those many thousand acres, sir?”
“I almost wish he may not. Perhaps his best chance would be in his being
left to manage for himself in some such way as you have done, Arthur.
Such a call on his energies would be the best thing for him, if it did
not come too late.”
Arthur had a strong persuasion that it might come at any time. He was by
no means satisfied that the many thousand acres were still Temple’s. He
was very sure that much of the gentleman’s wealth must have evaporated
during his incessant transmutations of meadows into pleasure-grounds,
and flower-gardens into shrubberies, and hot-houses into baths, and
stables into picturesque cottages, and cottages into stables again. He
was seldom seen three times on the same horse; and it was certain that
the money he had locked up in land would never be productive while he
remained its owner. Who would come and settle under such a proprietor,
when land as good, and liberty to boot, was to be had elsewhere? Temple
himself was contracting his cultivation every year. The more he laid out
unproductively, the less remained to be employed productively. If Arthur
had had one-tenth part of what Temple had wasted since he settled at
Briery Creek, his days of anxiety and excessive toil might have been
over long ago.
“It is all for the best, Arthur. You would not have been happy in the
possession of Temple’s money, subject to his caprices, poor man! Nobody
is more easy than I am under pecuniary obligation; but all depends on
the quarter whence it comes, and the purposes for which the assistance
is designed. I accepted this observatory from you, you remember, when I
knew that it cost you something to give up your time and labour to it;
and I dare say I should have accepted the same thing from Temple, if he
had happened to offer it, because, in such a case, the good of science
could be the only object. But, if I were you, I would rather work my own
way up in the world than connect myself with such a man as Temple. The
first time he wanted something to fidget himself about, he would be for
calling out of your hands all he had lent you.”
“One would almost bear such a risk,” said Arthur, “for the sake of the
settlement. My poor sister makes the best of matters by talking
everywhere of the quantity of labour her husband employs. But I think
she must see that that employment must soon come to an end if no returns
issue from it. I am sure I should be glad to employ much more labour,
and in a way which would yield a maintenance for a still greater
quantity next year, if I had the laying out of the money Temple wastes
on his caprices. I am not complaining, father, on my own account. My
hardest time is over, and I shall soon be doing as well as I could wish.
I am now thinking of the interests of the place at large. It seems too
hard that the richest man among us should at the same time keep away new
settlers by holding more land than he can cultivate, waste his capital,
instead of putting it out to those who would employ it for his and the
common good, and praise himself mightily for his liberal expenditure,
holding the entire community obliged to him for it, every time he buys a
new luxury which will yield no good beyond his own selfish pleasure.”
“I am afraid you think the community has little to thank me for, Arthur?
Perhaps, in our present state of affairs, the money I have ought to go
towards tilling the ground, instead of exploring the heavens.”
"My dear sir, no. I differ from you entirely. You do not live beyond
your income, nor——"
“Give your mother the credit of that, Arthur. But for her, my little
property would have flown up to the moon long ago.”
“But, father, I was going to say that what I and others here produce is
but the means of living, after all. It would be deplorable to sacrifice
the end to them.”
“What end? Do you mean the pleasure of star-gazing? I should be
delighted to hear that.”
"Pleasure,—whether of star-gazing, or of any thing else that is innocent
and virtuous,—that is really happiness. If Temple is really happy over
his foreign wines, I am sure I have no more objection to his drinking
them than to my men enjoying their cider. Let it be his end, if he is
capable of no higher, as long as his pleasures do not consume more than
his income. Much more may I be willing that you should enjoy your star-
gazing, when out of the gratification to yourself arises the knowledge
which ennobles human life, and the truth for which, if we do not live
now, we shall assuredly live hereafter."
“I have always trusted, Arthur, that the means which have been bestowed
upon me would not prove to be lost. Otherwise, I would have taken my axe
on my shoulder, and marched off to the forest with you.”
"Father, it is for such as you that forests and prairies should be made
to yield double, if the skill of man could ensure such fruitfulness. It
is for such as you that the husbandman should lead forth his sons before
the dawn, and instruct them to be happy in toiling for him whose light
in yon high place is yet twinkling,—who has been working out God’s truth
for men’s use while they slept."
“Our husbandmen are not of the kind you speak of, Arthur. I see them
look up as they pass, as if they thought this high chamber a folly of
the same sort as Temple’s Chinese alcove.”
“I think you mistake them, sir. I can answer for those with whom I have
to do. They see all the difference between Temple’s restless discontent
and your cheerfulness. They see that he has no thought beyond himself,
while you have objects of high and serious interest ever before your
mind’s eye; objects which, not comprehending, they can respect, because
the issue is a manifestation of wisdom and benignity.”
“Enough! enough!” cried the doctor. "I have no complaint to make of my
neighbours, I am sure. I should be a very ungrateful man, if I fancied I
had. I am fully aware of the general disposition of men to venerate
science, and to afford large aid to those who pursue it, on a principle
of faith in its results. My belief in this is not at all shaken by what
befel me in England; but, as I have appeared here accidentally,—a
philosopher suddenly lighting in an infant community instead of having
grown up out of it, it was fair to doubt the light in which I am
regarded. If the people hated me as a magician, or despised me as an
idle man, I think it would be no wonder."
“I am glad you hold your faith, father, in the natural veneration of
society for the great ends of human life. I believe it must be a strong
influence, indeed, which can poison men’s minds against their
legislators, and philosophers, and other wise men who neither dig nor
manufacture. I believe it must be such a silver tongue as never yet
spoke that could persuade any nation that its philosophers are not its
best benefactors.”
"True. It was not the English nation that drove me hither; and those who
did it never complained of my pursuits,—only of what they supposed my
principles. I wish I could bear all the sorrow of the mistake."
“Be satisfied to let them bear some of it, father. It will help to guard
them against a repetition of it. I am sure your own share is enough.”
"In one sense it is, Arthur. Do you know, I find myself somewhat
changed. I perceive it when I settle myself down to my pursuits; and to
a greater extent than I anticipated. It may be owing in part to the want
of the facilities I had enjoyed for so many years, and never thought to
part with more. I sometimes wonder whether I should be the same man
again at home, among——But let all that pass. What I was thinking of, and
what your mother and I oftenest think of, is the hardship of your having
to bear a part,—so large a part in our misfortune. I should wonder to
see you toiling as you do, from month to month,—(for I know that wealth
is no great object with you,)—if I did not suspect——But I beg your
pardon. I have no right to force your confidence."
“Go on, father.”
“Well, to say the truth, I suspect that you left something more behind
you than you gave us reason to suppose. If you had not come of your own
free choice, this idea would have made both your mother and me very
unhappy.”
“I have hopes that she will come, father. I have been waiting to tell
you, only for a prospect of the time when I might go for her. Nothing is
settled, or I would have told you long ago; but I have hopes.”
Dr. Sneyd was so long silent, thinking how easily the use of some of
Temple’s wasted money would have completed Arthur’s happiness ere
this,—benefiting Temple and the whole community at the same time,—that
his son feared he was disappointed. He had no apprehension of his being
displeased at any part of his conduct.
“I hoped the prospect would have given you pleasure, father,” he said,
in a tone of deep mortification.
"My dear son, so it does—the greatest satisfaction, I assure you;
though, indeed, I do not know how you were to become aware of it without
my telling you. I know my wife’s opinion of her to be the same as my
own. I only hope she will be to you all that may repay you for what you
have been to us: indeed, I have no doubt of it."
Arthur was perfectly happy; happy enough to observe that the clouds were
parting, and that,—as science had been so lately pronounced the great
end for which his father was living,—it was a pity his observations
should not be renewed.
“If science be the great object we think it,” observed the doctor the
next time he was obliged to suspend his labours, “it seems strange that
it should be pursued by so few. At present, for one who devotes himself
to the end, thousands look not beyond the mere means of living. I am not
afraid to call it the end to you, though I would not have done so in my
pulpit this morning without explanation. We understand one another.”
"Perfectly; that since the full recognition of truth is virtue, science
is the true end. I hope, I believe, I discern the method by which more
and more labour will be withdrawn from the means to be transferred to
the end. For a long time past,—ever since I have been in the habit of
comparing you and your pursuits with the people about you and their
pursuits—ever since I came here,—I have been arriving at my present
conviction, that every circumstance of our social condition,—the most
trifling worldly interest of the meanest of us,—bears its relation to
this great issue, and aids the force of tendency towards it."
“You have come hither for something worth gaining, then: it is worth
while to cross land and sea for such a conviction. Can I aid you with
confirmation from the stars?”
"No doubt; for all knowledge, come whence it may,—from incalculable
heights or unfathomable depths,—all new knowledge of the forces of
nature affords the means of setting free a quantity of human labour to
be turned to new purposes. In the infancy of the race, the mind had no
instruments but the unassisted hands. By degrees, the aid of other
natural forces was called in; by degrees, those forces have been
overruled to more and more extended purposes, and further powers brought
into subjection, setting free, at every new stage of acquisition, an
immense proportion of human labour, and affording a glimpse,—almost too
bright to be met by our yet feeble vision,—of times when material
production—the means of living, shall be turned over to the machinery of
nature, only superintended by man, whose life may then be devoted to
science, ‘worthy of the name,’ which may, in its turn, have then become
the means to some yet higher end than is at present within our ken."
“In those days, then, instead of half-a-dozen labourers being virtuously
employed in production for themselves and one unproductive philosopher,
the six labourers will themselves have become philosophers, supported
and cherished by the forces of nature, controlled by the intellect of
perhaps one productive labourer.”
“Just so; the original philosopher being the cause of this easy
production by his ascertainment of the natural forces in question. This
result is merely the protraction of the process which has been going on
from the earliest infancy of the race. If Noah, in his first moonlight
walk upon Ararat, could have seen mirrored in the watery waste the long
procession of gigantic powers which time should lead forth to pass under
the yoke of man, would he not have decided (in his blindness to the new
future of man) that nothing would be left for man to do?”
“Probably. And in order to exhibit to him the whole case, he must be
carried forward to man’s new point of view.”
“And so it will be with some second Noah, whose happier lot it shall be
to see knowledge cover the earth, bearing on its bosom all that is
worthy of the new heavens and new earth; while all that is unworthy of
them is sunk and lost. By the agency of his gigantic servants he may be
raised to that pinnacle of the universe whence he may choose to look
forth again, and see what new services are appointed to man, and who are
the guides and guardians allotted to his higher state.”
"And what will he behold?——But it is foolish to inquire. One must be
there to know."
"To know fully. But though we can but barely speculate upon what he will
see, we may decidedly pronounce upon what he will not see. We cannot
tell how many galaxies will be perceived to complete the circle of
Nature’s crown, nor what echoes of her diapason shall be wafted to the
intent spirit. We cannot tell how near he may be permitted to approach
to behold the evolution of a truth from apparent nothingness, as we are
apt to fancy a seraph watches the creation of one of yonder worlds—first
distinguishing the dim apparition of an orb emerging from the vacuum,
then seeing it moulded into order, and animated with warmth, and
invested with light, till myriads of adorers are attracted to behold it
sent forth by the hand of silence on its everlasting way. We cannot tell
to what depth man may then safely plunge, to repose in the sea-caves,
and listen to the new tale that its thunders interpret, and collect
around him the tributaries of knowledge that come thronging down the
green vistas of ocean light. We cannot tell what way will be opened
before him to the dim chambers of the earth, where Patience presides,
while her slow and blind agents work in dumb concert from age to age,
till, the hour being come, the spirit of the volcano, or the angel of
the deluge, arrives to burst their prison-house. Of all these things we
can yet have but a faint conception; but of some things which will not
be we can speak with certainty."
“That when these inanimate powers are found to be our best servants, the
immortal mind of man will be released from the drudgery which may be
better performed by them. Then, never more will the precious term of
human life be spent in a single manual operation; never more will the
elastic limbs of children grow rigid under one uniform and excessive
exercise; never more will the spirit sit, self-gnawing, in the fetters
to which it has been condemned by the tyranny of ignorance, which must
have its gratifications. Then bellows may breathe in the tainted streams
of our factories, and human lungs be spared, and men’s dwellings be
filled with luxuries, and no husbandman be reduced from his sovereignty
of reason to a similitude with the cattle of his pastures. But much
labour has already been set free by the employment of the agency of
nature; and how little has been given to science!”
“It seems as if there must ever be an intermediate state between the
discovery of an instrument and its application to its final use. I am
far from complaining, as you know, of the nature of human demands being
what it has been, as, from time to time, liberated industry has afforded
a new supply. I am far from complaining that new graces have grown up
within the domains of the rich, and that new notions of convenience
require a larger satisfaction day by day. Even when I perceive that a
hundred heads and hands are necessary to the furnishing forth of a
gentleman’s equipage, and that the wardrobe of a lady must consist of,
at least, a hundred and sixty articles, I am far from wishing that the
world should be set back to a period when men produced nothing but what
was undeniably essential.”
“You would rather lead it on to the time when consumption will not be
stimulated as it is at present?”
"When it shall be of a somewhat different kind. A perpetual stimulus
seems to me to be provided for by labour being more and more set at
liberty, since all the fruits of labour constitute at once the demand
and the supply. But the desires and tastes which have grown up under a
superabundance of labour and a dearth of science are not those which may
be looked for when new science (which is as much the effect as the cause
of new methods of production) shall have opened fresh worlds to human
tastes. The spread of luxury, whether it be pronounced a good or an
evil, is, I conceive, of limited duration. It has served, and it still
serves, to employ a part of the race and amuse another part, while the
transition is being made from one kind of simplicity to another,—from
animal simplicity to intellectual simplicity."
“The mechanism of society thus resembles the mechanism of man’s art.
What was done as a simple operation by the human arm, is effected as a
complicated operation by instruments of wood and steel. But the time
surely comes when this complexity is reduced, and the brute instrument
is brought into a closer and a still closer analogy with the original
human mechanism. The more advanced the art, the simpler the mechanism.”
"Just so. If, in respect of our household furniture, equal purposes of
convenience are found to be answered by a smaller variety of articles,
the industry which is thus released will be free to turn to the fine
arts,—to the multiplication of objects which embody truth and set forth
beauty,—objects which cannot be too extensively multiplied. If our
ladies, at the same time, discover that equal grace and more convenience
are attained by a simpler costume, a more than classical simplicity will
prevail, and the toil of operatives will be transferred to some higher
species of production."
“We should lose no time, then, in making a list of the present
essentials of a lady’s wardrobe, to be preserved among the records of
the race. Isaiah has presented one, which exhibits the maidens of Judea
in their days of wealth. But I believe they are transcended by the
damsels of Britain.”
"I am sure the British ladies transcend the Jewish in their method of
justifying their luxury. The Jewesses were satisfied that they enjoyed
luxury, and looked no farther. The modern ladies extol it as a social
virtue,—except the few who denounce the very enjoyment of it as a crime.
How long will the two parties go on disputing whether luxury be a virtue
or a crime?"
“Till they cease to float themselves on the surface of morals on the
support of old maxims of morality; till they look with their own eyes
into the evidence of circumstance, and learn to make an induction for
themselves. They will see that each side of the question has its right
and its wrong; that there is no harm, but much good in enjoyment,
regarded by itself; and that there is no good, but much harm in causing
toil which tends to the extinction of enjoyment.”
“In other words, that Dr. B’s pleasure in his picture gallery is a
virtuous pleasure while he spends upon it only what he can well spare;
and that Temple’s hot-houses are a vicious luxury, if, as we suspect, he
is expending upon them the capital on which he has taught his labourers
to depend as a subsistence fund.”
“Exactly; and that the milk-maid may virtuously be married in the silk
gown which her bridegroom thinks becoming, provided it is purchased with
her surplus earnings; while an empress has no business with a yard of
ribbon if she buys it after having parted with the last shilling of her
revenue at the gaming-table. Silk is beautiful. If this were all, let
every body wear silk; but if the consequence of procuring silk be more
pain to somebody than the wearing of silk gives pleasure, it becomes a
sin to wear silk. A thriving London tradesman may thus innocently dress
his wife and nine daughters in Genoa velvet, while the spendthrift
nobleman may do a guilty deed in arraying himself in a new fashion of
silk hose.”
"Our countrywomen may be expected to defend all luxurious expenditure as
a virtue, while their countrymen,—the greyheaded as well as youths,—are
overheard extolling a war expenditure as a public good. Both proceed on
the notion that benefit resides in mere consumption, instead of in the
reproduction or in the enjoyment which results; that toil is the good
itself, instead of the condition of the good, without which toil is an
evil."
“If war can be defended as a mode of expenditure by any but gunsmiths
and army clothiers, there is no saying what curse we may not next find
out to be a blessing. Of all kinds of unproductive consumption, that
occasioned by war is the very worst. Life, and the means of life, are
there extinguished together, and one might as well try to cause the
resurrection of a slain army on the field of battle, as hope for any
return to the toil of the labourers who equipped them for the strife.
The sweat of the artisan falls as fruitless as the tears of the widow
and orphan. For every man that dies of his wounds abroad, there is
another that pines in hunger at home. The hero of to-day may fancy his
laurels easily won; but he ought to know that his descendants of the
hundredth generation will not have been able to pay the last farthing of
their purchase-money.”
"And this is paid, not so much out of the luxuries of the rich as the
necessaries of the poor. It is not so much one kind of unproductive
consumption being exchanged for another as a productive consumption
being stinted for the sake of an unproductive. The rich may contribute
some of their revenue to the support of a war, but the middling classes
give,—some a portion of their capital, and others the revenue of which
they would otherwise make capital,—so that even if the debts of a war
were not carried forward to a future age, the evil consequences of an
abstraction of capital are."
"It appears, however, as if unproductive consumption was much lessened
at home during a war. One may see the difference in the very aspect of
the streets in London, and yet more in the columns of newspapers.
Puffing declines as soon as a war breaks out,—not that puffing is a sign
of any thing but a glut of the article puffed,—but this decline of
puffing signifies rather a cessation of the production of the community
than such a large demand as needs no stimulating."
"Yes; one may now see in London fire-arms or scarlet cloth exhibited at
the windows of an establishment where, during the peace, might be found
‘the acmè of paper-hanging;’ and where might formerly be had floor-cloth
of a marvellous number of yards without seam, whose praises were
blazoned in large letters from the roof to the ground, ball cartridges
are piled, and gunpowder stands guarded, day and night. Since gluts work
their own cure, and puffing comes of gluts, puffing is only a temporary
absurdity. Long may it be before we are afflicted with it here!"
"Afflicted?—Well! looked at by itself, perhaps it is an affliction, as
all violations of truth, all exhibitions of folly, are; but one may draw
pleasure too from every thing which is a sign of the times."
“O, yes; there is not only the strong present pleasure of philosophising
on states of society, but every indication of what it serves to the
thinker, at the same time, as a prophecy of better things that shall be.
But, do you not find it pleasanter to go to worship, as we went this
morning, through green pastures and by still waters, where human
industry made its appeals to us in eloquent silence, and men’s dwellings
bore entire the aspect of sabbath repose, than to pass through paved
streets, with a horizon of brick-walls, and tokens on every side, not
only of week day labour, but of struggle for subsistence, and
subservience for bread? The London shopkeepers do not remove their signs
on a Sunday. If one catches a glimpse here and there of a spectacled old
gentleman reading his Bible in the first-floor parlour, or meets a train
of spruce children issuing from their father’s door at the sound of the
church-bell, one sees, at the same time, that their business is to push
the sale of floor-cloth without seam, and to boast of the acmè of paper-
hanging.”
"There may be more immediate pleasure in the one Sabbath walk than in
the other, Arthur, but they yield, perhaps, equally the aliment of
piety. Whatever indicates the condition of man, points out, not only the
species of duty owing to man, but the species of homage due to God,—the
character of the petitions appropriate to the season. All the methods of
going to worship may serve the purpose of preparation for the sanctuary.
The nobleman may lean back in his carriage to meditate; the priest may
stalk along in reverie, unconscious of all around him; the citizen-
father may look with pride on the train of little ones with whom he may
spend the leisure of this day; and the observing philanthropist may go
forth early and see a thousand incidents by the way, and all may alike
enter the church-door with raised and softened hearts."
“And all listen with equal faith to the promise of peace on earth and
good-will to men?”
“Yes, and the observer not the least, if he observe for holy purposes.”
"O, father, think of the gin-shop and the news-office that he must pass
by the way! They are infinitely worse than the visible puffery. Think of
the thronged green-grocer’s shop, where you may see a widow in her
soiled weeds, flushed with drink, careless of the little ones that cling
to her gown, hungering as they are for the few potatoes which are all
she can purchase after having had her morning dram!—Think of the father
cheapening the refuse of the Saturday’s market, and passing on, at last,
wondering when his pale family will again taste meat! Think of the
insolent footmen, impeding the way to the church-door, while they amuse
themselves with the latest record of licentiousness in the paper of the
day!"
"I have often seen all this, Arthur, and have found in it——"
"Nothing that necessarily hardens the heart, I know; on the contrary,
the compassion excited is so painful that devotion is at times the only
refuge. But as for the congeniality——"
“What is the value of faith, if it cannot assimilate all things to
itself? And as for Christian faith, where and amidst what circumstances
did it arise? Was it necessary, in going up to the temple, to overlook
the blind beside the way, and to stop the ears when the contention of
brethren was heard, and to avoid the proud Pharisee and the degraded
publican? Was the repose of the spirit broken when an adultress entered
the sacred precincts? Were the avenues to the temple blocked up that the
holy might worship in peace? And when they issued forth, were they sent
home to their closets, forbidden to look to the right hand or to the
left for fear of defilement?”
“If so, it was by order of the Pharisees. You are right, father. The
holiest did not even find it necessary to resort to mountain solitudes,
or to the abodes of those who were pure as themselves, for the support
of their faith or the repose of their devotion. Aliment for piety was
found at the table of the publican, and among the sufferers beside
Bethesda. To the pure every emotion became a refining process, and
whatever was not found congenial was made so. It may certainly be the
same with the wise and the benignant of every age.”
“It is indeed a halting faith which dreads as common that which God has
cleansed and sanctified; and where is God’s own mark to be recognized
but in the presence of joy and sorrow, of which he is the sole
originator and distributor? Whatever bears a relation to joy and sorrow
is a call to devotion; and no path to the sanctuary is more sacred than
another, while there are traces of human beings by the way.”
“You prefer then the pastures which tell of our prosperity to the wilds
of the prairie; and I observed that you dwelt upon the portraits of
familiar faces before you left your study this morning.”
"I did; and many a time have I dwelt quite as earnestly on strange faces
in which shone no friendship for me, and no consciousness of the objects
of the day. I read in their human countenance,—human, whether it be vile
or noble,—the promise, that as all things are for some use, and as all
men contribute while all have need, the due distribution will in time be
made, causes of contention be done away, and the sources of social
misery be dried up, so that——"
"So that we may, through all present dismay and vicissitude, look
forward to ultimate peace on earth and good-will towards men. Yes, all
things are of use to some, from the stalk of flax that waves in my field
below, to Orion now showing himself as the black cloud draws off,—all
for purposes of support to body or mind,—all, whether appropriated, or
left at large because they cannot be appropriated. Let us hope that each
will, at length, have his share; and as Providence has placed no limit
to the enjoyment of his gifts but that of food, we may learn so to
understand one another’s desires as mutually to satisfy them; so that
there may not be too much of one thing to the injury of some, and too
little of another thing, to the deprivation of more."
“If we could but calculate the present uses of any one gift!” said Dr.
Sneyd, smiling; “but this is a task for the philosophers of another age,
or another state. I would fain know how many living beings are reposing
or pasturing on your flax-stalk, and how much service will be rendered
in the course of the processes it has to go through. I would fain know
how many besides ourselves are drawing from yonder constellation
knowledge and pleasure.”
“More than there are stars in the heaven, besides the myriads that have
their home in one or other of its worlds. What more knowledge are we to
derive to-night?”
And Arthur returned to his seat and his task, which he had quitted while
the sky was clouded. His father observed, with surprise, how far the
twinkling lights had travelled from their former place.
“It is later than I thought, Arthur,” said he. “I ought not to have kept
you so long from your rest, busy as your days are.”
Arthur was quite disposed to go on, till sunrise, if his father wished
to take advantage of his services. He must meet his men very early in
the dewy morning to mow, and the night was now so far advanced that it
would be as well to watch it out. Dr. Sneyd was very thankful for his
aid. When they had satisfied themselves that the household were gone to
rest, and had replenished the lamp, nothing but brief directions and the
ticking of the watch was again heard in this upper chamber till the
chirping of birds summoned the mower to fetch his scythe.
---------------------
CHAPTER V.
INTRODUCTIONS.
The true cause of Mr. Temple’s Sunday headache was spleen at the
occurrence of the morning. That Dr. Sneyd should preach, and in a
market-house, and that soldiers should come some miles to hear him was,
he declared, a perfect scandal to the settlement. He could not
countenance it.
The scandal continued, without the countenance of the scrupulous
gentleman, till the autumn, when the reason of certain magnificent
doings at Temple Hall began to be apparent. Probably the only persons
who could have told what all this new building meant were forbidden to
do so, as Mrs. Sneyd could never obtain a word from her daughter in
return for all her conjectures about what the Lodge was to grow into at
last, the builders having no sooner done one task than they had to set
about another. There was infinite hurry and bustle about these last
additions. Workmen were brought from a distance to relieve those on the
spot, that no part of the long summer days might be lost. Wall rose
above wall; beam followed beam from the forest, and planks issued from
the sawpit with marvellous speed. One would have thought the President
was expected on a visit before winter; and, in fact, a rumour was
current in the village that some new capitalists were coming to look
about them, and were to be tempted to abide on some of the great man’s
lands. This seemed the more probable as a substantial house was being
built in the Lodge grounds, besides the new wing (as it appeared to be)
of the mansion itself. Every body agreed that this house must be
intended for somebody.
The truth burst forth, one day late in the autumn, that seats instead of
partitions were being put up in the new building, and that the windows
were to be unlike those of the rest of the house:—in short, that it was
to be a chapel. The servants spread abroad the fact that company was
expected in a few days; to stay, they believed, all the winter.—Ay! till
the new house should be ready, every body supposed. Meantime, Mrs.
Temple said nothing more to her family than that friends of Mr. Temple’s
were shortly coming to stay at the Lodge. She had never seen them, and
knew but little about them:—hoped they might prove an acquisition to her
father:—depended upon Arthur’s civilities, if he should have it in his
power,—and so forth.
It was seldom that Mr. Temple called on his father-in-law,—especially in
the middle of the day, when less irksome things could be found to do;
but, one bright noon, he was perceived approaching the house, driving
the barouche, in which were seated two ladies and a gentleman, besides
the heir of Temple Lodge. Dr. Sneyd stepped out of his low window into
the garden, and met them near the gate, where he was introduced to the
Rev. Ralph Hesselden, pastor of Briery Creek, and Mrs. Hesselden.
The picturesque clergyman and his showy lady testified all outward
respect to the venerable old man before them. They forgot for a moment
what they had been told of his politics being "sad, very sad; quite
deplorable,"—and remembered only that he was the father of their
hostess. It was not till a full half hour after that they became duly
shocked at a man of his powers having been given over to the delusions
of human reason, and at his profaneness in having dared to set up for a
guide to others while he was himself blinded in the darkness of error.
There was so little that told of delusion in the calm simplicity of the
doctor’s countenance, and something so unlike profaneness and
presumption in his mild and serious manners, that it was not surprising
that his guests were so long in discovering the evil that was in him.
Mrs. Sneyd was busy about a task into which she put no small share of
her energies. She had heard that nothing that could be eaten was half so
good as pomegranate preserve, well made. In concert with Arthur, she had
grown pomegranates with great success, and she was this morning engaged
in preserving them; using her utmost skill, in the hope that if it
should prove an impossible thing to make her husband care for one
preserve rather than another while he was in health, this might be an
acceptable refreshment in case of sickness; or that, at least, Temmy
would relish the luxury; and possibly Temple himself be soothed by it in
one of the fits of spleen with which he was apt to cloud the morning
meal.—The mess was stewing, and the lady sipping and stirring, when her
husband came to tell her who had arrived, and to request her to
appear;—came instead of sending, to give her the opportunity of removing
all traces of mortification before she entered the room.
"Mr. and Mrs. Who?—a pastor? what, a methodist?—chaplain at the Lodge,
and pastor of Briery Creek?—My dear, this is aimed at you."
"One can hardly say that, as I only preached because there was no one
else.—I must not stay. You will come directly, my dear."
"I do not see how I can, my dear,"—glancing from her husband to her
stewpan, under a sense of outraged affection with respect to both of
them. “To take one so by surprise! I am sure it was done on purpose,”
“Then let us carry it off with as little consternation as we can. Peggy
will take your place.”
"And spoil all I have been doing, I know. And my face is so scorched, I
am not fit to be seen.—I’ll tell you what, my dear," she went on,
surrendering her long spoon to Peggy, and whisking off her apron,—“if I
appear now, I will not go and hear this man preach. I cannot be expected
to do that.”
“We will see about that when Sunday comes,” the doctor turned back to
say, as he hastened back to the party who were amusing themselves with
admiring the early drawings of Mrs. Temple, which hung against the walls
of her mother’s parlour. The doctor brought in with him a literary
journal of a later date than any which had arrived at the Lodge, and no
one suspected that he had been ministering to his wife’s good manners.
Mrs. Temple was in pain for what might follow the introduction.
There was no occasion for her inward tremors, nor for Dr. Sneyd’s quick
glance at his wife over his spectacles. Mrs. Sneyd might be fully
trusted to preserve her husband’s dignity. She instantly appeared,—so
courteous and self-possessed that no one could have perceived that she
had been hurried. The scorched cheeks passed with the strangers for the
ruddy health attendant on a country life, and they benevolently rejoiced
that she seemed likely to have some time before her yet, in which to
retract her heresies, and repent of all that she had believed and acted
upon through life. It was cheering to think of the safety that might
await her, if she should happily survive the doctor, and come under
their immediate guidance.
The ladies were left to themselves while Temple was grimacing (as he did
in certain states of nervousness) and whipping the shining toe of his
right boot, and the other gentleman making the plunge into science and
literature in which the doctor always led the way when he could lay hold
of a man of education. One shade of disappointment after another passed
over his countenance when he was met with questions whether one
philosopher was not pursuing his researches into regions whence many had
returned infidels,—with conjectures whether an eminent patriot was not
living without God in the world,—and with doubts whether a venerable
philanthropist might still be confided in, since he had gone hand in
hand in a good work with a man of doubtful seriousness. At last, his
patience seemed to be put to the proof, for his daughter heard him say,
“Well, sir, as neither you nor I are infidels, nor likely to become so,
suppose we let that matter pass. Our part is with the good tidings of
great deeds doing on the other side of the world. The faith of the doers
is between themselves and their God.”
"But, sir, consider the value of a lost soul—"
“I have so much hope of many souls being saved by every measure of wise
policy and true philanthropy, that I cannot mar my satisfaction by
groundless doubts of the safety of the movers. Let us take advantage of
the permission to judge them by their fruits, and then, it seems to me,
we may make ourselves very easy respecting them. Can you satisfy me
about this new method,—it is of immense importance,—of grinding
lenses——”
Mr. Hesselden could scarcely listen further, so shocked was he with the
doctor’s levity and laxity in being eager about bringing new worlds
within human ken, while there seemed to the pious a doubt whether the
agents of divine wisdom and benignity would be cared for by him who sent
them.—Mr. Hesselden solemnly elevated his eyebrows, as he looked towards
his wife; and the glance took effect. The lady began inquiring of Mrs.
Sneyd respecting the spiritual affairs of the settlement. She hoped the
population had a serious turn.
“Why, Madam,” replied Mrs. Sneyd, “every thing has so conduced to sober
the minds of our neighbours, that there has been little room yet for
frivolity among us. The circumstances of hardship, of one kind or
another, that led us all from our old homes were very serious; and it is
a serious matter to quit country and family and friends; and the first
casting about for subsistence in a new land is enough to bring thought
into the wildest brain; and now, when we have gathered many comforts
about us, and can thank Providence with full hearts, we are not at
liberty for idleness and levity. I assure you that Dr. Sneyd has had to
enlarge more against anxiety for the morrow than against carelessness or
vain-glory.”
“I rejoice to hear it. This is good as far as it goes. But I was
inquiring about more important affairs.”
"In more important matters still, I hope you will find much that is
encouraging. We are naturally free from the vices of extreme wealth or
poverty. Among the few whose labours have proved fruitful, there is a
sobriety of manners which I think will please you; and none are so poor
as to be tempted to dishonesty, or driven into recklessness. The cry of
‘stop thief’ has never been heard in Briery Creek, and you will neither
meet a drunken man nor a damsel dressed in tawdry finery.—By the way,
Louisa," she continued, addressing her daughter, “I am sorry there is
any difficulty about Rundell’s getting more land, and Chapman’s setting
up a general store. I have some fears that as our neighbours’ earnings
increase, we may see them spent in idle luxuries, unless there is a
facility in making a profitable investment.”
“Where is the difficulty, ma’am?” asked Mrs. Temple. “If Rundell wants
land, I rather think Mr. Temple has plenty for him.”
“I understand not.”
Mrs. Temple was about to argue the matter on the ground of her husband’s
thousands of uncultivated acres, but recollecting that there might be
more in the matter than was apparent to her, she stopped short, and
there was a pause.—At length, Mrs. Hesselden, turning the fullest aspect
of her enormous white chip bonnet on Mrs. Sneyd, supposed that as the
neighbourhood was so very moral, there were no public amusements in
Briery Creek.
“I am sorry to say there are none at present. Dr. Sneyd and my son
begin, next week, a humble attempt at a place of evening resort; and now
that Mr. Hesselden will be here to assist them, I hope our people will
soon be provided with a sufficiency of harmless amusement.”
"You begin next week?—A prayer meeting?" asked the lady, turning to Mrs.
Temple. Mrs. Temple believed not.
“We _have_ our meetings for intercourse on the subjects you refer to,”
replied Mrs. Sneyd; “but I understood you to be inquiring about places
of amusement. My son presented the settlement with a cricket ground
lately.”
“A cricket ground, was it?” said Mrs. Temple. “I thought it had been a
bleaching ground. I understood it was the ladies of the place who were
to be the better for his bounty.”
"That is true also. The same ground serves the washers on the Monday
morning, and the cricketers on the Saturday afternoon. You must know,
Mrs Hesselden, there is much trouble here in getting soap enough,—and
also candles,—for the purposes of all. There is some objection, I find,
to a general store being set up; so that only the richer of our
neighbours can obtain a regular supply of certain necessary articles;
and the poorer ones are just those who find it most expensive and
troublesome to make all the soap and candles they want. My son, knowing
how much consumption is saved by association, as he says, had a view to
these poorer settlers in opening the bleaching ground. They are truly
glad to get their linen washed twice as well in the field as at home,
and at half the expense of soap. They are very willing to clear the
place for the cricketers three afternoons in the week; and are already
beginning to pay off the cost incurred for the shed, with the boilers
and troughs. I really hardly know which is the prettiest sight,—the
games of the active young men, when they forget the worldly calculations
which are apt to engross new settlers too much,—or the merry maidens in
the field at noon, spreading out linen and blankets of a whiteness that
would be envied by most of the professional laundresses that I have
known."
“All these things,” observed Mrs. Hesselden, "are of inferior
consequence. I mean——"
"Very true: I mention them chiefly as signs of the times—not as the
limit to which our improvements have extended. We are anxious to provide
a reading-room for the youths, at the same time that we open our school.
My daughter has no doubt told you about the school which she is helping
to form. We find that the newspapers and journals which were always
deposited in the cricket-ground were so much relished by the players in
the intervals of their games, that Dr. Sneyd and my son have determined
to light up and warm the school-house every evening during the winter,
to be the resort of all who choose to go. Dr. Sneyd carries there the
humble beginning of a museum of natural history, which it must be the
care of our neighbours to improve. They can easily do so by exchanging
the productions of our forest and prairie for what may be obtained from
the societies Dr. Sneyd is connected with in England and France. All the
publications sent to us will find their way to the school-house; and
when the snow comes to enable a sleigh to bring us the packages of glass
we have been waiting for these eight months, the doctor will erect his
large telescope, and send an inferior one down to the village for the
use of his star-gazing neighbours."
Observing Mrs. Hesselden’s supercilious silence, Mrs. Sneyd proceeded,
smiling,
"I have had my share in the ordering of the affair, and have carried two
points, _nem. con._ The women are allowed as free ingress as their
husbands and brothers. I mentioned that candles were scarce, and you do
not need to be told that much sewing must be done in our households. By
bringing their work to the school-house, (which is within a stone’s
throw of most of the doors,) many of our hard-working mothers and
daughters will be spared the trouble and expense of making above half as
many candles as if each must have one burning during the whole of the
long evenings of winter. What is more important,—they will share the
benefit of the reading and other amusements that may be going on. My
other point is the dancing. I told Dr. Sneyd that if he carried a
telescope, and made them chill themselves with star-gazing, I must beg
leave to carry a fiddle for them to warm their feet by when they had
done. Two fiddlers have turned up already, and there are rumours of a
flute-player; and I have half promised my grandchild to lead off the
first dance, if he will persuade my son to take me for a partner."
Mrs. Hesselden hoped that others would also be allowed to carry their
points, and then there would be prayer on meeting and parting in the
school-house. If it should be found that such an exercise was
incompatible with the dancing part of the scheme, she trusted Mrs. Sneyd
saw which must give way.
Mrs. Sneyd would advocate no practice which was incompatible with
religious duty. In the present case, she thought that the only
concession required was that each exercise should have its proper
season. None of the usual objections to dancing would hold good here,
she continued. No shivering wretches stood without, while the rich were
making merry. There was no inducement to extravagance, and no room for
imprudence, and no encouragement to idleness. There was no scope for
these vices among the working-class of Briery Creek, and dancing was to
them (what it would be in many another place, if permitted) an innocent
enjoyment, a preventive of much solitary self-indulgence, and a
sweetener of many tempers. In a society whose great danger was the
growth of a binding spirit of worldliness, social mirth was an antidote
which no moralist would condemn, and which he would not dare to despise.
Mrs. Hesselden, fearing that she could never make Mrs. Sneyd comprehend
how much more she and her husband were than mere moralists, quitted the
subject till she could explain to Mrs. Temple on the way home, that
though the presence of the Sneyds had undoubtedly been of great use in
fostering a morality which was better than nothing, yet it was evidently
high time that more should be added, and certainly a great blessing to
Briery Creek that her husband and she had arrived to breathe inspiration
into the social mass which was now lying,—if not dead,—yet under the
shadow of death.
Mrs. Sneyd found time, before returning to her pomegranates, to take a
last wondering look at the immensity of Mrs. Hesselden’s chip bonnet, as
it floated, splendid in its variegated trimming, over the shrubs in her
passage to the garden gate.
“I can never make out,” she observed to her husband, "why so many of
these very strict religious people dress so luxuriously as they do. Here
is this lady,—infinitely scandalized, I perceive, at our having
introduced dancing,—dressed after such a fashion as our maidens never
saw before. If they begin to bedizen themselves with the money which
might be spent profitably in increasing the means of subsistence, or
innocently in procuring substantial comforts which are now difficult to
be had, I shall lay the blame on Mrs. Hesselden’s bonnet. I remember
observing that I never saw so splendid a show-room for dress as the new
church we attended, in ——- street, the Sunday before we left London. It
is very odd."
"Not more strange, my dear, than that the Friends should addict
themselves much to the furnishing their houses with expensive furniture,
and their tables with more costly and various foods than other people.
Not more strange than that Martin, the Methodist, should turn strolling
player when he gave up his methodism; or that the Irish betake
themselves to rebellion when stopped in their merry-makings; or that the
English artizan takes to the gin-shop when the fiddle is prohibited in
the public-house. Not more strange, my dear, than that the steam of your
kettle should come out at the lid, if you stop up the spout, or than
that——"
“O, you put me in mind of my preserves! But how did you think Louisa
looked to-day?”
"Not very well. There was a something—I do not know what——"
"Well, I wondered whether you would observe. It may be the contrast of
Mrs. Hesselden’s dress that made me remark the thing so much. It really
vexed me to see Louisa so dressed. That collar was darned like any
stocking-heel; and how she got her bonnet ribbons dyed in this place, I
cannot think. What can be the meaning of her being so shabby? It is so
contrary to her taste,—unless she has taken up a new taste, for want of
something to do."
Dr. Sneyd shook his head. He knew that Temple left his lady no lack of
something to do. Temmy had also dropped a piece of information about wax
candles lately, which convinced the doctor that the lady at the Hall was
now compelled to economize to the last degree in her own expenditure,
whatever indulgence might still be afforded to her tyrant’s tastes.
“_He_ looks wretchedly too,” observed Mrs. Sneyd. “Not all his
spruceness could hide it, if he was as spruce as ever. But there is a
change in him too. One might almost call his ensemble slovenly to-day,
though it would be neatness itself in many another man. I believe he
half kills himself with snuff. He did nothing but open and shut his box
to-day. So much snuff must be very bad for a nervous man like him.”
“Do you know, my dear,” said the doctor, "I have been thinking lately
whether we are not all rather hard upon that poor man——Yes, yes, I know.
I am not going to defend, only to excuse him a little. I am as unhappy
as you can be about all that Louisa has to go through with him, and
about his spoiling that poor boy for life,—doing all that can be done to
make him a dolt. But I am sure the man suffers—suffers dreadfully."
“Suffers! How?”
"Nay, you need but look in his face to see whether he is a happy man or
not; but what his ailments are, I do not pretend to say. His nerves
torture him, I am certain——"
Mrs. Sneyd insinuated speculations about indulgence in brandy, opium,
spices, &c., and about remorse, fear, and the whole demon band of the
passions. Dr. Sneyd’s conjecture was that Temple’s affairs were in an
unsatisfactory condition, and that this trouble, acting on the mind of a
coward, probably drove him to the use of sufficient stimulus to irritate
instead of relieving him. Great allowance, he insisted, should be made
for a man in so pitiable a state, even by the parents of his wife. This
was so effectually admitted by the good lady, that she not only sent a
double portion of pomegranate preserve to the Lodge, but restrained her
anger when she heard that Rundell could not obtain liberty to invest as
he pleased the capital he had saved, owing to Temple’s evil influence at
the land-office; and that Arthur’s interests were wantonly injured by
his interference. Arthur had taken great pains to secure a supply of
fresh meat and fresh butter for the approaching winter; and besides the
hope of profit from his fine sheep and cows, he had the assurance of the
gratitude of his neighbours, who had grown heartily weary of salt pork
and salt butter the winter before. But Mr. Temple now set up a grand
salting establishment; and made it generally understood that only those
who were prudent enough to furnish themselves with his cheap salt
provision, rather than Mr. Sneyd’s dear mutton, should have his custom
in the market, and his countenance at the land-office. Arthur’s first-
slain sheep had to be eaten up by his father’s household and his own;
and it was a piece of great forbearance in Mrs. Sneyd, when she heard
that Arthur meant to kill no more mutton, to say only, “The poor little
man punishes nobody so much as himself. I do not see how he can relish
his own fresh mutton very much, while he prevents other people having
any.”
“He cannot altogether prevent that, mother,” said Arthur. "He may
prevent mutton bearing any price in the market, and cut off my gains;
but we may still slay a sheep now and then, for ourselves; and find
neighbours who will quietly make such an exchange of presents as will
take off what we cannot consume. But I wish I could see an end of this
dictation,—this tyranny."
“It does seem rather strange to have come to a land of freedom to be in
the power of such a despot. I wonder the people do not shake him off,
and send him to play the tyrant farther in the wilds.”
“They are only waiting till his substance is all consumed, I fancy. He
has such a hold over the investments of some, and finds so much
employment for the labour of others, that they will submit to everything
for a time. But his hour will come, if he does not beware.”
“It may be all very well for those who have investments to take time to
extricate their capital from his grasp,” said Mrs. Sneyd; “but as for
the builders and gardeners he employs, I think they would be wiser if
they carried their labour where they might depend on a more lasting
demand for it. Anybody may see that if he spends more every year in
undoing what he did the year before, his substance must soon come to an
end, and his labourers become his creditors. If I were they, I would
rather go and build barns that are paid for by the preservation of the
corn that is in them, and till fields that will maintain the labour of
tillage, and set more to work next year, than turn round a fine house
from south to west, and from west to south, and change shrubberies into
lawns, and lawns into flower-gardens, knowing that such waste must come
to an end.”
“But some do not believe that it is waste, mother. They see the money
that pays them still in existence, still going the round of the market;
and they talk (as some people in England do about royal palaces, and
spendthrift noblemen’s establishments) of the blessing of a liberal
expenditure, and the patriotism of employing so much labour.”
"Which would be all very well if the labourers lived upon the sight of
the money they are paid with. But, as long as that money is changed many
times over for bread and clothing, which all disappears in the process,
it is difficult to make out that anything is gained but the
pleasure,—which may be justifiable or not, according to the
circumstances of the employers. In the end, the money remains as it was
before, and instead of so much food and clothing, there is a royal
palace. If you do not like your palace, and pull it down and rebuild it,
the money exists as before, and for a double quantity of food and
clothing, you still have a palace."
“The wrong notion you speak of arises partly,” said Dr. Sneyd, “from a
confusion between one sort of unproductive expenditure and another.
People hear of its being a fine thing to employ a crowd of labourers in
making a new line of road, or building a bridge, and they immediately
suppose it must be a patriotic thing to employ a crowd of labourers in
building any thing.”
“I think they might perceive that, though corn does not grow on a high
road, nor bridges yield manufactures, the value of corn lands may be
doubled by opening a way to a new market, and that an unused water power
may begin to yield wealth from the moment that there is a bridge over
which buyers may come for it. It is a misfortune to Briery Creek that
Temple is more of a selfish palace-fancier than a patriotic bridge and
road maker.”
The first Sunday of the opening of the chapel, Temple appeared in a
character which he had only once before attempted to support. On the
occasion of using the market-house for service, he had approached the
door, cast a glance within upon the company of soldiers, and the village
population at their worship, while their aged friend was leading their
devotions, and hastily departed, thankful that he was too pious to join
in such a service as this. He took the part of a religious man that day,
and now was the time for him to resume the character. Under the idea
that the market-house might be opened as usual for Dr. Sneyd, making his
own appear like an opposition place of worship, he spared no pains to
secure a majority in point of audience. He had managed to ride past the
military post, and be gracious with the soldiers. His domestics puffed
the chapel and chaplain at market, the day before, and the leading
villagers received intimations of good sittings being appropriated to
them. These pains might have been spared. All who desired might know
that Dr. Sneyd, his wife, son, and servants intended to be present, as a
matter of course.
When they entered, Temple looked nearly as much surprised as if they had
at the moment arrived from England. He made a prodigious bustle about
having them accommodated in a seat next his own, and condescendingly
sent them books, and inquired into the sufficiency of hassocks. During
the greater part of the service he stood up, as if he could not listen
with sufficient attention while sitting, like other people. Yet he
cleared his throat if any body moved, and sent his pert glance into
every corner to command a reverential demeanour, while his chaplain was
enforcing, as the prime glory and charm of a place of worship, that
there, and there alone, all are equal and all are free. Little Ephraim
cowered behind the coachman while the preacher insisted that here the
humblest slave might stand erect on the ground of his humanity; and the
butler stepped on tiptoe half way down the aisle to huff Jenkins the
ditcher for coming so high up, at the very moment that something was
quoted about a gold ring and purple raiment in the synagogue.
It was true the preacher and his message had not so good a chance of
being attended to as they might have on future Sundays. The bustle
produced by the anticipation of the occasion did not subside on the
arrival of the occasion. The fine large chip bonnets had been procured,
and the trimming and sending them home had been achieved by the Saturday
night. But it remained to wear them for the first time: not only to
support the consciousness of a new piece of finery, but to compare the
fine bonnets with the shabby head-gear of other people, with each other,
and, finally, with Mrs. Hesselden’s. Then, while Mrs. Dods was thus
contemplating the effect of her own peculiar species of architecture,
her husband could not but look round him, and remember that every
individual brick of this pile had been fashioned by himself and his
lads. The builder scanned the measurements of the windows and the
ceiling. Two or three boys and girls shuffled their feet on the matting
which their mother had woven. A trader from the north gradually made up
his mind to approach the ladies after service, for the purpose of
recommending fur pouches for the feet during the severe season that was
approaching. The Brawnees, unincumbered by any thing beyond their
working-day apparel, were among the best listeners. Temmy was so alarmed
at the prospect of having to give his father, for the first time, an
account of the sermon, that he could not have taken in a word of it,
even if he had not been miserable at seeing the tears coursing one
another down his mother’s cheeks during the whole time of the service.
Her left hand hung by her side, but he did not dare to touch it. He
looked at Mrs. Hesselden to try to find out whether she thought his
mother was ill; or whether the sermon was affecting; or whether this was
the consequence of something that had been said at breakfast against
grandpapa. Grandpapa seemed to be listening very serenely to the sermon,
and that was a better comfort than Mrs. Hesselden’s countenance,—so
grave, that Temmy feared to provoke a cross word if he looked at her
again.
It was not known, till the ladies of the village ranged themselves round
the work-table in the school-house, one chilly evening, soon afterwards,
how great had been the bustle of preparation before the fine chip
bonnets made their appearance in the chapel. All hearts, even those of
rival milliners, were laid open by the sight of the roaring wood fire,
the superior candles, the hearty welcome, and the smiling company that
awaited them as they dropped in at the place of entertainment,—the women
with their sewing apparatus, and their husbands and brothers ready for
whatever occupation might have been devised for their leisure evening
hours. While these latter crowded round the little library, to see of
what it consisted, the sewers placed their benches round the deal table,
snuffed their candles, and opened their bundles of work. Mrs. Dods made
no mystery of her task. She was cutting up a large chip bonnet to make
two small hats for her youngest boy and girl, owning that, not having
calculated on any one else attempting to gratify the rage for imitating
Mrs. Hesselden, she had injured her speculation by overstocking the
market. The lawyer’s lady had been reckoned upon as a certain customer;
but it turned out,—however true that the lawyer’s lady must have a chip
bonnet,—that the builder’s wife had just then entered upon a rivalship
with the brickmaker’s wife, and had stuck up at her window bonnets a
trifle cheaper than those of Mrs. Dods. It only remained for Mrs. Dods
to show how pretty her little folks looked in hats of the fashionable
material, in hopes that the demand might spread to children.
“If it does, Mrs. Dods, Martha Jenkins will have the same reason to
complain of you that you have to complain of being interfered with. It
is unknown the trouble that Jenkins has had, following the river till he
came to the beavers, and then hunting them, and preparing their skins at
home, and all that, while Martha spared no pains to make beaver hats for
all the boys and girls in the place. It will be rather hard if you cut
her out.”
“And you can do it only by lowering your price ruinously,” observed Mrs.
Sneyd. “I should think any mother in Briery Creek would rather keep her
child’s ears from freezing by putting on her a warm beaver, than dress
her out prettily in a light chip, at this season. Nothing but a great
difference in price can give yours the preference, I should think, Mrs.
Dods.”
“Then such a difference there must be,” Mrs. Dods replied. “I had rather
sell my article cheap than not sell it at all. Another time I shall take
care how I run myself out at elbows in providing for a new fashion among
the ladies.”
Mrs. Sneyd thought that those were engaged in the safest traffic who
dealt in articles in the commonest use,—who looked for custom chiefly
from the lower, i.e. the larger classes of the people. From their
numbers, those classes are always the greatest consumers; and, from the
regularity of their productive industry, they are also the most regular
consumers. It seemed probable that the demand for Martha Jenkins’s
beavers would prove superior in the long run to that for Mrs. Dods’s
varied supply, though poor Martha might suffer for a while from the glut
of chips which occasioned loss to all sellers of bonnets, at present,
and gain to all sellers of whatever was given in exchange for bonnets.
Fat for candles was scarcely to be had since Temple had discouraged the
sale of fresh meat. Mrs. Dods was deplorably in want of candles. She
made a bargain with a neighbour for some in return for the hat now under
her hands. How few she was to receive, it vexed her to think; but there
was no help for it till somebody should supply the deficiency of
candles, or till new heads should crave covering.
It now appeared that the ladies were not the only persons who had
brought their work. When it came to be decided who should be the reader,
it was unanimously agreed that some one who had no employment for his
hands should undertake the office. Dods had leathern mittens to make for
the less hardy of the woodsmen. Others occupied themselves in platting
straw, making mops, cutting pegs to be employed in roofing, and cobbling
shoes. Arthur drew sketches for Temmy to copy. Such was always the
pretence for Arthur’s drawings; but a neighbour who cast a peep over his
shoulder, from time to time, could not help thinking that the sketch was
of the present party, with Dr. Sneyd in the seat of honour by the fire-
side, Mrs. Sneyd knitting in the shadow, that the full benefit of the
candles might be yielded to those whose occupation required it; Isaac,
who had received the honour of the first appointment as reader, holding
his book rather primly, and pitching his voice in a key which seemed to
cause a tendency to giggle among some of the least wise of his auditors;
and, lastly, the employed listeners, as they sat in various postures,
and in many lights, as the blaze from the logs now flickered low, and
now leaped up to lighten all the room. Each of these was suspected to be
destined to find a place in Arthur’s sketch.
It was a pity Temmy was not here to take a drawing lesson, his uncle
thought. These evening meetings afforded just the opportunity that was
wanted; for Arthur could seldom find time to sit down and make his
little nephew as good an artist as he believed he might become. It was
not till quite late, when the party would have begun dancing if some one
had not given a broad hint about the doctor’s telescope, that Temmy
appeared. Nobody heard his steed approach the door, and every body
wondered to see him. It was thought that Mr. Temple would have allowed
no one belonging to him to mix with those whom he was pleased to call
the common people of the place. Unguarded, the boy would indeed have
been exposed to no such risk of contamination; but Mr. Hesselden had
promised to be there, and it was believed that, under his wing, the boy
would take no harm, while Mr. Temple’s object, of preserving a connexion
with whatever passed in his neighbourhood, might be fulfilled.
Mr. Hesselden was not there; and if it was desirable that Temple’s
representative should make a dignified appearance on this new occasion,
never was a representative more unfortunately chosen. The little fellow
crept to his grandmamma’s side, shivering and half crying. The good lady
observed that it was indeed very cold, chafed his hands, requested
Rundell to throw another log or two on the fire, and comforted the boy
with assurances that he was come in time to dance with her. Every body
was ready with protestations that it was indeed remarkably cold. It was
thought the beauty of the woods was nearly over for this season. In a
few days more it was probable that the myriads of stems in the forest
would be wholly bare, and little green but the mosses left for the eye
to rest upon under the woven canopy of boughs. Few evergreens grew near,
so that the forest was as remarkably gloomy in winter as it was bright
in the season of leaves.
When the window was opened, that the star-gazers might reconnoitre the
heavens, it was found that the air was thick with snow;—snow was falling
in a cloud.
“Do but see!” cried Arthur. “No star-gazing to-night, nor dancing
either, I fancy, if we mean to get home before it is knee-deep. Temmy,
did it snow when you came?”
“O, yes,” answered the boy, his teeth chattering at the recollection.
“Why did not you tell us, my dear?” asked Mrs. Sneyd.
The doctor was inwardly glad that there was so good a reason for Mr.
Hesselden’s absence.
“No wonder we did not hear the horse trot up to the door,” observed some
one. “Come, ladies, put up your work, unless you mean to stay here till
the next thaw.”
A child or two was present who was delighted to think of the way to the
school-house being impassable till the next thaw.
“Stay a bit,” cried Rundell, coming in from the door, and pulling it
after him. "I am not going without my brand, and a fine blazing one
too,—with such noises abroad."
“What noises?”
“Wolves. A strong pack of them, to judge by the cry.”
All who possessed sheep were now troubled with dire apprehensions: and
their fears were not allayed when Temmy let fall that wolves were
howling, as the groom thought, on every side, during his ride from the
Lodge. The boy had never been so alarmed in his life; and he laid a firm
grasp on uncle Arthur’s coat-collar when there was talk of going home
again.
“You must let me go, Temmy. I must look after my lambs without more loss
of time. If you had not been the strangest boy in the world, you would
have given us notice to do so, long ago. I cannot conceive what makes
you so silent about little things that happen.”
Mrs. Sneyd could very well account for that which puzzled Arthur. She
understood little minds, and had watched, only too anxiously, the
process by which continual checking had rendered her grand-child afraid
to tell that there was snow, or that wolves were abroad.
“Come, lads,” cried Arthur. “Who cares for his sheep? Fetch your arms,
and meet me at the poplar by the Kiln, and we will sally out to the
pens, and have a wolf-hunt.”
There was much glee at the prospect of this frolic; the more that such
an one had not been expected to occur yet awhile. So early a
commencement of winter had not happened within the experience of any
inhabitant of Briery Creek. The swine in the woods had not yet exhausted
their feast of autumn berries; and fallen apples and peaches enough
remained to feed them for a month. The usual signal of the advance of
the season,—these animals digging for hickory nuts among the rotting
leaves,—had not been observed. In short, the snow had taken every body
by surprise, unless it was the wolves.
Dr. Sneyd lighted and guided home his wife and Temmy, in almost as high
spirits as the youngest of the wolf-hunters. The season of sleighing was
come, and his precious package of glass might soon be attainable. Dire
as were the disasters which befel the party on their way,—the wetting,
the loss of the track, the stumbles, the dread of wild beasts, and
Temmy’s disappearance for ten seconds in a treacherous hollow,—the
doctor did not find himself able to regret the state of the weather. He
fixed his thoughts on the interests of science, and was consoled for
every mischance.
If he had foreseen all that would result from this night’s adventure, he
would not have watched with so much pleasure for the lights along the
verge of the forest, when the snow had ceased; nor have been amused at
the tribute of wolves’ heads which he found the next morning deposited
in his porch.
---------------------
CHAPTER VI.
A FATHER’S HOPE.
For several days an unwonted stillness reigned in Dr. Sneyd’s
abode;—from the day that the fever under which Arthur was labouring had
appeared of a serious character. While it was supposed to be merely a
severe cold, caught on the night of the wolf-hunt, all had gone on as
much in the common way as could be expected under the novelty of a sick
person being in the house; but from the moment that there was a hint of
danger, all was studious quiet. The surgeon stepped stealthily up
stairs, and the heavy-footed maids did their best not to shake the
floors they trod. Mrs. Temple conducted her consultations with her
father in a whisper, though the study door was shut; and there was thus
only too much opportunity for the patient’s voice to be heard all over
the house, when his fever ran high.
Temmy did not like to stay away, though he was very unhappy while on the
spot. When he could not slip in behind the surgeon, he avoided the hall
by entering the study through the garden-window. Then he could sit
unobserved in the low chair; and, what was better, unemployed. He had an
earnest desire to be of use, but so deep a conviction that he never
could be useful, that it was a misery to him to be asked to do any
thing. If requested merely to go an errand, or to watch for a messenger,
he felt as if his uncle’s life depended on what he might see and say and
do, within a few minutes; and he was therefore apt to see wrong, and
speak amiss, and do the very reverse of what he ought to do. All this
was only more tolerable than being at home;—either alone, in momentary
terror of his father coming in; or with his father, listening to
complaints of Mrs. Temple’s absence, or invited to an ill-timed
facetiousness which he dared not decline, however sick at heart he might
be.
He had just crouched down in the great chair one morning, (supposing
that Dr. Sneyd, who was bending over a letter at the table, had not seen
him enter,) when Mrs. Temple appeared from the sick chamber. As she
found time, in the first place, to kiss the forehead of her boy, whom
she had not seen since the preceding afternoon, he took courage to ask,
“Is uncle Arthur better?”
Mrs. Temple could not reply otherwise than by a melancholy shake of the
head. Dr. Sneyd turned round.
“No, my dear,” he said. “Your uncle is not better. Louisa,” he
continued, observing his daughter’s haggard and agitated countenance,
“you must rest. This last night has been too much for you.”
Arthur had dropped asleep at last, Mrs. Temple said; a troubled sleep,
which she feared would soon be at an end; but she saw the surgeon coming
up, and wished to receive him below, and ask him——A sudden thought
seemed to strike her.
"My dear, go up to your uncle’s room——"
Temmy drew back, and very nearly said “No.”
“You can leave your shoes at the bottom of the stairs. Ask your
grandmamma to come down to us; and do you sit at the bottom of the bed,
and watch your uncle’s sleep. If he seems likely to wake, call me. If
not, sit quiet till I come.”
Temmy moved slowly away. He had not once been in the room since the
illness began, and nothing could exceed the awe he felt of what he might
behold. He dared not linger, and therefore stole in, and delivered his
message in so low a whisper that his grandmamma could not hear it till
she had beckoned him out to the landing. She then went down, making a
sign to him to take her place. It was now necessary to look into the
bed; and Temmy sat with his eyes fixed, till his head shook
involuntarily with his efforts to keep a steady gaze on his uncle’s
face. That face seemed to change its form, hue and motion every instant,
and sometimes Temmy fancied that the patient was suffocating, and then
that he had ceased to breathe, according to the state that his own
senses were in. Sometimes the relaxed and shrunken hand seemed to make
an effort to grasp the bed clothes, and then Temmy’s was instantly
outstretched, with a start, to the hand-bell with which he was to summon
help. How altered was the face before him! So hollow, and wearing such
an expression of misery! There was just sufficient likeness to uncle
Arthur to enable Temmy to believe that it was he; and quite enough
difference to suggest his being possessed; or, in some sort, not quite
uncle Arthur. He wished somebody would come. How was he to know how soon
he should ring the bell?
This was soon decided. Without a moment’s warning, Arthur opened his
eyes wide, and sat up in the bed, looking at Temmy, till the boy nearly
screamed, and never thought of ringing the bell. When he saw, however,
that Arthur was attempting to get out of bed, he rang hastily, and then
ran to him, saying,
"O, uncle, do lie down again, that I may tell you about the lamb that
got so torn, you know. I have a great deal to tell you about that lamb,
and the old ewe too. And Isaac says——"
“Ay, the lamb, the lamb,” feebly said Arthur, sinking back upon his
pillow.
When Dr. Sneyd presently appeared, he found Arthur listening dully,
painfully, with his glazed eyes fixed on the boy, who was telling, in a
hurried manner of forced cheerfulness, a long story about the lamb that
was getting well. He broke off when help appeared.
“O grandpapa, he woke in such a hurry! He tried to get out of bed,
grandpapa.”
“Yes, my dear, I understand. You did just the right thing, Temmy; and
now you may go down. None of us could have done better, my dear boy.”
Any one who had met Temmy crying on the stairs would have rather
supposed that he had done just the wrong thing. Yet Temmy was a
different boy from that hour. He even thought that he should not much
mind being in uncle Arthur’s room again, if any body should wish to send
him there. It was yet some time before the event of this illness was
considered as decided, and as the days passed on, there became less and
less occasion for inquiry in words, each morning. Whenever Dr. Sneyd’s
countenance was remarkably placid, and his manner particularly quiet,
Temmy knew that his uncle was worse. It was rarely, and during very
brief intervals, that he was considered better. Strange things happened
now and then which made the boy question whether the world was just now
going on in its usual course. It was not very strange to hear his papa
question Mrs. Temple, during the short periods of her being at home,
about Arthur’s will; whether he had one; how it was supposed his
property would be left; and whether he was ever sensible enough to make
any alterations that might be desirable under the late growth of his
little property. It was not strange that Mr. Temple should ask these
questions, nor that they should be answered briefly and with tears: but
it was strange that papa went one day himself into the grapery, and cut
with his own hands the very finest grapes for Arthur, and permitted
Temmy to carry them, though they filled a rather large basket. It seemed
strange that Mr. Kendall, apt as he was, when every body was well, to
joke in season and out of season with guests and neighbours, should now
be grave from morning till night, and often through the night, watching,
considering, inventing, assisting, till Mrs. Sneyd said that, if Arthur
recovered, he would owe his life, under God, to the care of his medical
friend. It was strange to see a physician arrive from a great distance,
twice in one week, and go away again as soon as his horse was refreshed:
though nothing could be more natural than the anxiety of the villagers
who stood at their doors, ready to accost the physician as he went away,
and to try to learn how much hope he really thought there was of
Arthur’s recovery. It was very strange to meet Dr. Sneyd, one morning,
with Arthur’s axe on his shoulder, going out to do some work in the
woods that Arthur had been talking about all night, and wanted
grievously to be doing himself, till Dr. Sneyd had promised that he, and
nobody else, should accomplish it for him. It was strange that Mr.
Hesselden should choose that time, of all others, to turn back with Dr.
Sneyd, and ask why he had not been sent for to the patient’s bed-side,
urging that it was dreadful to think what might become of him hereafter,
if it should please God to remove him in his present feeble condition of
mind. Of all strange things it seemed the strangest that any one should
dare to add to such trouble as the greyhaired father must be suffering,
and that Mr. Hesselden should fancy himself better qualified than Dr.
Sneyd to watch over the religious state of this virtuous son of a pious
parent. Even Temmy could understand enough to be disgusted, and to
venerate the humble dignity with which Mr. Hesselden’s officiousness was
checked, and the calmness with which it was at once admitted that
Arthur’s period of probation seemed to be fast drawing to a close. But
nothing astonished the boy so much as some circumstances relating to his
mother. Temmy never knew before that she was fond of uncle Arthur,—or of
any one, unless it was himself. When his papa was not by, her manner was
usually high and cold to every body; and it had become more strikingly
so since he had observed her dress to be shabby. He was now awe-struck
when he saw her sit sobbing behind the curtain, with both hands covering
her face. But it was much worse to see her one day, after standing for a
long while gazing on the sunken countenance before her, cast herself
down by the bedside and cry,
"O, Arthur—Arthur—you will not look at me!"
Temmy could not stay to see what happened. He took refuge with his
grandpapa, who, on hearing what had overpowered him, led him up again to
the chamber, where Louisa was on her knees, weeping quietly with her
face hid in the bed clothes. She was not now in so much need of comfort.
Arthur had turned his eyes upon her, and, she thought, attempted to
speak. She believed she could now watch by him till the last without
repining; but it had been dreary,—most dreary, to see him wasting
without one sign of love or consciousness.
“What must it be then, my dear daughter, to watch for months and years
in vain for such a sign?” The doctor held in his hand a letter which
Temmy had for some days observed that his grandfather seemed unable to
part with. It told that the most beloved of his old friends had had an
attack of paralysis. It was little probable that he would write or send
message more.
“That it should happen just at this time!” murmured Louisa.
"I grieve for you, my dear. You have many years before you, and the loss
of this brother——But for your mother and me it is not altogether so
trying. We cannot have very long to remain; and the more it pleases God
to wean us from this world, the less anxiety there will be in leaving
it. If the old friends we loved, and the young we depended on, go first,
the next world is made all the brighter; and it is with that world that
we have now most to do."
"But of all losses—that Arthur must be the one——"
"This is the one we could be least prepared for, and from this there is,
perhaps, the strongest recoil,—especially when we think of this
boy,"—laying his hand on Temmy’s head. “But it is enough that it is the
fittest for us. If we cannot see this, we cannot but believe it; and let
the Lord do what seemeth to him good.”
"But such a son! Such a man——"
"Ah! there is precious consolation! No father’s—no mother’s heart—Hear
me, Arthur"——and he laid his hand on that of his son—“No parent’s heart
had ever more perfect repose upon a child than we have had upon you, my
dear son!”
“He hears you.”
"If not now, I trust he shall know it hereafter. His mother and I have
never been thankless, I believe, for what God has given us in our
children; but now is the time to feel truly what His bounty has been.
Some time hence, we may find ourselves growing weary under our loss,
however we may acquiesce: but now there is the support given through him
who is the resurrection and the life,—this support without drawback,
without fear. Thank God!"
After a pause, Mrs. Temple said, hesitatingly,
“You have seen Mr. Hesselden?”
"I have. He believes that there is presumption in the strength of my
hope. But it seems to me that there would be great presumption in doubt
and dread. If my son were a man of a worldly mind,—if his affections
were given to wealth and fame, or to lower objects still, it would
become us to kneel and cry, day and night, for more time, before he must
enter the state where, with such a spirit, he must find himself poor and
miserable and blind and naked. But his Maker has so guided him that his
affections have been fixed on objects which will not be left behind in
this world, or buried away with the body, leaving him desolate in the
presence of his God. He loves knowledge, and for long past he has lived
on benevolence; and he will do the same henceforth and for ever, if the
gospel, in which he has delighted from his youth up, say true. Far be it
from us to doubt his being happy in thus living for the prime ends of
his being!"
Mrs. Temple was still silent.
“You are thinking of the other side of his character,” observed Dr.
Sneyd; “of that dark side which every fallible creature has. Here would
be my fear, if I feared at all. But I do not fear for Arthur that
species of suffering which he has ever courted here. I believe he was
always sooner or later thankful for the disappointment of unreasonable
desires, and the mortifications of pride, and all retribution for sins
and follies. There is no reason to suppose that he will shrink from the
retribution which will in like manner follow such sins and follies as he
may carry with him into another state. All desires whose gratification
cannot enter there will be starved out. The process will be painful; but
the subject of this pain will be the first to acquiesce in it. We,
therefore, will not murmur nor fear.”
“If all this be true, if it be religious, how many torment themselves
and one another in vain about the terrors of the gospel!”
"Very many. For my part, whatever terrors I might feel without the
gospel,—and I can imagine that they might be many and great,—I cannot
conceive of any being left when the gospel is taken home to the
understanding and the heart. It so strips away all the delusions, amidst
which alone terror can arise under the recognition of a benignant
Providence, as to leave a broad unincumbered basis for faith to rest
upon; a faith which must pass from strength to strength, divesting
itself of one weakness and pain after another, till the end comes when
perfect love casts out fear;—a consummation which can never be reached
by more than a few, while arbitrary sufferings are connected with the
word of God in the unauthorized way which is too common at present. No!
if there be one characteristic of the gospel rather than another, it is
its repudiating terrors—(and terrors belong only to ignorance)—by
casting a new and searching light on the operations of Providence, and
showing how happiness is the issue of them all. Surely, daughter, there
is no presumption in saying this, to the glory of Him who gave the
gospel."
“I trust not, father.”
"My dear, with as much confidence as an apostle, were he here, would
desire your brother to arise and walk before us all, do I say to him, if
he can yet hear me, ‘Fear not, for God is with thee.’ I wish I feared as
little for you, Louisa; but indeed this heavy grief is bearing you down.
God comfort you, my child! for we perceive that we cannot."
With a passion of grief, Louisa prayed that she might not be left the
only child of her parents. She had never been, she never should be, to
them what she ought. Arthur must not go. Her father led her away,
soothing her self-reproaches, and giving her hope, by showing how much
of his hope for this world depended on her. She made a speedy effort to
compose herself, as she could not bear to be long absent from Arthur’s
bedside. Her mother was now there, acting with all the silent self-
possession which she had preserved throughout.
The snow was all melted before the morning when the funeral train set
forth from Dr. Sneyd’s door. On leaving the gate, the party turned,—not
in the direction of the chapel, but towards the forest. As Mr. Hesselden
could not in conscience countenance such a departure as that of
Arthur,—lost in unbelief, and unrelieved of his sins as he believed the
sufferer to have been,—it was thought better that the interment should
take place as if no Mr. Hesselden had been there. and no chapel built;
and the whole was conducted as on one former occasion since the
establishment of the settlement. The plain coffin was carried by four of
the villagers, and followed by all the rest, except a very few who
remained about the Lodge. Mrs. Sneyd would not hear of her husband’s
going through the service unsupported by any of his family. Mrs.
Temple’s presence was out of the question. Mrs. Sneyd and Temmy
therefore walked with Dr. Sneyd. When arrived at the open green space
appointed, the family sat down beside the coffin, while the men who had
brought spades dug a grave, and those who had borne axes felled trees
with which to secure the body from the beasts of the forest. There was
something soothing rather than the contrary in observing how all went on
as if the spectators had been gazing with their usual ease upon the
operations of nature. The squirrels ran among the leaves which gaudily
carpeted the ground in the shade: the cattle browzed carelessly,
tinkling their bells among the trees. A lark sprang up from the ground-
nest where she was sitting solitary when the grave-diggers stirred the
long grass in which she had been hidden; and a deer, which had taken
alarm at the shock of the woodsmen’s axes, made a timid survey of the
party, and bounded away into the dark parts of the wood. The children,
who were brought for the purpose of showing respect to the departed,
could scarcely be kept in order by their anxious parents, during the
time of preparation. They would pick up glossy brown nuts that lay at
their feet; and trudged rustling through all the leaves they could
manage to tread upon, in hopes of dislodging mice or other small animals
to which they might give chase. One little girl, with all a little
girl’s love for bright colours, secured a handful of the scarlet leaves
of the maple, the deep yellow of the walnut and hickory, and the pink of
the wild vine; and, using the coffin for a table, began laying out her
treasure there in a circle. Dr. Sneyd was watching her with a placid
smile, when the mother, in an agony of confusion, ran to put a stop to
the amusement. The doctor would not let the child be interfered with. He
seemed to have pleasure in entering into the feelings of as many about
him as could not enter into his.
He was quite prepared for his office at the moment when all was ready
for him. None who were present had ever beheld or listened to a funeral
service so impressive as this of the greyheaded father over the grave of
his son. The few, the very few natural tears shed at the moment of final
surrender did not impair the dignity of the service, nor, most
assuredly, the acceptableness of the devotion from which, as much as
from human grief, they sprang. The doctor would himself see the grave
filled up, and the felled trees so arranged upon it as to render it
perfectly safe. Then he was ready to be the support of his wife home;
and at his own gate, he forgot none who had paid this last mark of
respect to his son. He shook hands with them every one, and touched his
hat to them when he withdrew within the gate.
Mrs. Sneyd wistfully followed him into his study, instead of going to
seek her daughter.—Was he going to write?
“Yes, my dear. There is one in England to whom these tidings are first
due from ourselves. I shall write but little; for hers will be an
affliction with which we must not intermeddle. At least, it is natural
for Arthur’s father to think so. Will you stay beside me? Or are you
going to Louisa?”
"I ought to write to Mrs. Rogers; and I think I will do it now, beside
you. And yet——Louisa——Tell me, dear, which I shall do."
There was something in the listlessness and indecision of tone with
which this was said that more nearly overset Dr. Sneyd’s fortitude than
any thing that had happened this day. Conquering his emotion, he said,
"Let us both take a turn in the garden first, and then——"—and he drew
his wife’s arm within his own, and led her out. Temmy was
there,—lingering, solitary and disconsolate in one of the walks. The
servants had told him that he must not go up to his mamma; they believed
she was asleep; and then Temmy did not know where to go, and was not at
all sure how much he might do on the day of a funeral. In exerting
themselves to cheer him, the doctor and Mrs. Sneyd revived each other;
and when Mrs. Temple arose, head-achy and feverish, and went to the
window for air, she was surprised to see her father with his spade in
his hand, looking on while Mrs. Sneyd and Temmy sought out the last
remains of the autumn fruit in the orchard.
When the long evening had set in, and the most necessary of the letters
were written, little seemed left to be done but to take care of Mrs.
Temple, whose grief had, for the present, much impaired her health. She
lay shivering on a couch drawn very near the fire; and her mother began
to feel so uneasy at the continuance of her head-ache that she was
really glad when Mr. Kendall came up from the village to enquire after
the family. It was like his usual kind attention; and perhaps he said no
more than the occasion might justify of distress of mind being the cause
of indisposition. Yet his manner struck Mrs. Sneyd as being peculiarly
solemn,—somewhat inquisitive, and, on the whole, unsatisfactory. Mrs.
Temple also asked herself for a moment whether Kendall could possibly
know that she was not a happy wife, and would dare to exhibit his
knowledge to her. But she was not strong enough to support the dignified
manner necessary on such a supposition; and she preferred dismissing the
thought. She was recommended to rest as much as possible; to turn her
mind from painful subjects; and, above all, to remain where she was. She
must not think of going home at present;—a declaration for which every
body present was heartily thankful.
When Temmy had attended the surgeon to the door, he returned; and
instead of seating himself at his drawing, as before, wandered from
window to window, listening, and seeming very uncomfortable. Dr. Sneyd
invited him to the fire-side, and made room for him between his knees;
but Temmy could not be happy even there,—the night was so stormy, and it
was raining so very heavily!
“Well, my dear?”
“And uncle Arthur is out in the wood, all alone, and every body else so
comfortable at home!”
“My boy, your uncle can never more be hurt by storm or heat, by night
dew or rain. We will not forget him while we are comfortable, as you
say, by our fire-side: but it is we ourselves, the living, who have to
be sheltered and tended with care and pains, like so many infants, while
perhaps the departed make sport of these things, and look back upon the
needful care of the body as grown men look down upon the cradles they
were rocked in, and the cushions spread for them to fall upon when they
learned to walk. Uncle Arthur may know more about storms than we; but we
know that they will never more beat upon his head.”
Temmy believed this; yet he could not help thinking of the soaked grass,
and the dripping boughs, and the groaning of the forest in the wind,—and
even of the panther and the wild cat snuffing round the grave they could
not reach. He could not help feeling as if his uncle was deserted; and
he had moreover the fear that, though he could never, never think less
of him than now, others would fall more and more into their old way of
talking and laughing in the light of the fire, without casting a thought
towards the forest or any thing that it contained. He felt as if he was,
in such a case, called upon to vindicate uncle Arthur’s claims to solemn
remembrance, and pondered the feasibility of staying at home alone to
think about uncle Arthur when the time should be again come for every
body else to be reading and working, or dancing, during the evenings at
the schoolhouse.
Mrs. Sneyd believed all that her husband had just said to Temmy; and the
scripture which he read this evening to his family, about the heavenly
transcending the earthly, did not pass idly over her ear; yet she so far
felt with Temmy that she looked out, forest-wards, for long before she
tried to rest; and, with the first grey of the morning, was again at the
same station. On the first occasion, she was somewhat surprised by two
things that she saw;—many lights flitting about the village, and on the
road to the Lodge,—and a faint glimmer, like the spark of a glow-worm,
in the opposite direction, as if precisely on the solitary spot where
Arthur lay. Dr. Sneyd could not distinguish it through the storm; but on
being assured that there was certainly some light, supposed that it
might be one of the meteoric fires which were wont to dart out of the
damp brakes, and run along the close alleys of the forest, like swift
torch-bearers of the night. For the restlessness in the village he could
not so easily account; nor did he take much pains to do so; for he was
wearied out,—and the sleep of the innocent, the repose of the pious,
awaited him.
"From this he was unwillingly awakened, at peep of dawn, by Mrs. Sneyd,
who was certain that she had distinguished the figure of a man, closely
muffled, pacing the garden. She had previously fancied she heard a
horse-tread in the turf road.
“My dear,” said the doctor, “who should it be? We have no thieves here,
you know; and what should anybody else want in our garden at this hour?”
"Why—you will not believe me, I dare say,—but I have a strong
impression,—I cannot help thinking it is Temple."
Dr. Sneyd was at the window without another word. It was still so dark
that he could not distinguish the intruder till he passed directly
before the window. At that moment the doctor threw up the sash. The wind
blew in chilly, bringing the autumnal scent of decaying vegetation from
the woods; but the rain was over. The driving clouds let out a faint
glimmer from the east; but all besides was darkness, except a little
yellow light which was still wandering on the prairie, and which now
appeared not far distant from the paling of the orchard.
“Mr. Temple, is it you?” asked Dr. Sneyd. “What brings you here?”
The gentleman appeared excessively nervous. He could only relate that he
wanted to see his wife,—that he must see Mrs. Temple instantly. She must
come down to him,—down to the window, at least. He positively could not
enter the house. He had not a moment to spare. He was on business of
life and death. He must insist on Mrs. Temple being called.
She was so, as the intelligence of her being ill seemed to effect no
change in the gentleman’s determination. He appeared to think that she
would have ample time to get well afterwards. When her mother had seen
that she was duly wrapped up, and her father had himself opened the
shutter of the study window, to avoid awakening the servants’ curiosity,
both withdrew to their own apartment, without asking further questions
of Temple.
“Did you see anybody else, my dear?” the doctor inquired. Mrs. Sneyd was
surprised at the question.
"Because—I did. Did you see no torch or lantern behind the palings? I am
sure there was a dark face peeping through to see what we were doing."
A pang of horror shot through Mrs. Sneyd when she asked her husband
whether he supposed it was an Indian. O, no; only a half-savage. He
believed it to be one of the Brawnees. If so, Mrs. Sneyd could account
for the light in the forest, as well as for the maiden being so far from
home at this hour. She had marked her extreme grief at the interment the
day before, and other things previously, which gave her the idea that
Arthur’s grave had been lighted and guarded by one who would have been
only too happy to have watched over him while he lived.
It was even so, as Mrs. Sneyd afterwards ascertained. The maiden hung
lanterns round the space occupied by the grave, every night, till all
danger was over of Arthur’s remains being interfered with. The family
could not refuse to be gratified with this mark of devotion;—except
Temple, who would have been glad if the shadows of the night had availed
to shroud his proceedings from curious eyes.
When the gate was heard to swing on its hinges, and the tread of a horse
was again distinguishable on the soaked ground, Mrs. Sneyd thought she
might look out upon the stairs, and watch her daughter to her chamber.
But Mrs. Temple was already there. Not wishing to be asked any
questions, she had gone up softly, and as softly closed her door; so
that her parents, not choosing to disturb her, must wait till the
morning for the satisfaction of their uneasy curiosity.
---------------------
CHAPTER VII.
THE END OF THE MATTER.
The truth was not long in becoming known when the daylight called the
villagers abroad. Temple was gone. He had fled from his creditors, and
to escape the vengeance of the land-office for his embezzlement of funds
which had come into his hands in the transaction of its business. His
creditors might make what they could of that which he left behind; but
his mansion, shrubberies, conservatories, and ornamental furniture could
by no method be made to compensate for the property which had flown to
the moon, or somewhere else where it was as little accessible. The
estate, disposed of to the greatest possible advantage, could not be
made worth more than what was spent upon it in its present form; and the
enormous waste which had been perpetrated in wanton caprices could never
be repaired.
Temple had spent more than his income, from the time he set foot in
America, if not before. He was only careless at first, forgetting to
provide for contingencies, and being regularly astonished, as often as
he looked into his affairs, at discovering how much his expenses had
exceeded his expectations. He next found it easier to avoid looking too
closely into his affairs than to control his passion for ostentation:
and from that moment, he trod the downward path of the spendthrift;
raising money by any means that he could devise, and trusting that fate
or something would help him before all was spent. Fate did not come in
as a helper till he could turn nothing more of his own into dollars
without the humiliation of appearing to retrench; and to submit to this
was quite out of the question. So he compelled his lady to darn and dye,
and make her old wardrobe serve; restricted her allowance for
housekeeping in all the departments that he had nothing to do with; and
betook himself to embezzlement. This served his purpose for a short
time; but, on the day of Arthur’s funeral, a stranger was observed to
have arrived in the place, without an introduction to Mr. Temple.
Temple’s unpaid labourers had lately taken the liberty of asking for
their money, and, actuated by some unknown impulse, had this evening
come up with torches through the rain, to call the gentleman to account,
and show him that they would not be trifled with any longer. It was time
to be off; and Temple waited only till the village was quiet, before he
stole to the stables, saddled his horse with his own hands, just called
to tell his wife that he could not at present say whether he should send
for her, or whether she might never see or hear from him more, and
turned his back on Briery Creek for ever. Whether his wife would choose
to go to him was a question which did not seem to occur to his mind.
A passing traveller, looking down upon Briery Creek from the
neighbouring ridge, might perhaps ask the name of the social benefactor
who had ornamented the district with yon splendid mansion, presented the
village with a place of worship, and the shell, at least, of a
parsonage; had reclaimed those green lawns from the wild prairie, and
cleared the woodland in the rear so as to leave, conspicuous in beauty,
clumps of the noblest forest trees. Such a stranger ought not to use the
term “benefactor” till he knew whence came the means by which all this
work was wrought. If from a revenue which could supply these graces
after all needful purposes had been fulfilled, well and good. Such an
expenditure would then have been truly beneficent. It is a benignant act
to embellish God’s earth for the use and delight of man. But if there is
not revenue enough for such objects,—if they are attained by the
sacrifice of those funds on whose reproduction society depends for
subsistence, the act, from being beneficent, becomes criminal. The
mansion is built out of the maintenance of the labourer; and that which
should have been bread to the next generation is turned into barren
stone. Temple was a criminal before he committed fraud. He injured
society by exhausting its material resources, and leaving no adequate
substitute for them. If he had lavished his capital, as Dr. Sneyd laid
out his revenue, in the pursuit of science, it is very possible that,
though such an expenditure might require justification in comparison
with Dr. Sneyd’s, the good he would effect might have so superabounded
above the harm as to have made society his debtor,—(as in many a case
where philosophers have expended all their substance in perfecting a
discovery or invention,)—but Temple had done nothing like this. The
beauty of his estate, however desirable in itself, was no equivalent for
the cost of happiness through which it was produced. He had no claim to
a share of the almost unlimited credit allowed, by the common consent of
society, to its highest class of benefactors,—the explorers of
Providence.
Arthur had done little less than Temple in the way of adorning Briery
Creek; and how differently! His smiling fields, his flocks spreading
over the prairie, his own house, and the dwellings of his labourers,
increasing in number and improving in comfort every year, were as
beautiful in the eye of a right-minded observer as the grander abode of
his brother-in-law. There were indications also of new graces which were
to arise in their proper time. The clearings were made with a view to
the future beauty of the little estate; creepers were already spreading
over the white front of the house, and no little pains had been bestowed
upon the garden. Yet, so far from any suffering by Arthur’s expenditure,
every body had been benefited. A larger fund had remained at the close
of each year for the employment of labour during the next; and if new
labourers were induced to come from a distance and settle here, it was
not that they might be kept busy and overpaid for a time, and afterwards
be left unemployed and defrauded of part of their dues, but that they
and their children after them might prosper with the prosperity of their
employer. Temple had absconded, leaving a name which would be mentioned
with either contempt or abhorrence as long as it would be mentioned at
all. Arthur had departed, surrounded with the blessings of those who
regarded him as a benefactor. He had left a legacy of substantial wealth
to the society in which he had lived, and a name which would be
perpetuated with honour.
It was hoped that the effects of Arthur’s good deeds would long outlast
those of Temple’s evil ones. In all communities that can boast of any
considerable degree of civilization, there are many accumulators to one
spendthrift. The principle of accumulation is so strong, that it has
been perpetually found an overmatch for the extravagance of ostentatious
governments, and for the wholesale waste of war. The capital of every
tolerably governed state has been found to be gradually on the increase,
however much misery might, through mismanagement, be inflicted on
certain portions of the people. It was to be hoped that such would be
the process in Briery Creek; that the little capitals which had been
saved by the humbler residents would be more freely employed in putting
labour into action, than while the great man had been there to buy up
all that was to be had. It might be hoped that the losses of the
defrauded labourers might thus be in time repaired, and new acquisitions
made. Again:—there was now no one to interfere with the exchanges in the
markets, and thus perplex the calculations of producers, causing
deficiencies of some articles and gluts of others;—inequalities which no
foresight could guard against. Every one might now have as much fresh
meat, and as little salt, as he chose; and the general taste would
regulate the supply in the market, to the security of those who sold and
the satisfaction of those who bought. It would be well for certain
nations if those who attempt interference with commerce on a larger
scale could be as easily scared away as Temple; their dictation (in the
form of bounties and prohibitions) expiring as they withdrew. Greater,
in proportion to their greater influence in society, would be the
rejoicing at their departure, than that with which Temple’s
disappearance was hailed, when the first dismay of his poorer creditors
was overcome.
The ease which was thus occasioned was not confined to those who had
merely a business connexion with him. No one liked to tell his notions
upon so delicate a matter; but a significant smile went round, some
months after, when it was remarked how uncommonly well Mrs. Temple was
looking, and how gracious she had become, and what a different kind of
boy Temmy now promised to be from any thing that was expected of him
formerly. The air of the farm was pronounced to be a fine thing for them
both.
Yes; the farm,—Arthur’s farm. The estate was of course left to his
family; and it was the most obvious thing in the world that Mrs. Temple
should establish herself in it, and superintend its management, with
Isaac and his wife to assist her, till Temmy should be old and wise
enough to take it into his own charge. The lady herself proposed this
plan; and it was a fortunate thing that she had always been fond of a
dairy and poultry yard, and of a country life altogether. The pride
which had chilled all who came near her during “the winter of her
discontent,” gradually thawed under the genial influence of freedom and
ease. Her parents once more recognized in her the Louisa Sneyd who had
been so long lost to them, and every body but the Hesseldens thought her
so improved that she could not have been known for the same person;—even
as to beauty,—so much brighter did she look carrying up a present of
eggs and cream-cheese to her mother, in the early morning, than
sauntering through the heat from her carriage, entrenched behind her
parasol, with the liveried servant at her heels, burdened with her
pocket-handkerchief and a pine-apple for the doctor’s eating.
She was never afraid of being too early at her father’s. Dr. Sneyd was
as fond of country occupations as she; and when he had not been in his
observatory for half the night, might be found at sunrise digging or
planting in his garden. His grievous loss had not destroyed his
energies; it had rather stimulated them, by attaching him for the short
remainder of his days to the place of his present abode. He had
gradually relaxed in his desire to see England again, and had now
relinquished the idea entirely,—not through indolence, or because the
circle of his old friends at home was no longer complete, but
because,—free from superstition as he was,—his son being buried there
attached him to the place. Here he, and his wife, and their daughter,
and grandchild, could speak of Arthur more frequently, more easily, more
happily, than they could ever learn to do elsewhere. They could carry
forward his designs, work in his stead, and feel, act, and talk as if he
were still one of them. Not only did they thus happily regard him in the
broad sunshine, when amidst the lively hum of voices from the village
they were apt to fancy that they could distinguish his; but, in the dead
of night, when the doctor was alone in his observatory, or sometimes
assisted by Mrs. Sneyd, (who had taken pains to qualify herself thus
late to aid her husband,) bright thoughts of the departed would
accompany the planets in their courses, and hopes were in attendance
which did not vanish with the morning light, or grow dark in the evening
shade. The large telescope was not, for some time, of the use that was
expected, for want of such an assistant as Arthur. A sigh would
occasionally escape from Dr. Sneyd when he felt how Arthur would have
enjoyed a newly-made discovery,—how he might have suggested the means of
removing a difficulty. Then a smile would succeed at the bare
imagination of how much greater things might be revealed in Arthur’s new
sphere of habitation; and at the conviction that the progress of God’s
truth can never be hurtfully delayed, whether its individual agents are
left to work here, or removed to a different destination elsewhere.
Hopes, different in kind, but precious in their way, rested now on
Temmy,—soon to be called by the less undignified name of Temple. The boy
had brightened, in intellect and in spirits, from the hour that he began
to surmount his agitation at the idea of being some day sole master of
the farm. There was something tangible in farm-learning, which he felt
he could master when there was no one to rebuke and ridicule almost
every thing he attempted; and in this department he had a model before
him on which his attention was for ever fixed. Uncle Arthur was the plea
for every new thing he proposed to attempt; and, by dint of incessant
recourse to it, he attempted many things which he would not otherwise
have dreamed of. Among other visions for the future, he saw himself
holding the pen in the observatory, _sans peur et sans reproche_.
He was some time in learning to attend to two things at once; and all
his merits and demerits might safely be discussed within a yard of his
ear, while he was buried in mathematics or wielding his pencil; which he
always contrived to do at odd moments.
“What is he about now?” was the question that passed between the trio
who were observing him, one evening, when he had been silent some time,
and appeared to be lightly sketching on a scrap of paper which lay
before him.
“Ephraim’s cabin, I dare say,” observed his mother. “We are to have a
frolic in a few days, to raise a cabin for Ephraim, who has worked
wonderfully hard in the prospect of having a dwelling of his own. It is
Temple’s affair altogether; and I know his head has been full of it for
days past. He wishes that Ephraim’s cabin should be second to none on
the estate.”
“Let us see what he will make of it,” said the doctor, putting on his
spectacles, and stepping softly behind Temple. He looked on, over the
youth’s shoulder, for a few minutes, with a quiet smile, and then
beckoned his wife.
This second movement Temple observed. He looked up hastily.
“Very like my dear boy! It is very like. It is something worth living
for, Temple, to be so remembered.”
"So remembered as this, Sir! It is so easy to copy the face, the——”"
“The outward man? It is a great pleasure to us that you find it so; but
it gives us infinitely more to see that you can copy after a better
manner still. We can see a likeness there too, Temple.”
Having illustrated the leading principles which regulate the PRODUCTION,
DISTRIBUTION, and EXCHANGE of Wealth, we proceed to consider the laws of
its CONSUMPTION.
Of these four operations, the three first are means to the attainment of
the last as an end.
Consumption by individuals is the subject before us. Government
consumption will be treated of hereafter.
_Summary of Principles illustrated in this volume._
Consumption is of two kinds, productive and unproductive.
The object of the one is the restoration, with increase, in some new
form, of that which is consumed. The object of the other is the
enjoyment of some good through the sacrifice of that which is consumed.
That which is consumed productively is capital, reappearing for future
use. That which is consumed unproductively ceases to be capital, or any
thing else. It is wholly lost.
Such loss is desirable or the contrary in proportion as the happiness
resulting from the sacrifice exceeds or falls short of the happiness
belonging to the continued possession of the consumable commodity.
The total of what is produced is called the gross produce.
That which remains, after replacing the capital consumed, is called the
net produce.
While a man produces only that which he himself consumes, there is no
demand and supply.
If a man produces more of one thing than he consumes, it is for the sake
of obtaining something which another man produces, over and above what
he consumes.
Each brings the two requisites of a demand; viz., the wish for a supply,
and a commodity wherewith to obtain it.
This commodity, which is the instrument of demand, is, at the same time,
the instrument of supply.
Though the respective commodities of no two producers may be exactly
suitable to their respective wishes, or equivalent in amount, yet, as
every man’s instrument of demand and supply is identical, the aggregate
demand of society must be precisely equal to its supply.
In other words, a general glut is impossible.
A partial glut is an evil which induces its own remedy; and the more
quickly, the greater the evil; since, the aggregate demand and supply
being always equal, a superabundance of one commodity testifies to the
deficiency of another; and, all exchangers being anxious to exchange the
deficient article for that which is superabundant, the production of the
former will be quickened, and that of the latter slackened.
A new creation of capital, employed in the production of the deficient
commodity, may thus remedy a glut.
A new creation of capital is always a benefit to society, by
constituting a new demand.
It follows that an unproductive consumption of capital is an injury to
society, by contracting the demand. In other words, an expenditure which
avoidably exceeds the revenue is a social crime.
All interference which perplexes the calculations of producers, and thus
causes the danger of a glut, is also a social crime.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES,
Stamford Street.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE THREE AGES.
---------------------
FIRST AGE.
One fine summer day, about three hundred and ten years ago, all
Whitehall was astir with the throngs who were hastening to see my Lord
Cardinal set forth from the episcopal palace for the Parliament House.
The attendants of the great man had been collected for some time,—the
bearers of the silver crosses, of the glittering pillars, and of the
gilt mace, those who shouldered the pole-axes, the running footmen, and
the grooms who held the well-clothed mules. The servants of the palace
stood round, and there came among them a troop of gentlemen in foreign
costume, whose country could not be divined from their complexions,
since each wore a mask, rarely painted wherever left uncovered by a
beard made of gold or silver wire. When my Lord Cardinal came forth,
glowing in scarlet damask, and towering above everybody else by the
height of the pillion and black velvet noble which he carried on his
head, these strangers hastened to range themselves round the mule,
(little less disguised than they,) and to offer a homage which savoured
of mockery nearly as strongly as that of casual passengers, who had good
reason for beholding with impatience the ostentatious triumphs of the
“butcher’s dog,” as an angry man had been heard to call my Lord
Cardinal. Wolsey made a sudden halt, and his goodly shoe, blazing with
gems, met the ground less tenderly than was its wont, as its wearer
stopped to cast a keen glance upon the strangers. He removed from
beneath his nose the orange peel filled with confections which might
defy the taint of the common people, and handed it to a page, with a
motion which signified that he perceived how an atmosphere awaited him
which he need not fear to breathe. There was then a general pause.
“Pleaseth it your Grace,” said one of the strangers, “there are certain
in Blackfriars that await your Grace’s passage and arrival, to prosper a
light affair, in which your Grace’s countenance will be comfortable to
them. Will it please you to spare them further perplexity of delay?”
The Cardinal bowed low to the speaker, mounted his mule in all
solemnity, and in a low voice asked for the honour of the stranger’s
latest commands to his obedient parliament.
“Commend us heartily to them, and see that they be readily obedient. We
commend them to your Grace’s tuition and governance. We will be
advertised of their answer at a certain fair house at Chelsea, where we
shall divert ourselves till sunset. Pray heaven your Grace may meet as
good diversion in Blackfriars!”
The strangers renewed their obeisances, and drew back to allow the
Cardinal’s stately retinue to form and proceed. The crowd of gazers
moved on with the procession, and left but few to observe the motions of
the strangers when the last scarlet drapery had fluttered, and the last
gold mace had gleamed on the sight. He who seemed the leader of the
foreigners then turned from the gate of the episcopal palace, followed
by his companions. All mounted mules which awaited them at some
distance, and proceeded in the direction of Chelsea.
They saw many things on the way with which they might make merry. Pale,
half-naked men were employed along the whole length of road in heaping
up wood for bonfires, as the people had been told that it pleased the
King’s Highness that they should rejoice for a mighty success over the
French. There was something very diverting, it was found, in the economy
of one who reserved a clean bit of board to be sawn into dust to eke out
the substance of his children’s bread; and nothing could be more amusing
than the coolness with which another pulled up the fence of his little
field, that the wood might go to the bonfire, and the scanty produce of
the soil to any wandering beggar who chose to take it, the owner having
spent his all in supporting this war, and being now about to become a
wandering beggar himself. He was complimented on his good cheer, when he
said that the king’s asses were welcome to the thistles of his field,
and the king’s pages to adorn themselves with the roses of his garden,
since the king himself had levied as tribute the corn of the one and the
fruits of the other. There was also much jesting with a damsel who
seemed nothing loth to part with her child, when they offered playfully
to steal it to be brought up for the wars. She thought the boy might
thus perchance find his father, since he owed his birth to one who had
promised the woman to get her father released from the prison where he
pined because he was unable to pay his share of the Benevolence by which
the King’s wars were to be carried on. She would give her son in
exchange for her father, in hopes of forgetting her anger and her shame.
The child was cast back into her arms with the assurance that when he
was strong enough to wield his weapon, the King’s Highness would call
for him. The next diverting passage was the meeting with a company of
nuns, on their way from their despoiled convent to find a hiding-place
in London. There was some exercise of wit in divining, while the maidens
kept their veils before their faces, which of them were under four-and-
twenty, and might therefore be toyed with, according to the royal
proclamation, that all below that age were released from their vows.
When the veils were pulled aside, there was loud laughter at the
trembling of some of the women, and the useless rage of others, and at
the solemn gravity of the youngest and prettiest of them all, who was
reproved by her superior for putting on a bold, undismayed face when so
many older and wiser sisters were brought to their wits’ end. Nothing
could be made of her, and she was therefore the first to be forgotten
when new matter of sport appeared. A friar, fatter than he seemed likely
to be in future, was seen toiling along the road under a loaded basket,
which the frolickers were certain must contain something good, from its
being in the custody of a man of God. They got round him, so enclosing
him with their beasts that he could not escape, and requested to be
favoured with the sight and scent of the savoury matters which his
basket doubtless contained, and for which they hungered and thirsted,
since they had seen none but meagre fare in the houses they had
passed:—little better than coarse bread had met their eyes since their
own morning meal. The friar was not unwilling to display his treasures,
(although unsavoury,) in the hope of a parting gift: so the eyes of the
stranger were regaled with the parings of St. Edmund’s toes,—the most
fastidious of saints in respect of his feet, to judge from the quantity
of such parings as one and another of the present company had seen since
there had been a stir among the monasteries. There were two of the coals
which had roasted St. Lawrence—now cool enough to be safely handled. A
head of St. Ursula,—very like a whale,—but undoubtedly a head of St.
Ursula, because it was a perfect preventive of weeds in corn. The friar
was recommended to bestow it upon the poor man who had been seen pulling
up the fence of his barren field; but the leader of the party could not
spare the friar at present. The holy man did not know his own age, for
certain. He must,—all the party would take their oath of it,—be under
four-and-twenty, and his merriment would match admirably with the
gravity of the young nun who had just passed. Two of the revellers were
sent back to catch, and bring her with all speed to Chelsea, where she
should be married to the friar before the day was over; the King’s
Highness being pleased to give her a dower. The friar affected to enjoy
this as a jest, and sent a message to the damsel while inwardly planning
how to escape from the party before they should reach Chelsea.
His planning was in vain. He was ordered to ride behind one of the
revellers, and his precious burden of relics was committed to the charge
of another, and some of the mocking eyes of the party were for ever
fixed on the holy man, insomuch that he did not dare to slip down and
attempt to escape; and far too soon for him appeared the low, rambling
house, its expanse of roof alive with pert pigeons, its garden alleys
stretching down to the Thames, and its porch and gates guarded with
rare, grim-looking stuffed quadrupeds placed in attitudes,—very unlike
the living animals which might be seen moving at their pleasure in the
meadow beyond.
On the approach of the party, one female face after another appeared at
the porch, vanished and reappeared, till an elderly lady came forth,
laden with fruit, from a close alley, and served as a centre, round
which rallied three or four comely young women, a middle-aged gentleman
who was the husband of one of them, and not a few children. The elder
dame smoothed a brow which was evidently too apt to be ruffled, put into
her manner such little courtesy as she could attain, and having seen
that servants enough were in attendance to relieve her guests of their
mules, offered the King’s Majesty the choice of the garden or the cooler
house, while a humble repast was in course of preparation.
The attendant gentlemen liked the look of the garden, and the thought of
straying through its green walks, or sitting by the water’s edge in
company with the graceful and lively daughters of Sir Thomas More; but
Henry chose to rest in the house, and it was necessary for some of his
followers to remain beside him. While some, therefore, made their
escape, and amused themselves with finding similitudes for one young
lady in the swan which floated in a square pond, and in sprinkling
another with drops from the fountain which rained coolness over the
circular grass-plat, others were called upon to follow the King from the
vestibule, which looked like the antechamber to Noah’s ark, and the
gallery where the promising young artist, Holbein, had hung two or three
portraits, to the study,—the large and airy study,—strewed with fresh
rushes and ornamented with books, manuscripts, maps, viols, virginals,
and other musical instruments, and sundry specimens of ladies’ works.
“Marry,” said the King, looking round him, “there are no needs here of
the lackery of my Lord Cardinal’s and other palaces. These maps and
perspectives are as goodly as any cloth of gold at Hampton, or any cloth
of bodkin at York House. Right fair ladies, this holy friar shall
discourse to us, if you are so minded, of the things here figured
forth.”
The ladies had been accustomed to hear a holy man (though not a friar)
discourse of things which were not dreamed of in every one’s philosophy;
but they respectfully waited for further light from the friar, who now
stepped forward to explain how no map could be made complete, because
the end of the land and sea, where there was a precipice at its edge,
overhanging hell, was shrouded with a dark mist. He found, with
astonishing readiness, the country of the infidels, and, the very place
of the sepulchre, and the land where recent travellers had met with the
breed of asses derived from the beast which carried Christ into
Jerusalem. These were known from the common ass from having, not only
Christ’s common mark,—the cross,—but the marks of his stripes; and from
the race suffering no one to ride them but a stray saint whom they might
meet wayfaring. Many more such treasures of natural science did he lay
open to his hearers with much fluency, as long as uninterrupted; but
when the young ladies, as was their wont when discoursing on matters of
science with their father or their tutor, made their inquiries in the
Latin tongue, the friar lost his eloquence, and speedily substituted
topics of theology; the only matter of which he could treat in Latin.
This was not much to Henry’s taste. He could at any time hear all the
theology he chose treated of by the first masters in his kingdom; but it
was not every day that graceful young creatures, as witty as they were
wise, were at hand to amuse his leisure with true tales,—not “of men
whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders,” but of things quite as
unknown to his experience, and far more beautiful to his fancy. It was a
pity that Mr. Roper, the husband of the eldest of these young ladies,
was present, as it prevented the guests putting all the perplexing
questions which might otherwise have occurred to them.
By the time the house had resounded with music, and the King had found
his way up to the roof of the house,—where he had more than once amused
himself with star-gazing, in the company of his trusty and well-beloved,
the honourable Speaker, his host,—dinner was announced.
The dame had bustled about to so much purpose, that the service of
pewter made a grand display, the board was amply spread, and the King’s
Highness was not called upon to content himself with the homely fare of
a farm-house, as he had been assured he must. There was a pudding which
marvellously pleased the royal palate; and Henry would know whose
ingenuity had devised the rare mixture of ingredients.
“If it like your Grace,” replied the lady, "the honour must be parted
between me and Margaret, now sitting at your Grace’s right hand. The
matter was put in a good train by me, in every material point; but as
touching the more cunning and delicate—"
“Mine own good mistress Margaret,” interrupted Henry, “we are minded to
distinguish the great pain and discretion that you have towardly
exercised on this matter; and for a recompense, we appoint you the
monies of the next monastery that we shall require to surrender. The
only grace we ask is that we may appoint the marriage of the monks who
shall owe their liberty to us. Please it you, holy father, to advertise
us of a sumptuous monastery that may be most easily discharged?”
“I beseech your Grace to remember that what the regal power may
overthrow, the papal power will rectify. Any damageable proceedings may
bring on the head of your Highness’s servants a grievous punishment.”
“From Servus Servorum?” said the King, laughing. “Let him come to the
succour of the monks of Beggam, when they ring their abbey bell, and
carry away the sums in their treasury from the hands of Mistress
Margaret, to whom we appoint them. Nay, Mistress Margaret, I desire you
as lovingly to take this largesse as I do mean it; and ensure yourself
that that was ill-gotten which is now well-bestowed.”
The friar probably wished to be dismissed from the King’s presence
before his destined bride should arrive; for he muttered that dogs and
base poisoners, who have their chiefest hope in this world, were ever
ready to speak unfitting and slanderous words against those whom the
holy Trinity held fast in his preservation. The naughty friar received,
not an order to go about his business for supposing that Henry was
deceived, but a box on the ear from the dignified hands of the monarch,
and a promise that he should try the Little Ease in the Tower, if he did
not constrain his contumacious tongue in the King’s presence. A dead
silence followed this rebuff,—partly caused by dismay at the King’s
levity about popish matters, and partly by sorrow that he should
wantonly increase the enmity which was known to be borne to him by the
monks and friars in his dominions. The only way of restoring the
banished mirth was to call in one who stood without,—the facetious
natural who was wont to season Henry’s repasts with his jests.
As the jester entered, a royal messenger was seen standing outside, as
if anxious to deliver the letter he had in charge; and, unfitting as
seemed the time, it was presently in the hands of Henry. Its contents
seemed to leave him in no humour for feast or jest; and he had given no
further signal for mirth when his entirely beloved counsellor, the
Cardinal, and his trusty and honourable Speaker arrived,—the one to glow
and glitter in his costly apparel, and feast off “plump fesaunts,” and
the other to resume the homely guise he loved best, and refresh himself
with fruits and water.
“Marry, my Lords,” cried the King, when they were seated, one on each
side of him, “if the Lower House be not mindful of our needs, our sister
of Scotland may satisfy herself for her jewels as she may. She is
ashamed therewith; and would God there had never been word of the
legacy, as the jewels are worth less to her than our estimation.”
“Says the Queen of Scotland so much?” inquired the Cardinal.
“Satisfy yourself how much more,” replied the King, handing to Wolsey
the angry letter in which Margaret of Scotland expressed her contempt
for the withholding of her father’s legacy of jewels.
“Please your Highness, there are matters of other necessity than a
perplexed woman’s letter,” observed the Cardinal, with a freedom of
speech which was not now displeasing to his master.
“Another wager lost by the Princess’s governante in her Highness’ name?
Let us divert ourself with the inventory, my Lord Cardinal, while you
refresh yourself in a more hearty wise than our trusty host.”
Wolsey was impatient to consult upon the measures necessary to be taken
to follow up the extorted resolution of the House to furnish supplies to
the King’s needs: but Henry was in a mood for trifling, and he would
examine for himself the list of requests from the steward of the
Princess’s household; a list regularly addressed to the Cardinal, who
chose to superintend the details of all the management that he could get
into his own hands. Passing his arm round More’s neck, the King jested
upon the items in the letter,—the ship of silver for the alms-dish, the
spice plates, the disguisings for an interlude at a banquet, the
trumpets for the minstrels, and a bow and quiver for his lady’s Grace.
There was an earnest beseeching for a Lord of Misrule for the honourable
household, and for a rebeck to be added to the band. A fair steel glass
from Venice was desired, and a pair of hose wrought in silk and gold
from Flanders. There was an account of a little money paid for “Mr. John
poticary” coming to see my lady sick, and a great deal for a pound and a
half of gold for embroidering a night-gown. Something was paid for a
frontlet lost in a wager with my little lady Jane; and something more
for the shaving of her Grace’s fool’s head; and, again, for binding
prentice the son of a servant, and for Christopher, the surgeon, letting
her lady’s Grace blood; and again for a wrought carnation satin for the
favoured lady’s maid.
“I marvel, my Lord Cardinal,” said the King, “that your Grace can take
advice of the ordering of the Princess’s spice plates, and leave your
master to be sorely perplexed with the grooms and the yeomen and pages,
and those that bring complaints from the buttery, and the wardrobe of
beds, and the chaundery, and the stables, till my very life is worn with
tales of the mighty wants and debts of the household.”
“If it like your Grace, my most curious inquisition hath of late been
into the particulars of the royal household; and my latest enemies are
divers grooms, yeomen, and pages, whom I have compelled to perform their
bounden service to your Majesty, or to surrender it.”
The Speaker conceived that the charge of his own household would be
enough for the Cardinal, if he were made as other men; but as the King’s
was added, that of the Princess might reasonably devolve upon some less
occupied——
“Upon yourself?” inquired the King. “Marry, if you were to appoint your
spare diet of fruit for the Princess, Mistress Margaret should add to it
such a pudding as I have to-day tasted. What say you, Mistress
Margaret?” he continued, calling back the ladies who were modestly
retiring, on finding the conversation turning upon matters of state.
“My Margaret has no frontlets to lose in betting,” observed Sir Thomas
More. “But your Grace knows that there are many who have more leisure
for ordering the Princess’s household than your poor councillor. There
are divers in your good city of London who can tell whether the silver
ship for the alms-dish will not carry away the alms; and we have passed
some by the wayside to-day who would see somewhat miraculous in these
Venetian mirrors, not knowing their own faces therein.”
“These are not mirrors whose quality it is to make faces seem long, or,
certes, we ourself would use one,” said the King.
“Long faces might sometimes be seen without glasses,” Sir Thomas More
quietly replied.
“As for shaven fools’ heads,” observed the King, looking at the friar,
“there is no need to go to the Princess’s household to divert ourselves
with that spectacle. We will beseech our released monks, who must needs
lack occupation, to watch over their brethren of our household in this
particular.”
Sir Thomas More requested the friar to pronounce the thanksgiving over
the board, (as the Cardinal had at length finished his meal,) and to
instruct the women in certain holy matters, while the King’s Highness
should receive account of the passages of the morning.
Henry looked from the one to the other to know what had been their
success in raising money from his faithful Commons. The Cardinal opened
to him his plans for securing assent to the levy of an enormous
benevolence. Wolsey himself had never been more apt, more subtle, more
busy, than in his devices on this occasion. He had found errands in
remote parts for most whose obstinacy was to be feared. He had ordered
down to the House all the King’s servants who had a vote there: had
discharged easily of their sins many who were wavering in the matter of
the subsidy; and had made as imposing an appearance as possible on going
to Blackfriars to “reason” with the members who believed that the people
could not pay the money. And what was the result?
“Please it your Grace to understand that there hath been the greatest
and sorest hold in the House that ever was seen, I think, in any
Parliament. There was such a hold that the House was like to be
dissevered, but that the Speaker did mediate graciously between your
Highness and the greedy Jews that bearded me.”
“Mediate, I trow! And why not command, as beseems the Speaker?” cried
the King, glancing angrily on More.
“In his bearing the Speaker is meek,” observed Wolsey, with some malice
in his tone. “His words were dutiful, and the lowness of his obeisance
an ensample to the whole Parliament.”
“And what were his acts?”
“He informed me that the Commons are not wont to be reasoned with by
strangers, and that the splendour of my poor countenance must needs
bewilder their deliberations.”
“So be it. We have deliberated too long and too deeply for our royal
satisfaction on the matter of filling our coffers. We expect our Commons
to fill them without deliberation. Wherefore this repining and delay?”
asked Henry of More.
"Because your Grace’s true servants would that this vast sum should be
well and peaceably levied, without grudge——"
“We trouble not ourself about the grudge, if it be surely paid,”
interrupted Henry.
“We would that your Grace should not lose the true hearts of your
subjects, which we reckon a greater treasure than gold and silver,”
replied the Speaker.
“And why lose their hearts? Do they think that no man is to fare well,
and be well clothed but themselves?”
“That is the question they have this morning asked of the Lord
Cardinal,” replied More, “when my Lord discoursed to them of the wealth
of the nation, as if it were a reason why they should make such a grant
as your Majesty’s ancestors never heard of. One said that my lord had
seen something of the wealth of the nation, in the form of a beautiful
welcoming of your Majesty; but of the nation’s poverty, it is like the
Lord Cardinal has seen less than he may see, if the benevolence is
finally extorted.”
“And who is this one that beards my Lord Cardinal?”
“The one who spoke of the nation’s poverty is one who hath but too much
cause to do so from what his own eyes have seen within his own
household. He is one Richard Read, an honourable alderman of London,
once wealthy, but now, as I said, entitled, through his service to your
Majesty, to discourse of poverty.”
“Marry, I would that he would discourse of our poverty as soothly as of
his own. Has he been bearded by France? Is he looking for an invasion
from Scotland? Has he relations with his Holiness, and enterprizes of
war to conduct?”
“Such were the questions of my Lord Cardinal. He seems to be fully
possessed of your Grace’s mind.”
“And what was the answer?”
“That neither had the late King left to him in legacy nearly two
millions of pounds. Neither had he levied a benevolence last year, nor
borrowed twenty thousand pounds of the city of London. If he had, there
might not now perhaps have been occasion for alleging such high
necessity on the King’s part, nor for such high poverty expressed, not
only by the commoners, citizens, and burgesses, but by knights,
esquires, and gentlemen of every quarter.”
“And the Lord Cardinal did not allow such argument of poverty. How did
he rebuke the traitor for his foul sayings?”
“If it like your Grace, this Richard Read was once this day ordered to
be committed to prison, but he is still abroad. He regards himself and
his family as despoiled by never having rest from payments; and he cares
not greatly what he does. This is also the condition of so many that it
would not be safe to offer vengeance till the cuckoo time and hot
weather (at which time mad brains are most wont to be busy) shall be
overpassed.”
The King rose in great disturbance, and demanded of Wolsey why he had
not sent to a distance all who were likely to dispute the subsidy he
desired. Wolsey coolly assured him that this was an easier thing to
speak of than to do, as there were but too large a number who desired
that no more conquests should be sought in France, urging that the
winning thereof would be more chargeful than profitable, and the keeping
more chargeful than the winning. Audacious dogs were these, the Cardinal
declared; but it must be wary whipping till some could be prevented from
flying at the throat, while another was under the lash. But the day
should come when those who ought to think themselves only too much
honoured in being allowed to supply the King’s needs, should leave off
impertinently speculating on the infinite sums which they said had been
already expended in the invading of France, out of which nothing had
prevailed in comparison with the costs. If his Majesty would but turn
over his vengeance to his poor councillor, the pernicious knaves should
be made to repent.
“Of the salt tears they have shed, only for doubt how to find money to
content the King’s Highness?” inquired More.
“Their tears shall hiss hot upon their cheeks in the fire of my
vengeance,” cried the King. “Send this traitor Read to prison, that he
may answer for his words. If he keeps his head, he shall come out with
such a hole in his tongue as shall make him for ever glad to keep it
within his teeth.”
The Cardinal endeavoured to divert the King’s rage. He was as willing as
his royal master that this honest alderman Read should suffer for his
opposition to the exactions of the Government; but he knew that to send
one murmurer to prison at this crisis would be to urge on to rebellion
thousands of the higher orders, to head the insurrections which were
already beginning in the eastern counties. He now hastened to assure
Henry that there had not been wanting some few men besides himself to
rebuke the stupidity of those who complained of the impoverishment of
the nation, and to explain that that which was given to the King for his
needs was returned by the King in the very supplying of those needs.
“After there had been much discourse,” said he, “of what straits the
nation would be in if every man had to pay away his money, and how the
whole frame and intercourse of things would be altered if tenants paid
their landlords in corn and cattle, so that the landlords would have but
little coin left for traffic, so that the nation itself, for want of
money, must grow in a sort barbarous and ignoble, it was answered that
the money was only transferred into the hands of others of the same
nation, as in a vast market where, though the coin never lies still, all
are accommodated.”
“I will use despatch,” observed More, “to write this comforting news to
a cousin-german of mine, who is in sore distress because some rogues
have despoiled him of a store of angels that he had kept for his
daughter’s dower. I will assure him that there can be no impoverishment
in his case.”
Wolsey had not finished his speech. He had something still to say about
how much more precious was the wealth which descended from the throne in
streams of royal bounty and custom than when it went up from the rude
hands of his unworthy subjects. His Majesty only accepted for a time, in
order to return what he had received, embalmed with his grace, and
rendered meet to be handled with reverential ecstacy.
“Further good tidings for my cousin-german,” observed More. "If the
money which has been taken from him be spent in purchasing his corn and
cattle, he has nothing to complain of. His injury is repaired, and his
daughters are dowered. O rare reparation,—when the gentleman is no
worse, and the rogues are the better by the corn and cattle!"
“At this rate, O rare philosopher!” said Henry, “the way to make men
rich is to rob them; and to tax a people is to give them wealth. We have
wit, friend, to spy out jest from earnest. But who reports of these salt
tears?”
“Does not every report from the eastern counties savour of them?”
inquired More. “And in the west a like pernicious rheum distils in the
cold wind of poverty. And so it is in the north and south, though this
be the cuckoo time, and the season of hot weather.”
“It is the Parliament, your Grace may be assured,” interrupted the
Cardinal,—“it is your right trusty Lower House that devises sad tales of
salt tears to move such pitiful hearts as that of the Honourable
Speaker. If your Grace had seen how enviously they looked upon my poor
train, as we entered Blackfriars, and how they stood peevishly mute in
the House, each one like your Highness’s natural under disfavour, your
Grace would marvel that the tales are not of tears of blood.”
“Patience!” said More. “The next east wind will bring such rumours as
you speak of. They are already abroad.”
“The Parliament shall not puff them in our face,” cried Henry. “On our
conscience, we have borne with our faithless Commons too long. They
shall have another seven years to spy out the poverty that is above
them, while we will not listen to their impertinent tales of that which
is below. My Lord Cardinal, let them be dispersed for seven years.”
“And then,” observed More, "they will have time to learn what your
Majesty’s wisdom already discerns,—how much more fatal is poverty in
high places than in low. The contemptible handicraftsman can, while
consuming his scanty food of to-day, produce the scanty food of to-
morrow; while the gallants of your Grace’s court,—right noble gentlemen
as they are,—must beg of the low artizan to repair to-morrow that which
they magnificently consume to-day."
“My nobles are not beggars,” cried the King. “They pay for their pomp.”
"Most true. And their gold is right carefully cleansed from the rust of
salt tears, which else might blister their delicate fingers. But were it
not better for them to take their largess from the people in corn and
meat and wine at once,—since the coin which they handle hath been
already touched by the owner of land who has taken it as rent, or, worse
still, by the merchant as his gains, or, worst of all, by the labourer
as his hire?"
Wolsey assured the Speaker that his suggestion would soon be acted upon.
The people were so shy of making payments from their rent, their
profits, and their wages, that it would be necessary to take for the
King’s service the field of the landowner, the stock of the merchant,
and——
“And what next? For then there will be left no hire for the labourer.”
The Cardinal grew suddenly oracular about the vicissitudes of human
affairs, and the presumption of looking into futurity. The Speaker bowed
low under the holy man’s discourse, and the King was reassured.
“I marvel that your wit does not devise some pastimes that may disperse
the ill-blood of the people,” said Henry. “Dull homes cloud men’s minds
with vapours; and your Grace is full strict with them in respect of
shows and outward apparel. My gallants have not ceased their jests on
the aged man from whom your Grace’s own hands stripped the crimson
jacket decked with gauds. And there is talk of many pillories being
wanted for men who have worn shirts of a finer texture than suits your
Grace’s pleasure.”
“Is there not amusement enough for the people,” asked More, "in gazing
at the Lord Cardinal’s train? For my part, I know not elsewhere of so
fine a pageant. If they must have more, the legate is coming, and who
has measured the scarlet cloth which is sent over to Calais to clothe
Campeggio’s train? This will set the people agape for many days,—if they
can so spy out my Lord Cardinal’s will about their apparel as to dare to
come forth into the highway."
The King thought the pleasure of beholding a pageant did not last long
enough effectually to quiet the popular discontents. He wished that
fields could be opened for the sports of the young men, and that
companies of strolling mummers could be supported at the royal expense.
His miraculous bounty and benignity were extolled so that it was a pity
the people themselves were not by to say Amen; but it was feared the
said people must take the will for the deed, as, in the present
condition of the exchequer, it was impossible to afford the
appropriation of the ground, the outlay upon it to render it fit for the
proposed objects, or the annual expense of keeping it up. The people
must remain subject to blue devils, and liable to rebellion, till the
Scots were beaten off, and the French vanquished; till the Pope had done
with Henry, and the court had been gratified with a rare new masque, for
which an extraordinary quantity of cloth of gold, and cloth of silver,
and cloth of taffety, and cloth of bodkin, would be necessary; to say
nothing of the forty-four varieties of jewelled copes of the richest
materials which had been ordered for the chaplains and cunning singing-
men of the royal chapel. The king’s dignity must be maintained;—a truth
in which More fully agreed. What kingly dignity is, he was wont to
settle while pacing one of the pleached alleys of his garden as the sun
was going down in state, presenting daily a gorgeous spectacle which
neither Wolsey nor Campeggio could rival, and which would have been
better worth the admiration of the populace if their eyes had not been
dimmed by hunger, and their spirits jarred by tyranny into a dissonance
with nature. More was wont to ridicule himself as a puppet when decked
out with his official trappings; and he was apt to fancy that such holy
men as the future Defender of the Faith and the anointed Cardinal must
have somewhat of the same notions of dignity as himself.—There were also
seasons when he remembered that there were other purposes of public
expenditure besides the maintenance of the outward state of the
sovereign. His daughters and he had strengthened one another in the
notion that the public money ought to be laid out in the purchase of
some public benefit; and that it would not be unpardonable in the nation
to look even beyond the DEFENCE of their territory, and ask for an ample
administration of JUSTICE, a liberal provision for PUBLIC WORKS, and
perhaps, in some wiser age, an extensive apparatus of NATIONAL
EDUCATION. He was wont to look cheerfully to the good Providence of God
in matters where he could do nothing; but he was far from satisfied that
the enormous sums squandered in damaging the French availed anything for
the defence of the English; or that those who most needed justice were
the most likely to obtain it, as long as it must be sought with a
present in the hand which was not likely to be out-bid; or that the
itinerant justice-mongers of his day were of much advantage to the
people, as long as their profits and their credit in high quarters
depended on the amount they delivered in as amercements of the guilty.
He was not at all sure that the peasant who had done his best to satisfy
the tax-gatherer was the more secure against the loss of what remained
of his property, whenever a strong oppressor should choose to wrest it
from him. He could see nothing done in the way of public works by which
the bulk of the tax-payers might be benefited. Indeed, public
possessions of this kind were deteriorating even faster, if possible,
than private property; and the few rich commoners, here and there, who
dreaded competition in their sales of produce, might lay aside their
fears for the present. Competition was effectually checked, not only by
the diminution of capital, but by the decay of roads and bridges which
there were no funds to repair. As for education, the only chance was
that the people might gain somewhat by the insults offered to the
Church. The unroofed monks might carry some slight scent of the odour of
learning from the dismantled shrines; but otherwise it seemed designed
that the people’s acquaintance with polite learning should be confined
to two points which were indeed very strenuously taught,—the King’s
supremacy and the Cardinal’s infallibility.
More was not much given to reverie. While others were discoursing, his
ready wit seldom failed to interpose to illustrate and vivify what was
said. His low, distinct utterance made itself heard amidst the laughter
or the angry voices which would have drowned the words of almost any one
else; and the aptness of his speech made him as eagerly sought in the
royal circle as sighed for by his own family, when he was not at hand to
direct and enlighten their studies in their modest book-chamber. He was
much given to thought in his little journeys to and from town, and in
his leisure hours of river-gazing, and star-exploring; but he seldom
indulged his meditations in company. Now, however, while Henry and
Wolsey laid their scheme for swearing every man of the King’s subjects
to his property, and taxing him accordingly,—not only without the
assistance of Parliament, but while the Commons were dispersed for seven
years,—More was speculating within himself on the subject of kingly
dignity.
“One sort of dignity,” thought he, "consists with the purposes of him
who regards his people as his servants, and another with the wishes of
him who regards himself as the servant of his people. As for the
monarchs who live in times when the struggle is which party shall be a
slave, God’s mercy be on them and their people! Their throne moves, like
an idol’s car, over the bones of those who have worshipped or defied
their state; and they have fiends to act as mummers in their pageants,
and defiled armour for their masques, and much dolorous howling in the
place of a band of minstrels. In such days the people pay no tax,
because the monarch has only to stretch forth his hand and take. It is a
better age when the mummers are really merry, and minstrels make music
that gladdens the heart like wine; and gaudy shows make man’s face to
shine like the oil of the Hebrews: but it would be better if this
gladdening of some made no heart heavy; and this partial heaviness must
needs be where childish sports take place; and the gawds of a court like
ours are but baby sports after all. When my little ones made a pageant
in the meadow, there were ever some sulking, sooner or later, under the
hedge or within the arbour, while there was unreasonable mirth among
their fellows in the open sunshine,—however all might be of one accord
in the study and at the board. And so is it ever with those who follow
childish plays, be they august kings, or be they silly infants. But it
is no April grief that clouds the faces of the people while their King
is playing the master in order afterwards to enact the buffoon. They
have spent more upon him than the handful of meadow-flowers that
children fling into the lap to help the show; and they would do worse in
their moods than pull these gay flowers to pieces, after the manner of a
freakish babe. Remembering that it is the wont of honest masters to pay
their servants, they are ill content to pay the very roofs from off
their houses, and the seed from out of their furrows, to be lorded over,
and for the greatest favour, laid at the gate to see Dives pass in and
out in his purple and fine linen. It is ill sport for Dives to whistle
up his dogs to lick the poor man’s sores when so black a gulf is opening
yonder to swallow up his pomp. May be, his brethren that shall come
after him shall be wiser; as all are apt to become as time rolls on. The
matin hour decks itself gorgeously with long bright trains, and flaunts
before men’s winking eyes, as if all this grandeur were not made of
tears caught up for a little space into a bright region, but in their
very nature made to dissolve and fall in gloom. But then there is an end
of the folly, and out of the gloom step forth other hours, growing
clearer, and more apt to man’s steady uses; so that when noon is come,
there is no more pranking and shifting of purple and crimson clouds, but
the sun is content to light men perfectly to their business, without
being worshipped as he was when gayer but less glorious. Perhaps a true
sun-like king may come some day, when men have grown eagle-eyed to hail
such an one; and he will not be for calling people from their business
to be dazzled with him; nor for sucking up all that the earth will
yield, so that there may be drought around and gloom overhead. Rather
will he call out bubbling springs from the warm hill-side, and cast a
glister over every useful stream, to draw men’s eyes to it; and would
rather thirst himself than that they should. Such an one will be content
to leave it to God’s hand to fill him with glory, and would rather kiss
the sweat from off the poor man’s brow, than that the labourer should
waste the precious time in falling on his knees to him to mock him with
idolatry. Though he be high enough above the husbandman’s head, he is
not the lord of the husbandman, but in some sort his servant; though it
be a service of more glory than any domination.—If he should chance
vainly to forget that there sitteth One above the firmament, he may find
that the same Maker who once stayed the sun for the sake of one
oppressed people may, at the prayer of another, wheel the golden throne
hurriedly from its place, and call out constellations of lesser lights,
under whose rule men may go to and fro, and refresh themselves in peace.
The state of a king that domineers is one thing; and the dignity of a
king that serves and blesses is another; and this last is so noble, that
if any shall arise who shall not be content with the office’s
simplicity, but must needs deck it with trappings and beguile it with
toys, let him be assured that he is as much less than man as he is more
than ape; and it were wiser in him to rummage out a big nut to crack,
and set himself to switch his own tail, than seek to handle the orb and
stretch out the sceptre of kings."
It was a day of disappointments to Henry. Not only were his Commons
anything but benevolently disposed towards furnishing the benevolence
required, but the young nun would not come to be married to the friar.
The gallants who had been sent for her now appeared before the King with
fear and trembling, bearing sad tidings of the sturdiness of female
self-will. They had traced the maiden to the house of her father, one
Richard Read, and had endeavoured to force her away with them,
notwithstanding her own resistance, and her mother’s and sister’s
prayers and tears. In the midst of the dispute, her father had returned
from Blackfriars, surrounded by the friends who had joined him in
declining the tribute which they were really unable to pay. Heated by
the insolent words which had been thrown at them by the Cardinal, and
now exasperated by the treatment his daughter had met with, Read had
dropped a few words,—wonderfully fierce to be uttered in the presence of
courtiers in those days,—which were now repeated in the form of a
message to the King:—Read had given his daughter to be the spouse of
Christ, and had dowered her accordingly; and it did not now suit his
paternal ambition that she should be made the spouse of a houseless
friar for the bribe of a dowry from the King; this dowry being actually
taken from her father under the name of a benevolence to aid the King’s
necessities. He would neither sell his daughter nor buy the King’s
favour.
Henry was of course enraged, and ordered the arrest of the entire
household of Richard Read; a proceeding which the Cardinal and the
Speaker agreed in disliking as impolitic in the present crisis. Wolsey
represented to the King that there could be no failure of the subsidy if
every recusant were reasoned with apart, instead of being placed in a
position where his malicious frowardness would pervert all the rest of
the waverers. If good words and amiable behaviour did not avail to
induce men to contribute, the obstinate might be brought before the
privy council; or, better still, be favoured with a taste of military
service. Henry seized upon the suggestion, knowing that such service as
that of the Border war was not the pleasantest occupation in the world
for a London alderman, at the very time when his impoverished and
helpless family especially needed his protection. He lost sight, for the
time, as Wolsey intended that he should, of the daughter, while planning
fresh tyranny towards her father. The church would be spared the scandal
of such a jesting marriage as had been proposed, if, as the Cardinal
hoped, the damsel should so withdraw herself as not to be found in the
morning. The religious More had aspirations to the same effect.
“It is a turning of nature from its course,” said he, “to make night-
birds of these tender young swallows; but they are answerable who scared
them from beneath their broad eaves when they were nestled and looked
for no storm. Pray the Lord of Hosts that he may open a corner in some
one of his altars for this ruffled fledgeling!”
Little did the gentle daughters of More suspect for what message they
were summoned to produce writing materials, and desired to command the
attendance of a king’s messenger. Their father was not required to be
aiding and abetting in this exercise of royal tyranny. Perceiving that
his presence was not wished for, he stepped into his orchard, to refresh
himself with speculations on his harvest of pippins, and to hear what
his family had to say on his position with respect to the mighty
personages within.
“I marvel,” said his wife to him, “that you should be so wedded to your
own small fancies as to do more things that may mislike his Grace than
prove your own honest breeding. What with your undue haste to stretch
your limbs in your bedesman’s apparel, and your simple desire to mere
fruit and well-water, his Highness may right easily content himself that
his bounty can add nothing to your state.”
“And so shall he best content me, dame. Worldly honour is the thing of
which I have resigned the desire; and as for worldly profit, I trust
experience proveth, and shall daily prove, that I never was very greedy
therein.”
Mr. Roper saw no reason for the lady’s rebuke or apprehensions. When did
the King’s Highness ever more lovingly pass his arm round any subject’s
neck than this day, when he caressed the honourable Speaker of his
faithful Commons?
“There is full narrow space, Mr. Roper, between my shoulders and my head
to serve as a long resting-place for a king’s caress. Trust me, if he
had been a Samson, and if it had suited the pleasure of his Grace, he
would at that moment have plucked my head from my shoulders before you
all. It may be well for plain men that a king’s finger and thumb are not
stronger than those of any other man.”
Henry and his poor councillor now appeared from beneath the porch, the
one not the less gay, the other not the less complacent, for their
having together made provision for the utter ruin of a family whose only
fault was their poverty. A letter had been written to the general
commanding on the Scotch border, to desire that Richard Read, now sent
down to serve as a soldier at his own charge, should be made as
miserable as possible, should be sent out on the most perilous duty in
the field, and subjected to the most severe privations in garrison, and
used in all things according to the sharp military discipline of the
northern wars, in retribution for his refusing to pay money which he did
not possess. The snare being thus fixed, the train of events laid by
which the unhappy wife and daughters were to be compelled first to
surrender their only guardian, then to give their all for his ransom
from the enemy, and, lastly, to mourn him slain in the field,—this
hellish work being carefully set on foot, the devisers thereof came
forth boldly into God’s daylight, to amuse themselves with innocence and
flatter the ear of beauty till the sun went down, and then to mock the
oppressed citizens of London with the tumult of their pomp and revelry.
Perhaps some who turned from the false glare to look up into the pure
sky might ask why the heavens were clear,—where slept the thunderbolt?
---------------------
SECOND AGE.
It was not Sunday morning, yet the bells of every steeple in London had
been tolling since sunrise; the shops were all shut; and there was such
an entire absence of singers and jugglers, of dancing bears and
frolicking monkeys in the streets, that it might seem as if the late
Protector had risen from his grave, and stalked abroad to frown over the
kingdom once more. Nothing this morning betokened the reign of a merry
monarch. No savour of meats issued from any house; no echo of music was
heard; the streets were as yet empty, the hour of meeting for worship
not having arrived, and there being no other cause for coming abroad.
There was more than a sabbath purity in the summer sky, unstained by
smoke as it could never be but on the day of a general fast in summer.
The few boats on the river which brought worshippers from a distance to
observe the solemn ordinance in the city, glided along without noise or
display. There was no exhibition of flags; no shouting to rival barks;
no matching against time. The shipping itself seemed to have a mournful
and penitential air, crowded together in silence and stillness. The
present had been an untoward season, as regarded the nation’s
prosperity, in many respects; and when the court and the people were
heartily tired of the festivities which had followed the King’s
marriage, they bethought themselves of taking the advice of many of
their divines, and deprecating the wrath of Heaven in a solemn day of
entreaty for rain, and for vengeance on their enemies.
The deepest gloom was not where, perhaps, it would have been looked for
by the light-minded who regarded such observances as very wholesome for
the common people, but extremely tiresome for themselves. Dr. Reede, a
young Presbyterian clergyman, the beloved pastor of a large congregation
in London, came forth from his study an hour before the time of service,
with a countenance anything but gloomy, though its mild seriousness
befitted the occasion. Having fully prepared himself for the pulpit, he
sought his wife. He found her with her two little children, the elder of
whom was standing at a chair, turning over the gilt leaves of a new
book; while the younger, a tender infant, nestled on its mother’s bosom
as she walked, in a rather hurried manner, from end to end of the
apartment.
“What hath fallen out, Esther? Is the babe ill-disposed?” asked the
husband, stooping to look into the tiny face that peeped over Esther’s
shoulder.
“The child is well, my love; and the greater is my sin in being
disturbed. I will be so no more,” she continued, returning to the seat
where the child was playing with the book; “I will fret myself no more
on account of evildoers, as the word of God gives commandment.”
“Is it this which hath troubled you?” asked her husband, taking up the
volume,—the new Book of Common Prayer,—of which every clergyman must
shortly swear that he believed the whole, or lose his living. “We knew,
Esther, what must be in this book. We knew that it must contain that
which would make it to us as the false gospel of the infidels; and, thus
knowing, there is no danger in the book.”
And he took it up, and turned over its pages, presently observing, with
a smile,—
“Truly, it is a small instrument wherewith to be turned out of so large
a living. I could lay my finger over the parts which make a gulf between
my church and me which I may not pass. The leaven is but little; but
since there it must lie, it leavens the whole lump.”
“Do you think?” inquired Esther, hesitatingly; "is it supposed that many
will——that your brethren regard the matter as you do?"
“It will be seen in God’s own time how many make a conscience of the
oaths they take in his presence. For me it is enough that I believe not
all that is in this book. If it had been a question whether the King
would or would not compel the oath, I could have humbled myself under
his feet to beseech him to spare the consciences which no King can bind;
but as it is now too late for this, we must cheerfully descend to a low
estate among men, that we may look up before God.”
“Without doubt; I mean nought else; but when, and where shall we go?”
"In a few days, unless it should please God to touch the hearts that he
hath hardened,—in a few days we must gird ourselves to go forth."
“With these little ones! And where?”
“Where there may be some unseen to bid us God speed! Whether the path
shall open to the right hand or to the left, what matters it?”
"True: if a path be indeed opened. But these little ones——"
“God hath sent food into the heart of wildernesses whence there was no
path; and the Scripture hath a word of the young ravens which cry.”
"It hath. I will never again, by God’s grace, look back to the estate
which my father lost for this very King. But, without reckoning up that
score with him, it moves the irreligious themselves to see how he guides
himself in these awful times,—toying in his palace-walks this very
morning, while he himself puts sackcloth on the whole nation. Edmund is
just come in from seeing the King standing on the green walk in the
palace-garden, and jesting with the Jezebel who ever contrives to be at
that high, back window as he passes by. I would the people knew of it,
that they might avoid the scandal of interceding for a jester whom they
suppose to be worshipping with them, while he is thinking of nothing so
little all the time as worshipping any but his own wantons."
“If Edmund can thus testify, it is time that I were enlarging my prayer
for the King. If for the godly we intercede seven times, should it not
for the ungodly be seventy-times seven?”
Mrs. Reede’s brother Edmund could confirm the account. In virtue of an
office which he held, he had liberty to pass through the palace-garden.
The sound of mirth, contrasting strangely with the distant toll of
bells, had drawn him into the shade; and he had seen Charles throwing
pebbles up to a window above, where a lady was leaning out, and pelting
him with sweetmeats in return. It was hoped that the queen, newly
married, and a stranger in the country, was in some far-distant corner
of the palace, and that she did not yet understand the tongue in which
Charles’s excesses were wont to be openly spoken of. The Corporations of
London had not yet done feasting and congratulating this most unhappy
lady; but all supposed matter of congratulation was already over. The
clergy of the kingdom prayed for her as much from compassion as duty;
and her fate served them as an unspoken text for their discourses on the
vanity of worldly greatness. The mothers of England dropped tears at the
thought of the lonely and insulted stranger; and their daughters sighed
their pity for the neglected bride.
Edmund now came into the room, and his appearance cost Dr. Reede more
sighs than his own impending anxieties. Though Edmund held a place of
honour and trust at the Admiralty, he had been in possession of it too
short a time to justify such a display as he had of late appeared
disposed to make. On this day of solemn fast, he seemed to have no
thought of sackcloth, but showed himself in a summer black bombazin
suit, trimmed very nobly with scarlet ribbon; a camlet cloak, lined with
scarlet; a prodigious periwig, and a new beaver.
“What news do you bring from the navy-yards?” inquired Dr. Reede. “Is
there hope of the ill spirit being allayed, and the defence of the
country cared for?”
“In truth, but little,” replied Edmund, "unless it become the custom to
pay people their dues. What with the quickness of the enemy, and the
slowness of the people to work without their wages, and the chief men
running after the shows and pastimes of the court, and others keeping
their hands by their sides through want of the most necessary materials,
and the waste that comes of wanton idleness,—it is said by certain wise
persons that it will be no wonder if our enemies come to our very shores
to defy us, and burn our shipping in our own river."
°How is it that you obtain your dues, Edmund? This neat suit would be
hardly paid for out of your private fortune."
“It is time for me to go like myself,” said Edmund, conceitedly, “liable
as I am to stand before the King or the Duke. I might complain, like the
rest, that but little money is to be seen; but, with such as I have, I
must do honour to the King’s Majesty, whom I am like to see to-day.”
Mrs. Reede had so strong an apprehension that Edmund would soon be
compelled, like others, to forego his salary, that she saw little that
was safe and honourable in spending his money on dress as fast as it
came in. But that the servants of government were infected with the
vanities of the government, they would prepare for the evil days which
were evidently coming on, instead of letting their luxury and their
poverty grow together.
“So is it ever, whether the vices of government be austere or pleasant,”
observed Dr. Reede. “The people must needs look and speak sourly when
Oliver grew grave; and now, they have suddenly turned, as it were, into
a vast troop of masqueraders, because the court is merry. But there is a
difference in the two examples which it behoves discerning men to
perceive. In respect of religious gravity, all men stand on the same
ground; it is a matter between themselves and their God. But the
government has another responsibility, in regard to its extravagance: it
is answerable to men; for government does not earn the wealth it spends;
and each act of waste is an injury to those who have furnished the
means, and an insult to every man who toils hard for scanty bread.”
Government could not be expected to look too closely into these matters,
Edmund thought. All governments were more or less extravagant; and he
supposed they always would be.
“Because they live by the toil of others? If so, there is a remedy in
making the government itself toil.”
“I would fain see it,” cried Mrs. Reede. “I would fain see the King
unravelling his perplexed accounts; and the Duke bestirring himself
among the ships and in the army, instead of taking the credit of what
better men do; and the court ladies ordering their houses discreetly,
while their husbands made ready to show what service they had done the
nation. Then, my dear, you would preach to a modest, and sober, and
thankful people, who, with one heart, would be ready to listen.”
“It is but too far otherwise now,” replied Dr. Reede. "Of my hearers,
some harden their hearts in unchristian contempt of all that is not as
sad as their own spirits; and others look to see that the cloak hangs
from the shoulder in a comely fashion as they stand. At the same time,
there is more need of the word the more men’s minds are divided. This is
the age when virtue is oppressed, and the selfish make mirth. Of those
that pray for the King’s Majesty, how many have given him their
children’s bread, and mourn and pine, while the gay whom they feed have
no thought for their misery! Edmund himself allows that the shipwrights
go home without their wages, while he who works scarce at all disports
himself with his bombazin suit and scarlet ribbons. Can I preach to them
as effectually as if they were content, and he——"
“What?” inquired Edmund.
"In truth, Edmund, I could less find in my heart to admonish these
defrauded men for stealing bread from the navy-stores for their hungry
children, than you for drawing their envious eyes upon you. The large
money that pays your small service, whose is it but theirs,—earned
hardly, paid willingly to the King, to be spent in periwigs and silk
hose? Shall men who thus injure and feel injury in their worldly labour,
listen with one heart and mind to the Sabbath word? Too well I know
that, from end to end of this kingdom, there is one tumult of bad
passions which set the Scriptures at nought. The lion devours the lamb;
the innocent know too well the sting of the asp; and as often as a
fleece appears, men spy for the wolf beneath it. What chance hath the
word when it falls upon ground so encumbered?"
Edmund pleaded that, though he had done little yet to merit his public
salary, he meant to do a great deal. This very day, the King had
appointed some confidential person to confer with him on an affair in
which his exertions would be required. Things had come to such a pass
now in the management of the army and navy, that something must be done
to satisfy the people; and Edmund hoped, that if he put on the
appearance of a rising young man, he might soon prove to be so, and gain
honour in proportion to the profit he was already taking by
anticipation.
It must be something very pressing that was wanted of Edmund, if no day
would serve but that of this solemn fast. It did not occur to the Reedes
that it must be a day of ennui to Charles and his court, at any rate,
and that there would be an economy of mirth in transacting at such a
time business which must be done.
There was a something in Edmund’s countenance and gait as he went to
worship this morning which made his sister fear that, during the
service, he must be thinking more of the expected interview at the
palace than of her husband’s eloquent exposition of how the sins of the
government were the sins of the nation, and how both merited the
chastisement which it was the object of this day’s penitence to avert.
The sermon was a bold one; but the nation was growing bold under a sense
of injury, and of the inconsistency of the government. The time was past
when plain speakers could be sent off to the wars, for the purpose of
being impoverished, made captive, or slain. Dr. Reede knew, and bore in
mind, the fate of a certain ancestor of his, and returned thanks in his
heart for such an advance in the recognition of social rights as allowed
him to be as honest as his forefathers, with greater impunity. He
resolved now to do a bolder thing than he had ever yet meditated,—to
take advantage of Edmund’s going to the palace to endeavour to obtain an
interview with the King, and intercede for the Presbyterian clergy, who
must, in a few days, vacate their livings, or violate their consciences,
unless Charles should be pleased to remember, before it was too late,
that he had passed his royal word in their favour. Charles was not
difficult of access, particularly on a fast-day; the experiment was
worth trying.
The streets were dull and empty as the brothers proceeded to the river-
side to take boat for the palace. There was a little more bustle by the
stairs whence they meant to embark, the watermen having had abundance of
time this day to drink and quarrel. The contention for the present God-
send of passengers would have run high, if Edmund had not known how to
put on the manner of a personage of great importance; a manner which he
sincerely thought himself entitled to assume, it being a mighty
pleasure, as he declared to his companion, to feel himself a greater man
in the world than he could once have expected for himself, or any of his
friends for him. He felt as if he was lord of the Thames, while, with
his arms folded in his cloak, and his beaver nicely poised, he looked
abroad, and saw not another vessel in motion on the surface of the broad
river.
This solitude did not last very long. Dr. Reede had not finished
contemplating the distant church of St. Paul’s, which Wren, the artist,
had been engaged to repair. He was speculating on the probable effect of
a cupola (a strange form described, but not yet witnessed, in England);
he was wondering what induced Oliver to take the choir for horse-
barracks, when so many other buildings in the neighbourhood might have
served the purpose better; he was inwardly congratulating his
accomplished young friend on his noble task of restoring,—not only to
beauty, that which was dilapidated,—but to sanctity that which was
desecrated. Dr. Reede was thinking of these things, rather than
listening to the watermen’s account of a singular new vessel, called a
yacht, which the Dutch East India Company had presented to the King,
when a barge was perceived to be coming up the river with so much haste
as to excite Edmund’s attention and stop the boatman’s description.
"It is Palmer, bringing news, I am sure,—what mighty haste!" observed
Edmund, turning to order the boatmen to make for the barge. "News from
sea,—mighty good or bad, I am certain. We will catch them on their way."
“Palmer, the King’s messenger! He will not tell his news to us, Edmund.”
“He will, knowing me, and finding where I am going.”
Palmer did tell his news. His Majesty had sustained a signal defeat
abroad. The doubt was where to find the King or the Duke, there being a
rumour that they were somewhere on the river. Palmer had witnessed a
sailing-match between two royal boats, some way below Greenwich, but he
could not make out that any royal personages were on board.
“Here they are, if they be on the river!” exclaimed Edmund, inquiring of
the watermen if the extraordinary vessel just coming in sight was not
the yacht they had described. It was, and the King must be on board, as
no one else would dream of taking pleasure on the river this day.
Edmund managed so well to put himself in the way of being observed while
Palmer made his inquiries, that both were summoned on board the yacht.
The clergyman looked so unlike anybody that the lords and gentlemen
within had commonly to do with, that he was not allowed to remain
behind. They seemed to have some curiosity to see whether a presbyterian
parson could eat like other men, for they pressed him to sit down to
table with them,—a table steaming with the good meats which had been
furnished from the kitchen-boat which always followed in the rear of the
yacht. Dr. Reede simply observed that it was a fast day; and could not
be made to perceive that being on the water and in high company absolved
him from the observances of the day. Every body else seemed of a
different opinion; for, not content with the usual regale of fine music
which attended the royal excursions, the lords and gentlemen present had
made the fiddlers drunk, and set them in that state to sing all the foul
songs with which their professional memories could furnish them.
Abundance of punch was preparing, and there was some Canary of
incomparable goodness which had been carried to and from the Indies. Two
of the company were too deeply interested in what they were about to
care for either music or Canary at the moment. Charles and the Duke of
Ormond were rattling the dice-box, having staked 1000_l._ on the cast.
It was of some consequence to the King to win it, as he had, since
morning, lost 23,000_l._ in bets with the Duke of York and others about
the sailing match which they had carried on while the rest of the nation
were at church, deprecating God’s judgments.
Having lost his 1000_l._, he turned gaily to the strangers, as if
expecting some new amusement from them. He made a sign to Edmund (whom
he knew in virtue of his office), that he would hold discourse with him
presently in private, and then asked Dr. Reede what the clergy had
discovered of the reasons for the heavy judgment with which the kingdom
was afflicted.
Dr. Reede believed the clergy were more anxious to obtain God’s mercy
than to account for his judgments.
“You are deceived, friend. Our reverend dean of Windsor has been
preaching that it is our supineness in leaving the heads of the
regicides on their shoulders that has brought these visitations on our
people. He discoursed largely of the matter of the Gibeonites, and
exhorted us to quick vengeance.”
Dr. Reede could not remember any text which taught that wreaking
vengeance on man was the way to propitiate God. He could not suppose
that this disastrous defeat abroad would have been averted by butchering
the regicides in celebration of the King’s marriage, as had been
proposed.
The King had not yet had time to comprehend the news of this defeat. On
hearing of it, he seemed in a transient state of consternation;
marvelled, as his subjects were wont to do, what was to become of the
kingdom at this rate; and signified his wish to be left with the
messenger, the Duke of York alone remaining to help him to collect all
the particulars. The company accordingly withdrew to curse the enemy,
wonder who was killed and who wounded, and straightway amuse themselves,
the ladies with the dice-box, the gentlemen with betting on their play,
and all with the feats of a juggler of rare accomplishments, who was at
present under the patronage of one of the King’s favourites.
When Palmer had told his story and was dismissed, Edmund was called in,
and, at his own request, was attended by his brother-in-law,—the
discreet gentleman of excellent learning, who might aid the project to
be now discoursed of. The King did, at length, look grave. He supposed
Edmund knew the purpose for which his presence was required.
“To receive his Highness the Duke’s pleasure respecting the navy
accounts that are to be laid before Parliament.”
“That is my brother’s affair,” replied the King. "I desire from
you,—your parts having been well commended to me,—some discreet
composure which shall bring our government into less disfavour with our
people than it hath been of late."
Edmund did not doubt that this could easily be done.
"It must be done; for in our present straits we cannot altogether so do
without the people as for our ease we could desire. But as for the
ease,—there is but little of it where the people are so changeable. They
have forgot the flatteries with which they hailed us, some short while
since, and give us only murmurs instead. It is much to be wished that
they should be satisfied in respect of their duty to us, without which
we cannot satisfy them in the carrying on of the war."
The Duke of York thought that his Majesty troubled himself needlessly
about the way in which supplies were to be obtained from the people.
Money must be had, and speedily, or defeat would follow defeat; for
never were the army and navy in a more wretched condition than now. But
if his Majesty would only exert his prerogative, and levy supplies for
his occasions as his ancestors had done, all might yet be retrieved
without the trouble of propitiating the nation. The King persisted
however in his design of making his government popular by means of a
pamphlet which should flatter the people with the notion that they kept
their affairs in their own hands. It was the shortest way to begin by
satisfying the people’s minds.
And how was this to be done? Dr. Reede presumed to inquire. Charles,
thoroughly discomposed by the news he had just heard, in addition to a
variety of private perplexities, declared that nothing could be easier
than to set forth a true account of the royal poverty. No poor gentleman
of all the train to whom he was in debt could be more completely at his
wit’s end for money than he. His wardrobeman had this morning lamented
that the King had no handkerchiefs, and only three bands to his neck;
and how to take up a yard of linen for his Majesty’s service was more
than any one knew.
Edmund glanced at his own periwig in the opposite mirror, and observed
that it would be very easy to urge this plea, if such was his Majesty’s
pleasure.
“Od’s fish! man, you would not tell this beggarly tale in all its
particulars! You would not set the loyal housewives in London to offer
me their patronage of shirts and neckbands!”
“Besides,” said the Duke, “though it might be very easy to tell the tale
of our poverty, it might not be so easy to make men believe it.”
Dr. Reede here giving an involuntary sign of assent, the King would know
what was in his mind. Dr. Reede, as usual, spoke his thoughts. The
people, being aware what sums had within a few months fallen into the
royal treasury, would be slow to suppose that their king was in want of
necessary clothing.
“What! the present to the Queen from the Lord Mayor and Aldermen? That
was but a paltry thousand pounds.”
Dr. Reede could not let it be supposed that any one expected the King to
benefit by gifts to his Queen.
Charles looked up hastily to see if this was intended as a reproach, for
he had indeed appropriated every thing that he could lay his hands on of
what his dutiful subjects had offered to his Queen, as a compliment on
her marriage. The clergyman looked innocent, and the King went on,—
"And as for her portion,—twenty such portions would not furnish forth
one war, as the people ought to know. And there is my sister’s portion
to the Prince of Orleans soon to be paid. If the people did but take the
view we would have them take of our affairs at home and abroad, we
should not have to borrow of France, and want courage to tell our
faithful subjects that we had done so."
Edmund would do his best to give them the desired opinions. Dr. Reede
thought it a pity they could not be by the King’s side,—aye, now on
board this very boat, to understand and share the King’s views, and thus
justify the government. As a burst of admiration at some of the
juggler’s tricks made itself heard in the cabin at the very moment this
was said, the King again looked up to see whether satire was intended.
Edmund supposed that one object of his projected pamphlet was to
communicate gently the fact of a secret loan of 200,000 crowns from
France, designed for the support of the war in Portugal, but so
immediately swallowed up at home that it appeared to have answered no
more purpose than a loan of so many pebbles, while it had subjected the
nation to a degradation which the people would not have voluntarily
incurred. This communication was indeed to be a part of Edmund’s task;
but there was a more important one still to be made. It could not now
long remain a secret that Dunkirk was in the hands of the French——
“Dunkirk taken by the French!” exclaimed Dr. Reede, not crediting what
he heard. “We are lost indeed, if the French make aggressions like
this.”
“Patience, brother!” whispered Edmund. “There is no aggression in the
case. The matter is arranged by mutual agreement.”
Dr. Reede looked perplexed, till the Duke carelessly told him that
Dunkirk had been sold to the French King. It was a pity the nation must
know the fact. They would not like it.
“Like it! Dunkirk sold! Whose property was Dunkirk?” asked Dr. Reede,
reverting to the time when Oliver’s acquisition of Dunkirk was
celebrated as a national triumph.
“We must conduct the bargains of the nation, you know,” replied the
Duke. “In old times, the people desired no better managers of their
affairs than their kings.”
“’Tis a marvel then that they troubled themselves to have Parliaments.
Pray God the people may be content with what they shall receive for a
conquest which they prized! Some other goodly town, I trust, is secured
to us; or some profitable fishing coast; or some fastness which shall
give us advantage over the enemy, and spare the blood of our soldiers.”
“It were as well to have retained Dunkirk as taken any of these in
exchange,” said the King;—a proposition which Dr. Reede was far from
disputing. “Our necessities required another fashion of payment.”
"In money!—and then the taxes will be somewhat lightened. This will be a
welcome relief to the people, although their leave was not asked. There
is at least the good of a lifting up of a little portion of their
burdens."
“Not so. We cannot at present spare our subjects. This 400,000_l._ come
from Dunkirk is all too little for the occasions of our dignity. Our
house at Hampton Court is not yet suitably arranged. The tapestries are
such that the world can show nothing nobler, yet the ceilings, however
finely fretted, are not yet gilt. The canal is not perfected, and the
Banqueting House in the Paradise is yet bare.”
“The extraordinary wild fowl in St. James’s Park did not fly over
without cost,” observed the Duke.
"Some did. The melancholy water-fowl from Astracan was bestowed by the
Russian Ambassador; and certain merchants who came for justice brought
us the cranes and the milk-white raven. But the animals that it was
needful to put in to make the place answerable to its design,—the
antelopes, and the Guinea goats, and the Arabian sheep, and others,—cost
nearly their weight of gold. Kings cannot make fair bargains."
“For aught but necessaries,” interposed the divine.
"Or for necessaries. Windsor is exceedingly ragged and ruinous. It will
occupy the cost of Dunkirk to restore it——"
“According to the taste of the ladies of the court,” interrupted the
Duke. “They will have the gallery of horns furnished with beams of the
rarest elks and antelopes that there be in the world. Then the hall and
stairs must be bright with furniture of arms, in festoons, trophy-like:
while the chambers have curious and effeminate pictures, giving a
contrast of softness to that which presented only war and horror.”
“Then there is the demolishing of the palace at Greenwich, in order to
build a new one. Besides the cost of rearing, we are advised so to make
a cut as to let in the Thames like a square bay, which will be
chargeable.”
“And this is to be ordered by Parliament? or are the people to be told
that a foreign possession of theirs is gone to pay for water-fowl and
effeminate pictures?”
“Then there is the army,” continued the King. “I have daily news of a
lack of hospitals, so that our maimed soldiers die of the injuries of
the air. And this very defeat, with which the city will presently be
ringing, was caused by the failure of ammunition. And not unknowingly;
for this young clerk had the audacity to forewarn us.”
“Better have sold the troops and their general alive into the hands of
the enemy, than send them into the field without a sufficiency of
defence,” cried Dr. Reede.
“So his Majesty thinks,” observed the Duke; “and has therefore done
wisely in taking a goodly sum from the Dutch to delay the sailing of the
fleet for the east till the season is too far gone for action. Nay! is
it not a benefit for the King to have the money he so much needs, and
for the lives to be saved which must be otherwise lost for want of the
due ammunition?”
Dr. Reede was too much affected at this gross bartering away of the
national honour to trust himself to speak; Edmund observed that he
should insist, in his pamphlet, on the exceeding expensiveness of war in
these days, in comparison of the times when men went out, each with his
bow and arrow, or his battle-axe, and his provision of food furnished at
his own charge. Since gunpowder had been used, and engines of curious
workmanship,—since war had become a science, it had grown mightily
expensive, and the people must pay accordingly, as he should speedily
set forth.
“Setting forth also how the people should therefore be the more
consulted, before a strife is entered upon,” said the clergyman.
“Nay,” said the Duke, “I am for making the matter short and easy. An
expensive army we must have; and a troublesome Parliament to boot is too
much. I am for getting up the army into an honourable condition, and
letting down the Parliament. His Majesty will be persuaded thereto in
time, when he has had another taste of the discontents of his changeable
people.”
Dr. Reede imagined that such an innovation might not be the last change,
if the nation should have more liking to be represented by a Parliament
than ruled by an army. But the Duke did not conceal his contempt for the
new fashion of regarding the people and their representatives. There was
no telling what pass things might come to when monarchs were reduced to
shifts to get money, and the people fancied that they had a right to sit
in judgment on the use that was made of it. He seemed to forget that he
had had a father, and what had become of him, while he set up as an
example worthy of all imitation the spirited old king, bluff Harry, that
put out his hand and took what he pleased, and amused himself with
sending grumblers to seek adventures north, south, east, or west. If the
King would take his advice, he would show the nation an example of the
first duty of a king,—to protect his people from violence,—in such a
fashion as should leave the Parliament little to say, even if allowed to
meet. Let his Majesty bestow all his paternal care on cherishing his
army.
“It is true,” said Dr. Reede, “that a ruler’s first duty is to give
security to his people; and in the lowest state in which men herd
together, the danger is looked for from without; and the people who at
home gather food, each for himself, go out to war, each with his own
weapon. Their ruler does no more than call them out, and point the way,
and lead them home. Afterwards, when men are settled on lands, and made
the property of the rich and strong, they go out to war at the charge of
their lords, and the King has still nothing to do but to command them.
Every man is or may be a warrior; and it is for those who furnish forth
his blood and sinews, his weapons and his food, to decide about the
conduct of the war. But, at a later time, when men intermingle and
divide their labour at will, and the time of slavery is over, every man
is no longer a warrior, but some fight for hire, while those who hire
them stay at their business at home.”
“Or at their pleasures,” observed the Duke, glancing at his brother.
“Under favour, no,” replied Dr. Reede. "It is not, I conceive, the King
that hires the army to do his pleasure, but the people who hire it for
their defence, the King having the conduct of the enterprises. If the
will of the nation be not taken as to their defence,—if they should
perchance think they need no armed defence, and lose their passion for
conquest, whence must come the hire of their servants,—the soldiery?"
“They must help themselves with it,” replied the Duke, carelessly.
"And if they find a giant at every man’s door,—a lion in the path to
every one’s field?" said the divine.
“Thy learning hath perplexed thee, man. These are not the days of
enchantment, of wild beasts, and overtopping men.”
“Pardon me; there are no days when men may not be metamorphosed, if the
evil influence be but strong enough. There are no days when a man’s
household gods will not make a giant of him for the defence of their
shrine. There are no days when there are not such roarings in the path
of violence as to sink the heart of the spoiler within him.”
“Let but the art of war improve like other arts,” said the Duke, “and
our cannon will easily out-roar all your lions, and beat down the giants
you speak of.”
“Rather the reverse, I conceive,” said the plain-spoken clergyman. “The
expense of improved war is aggravated, not only in the outfit, but in
the destruction occasioned. The soldier is a destructive labourer, and,
as such, will not be overlong tolerated by an impoverished nation, whose
consent to strife is the more necessary the more chargeable such strife
becomes to them. Furthermore, men even now look upon blood as something
more precious than water, and upon human souls as somewhat of a higher
nature than the fiery bubbles that our newly-wise chemists send up into
the ether, to wander whither no eye can follow them. Our cannon now
knock down a file where before a battle-axe could cleave but a single
skull. Men begin already to tremble over their child’s play of human
life; and if the day comes when some mighty engine shall be prepared to
blow to atoms half an army, there may be found a multitude of stout
hearts to face it; but where is he who will be brave enough to fire the
touch-hole, even for the sure glory of being God’s arch enemy?”
“Is this brother of thine seeking a patent for some new device of war-
engines?” inquired Charles of the divine. “Methinks your discourse seems
like a preface to such a proposal. Would it were so! for patents aid the
exchequer.”
“Would it were so!” said the Duke, “for a king might follow his own will
with such an engine in his hand.”
“Would it were so!” said Dr. Reede, “for then would the last days of war
be come, and Satan would find much of his occupation gone. Edmund, if
thou wilt invent such an engine as may mow down a host at a blow, I will
promise thee a triumph on that battle-field, and the intercession of
every church in Christendom. Such a deed shall one day be done. War
shall one day be ended; but not by you, Edmund. Men must enact the wild
beast yet a few centuries longer, to furnish forth a barbarous show to
their rulers, till men shall call instead for a long age of fasting, and
sackcloth, and ashes.”
“Meantime,” said Edmund, “they call impertinently for certain accounts
of the charges of our wars which his Majesty is over gracious in
permitting them to demand.”
“Do they think so?”
“They cannot but see,” said the Duke, “by the way his Majesty gave his
speech to the Parliament, that he desires no meddling from them.”
“And how did I speak?” asked the King. “Did I not assure the Commons
that I would not have asked for their subsidies if I had not had need;
and that through no extravagance of my own, but the disorder of the
times? And is not that much to say when I am daily told by my gentlemen
of the palace, and others who know better still, that my will is above
all privilege of Parliament or city, and that I have no need to account
to any at all? How did I speak?”
"Only as if your wits were with your queen, or some other lady, while
the words of your speech lay under your eye. Some words your Commons
must needs remember, from the many times they were said over; but
further——"
“Pshaw!” cried the King, vexed at the description he had himself asked
for. “This learned divine knows not what our Parliament is made of.
There are but two seamen and about twenty merchants, and the rest have
no scruple in coming drunk to the house, and making a mockery of the
country people when they are sober. How matters it how I give my speech
to them?”
“They are indeed not the people,” observed Reede; "and I forewarn your
Majesty that their consent is not the consent of the people; and that
however they may clap the hands at your Majesty’s enterprises and
private sales, the people will not be the less employed in looking back
upon Oliver——"
“And forward to me?” inquired the Duke, laughing.
"And forward to the time when the proud father shall not be liable to
see his only son return barefoot and tattered from a war where he has
spilled his blood; or a daughter made the victim, first of violence, and
then of mockery, through the example of the King’s court; and no justice
to be had but by him who brings the heaviest bribe:—forward to the time
when drunken cavaliers shall be thought unfitting representatives of a
hungering people; and when the money which is raised by the toils of the
nation shall be spent for the benefit of the nation; when men shall
inquire how Rome fell, and why France is falling; and shall find that
decay ensues when that which is a trust is still pertinaciously used as
prerogative, and when the profusion in high places is answerable to the
destitution below!"
“Nay; I am sure there is destitution in high places,” cried the King,
“and luxury in the lower. I see not a few ladies outshining my Queen in
gallantry of jewels; and if you like to look in at certain low houses
that I could tell you of, you will see what vast heaps of gold are
squandered in deep and most prodigious gaming.”
“True; and therein is found the excuse of the court; that whenever the
nation is over-given to luxury, the court is prodigious in its
extravagance.”
“Hold, man!” cried the King. “Wouldst thou be pilloried for a libel?”
“Such is too common a sight to draw due regard,” coolly replied the
divine. “Libels are in some sort the primers of the ignorant multitude,
scornfully despised for their ignorance. There are not means wherewith
to give the people letters in an orderly way; so that they gape after
libels first, and then they gape to see them burned by the hangman; and
learn one sort of hardness by flinging stones at a pilloried wretch, and
another sort of hardness by watching the faces of traitors who pray
confidently on the scaffold, and look cheerfully about them on the
hangman’s hellish instruments; and all this hardness, which may chance
to peril your Majesty, is not always mollified by such soft things as
they may witness at the theatres which profanely give and take from the
licentious times. If the people would become wise, such is the
instruction that awaits them.”
“Methinks you will provoke us to let the people see how cheerfully you
would look on certain things that honest gazers round a scaffold shrink
from beholding. It were better for you to pray for me from your pulpit,
like a true subject of Christ and your King.”
“Hitherto I have done so; but it pleases your Majesty that from my
pulpit I should pray no longer. Alas!” cried he, casting a glance
through the window as he perceived that the vessel drew to land, “alas!
what a raging fire! And another! And a third!”
“The bonfires for the victory,” quietly observed Edmund.
Dr. Reede was forbidden to throw any doubts abroad on the English having
gained a splendid victory. The King had ordered these bonfires at the
close of the fast day. They were lighted, it appeared, somewhat
prematurely, as the sun yet glittered along the Thames; but this only
showed the impatient joy of the people. The church bells were evidently
preparing to ring merry peals as soon as the last hour of humiliation
should have expired. The King’s word had gone forth. It suited his
purposes to gain a victory just now; and a victory he was determined it
should be, to the last moment. When the people should discover the
cheat, the favours occasioned by it would be past recall. They could
only do what they had done before,—go home and be angry.
This was all that now remained for Dr. Reede, the King’s landing being
waited for by a throng of persons whose converse had little affinity
with wise counsel. Certain courtiers, deplorably _ennuyés_ by the king’s
absence, sauntered about the gardens, and looked abroad upon the river,
in hopes of his approach. An importation of French coxcombs from
Dunkirk, in fantastical habits, was already here to offend the eyes of
the insulted English people. It was not till Edmund (who was not
dismissed with Dr. Reede) began to exhibit at home the confidence with
which he had been treated, that Dr. Reede and his lady became aware how
much these accomplished cadets could teach Charles on the part of their
own extravagant master. Louis the Fourteenth knew of more ways of
raising money than even Charles. He had taken to creating offices for
sale, for which the court ladies amused themselves in making names. The
pastime of divining their object and utility was left to the people who
paid for them. They read, or were told,—and it made a very funny
riddle,—that the inspector of fresh-butter had kissed hands on his
appointment; that the ordainer of faggots had had the honour of dining
with his Majesty; and that some mighty and wealthy personage had been
honoured with the office of licenser of barber-wig-makers.
The example of Louis in this and other matters was too good not to be
followed by one in circumstances of equal necessity. Edmund was not by
any means to delay the “discreet composure” by which the minds of the
people were to be propitiated and satisfied. He was to laud to the
utmost the Duke’s conduct of naval affairs,—(whose credit rested on the
ability of his complaisant Clerk of the Acts.) He was to falsify the
navy accounts as much as could be ventured, exaggerating the expenses
and extenuating the receipts, while he made the very best of the
results. He was to take for granted the willingness of a grateful people
to support the dignity of the sovereign, while he insinuated threats of
the establishment of a civil list,—(a thing at that time unknown.) All
this was to be done not the less for room being required for eloquence
about the sale of Dunkirk, and the loan from France, and the bribe from
Holland;—monuments of kingly wisdom all, and of paternal solicitude to
spare the pockets of the people. All this was to be done not the less
for the bright idea which had occurred to some courtier’s mind that the
making of a few new ambassadors might bring money to his Majesty’s
hands. There was more than one man about the court who was very willing
to accept of the dignity of such an office, and to pay to the power that
appointed him a certain fair proportion of the salary which the people
must provide. One gentleman was accordingly sent to Spain, to amuse
himself in reading Calderon, and another to some eastern place where he
might sit on cushions, and smoke at the expense of the people of
England, and to the private profit of their monarch. Amidst all these
clever arrangements, nothing was done for the _security_ or the
_advancement_ of the community. No new measures of _defence_; no better
administration of _justice_; no advantageous _public works_, no
apparatus of _education_, were originated; and, as for the _dignity of
the sovereign_, that was a matter past hope. But by means of the
treacherous sale of the nation’s property and of public offices, by
bribes, by falsification of the public accounts, breaches of royal
credit were for the present stopped, and the day of reckoning deferred.
If the Duke of York could have foreseen from whom and at what time this
reckoning would be demanded, he might have been less acute in his
suggestions, and less bold in his advice; and both he and the King might
have employed to less infamous purpose this day of solemn fast and
deprecation of God’s judgments. But, however true might be Dr. Reede’s
doctrine that the sins of government are the sins of the nation, it
happened in this case, as in a multitude of others, that the accessaries
to the crime offered the atonement, while the principals made sport of
both crime and atonement.
The false report about the late engagement had gained ground
sufficiently to answer the temporary purposes of those who spread it. As
Dr. Reede took his way homewards, bonfires gleamed reflected in the
waters of the river, and exhibited to advantage the picturesque fronts
of the wooden houses in the narrow streets, and sent trains of sparks up
into the darkening sky, and illuminated the steeples that in a few more
seasons were to fall into the surging mass of a more awful
conflagration. On reaching the comfortable dwelling which he expected to
be soon compelled to quit, he gave himself up, first to humiliation on
account of the guilt against which he had in vain remonstrated, and then
to addressing to the King a strong written appeal on behalf of the
conscientious presbyterian clergy, who had, on the faith of the royal
word, believed themselves safe from such temptations to violate their
consciences as they were now suffering under.
On a certain Saturday of the same month might be seen the most
magnificent triumph that ever floated on the Thames. It far exceeded the
Venetian pageantry on occasion of espousing the Adriatic. The city of
London was entertaining the King and Queen; and the King was not at all
sorry that the people were at the same time entertained, while he was
making up his mind whether, on dissolving the Parliament, he should call
another which would obligingly give him the dean and chapter lands, or
whether he should let it be seen, according to the opinion of his
brother, that there was no need of any more parliaments. As he sat
beside his Queen, in an antique-shaped vessel, under a canopy of cloth
of gold, supported by Corinthian pillars, wreathed with flowers,
festoons, and garlands, he meditated on the comfort that would accrue,
on the one hand, from all his debts being paid out of these church
lands, and, on the other, from such an entire freedom from
responsibility as he should enjoy when there should be no more speeches
to make to his Commons, and no more remonstrances to hear from them,
grounded on dismal tales of the distresses of his people which he had
rather not hear. The thrones and triumphal arches might do for the
corporation of London to amuse itself with, and for the little boys and
girls on either side of the river to stare at and admire: but it was in
somewhat too infantine a taste to please the majority of the gazers
otherwise than as a revival of antique amusements. The most idly
luxurious about the court preferred entertainments which had a little
more meaning in them,—dramatic spectacles, pictures, music, and fine
buildings and gardens. War is also a favourite excitement in the middle
age of refinement; and the best part of this day’s entertainments, next
to the music, was the peals of ordnance both from the vessels and the
shore, which might prettily remind the gallants, amidst their mirth and
their soft flirtations, of the cannonading that was going on over the
sea. Within a small section of the city of London, many degrees of mirth
might be found this day.
In the royal barge, the Queen cast her “languishing and excellent eyes”
over the pageant before her, and returned the salutations of the
citizens who made obeisances in passing, and now and then exchanged a
few words with her Portuguese maids of honour, the King being too
thoughtful to attend to her;—altogether not very merry.
In the barge immediately following, certain of the King’s favourites
made sport of the Queen’s foretop,—turned aside very strangely,—of the
monstrous fardingales and olivada complexions and unagreeable voices of
her Portuguese ladies,—and of the old knight, her friend, whose bald
pate was covered by a huge lock of hair, bound on by a thread, very
oddly. The King’s gravity also made a good joke; and there was an
amusing incident of a boat being upset, which furnished laughter for a
full half hour. A family of Presbyterians, turned out of a living
because the King had broken his word, were removing their chattels to
some poor place on the other side of the river, and had unawares got
their boat entangled in the procession, and were run down by a royal
barge. It was truly laughable to see first the divine, and then his
pretty daughters, with their dripping long hair, picked up from the
water, while all their little wealth went to the bottom: and yet more so
to witness how, when the King, of his bounty, threw gold to the
sufferers, the clergyman tossed it back so vehemently that it would have
struck the Duke of York on the temple, if he had not dexterously
contrived to receive it on the crown of his periwig. It was a charming
adventure to the King’s favourites;—very merry.
In the mansions by the river side, certain gentlemen from the country
were settling themselves, in preparation for taking office under the
government. They and their fathers had been out of habits of business
for fourscore years, and were wholly incapable of it, and knew
themselves to be so; the best having given themselves to rural
employments, and others to debauchery; but, as all men were now declared
incapable of employment who had served against the King, and as these
cavaliers knew that their chief business was to humour his Majesty, they
made themselves easy about their responsibilities, looked after their
tapestries, plate, and pictures, talked of the toils and cares of
office, and were—very merry.
In the narrow streets in their neighbourhood might be hourly seen
certain of the King’s soldiers, belted and armed, cursing, swearing, and
stealing; running into public-houses to drink, and into private ones to
carry off whatever they had a mind to; leaving the injured proprietors
disposed to reflect upon Oliver, and to commend him,—what brave things
he did, and how safe a place a man’s own house was in his time, and how
he made the neighbour princes fear him; while now, a prince that came in
with all the love, and prayers, and good-liking of his people, who had
given greater signs of loyalty and willingness to serve him with their
estates than ever was done by any people, could get nothing but contempt
abroad, and discontent at home; and had indeed lost all so soon, that it
was a miracle how any one could devise to lose so much in so little
time. These housekeepers, made sage by circumstance, looked and spoke
with something very little like mirth. Those who had given occasion to
such thoughts were, meantime,—very merry.
It was not to these merry men, wise people thought, that the King must
look for help in the day of war, but to the soldiers of the republican
army, who had been declared by act of parliament for evermore incapable
of serving the kingdom. But where were these men to be found, if wanted?
Not one could be met with begging in the streets to tell how his
comrades might be reached. One captain in the old parliament army was
turned shoemaker, and another a baker. This lieutenant was now a
haberdasher; that a brewer. Of the common soldiers, some were porters,
and others mechanics in their aprons, and husbandmen in their frocks,
and all as quiet and laborious as if war had never been their
occupation. The spirits of these men had been trained in contentment
with God’s providences; and though, as they sat at the loom and the
last, they had many discontented thoughts of man’s providences, it was
clear to observers among the King’s own servants that he was a thousand
times safer from any evil meant by them than from his own unsatisfied
and insatiable cavaliers. While the staid artizans who had served under
Cromwell looked out upon the river as the procession passed, they
dropped a few words in their families about the snares of the Evil One,
and were—not very merry.
Within hearing of the ordnance in which the young gallants of the court
delighted was an hospital, meagrely supplied with the comforts which its
inmates required, where languished, in a crowded space, many of the
soldiers and sailors who had been set up to be fired at while it was
known in high quarters that there was such a deficiency of ammunition as
must deprive the poor fellows of the power of effectual self-defence.
This fact had become known, and it had sunk deep into the souls of the
brave fellows who, maimed, feverish, and heart-sore,—in pain for want of
the proper means of cure, and half suffocated from the number of their
fellow-sufferers, listened with many a low-breathed curse to the peals
of ordnance that shook their crazy place of refuge, and forswore mirth
and allegiance together.
Within hearing of the shouts and of a faint occasional breath of music
from the royal band, were certain of the two thousand clergy, who were
to resign their livings the next morning, and whose families were taking
advantage of the neighbourhood being deserted for the day to remove
their furniture, and betake themselves to whatever place they might have
found wherein the righteous could lay his head. Dr. Reede was one of
these. He had been toiling all day with his wife, demolishing the _tout
ensemble_ of comfort which had been formed under her management. He was
now, while she was engaged with her infants, sitting alone in his study
for the last time. He was doing nothing; for his business in this place
was closed. He let his eye be amused by the quick flickering in the
breeze of the short, shining grass of his little court, which stretched
up to his window. The dark formal shrubs, planted within the paling by
his own hand, seemed to nod to him as the wind passed over their heads.
The summer flowers in the lozenge-shaped parterres which answered to
each other, danced and kissed unblamed beneath the Rev. Doctor’s gaze.
All looked as if Nature’s heart were merry, however sad might be those
of her thoughtful children. The Doctor stepped out upon the grass. There
was yet more for him to do there. He had, with his own hands, mowed the
plat, and clipped the borders; and the little hands of the elder of his
two children had helped to pluck out the very few weeds that had sprung
up. But the weather had been warm and dry, and, in order to leave the
place in the beauty desired by its departing tenant, it was necessary to
water the flower-court. It was not a very inspiriting thing to glance at
doors and windows standing wide, displaying the nakedness of an empty
dwelling within: so the Doctor hastened to the well to fill his bucket.
Mrs. Reede heard the jingle of the chain, and showed herself at an upper
window, while the child that could walk made her way down stairs with
all speed to help papa, and wonder at her own round little face in the
full bucket. Mrs. Reede was glad that her husband had turned out of his
study, though she could not bring herself to sympathize in his anxiety
to leave all in a state of the greatest practicable beauty. If a gale
had torn up the shrubs, or the hot sun of this summer day had parched
the grass and withered the flowers, she did not think she could have
been sorry. But it was very well that her husband had left his study
open for the further operations necessary there. This room had remained
the very last in its entireness. The time was now come when she must
have asked her husband to quit his chair and desk, and let his books be
dislodged. She would make haste to complete the work of spoliation, and
she hoped he would make a long task of watering the flower-court.
He was not likely to do that when he had once perceived that she and one
of her damsels were lifting heavy loads of books, while another was
taking care of the baby. He hastened to give their final draught to his
favourite carnations, placed a chair for Esther on the grass just
outside the window, where she might sit with the infant, and, while
resting herself, talk to him as he finished her laborious task.
Mrs. Reede did not remember to have ever started so incessantly at the
sound of guns; and the air-music of the window-harp that she had seen in
the pavilions of great men’s gardens had never come so mournfully over
her spirit as the snatches of harmony that the wind now brought from the
river to make her infant hold up his tiny finger while his sister said
“hark!” She was, for once, nervous. It might be seen in her flushed face
and her startled movements; and the poor baby felt it in the absence of
the usual ease with which he was held and played with. A sharp sudden
cry from him called the attention of the doctor from his task. In a
moment, mamma’s grief was more tumultuous than the infant’s.
“O, my child! my child! I have hurt my child! my own little baby!” cried
she, weeping bitterly, and of course redoubling the panic of the little
one.
“My dear love,” said her husband, trying to prove to her that the baby
had only been frightened by a jerk; “my dear love, you alarm yourself
much more than the child. See!” and he held up in the evening sunlight
the brass plate on which his study lamp stood. Its glittering at once
arrested the infant’s terrors: but not so soon could the tears of the
mother be stopped.
“My love, there must be some deeper cause than this trifling accident,”
said he, sitting down on the low window sill beside her chair. “Is it
that you have pent up your grief all day, and that it will have way?”
Mrs. Reede had a long train of sad thoughts to disclose, in the
intervals of her efforts to compose herself. The children, she said,
amused themselves as if nothing was the matter; while who could tell
what they might think hereafter of being thus removed from a fair and
honourable home, and carried where—O, there was no telling what lot
might await them! If everybody had thought the sacrifice a right one,
she could have gone through it without any regret: but some of her
husband’s oldest friends thought him wrong——
“Towards God, or towards you, my love?”
"O, towards these children, I suppose. They dare not think that you
would do anything wrong towards me. I am sure I only think of you first,
and then of the children. How you have preached here, with the souls of
your people in your hand, to mould them as you would! and now, you must
go where your gift and your office will be nothing; and you will be only
like any other man. And, as for the children, we do not know——"
“When the bird leads forth her brood from their warm nest, because
springes are set round about them, does she know what shall befall them?
There may be hawks abroad, or a sharp wind that may be too strong for
their scarce-plumed wings. Or they may gather boldness from their early
flight, and wave in the sunshine on a high bough, and pour out there a
grateful morn and even song from season to season. The parent bird knows
not: but she must needs take them from among the springes, however soft
may be the nest, and cool the mossy tree. We know more than this parent
bird; even that no sparrow falleth unheeded to the ground.”
Mrs. Reede’s tears began to flow again as another faint breath of music
reached her.
“Is it that you will be more composed when the sounds of mirth, to us
unseasonable, have passed away?” asked Dr. Reede, smiling.
“It does seem hard that our spoilers should be making merry while we are
going forth we know not whither,” said the wife.
“How would it advantage the mother bird that the fowlers should lie
close while she plumes her pinions to be gone? Will she stoop in her
flight for all their mirth? As for us, music may be to us a rare treat
henceforth. Let our ears be pleased with it, whencesoever it may come.”
And he made the children hearken, till they clapped their little hands,
and their mother once more smiled. Her husband then said to her,
“If this mirth be ungodly, there is no reason why we should be more
scandalized at it than on any other day, only because we ourselves are
not merry. If it be innocent, we should thank God that others are
happier than ourselves. Yet I am not otherwise than happy in the inward
spirit. I shall never repent this day.”
"They say you will, when——But it is not as if we stood alone. It is said
that there will be a large number of the separated."
“Thank God! not for the companionship to ourselves, so much as for the
profit to his righteousness. It will be much to meet here and there eyes
that tell back one’s own story, and to clasp hands that are undefiled by
the world’s lucre. But it is more to know that God’s truth is so hymned
by some thousand tongues this night, that the echo shall last till weak
voices like ours shall be wanted no more.”
“Let us go,” cried Mrs. Reede, dispersing her last tears, and lifting up
one child while the other remained in her husband’s arms. He took
advantage of her season of strength, and resolved to convey her at once
to the humble lodging which was to be their present abode, and to return
himself to see that all was done. He detained her only to join him in a
brief thanksgiving for the happiness they had enjoyed there since their
marriage day, and to beseech a blessing on him who was to succeed to the
dwelling and to the pastoral office. Courageous as was Mrs. Reede’s
present mood, she was still at the mercy of trifles. The little girl’s
kitten would not bear them company. It had been removed twice, and had
returned, and now was not to be found. It had hidden itself in some
corner whence it would come out when they were gone; and the child
departed in a very unchristian state of distress. Her mamma found that
both she and her child had yet to learn Dr. Reede’s method of not
fretting because of evil-doers.
Though he could not trouble himself with personal resentments, no man
could more strenuously rebuke and expose guilt,—especially guilt in high
places, which is so much worse than other guilt, in as far as it
desolates a wider region of human happiness. In his farewell discourse,
the next day, he urged some considerations on behalf of society far more
eagerly than he ever asked anything for himself.
“It is no new thing,” said he, "for men to be required to set their hand
to that which they believe not, or to affirm that they believe that
which they understand no more in the expression than in the essence. It
is no new thing for a mistake to be made as to such protestation, so
that if a man say he believes that a sown field will bear corn, though
he knows not the manner of its sprouting nor the order of its ripening,
he shall be also required to believe a proposition in an unknown tongue,
whereof he knows not even what it is that should be proposed. It is no
new thing that men should start at such a requisition, as a sound-witted
man would start from the shows and babble of the magician; or as a
modest wise man would shrink from appointing the way to a wandering
comet, lest he should unawares bring the orderly heavens to a mighty
wreck. It is no new thing for the searchers of God’s ways to respect his
everlasting laws more than man’s presumptuous bidding: or for Him whom
they serve so to change the face of things to them as to make his
extremest yoke easy, and his heaviest burden light:—to cast a shade over
what must be foregone,—whether it be life itself, or only the goodly
things in which maybe too much of our life hath been found,—or to beam a
light from his own highest heaven on the wilderness-path, which may seem
horrid to those who are not to tread it, but passable enough to such as
must needs take this way to their everlasting home. These things being
not new, are a sign to us recusants of this day not to be in anywise
astonished or dismayed, and also not to allow a dwelling upon the part
we have taken, as if it were any mighty merit to trust to God’s
providence, which waits only to be trusted, or required any marvellous
faith to commit ourselves to Christ’s word, which, if it be Christ’s,
must stand when the heavens themselves shall be dissolved. It behoves us
rather to look to things less clear than these, and more important than
the putting forth of a few of Christ’s meanest shepherds from their
folds;—for whom the chief Shepherd may perhaps find other occasions;
and, if not, they may be well content to lie down among the sheep,
remembering that he once had not where to lay his head. The true
occasion of this day is not to break one another’s hearts with griefs
and tears, (which may but puff out or quench the acceptable fire of the
altar;) but so to fan the new-kindled flame as that it may seize and
consume whatsoever of foul and desecrating shows most hideous in its
light. Is it not plain that powers whose use is ushered in with prayers,
and alternated with the response of God’s most holy name,—the powers of
government,—are used to ensnare those who open their doors to whatsoever
cometh in that name? It is well that governments should be thus
sanctified to the ears and eyes of the governed; for, if there be a
commission more certainly given straight from the hand of God than
another it is that of a ruler of men. Who but he opens the eyes of the
blind, and unstops the ears of the deaf, and sets the lame on his feet,
and strengthens together the drooping heart and the feeble knees,—by
setting before the one the radiant frame of society in all its fitness,
and waking up for another the voices of human companionship, and
compacting the powers of the weak with those of the strong, and cheering
all by warding off injury from without, and making restraint easy where
perchance it may gall any of those who are within? Sacred is the power
of the ruler as a trust; but if it be used as a property, where is its
sanctity? If the steward puts out the eyes that follow him too closely,
and ties the tongue that importunes, and breaks the limbs of the strong
man in sport, so as to leave him an impotent beggar in the porch of the
mansion,—do we not know from the Scripture what shall be the fate of
that steward? As it is with a single ruler, so shall it be with a
company of rulers,—with a government which regards the people only as
the something on which itself must stand, which takes bread from the
children to give it to dogs; which sells God’s gifts to them that are
without, at the risk of such utter blindness that they shall weary
themselves to find the door out of their perplexities and terrors. What
governments there be that commit the double sin of lording it over
consciences, (which are God’s heritage,) and of ruling for their own low
pleasures instead of the right living and moving of the people, judge
ye. If there be any which mismanage its defence, and deny or pervert
justice, and refuse public works, and make the church a scandal, and the
court a spectacle for angels to weep over and devils to resort to, and,
instead of speeding the people’s freedom with the wings of knowledge,
shut them into the little cells of ancient men’s wits, it is time that
such should know why God hath made them stewards, and should be alarmed
for the coming of their Master. It is not for the men and maid-servants
to wrest his staff from his hands, or to refuse his reasonable bidding,
or to forsake, the one his plough, and the other his mill, and the
maidens to spread the table: but it is for any one to give loud warning
that the Master of the house will surely demand an account of the
welfare of his servants. Such a warning do I give; and such is the
warning spoken by the many mourners of this day, who, because they
honour the kingly office as the holiest place of the fair temple of
society, and kingly agents as the appointed priesthood, can the less
bear to see the nation outraged as if there were no avenging angel of
Jehovah flying abroad; and comfortless in their miseries, as if Jehovah
himself were not in the midst of them."
It was well that Dr. Reede felt that he could bear the pillory. He was
pilloried.
---------------------
THIRD AGE.
History is silent as to the methods by which men were enabled to endure
the tedium of journeys by the heavy coaches of the olden time. The
absence of all notion of travelling faster might, indeed, be no
inconsiderable aid,—an aid of which travellers are at present, for the
most part, deprived; since the mail-coach passenger, the envy of the
poor tenant of the carrier’s cart, feels envy, in his turn, of the
privileged beings who shoot along the northern rail-road; while they,
perhaps, are sighing for the time when they shall be able to breakfast
at one extremity of the kingdom, and dine at the other. When once the
idea of not going fast enough enters a traveller’s mind, _ennui_ is
pretty sure to follow; and it may be to this circumstance that the
patience of our forefathers, under their long incarceration on the road,
was owing—if patience they had. Now, a traveller who is too much used to
journeying to be amused, as a child is, by the mere process of
travelling, is dismayed alike if there be a full number of passengers,
and if there be none but himself. In the first case, there is danger of
delay from the variety of deposits of persons and goods; and in the
second, there is an equal danger of delay from the coachman having all
his own way, and the certainty, besides, of the absence of all
opportunity of shaking off the dulness of his own society.
Mr. Reid, a sociable young barrister, who had never found himself at a
loss on a journey, was left desolate one day last summer when he least
expected it. He had taken his wife and child down to the south, in order
to establish them by the sea-side for a few weeks; and he was now
travelling up to town by the stage-coach, in very amusing company, as he
thought, for the first stage, but presently in solitude. Supposing that
his companions were going all the way, he took his time about making the
most of them, and lost the opportunity. There was a sensible farmer, who
pointed right and left to the sheep on the downs—green downs—retiring in
long sweeps from the road; and he had much to relate of the methods of
cultivation which had been pursued here, there, and everywhere,—with the
Barn Field, and Rick Mead, and Pond-side Field, and Brook Hollow, and
many other pretty places that he indicated. He had also stores of
information on the farmer’s favourite subject of complaint—the state of
the poor. He could give the history of all the well-meant attempts of my
lord this, and my lady that, and colonel the other, to make employment,
and institute prizes of almshouses, and induce their neighbours to lay
out more on patches of land than less helpless folks would think it
worth while to bestow. Meantime, a smart young lady in the opposite
corner was telling her widowed chaperon why she could not abide the
country, and would not be tempted to leave dear London any more,—namely,
that the country was chalky, and whitened the hems of all her
petticoats. The widow, in return, assured the unbelieving girl that the
country was not chalky all over the world, and that she had actually
seen, with her own eyes, the junction of a white, a red, and a black
road,—very convenient, as one might choose one’s walk by the colour of
one’s gown. The widow at the same time let fall her wish to have the
charge—merely for the sake of pleasant occupation—of the household of a
widower, to whose daughters she could teach everything desirable;
especially if they were intended to look after dairy and poultry-yard,
and such things.
“Thank’ee, ma’am,” said the farmer, as she looked full at him; “my
daughters are some of them grown up; and they have got on without much
teaching since their mother died.”
Mr. Reid promised himself to gain more information about the widow’s
estimate of her own capabilities; but she and her charge were not yet
going to “dear London.” They got out at the first country town, just
after the farmer had thrust himself half out of the window to stop the
coach, flung himself on the stout horse that was waiting for him at the
entrance of a green lane, and trotted off, with a prodigious exertion of
knee, elbow, and coat-flap.
Mr. Reid had soon done thinking of the widow, and of the damsel who had
displayed so intimate a knowledge of rural life. Pauperism lasted
longer; but this was only another version of a dismal story with which
he was already too well acquainted. He was glad to think of something
else. He found that he got most sun by riding backward, and most wind by
riding forward, and made his election in favour of the latter. He
discovered, after a momentary doubt, that his umbrella was safe, and
that there was no occasion to trouble his knees any longer with his
great-coat. He perceived that the coach had been new-lined, and he
thought the lace suited the lining uncommonly well. He wondered whether
the people would be as confoundedly long in changing horses at every
stage as they had been at the first. It would be very provoking to
arrive in town too late for dinner at G——’s. Ah! the women by the road-
side found it a fine day for drying the linen they had washed. How it
blew about, flapping, with a noise like mill-sails; big-sleeved
pinafores and dancing stockings! This was a pretty country to live in:
the gentlemen’s houses were sufficiently sheltered, and the cottages had
neat orchards behind them; and one would think pains had been taken with
the green lanes—just in the medium as they were between rankness and
bareness. What an advantage roads among little hills have in the clear
stream under the hedge,—a stream like this, dimpling and oozing, now
over pebbles, and now among weeds! That hedge would make a delicious
foreground for a picture,—the earth being washed away from the twisted
roots, and they covered with brown moss, with still a cowslip here and
there nodding to itself in the water as the wind passed by. By the way,
that bit of foreground might be kept in mind for his next paper for the
“New Monthly.” It would be easy to give his subject a turn that would
allow that hedge and its cowslip to be brought in. What had not Victor
Hugo made of a yellow flower, in a scene to which nobody who had read it
would need a second reference! But this well, to the left, was even
better than the hedge: it must have been described already; for it
looked as if put there for the purpose. What a damp nook in the hedge it
stood in, with three old yews above it, and tufts of long grass to
fringe the place! What a well-used chain and ladle, and what merry,
mischievous children, pushing one another into the muddy pool where the
drippings fell, and splashing each other, under pretence of drinking! He
was afraid of losing the impression of this place, so much dusty road as
he had to pass through, and so many new objects to meet before he could
sit down to write; unless, indeed, he did it now. Why should not he
write his paper now? It was a good idea—a capital thought!
Three backs of letters and a pencil were presently found, and a flat
parcel in one of the window-pockets, which served as a desk, when the
feet were properly planted on the opposite seat. The lines were none of
the straightest, at first; and the dots and stops wandered far out of
their right places; while the long words looked somewhat hieroglyphical.
But the coach stopped; and Mr. Reid forgot to observe how much longer it
took than before to change horses while he was the only passenger. He
looked up only once, and then saw so charming an old granny, with her
little Tommy, carrying a toad-in-a-hole to the baker’s, that he was
rewarded for his momentary idleness, and resolved to find a place for
them too, near the well and the mossy hedge.
He was now as sorry to be off again as before to stop. The horses were
spirited, and the road was rough. His pencil slipped and jerked, this
way and that. Presently his eyes ached: his ideas were jostled away. It
was impossible to compose while the manual act was so troublesome; it
was nonsense to attempt it. Nothing but idleness would do in travelling;
so the blunted pencil was put by, and the eye was refreshed once more
with green.
But now a new sort of country was opening. The hedges were gone, and a
prodigious stretch of fallow on either hand looked breezy and pleasant
enough at first; and the lark sprang from the furrow so blithely, that
Reid longed to stop the coach, that he might hear its trilling. But the
lark could not be heard, and was soon out of sight; and the perspective
of furrows became as wearying as making pothooks had been. Reid betook
himself to examining the window-pockets. There were two or three tidy
parcels for solicitors, of course; and a little one, probably for a
maid-servant, as there were seven lines of direction upon it. The scent
of strawberries came from a little basket, coolly lined with leaves, and
addressed to Master Jones, at a school in a town to be presently passed
through. Reid hoped, for the boy’s sake, that there was a letter too;
and he found an interstice, through which he could slip half-a-dozen
burnt almonds, which had remained in his pocket after treating his own
child. What speculations there would be, next holiday time, about how
the almonds got in! Two or three other little parcels were disregarded;
for among them lay one of more importance to Reid than all the
rest,—three newspapers, tied round once with a bit of red tape, and
directed, in pencil, to be left at the Blue Lion till called for. Reid
took the liberty of untying the tape, and amusing himself with the
precious pieces of type that had fallen in his way. There was little
political intelligence in these papers, and that was of old date; but a
little goes a great way with a solitary traveller; and when the better
parts of a newspaper are disposed of, enough remains in the drier parts
to employ the intellect that courts suggestion. That which is the case
with all objects on which the attention is occupied, is eminently the
case with a newspaper—that whatever the mind happens to be full of there
receives addition, and that the mood in which it is approached there
meets with confirmation. Reid had heard much from the farmer of the
hardships which individuals suffer from a wasteful public expenditure;
and his eye seemed to catch something which related to this matter, to
whatever corner of the papers it wandered.
"STRIKE AT ****** PALACE.—_All the workmen at present employed on this
extensive structure ceased work on the appearance of the contractor
yesterday morning. Their demand for higher wages being decidedly refused
by him, the men quitted the spot, and the works have since remained
deserted. A considerable crowd gathered round, and appeared disposed to
take part with the workmen, who, it is said, have for some time past
been arranging a combination to secure a rise of wages. The contractor
declares his intention to concede no part of the demand._"
The crowd taking part with the workmen! Then the crowd knows less than
the workmen what it is about. These wages are paid by that very crowd;
and it is because they issue from the public purse that the workmen
think they may demand higher wages than they would from a nobleman or
private gentleman. The contractor is but a medium, as they see, between
the tax-payers and themselves; and the terms of the contract must depend
much on the rate of wages of those employed. I hope the contractor will
indeed concede nothing; for it is the people that must overpay
eventually; and it has been too long taken for granted that the public
must pay higher for everything than individuals. I should not wonder if
these men have got it into their heads, like an acquaintance of mine in
the same line, that, as they are taxed for these public buildings, they
have a right to get as much of their money back as they can, forgetting
that if every taxed person did the same, there would be no palace
built;—not but that we could spare two or three extremely well;—or
might, at least, postpone some of the interminable alterations and
embellishments, with an account of which the nation is treated, year
after year, in return for its complaisance in furnishing the cash. Let
their Majesties be nobly lodged, by all means; and, moreover, gratified
in the exercise of tastes which are a thousand times more dignified than
those of our kings in the days of cloth of gold, and more refined than
those of monarchs who could make themselves exceedingly merry at the
expense of their people. The test, after all, is—What is necessary for
the _support_ of the administrating body, and what upholds mere _pomp_?
These are no days for public pomp. In one sense, the time for it is gone
by; in another sense, it is not come;—that is, we ought now to be men
enough to put away such childish things; and, we cannot yet afford them.
Two or three noble royal palaces, let alone when once completed, are, in
my mind, a proper support to the dignity of the sovereign. As for half-
a-dozen, if they do not make up a display of disgraceful pomp, the
barbaric princes of the East are greater philosophers than I take them
for. Yes, yes; let the sovereign be nobly lodged; but let it be
remembered that noble lodgings are quite as much wanted for other
parties.
"_Mr. ——’s motion was lost without a division._"
Aye: just so. The concentrated essence of the people, as the House of
Commons pretends to be, must put up with a sordid lodging, however many
royal palaces England may boast. They are not anything so precious as
they pretend to be, or they would not so meanly exclude themselves from
their right. They might just as faithfully consult the dignity of the
empire by making the King and Queen live in a cottage of three rooms, as
by squeezing themselves into a house where there is neither proper
accommodation for their sittings, nor for the transaction of their
business in Committees, nor for witnessing, nor for reporting their
proceedings. I thought my wife quite right in saying that she would
never again undergo the insult of being referred to the ventilators; and
I have determined twenty times myself that I would despise the gallery
so utterly that I would never set foot in it again: yet to the gallery I
still go; and I should not wonder if my wife puts away, for once or
twice, her disgust at inhaling smoke and steam, and her indignation at
being permitted to watch the course of legislation only through a
pigeon-hole and a grating. The presence of women there, in spite of such
insults, is a proof that they are worthy of being treated less like nuns
and more like rational beings; and the greater the rush and consequent
confusion in the gallery, the more certain is it that there are people
who want, and who eventually will have the means of witnessing the
proceedings of their legislators. But all this is nothing to the
importance of better accommodation to the members. Of all extraordinary
occasions of being economical, that is the most strange which impairs
the exertions of the grand deliberative assembly of the nation,—the most
majestic body, if it understood its own majesty,—within the bounds of
the empire. Why,—every nobleman should be content with one house, and
every private gentleman be ashamed of his stables and kennels, rather
than that the House of Commons should not have a perfect place of
assemblage. I verily believe that many a poor man would willingly give
his every third potato towards thus aiding the true representation of
his interests. It would be good economy in him so to do, if there was
nothing of less consequence to be sacrificed first. But King, Lords, and
Commons are not the only personages who have a claim on the public to be
well housed, for purposes of social support, not pomp.
"_Yesterday morning, Andrew Wilson underwent the sentence of the law,
&c. &c. Though only twenty years of age, he was old in guilt, having
been committed for his first offence,—throwing stones at the police,—-
when he was in his thirteenth year. He is supposed to have been for some
time connected with a gang of desperate offenders; but nothing could be
extracted from him relative to his former associates, though the
reverend chaplain of the jail devoted the most unremitting attention to
the spiritual concerns of the unhappy man._"
So this is the way we tend the sick children of the great social family,
because, forsooth, with all our palaces, we cannot afford a proper
infirmary! As soon as symptoms of sickness appear, we thrust all our
patients together, to make one another as much worse as possible, and
when any one is past hope, we take credit for our humanity in stuffing
him with remedies which come too late. To look at our prisons, one would
think that we must be out in our Christian chronology. That among the
many mansions of the social edifice, room cannot be found for those who
have the strongest claim of all on our pitying love and watchful
care,—what a scandal this is may be most fully comprehended by those who
have passed from the loathsome confusion of the greater number of our
prisons to the silence and rigid order of the very few in which a better
system has been tried. There are persons to press the argument that
while many of our honest poor, in London and in the factory districts,
are crowded together, six or seven families in the same apartment, it
cannot be expected that the guilty should be better accommodated. But
these same honest poor,—trebly honest if they can remain so under such a
mode of living,—may well be as glad as other people that the prisoner
should be doomed to the solitude which their poverty denies to them.
These same honest poor are taxed to pay for the transportation of
multitudes of the guilty, and for the idleness of all: while the
incessant regeneration of crime through our prison methods affords but a
melancholy prospect of augmented burdens on their children’s children
for similar purposes. In this point of view alone, how dearly has the
public paid for the destruction of this Andrew Wilson, and for the
offences of the gang he belongs to! Committed in his childhood for the
childish fault of throwing stones, kept in a state of expensive idleness
for want of an apparatus of labour, thrown into an atmosphere of
corruption for want of room to insulate him, issuing forth as a vagabond
to spread the infection of idleness and vice, and being brought back to
be tried and hanged at the nation’s expense, after he had successfully
qualified others for claiming from the public the expense of
transportation,—would not the injured wretch have been more profitably
maintained through a long life at the public expense? Would it not have
answered better to the public purse to give him an establishment, on
condition of his remaining harmless? If no Christian considerations are
strong enough to rouse us to build new jails, or to transmute the spare
palaces of the educated and the honoured into penitentiaries for the
ignorant and forlorn, there may be calculable truths,—facts of pounds,
shillings, and pence,—which may plead on behalf of the guilty against
the system of mingled parsimony and extravagance by which guilt is
aggravated at home, and diffused abroad, and the innocent have to pay
dear for that present quiet which insures a future further invasion of
their security. Every complainant who commits a young offender to
certain of our jails knows, or may know, that he thereby burdens the
public with a malefactor for life, and with all who will become
criminals by his means. What wonder that the growing chances of impunity
become a growing inducement to crime? There is no occasion to “provide
criminals with port wine and Turkey-carpets;” but there would be more
sense and better economy in this extreme,—if insulation were
secured,—than in the system which remains a reproach to the head and
heart of the community. Ah! here are a few hints as to one of the
methods by which we contrive to have so many young offenders upon our
hands.
“_John Ford, a publican, was fined for having music in his house, &c.
&c._”
“_Two labourers, brothers, named White, were charged with creating a
disturbance in the neighbourhood of the residence of Sir L. M. N. O.,
who has lately enforced his right of shutting up the foot-path, &c.
&c._”
“_The number of boats which passed under Putney Bridge from noon to
sunset on a Sunday in summer, was computed by the informant of the right
reverend bishop to exceed, &c. &c._”
"_The witness stated that he saw the two prisoners that morning in the
Albany Road, Regent’s Park, selling the unstamped publications which
were now produced. He purchased a copy from each of them, and took the
vendors into custody. The magistrates committed the prisoners to the
House of Correction for one month each, and thrust the forfeited papers
into the fire. The prisoners were then removed from the bar, laughing._“
”_On the discussion, last night, relative to the throwing open of the
Museum, we have to observe, &c. &c._“
”_The prisoner related that his dog having, on a former occasion,
brought a hare to him in a similar manner, the gamekeeper had ordered
the animal to be shot. The prisoner’s son had then contrived to secrete
it; but he could assure the magistrates that the animal should be
immediately sacrificed if he might be spared the ruin of being sent to
prison._"
Considering that one of the great objects of government is the security,
and another the advancement, of the people, it seems as if one of the
expenses of government should be providing useful and innocent amusement
for the people. All must have something to do in the intervals of their
toils; and as the educated can find recreations for themselves, it
behoves the guardians of the public to be especially careful in
furnishing innocent amusements to those who are less fitted to choose
their pleasures well. But where are the public grounds in which the poor
of our large towns may take the air, and exercise themselves in games?
Where are the theatres, the museums, the news-rooms, to which the poor
may resort without an expense unsuited to their means? What has become
of the principle of Christian equality, when a Christian prelate murmurs
at the poor man’s efforts to enjoy, at rare intervals, the green
pastures and still waters to which a loving shepherd would fain lead
forth all his flock; and if any more tenderly than others, it would be
such as are but too little left at large? Our administrators are careful
enough to guard the recreations of those who, if deprived of them, are
in the least danger of being driven to guilty excitements. The rich who
can have music and dancing, theatres, picture-galleries and museums,
riding in the parks, and walking in the fields any day of the week,
hunting and boating, journeying and study, must also have one more, at
whatever expense of vice and misery to their less favoured neighbours,
and at whatever cost to society at large. Yes; their game must be
protected, though the poor man must not listen in the public-house to
the music which he cannot hire, nor read at home almost the only
literature that he can buy. He must destroy his cherished dog, if it
happens to follow a hare; and must take his evening walk in the dusty
road if a powerful neighbour forbids him the quiet, green footway. Thus
we drive him to try if there is no being merry at the beer-shop, and if
he cannot amuse himself with his dog in the woods at night, since he
must not in the day. Thus we tempt him to worse places than a cheap
theatre would be. Thus we preach to him about loving and cherishing
God’s works, while we shut out some of them from his sight, and wrest
others from his grasp; and, by making happiness and heaven an
abstraction which we deny him the intellect to comprehend, we impel him
to make trial of misery and hell, and by our acts do our best to speed
him on his way, while our weak words of warning are dispersed by the
whirlwind of temptation which we ourselves have raised. If the
administration of penal justice be a grievous burden upon the people, it
must be lightened by a practical respect to that higher justice which
commands that the interests of all, the noble and the mean, the educated
and the ignorant, be of equal importance in the regards of the
administration; so that government shall as earnestly protest against
the slaughter of the poor man’s dog for the sake of the rich man’s
sport, as the prophet of God against the sacrifice of the poor man’s
ewe-lamb for the rich man’s feast. If bible-read prelates preached from
their hearts upon this text, we should never have another little boy
supposing that he was to be a clergyman, because he went out shooting
with his father. Would that such could be persuaded to leave their
partridges and pheasants, and go east and west, to bring down and send
home the winged creatures of other climes, wherewith to delight the eyes
of the ignorant, and to enlarge his knowledge of God’s works! Meantime,
the well-dressed only can enter the Zoological Gardens; and the footman
(who cannot be otherwise than well-dressed) must pull off his cockade
before he may look at that which may open to him some of the glory of
the 104th Psalm. We are lavish of God’s word to the people, but grudging
of his works. We offer them the dead letter, withholding the spirit
which gives life. Yet something is done in the way of genuine homage.
See here!—
“_Yesterday being the occasion of the annual assemblage of schools in
St. Paul’s * * under the dome * * children sang a hymn * * crowded to
excess * * presence of her Majesty, &c. &c._”
And here follows an account of certain university prize-givings. We are
not without public education,—badged,—the one to denote charity, the
other endowments.
If education were what it ought to be,—the breath of the life of the
community,—there would be an end of this childish and degrading badging.
At present, this prodigious display of white tippets and coloured
cockades under the dome of St. Paul’s tells only that, because the whole
of society is not educated at all, a small portion is educated wrong.
There is less to be proud than ashamed of in such an exhibition; and
though the stranger from a comparatively barbarous country may feel his
heart swell as that mighty infant voice chaunts its hymn of praise, the
thoughts of the meditative patriot will wander from these few elect to
the multitudes that are left in the outer darkness. Till the state can
show how every parent may afford his children a good education, the
state is bound to provide the means for it; and to enforce the use of
those means by making a certain degree of intellectual competency a
condition of the enjoyment of the benefits of society. Till the state
can appoint to every member a sufficiency of leisure from the single
manual act which, under an extensive division of labour, constitutes the
business of many, it is bound to provide the only effectual antidote to
the contracting and benumbing influences of such servile toil.
Till knowledge ceases to be at least as necessary to the happiness of
the state as military skill was to the defence of the Greek Republics,
the state is bound to require of every individual a certain amount of
intellectual ability, as Greece required of her citizens a specified
degree of military skill. Till all these extraordinary things happen, no
pleas of poverty, no mournful reference to the debt, no just murmurs
against the pension list, can absolve us from the obligation of framing
and setting in motion a system of instruction which shall include every
child that shall not be better educated elsewhere. Not that this would
be any very tremendous expense. There is an enormous waste of
educational resources already, from the absence of system and co-
operation. Lords and ladies, squires and dames, farmers’ wives,
merchants’ daughters, and clergymen’s sisters, have their schools,
benevolently set on foot, and indefatigably kept up, in defiance of the
evils of insulation and diversity of plan. Let all these be put under
the workings of a well-planned system, and there will be a prodigious
saving of effort and of cost. The private benevolence now operating in
this direction would go very far towards the fulfilment of a national
scheme. What a saving in teachers, in buildings, in apparatus and
materials, and, finally, in badges! There will be no uniform of white
caps and tippets when there is no particular glory to be got by this
species of charity; when none can be found who must put up with the
humiliation for the sake of the overbalancing good. When the whole
people is so well off that none come to receive alms at the sound of the
trumpet, the trumpet will cease to sound. The day may even arrive when
blue gowns and yellow stockings shall excite pity in the beholders no
more, and no widowed parent be compelled to struggle with her maternal
shame at subjecting her comely lad to the mortifications which the young
spirit has not learned to brave. This last grievance, however, lies not
at the nation’s door. It is chargeable on the short-sightedness of an
individual, which may serve as a warning to us whenever we set to work
on our system of national education. It may teach us, by exhibiting the
folly of certain methods of endowment, to examine others; to avoid the
absurdity of bestowing vast sums in teaching plain things in a perplexed
manner, or supposed sciences which have long ceased to be regarded as
such, or other accomplishments which the circumstances of the times do
not render either necessary or convenient. It may lead our attention
from the endowed school to the endowed university, and show us that what
we want, from our gentlemen as well as our poor, is an awakening of the
intellect to objects of immediate and general concern, and not a
compulsion to mental toil which shall leave a man, after years of
exemplary application, ignorant of whatever may make him most useful in
society, and may be best employed and improved amidst the intercourses
of the world. Let there remain a tribe of book-worms still; and Heaven
forbid that the classics should fall into contempt! But let scholastic
honours be bestowed according to the sympathies of the many; the many
being meantime so cultivated as that they may arrive at a sympathy with
intellectual toil. With the progress of science, the diffusion of
science becomes necessary. The greater the power of the people to injure
or rebel, the more necessary it is to teach them to be above injuring
and rebelling. The ancient tyrant who hung up his laws written in so
small a character that his people could not read them, and then punished
offenders under pretence that his laws were exhibited, was no more
unjust than we are while we transport and hang our neighbours for deeds
of folly and malice, while we still withhold from them the spirit of
power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Bring public education to the
test, and it will be found that badgery is _pomp_, while universal
instruction is essential to the _support_ of the state.
A pretty new church that! But I should scarcely have supposed it wanted
while there is a new Methodist meeting-house on one side the way, and
the large old Independent chapel on the other. The little church that
the lady is sketching before it comes down, might have served a while
longer, I fancy, if the necessity had been estimated by the number of
church-goers, and not of souls, in the parish. Whatever may be thought
of the obligation to provide a national scheme of worship after the
manner in which a national scheme of education is certainly a
duty,—however the essential circumstance of distinction is overlooked,
that every member of the state has, without its assistance,
opportunities of worship, while such is not the case with
instruction,—whatever may be thought of the general question of an
ecclesiastical establishment,—it is not pretended by any that its
purposes are answered by the application of its funds to the
augmentation of private fortunes instead of the religious instruction of
the people. Time was when he who presented to a _benefice_ was supposed
to confer a _benefit_ on the people connected with it. Now we have the
public barter of such presentations for gold; and whether most regard be
always paid to the qualifications of the candidate or to the gold he
brings, let the face of the country declare. Meeting-houses springing up
in every village, intelligent artizans going off to one class or another
of Dissenters, while the stolid race of agricultural labourers lounge to
church,—what does this tell but that the religious wants of the people
are better met by the privately-paid than the publicly-paid church? The
people are not religiously _instructed_ by the clergy, as a body. Look
into our agricultural districts, and see what the mere opening of
churches does for the population,—for the dolts who snore round the fire
in the farm-kitchen during the long winter evenings, and the poor
wretches that creep, match in hand, between the doomed stacks, or that
walk firmly to the gibbet under the delusion that their life-long
disease of grovelling vice is cured and sent to oblivion by a few
priestly prayers and three days of spiritual excitement! Look into our
thronged towns, and search in its cellars and garrets, its alleys and
its wider streets, how many dwellers there see the face of their
clergyman, and have learned from his lips the reason of the hope that is
in them,—if such hope there indeed be! They hear that he who holds the
benefice, _i.e._ is appointed their benefactor, is living in London, or
travelling abroad, on the funds which are derived from the people, and
that a curate, found by accident or advertisement, is coming to do the
duty. He may be a religious instructor, in the real sense of the term,
or he may not. If he be, no thanks to his superior, no thanks to the
state, no thanks to the university that bred him! For aught they know or
trouble themselves about, he may be more ignorant than many a mechanic
in his flock, and more indolent than the finest lady who carries her
salts to her cushioned pew. He might have the same virtues that he has
now if he were a dissenting minister; and nobody disputes that nowhere
does virtue more eminently fail of its earthly recompense than in the
church. Nowhere do luxury and indolence more shamelessly absorb the
gains of hardship and of toil. The sum of the whole matter is, that in
the present state of the church, the people pay largely for religious
instruction, which it is a chance whether they obtain. If the same
payment were made by the people direct,—without the intervention of the
state,—they would be sure to demand and receive an equivalent for their
sacrifices. If the people be supposed incapable of thus providing for
their own spiritual wants, it behoves the state to see that those wants
are actually provided for, so that more than half the nation may not be
compelled, through failure of duty in the establishment, to support a
double ministry. No power in earth or heaven can absolve the state from
the obligation, either to leave to its members the management of their
own funds for religious worship and instruction, or to furnish to every
individual the means of learning the Gospel and worshipping his Maker.
The first is a plan which has been elsewhere found to answer full as
well as any we have yet tried. The last can never be attained by merely
opening a sufficiency of churches, and leaving to men’s cupidity the
chance whether the pulpit shall be occupied by an ape or an apostle.
Have the people got a notion already of such an alternative?
"TITHES.—PARISH OF C.—_On Monday, the Rev. J. B. H. commenced
distraining for tithes due, &c. &c. On that day there were impounded
above forty cows. The parishioners offered security for the cattle,
which was refused, and they have resolved to let the law take its
course. In the mean time, a large military and police force is stationed
in the vicinity of the pound. Sentinels are regularly posted and
relieved, and the place presents more the appearance of a warlike
district than a country village._"
Ah! this Rev. J. B. H. takes for his text, perhaps, “I came not to send
peace on earth, but a sword.” The people, it seems, think his claim,
1476_l._, on a valued property of 9000_l._ a year, excessive. But his
advocate declares that no man, acquainted with first principles, can
deny that the Rev. J. B. H. has a legal right to demand and take his
tithes. Be it so! But first principles tell just as plainly that it is
high time the law was altered:—first principles of humanity to the
clergy themselves, to judge by what comes next.
"_The subscription for the relief of the families of clergymen in
Ireland proceeds but slowly, though the necessity for it increases with
every passing day. Ladies who have been educated with a view to filling
a highly-respectable station in society may now be seen engaged in the
most laborious domestic offices; while their children are thankful to
accept a meal of potatoes from some of the lowest of their father’s
flock._“
”_The widow of an Irish clergyman, middle-aged, is eager to obtain a
situation to superintend the management of the nursery in the family of
a widower, or as useful companion to a lady, or as housekeeper in a
nobleman’s mansion, or as matron in an extensive charitable institution.
She would be willing to make herself useful in any situation not menial,
her circumstances being of an urgent nature.—References to a lady of
rank._“
”_A master of arts, in full orders, is desirous of a curacy. He feels
himself equal to a laborious charge; and a speedy settlement is of more
importance than the amount of salary, especially if there be an opening
for tuition._"
Alas! what a disclosure of misery is here! among a body which the United
Kingdom is taxed to maintain. Poor as the Dissenting clergy may be, as a
body, we hear of no such conflicts in their lot. The poor spirit-broken
clergyman bearing, undeserved by him, the opprobrium belonging to his
church, seeing his gentle wife washing his floor, or striving to patch
up once more the girl’s frock and the boy’s coat; while they, poor
children, peep in at the door of the labourer’s smoky cabin, and rush in
at the first invitation to take a sup of milk or a potatoe! Scraps of
the classics, descriptive of poverty, _will_ run in his head, instead of
gospel consolations of poverty; for the good reason that he was taught
that his classics, and not his choice of poverty, were his title to
preach the gospel. He could find in his heart to inquire further of any
heretical sect, which takes for its rule to employ every one according
to his capacity, and reward him according to his works. However
difficult it might be to fix upon any authority which all men would
agree to be a fitting judge of their capacities and their works, none
would affirm that an educated clergyman is employed according to his
capacities in wandering about helpless amidst the contempt or
indifference of his flock, or that his works are properly rewarded by
the starvation of his family. Then there is the widow of a brother in
the same fruitless ministry! “_Any situation not menial!_” “_Her
circumstances of an urgent nature!_” One poor relation, perhaps, taking
charge of one child, and another of a second; and the third, perhaps,
sent to wear the badge of this lady of rank at a charity-school, that
the widow may be made childless—may advertise herself as “without
incumbrance,” to undertake any situation not menial! Then comes the
curate, eager to undertake more than man can do for as little as man can
live for;—to use his intellectual tools, framed with care, and polished
with long toil, and needing, in their application, all the power of a
philosopher with all the zeal of a saint,—for less than is given to the
artizan who spends his life in the performance of one manual act, or the
clerk, whose whole soul lies in one process of computation! This poor
curate, heart-sick through long waiting, may find employment according
to his capacities, and above them; but, if he be fit for his work, he
will not be rewarded according to it, till those for whom he and his
brethren toil have, directly or indirectly, the distribution of the
recompense. Bring the church, in its turn, to the test. It is certain
that it is made up of pomp and penury; and no power on earth can prove
that it at present yields any support to the state.
Since the people have no benefit from a state education, and but a
questionable benefit from a state church, how much is spent on their
behalf? Here are tables which look as if they would tell something,
though it requires more wit than mortal man has to make out accurately
how the public accounts really stand. Among all the accommodations
provided for the transaction of public business, one would think a pay-
office might be fixed upon where all public claims should be discharged,
in certain allotted departments; and, among all the servants of
government, working men or sinecurists, one would think some might be
employed in preparing such a document as has never yet been seen among
us—an account of the actual annual expenditure of the public money. But
one may make some approach to the truth in the gross:—
“_The expenditure for the last year may be calculated, in round numbers,
at upwards of fifty millions._”
Upon my word, we are a gay nation! If we acted upon the belief held by
some very wise persons, that the business of government might be
conducted at a charge of one per cent. on the aggregate of individual
revenue, this sum total would show us to be rich enough to buy Europe,
and perhaps America to boot. This would give us a national wealth which
it would be beyond Crœsus himself to form a notion of. But we are far
enough from having ourselves governed so cheaply. Let us see how these
fifty millions go:—
“_To the Public Creditor_ £28,000,000
_Civil and Pension Lists_ 1,000,000
_Superannuated and Reduced Allowances of Civil £1,000,000
Departments_
_Do. of Military Ditto_ 4,300,000
_Miscellaneous Charges_ 200,000.”
Here are thirty-four millions and a half devoted to “non-
effective” expenditure. This is a pretty triumph of _Pomp_ versus
_Support_.—Yes,—pomp: for few will now dare to affirm that our
prodigious wars were necessary to the national defence. They were wars
of pomp which undermined our supports: and, as for the glory thus
gained, our descendants will be ashamed of it long before they have done
paying for it.—As for the other items of non-effective expenditure,—the
smaller they appear by the side of the enormous debt charge, the more
necessity there is for their reduction; since the disproportion
proves,—not their smallness, but its bigness. Though they cannot be
abolished,—though their Majesties must have a household,—though the
other branches of the royal family must be supported,—though retired
soldiers and sailors must be taken care of on their quitting a service
from which it is not easy to turn to any other,—no man will now affirm
that reduction is forever impossible; though the like affirmation was
made before the present government proved its falsehood. That their
Majesties must have a household on a liberal scale is true; but that
there are no sinecures in the royal households remains to be proved. And
if such sinecures there must be, it also remains to be proved that they
would not be equally well filled if they were merely honorary offices.
That the members of the royal family, precluded as they are by their
position from being independent, must submit to be maintained by a
pitying people, is also true. It is a lot so full of mortification, that
a Christian nation will soften the necessity to them to the utmost;
cheerfully paying as much as will support them in decent splendour, but
not so much more as will expose them to the taunts of their supporters.
This regard to their feelings is their due, till their day of
emancipation arrives,—till the customs of society shall allow them the
natural rights of men and women,—the power of social exertion, and the
enjoyment of social independence. Their case, however, is peculiar in
its hardships. No other class in society is precluded from either
enjoying ancestral property or accumulating property for themselves; and
it is too much to expect the nation to approve or to pay for the
infliction of a similar humiliation on any who have not, in their own
persons or in those of their very nearest connexions, served the people
for an otherwise insufficient reward. Let the soldier and sailor who
have sacrificed health or member in the public defence be provided for
by a grateful people; but there is no reason why the descendants of
civil officers, or diplomatists retired from already overpaid services,
should receive among them far more than is afforded to naval and
military pensions together. As for the proportion of these naval and
military pensions to the expenditure for effective defence, it is to be
hoped that a long abstinence from war will rectify,—if they must not be
otherwise rectified,—such enormous abuses as that of the number of
retired soldiers far exceeding that of the employed, and of the expenses
of the non-effective service being considerably greater than the
maintenance of the actual army. Monstrous absurdities! that the
factitiously helpless class should cost the nation more than those who
advance some plea,—more or less substantial,—of civil services, rendered
by themselves or their connexions! that these last should cost the
nation more than the whole body of its maimed, and wounded, and worn-out
defenders! and that these again should cost the nation more than its
actual defenders! What wonder that they from whose toils all these
expenses must be paid talk of a national militia,—of arming themselves,
and dispensing with a standing army? It is no wonder: but when we let
them be as wise as they desire to be, they will perceive that their best
weapons at present are the tongues of their representatives. It has not
yet been tried whether these tongues may not utter a spell powerful
enough to loosen this enormous Dead-Weight from the neck of the nation.
But how goes the 15,000,000_l._ for actual service?
“_Of the 15,000,000l. required for active service, three and a half are
expended on the collection of the revenue. Eight and a quarter on
defence. Law and justice swallow up three-quarters of a million. Another
million is required for civil government, and the expenses of
legislation. Diplomacy and the colonial civil service are discharged by
half a million. About half a million is spent on public works. The
remaining odd half million out of the fifteen, is expended on the
management of the debt, and for miscellaneous services,” &c._
So we, a most Christian nation, with abundance of Christian prelates,
and a church which is to watch over the state with apostolic care,—we,
strenuous professors of a religion of peace and enlightenment,—spend
eight millions and a quarter on Defence, and——how much on popular
Education? I suppose the latter forms some little item in one of the
smaller accounts, for I can nowhere see it. Eight millions and a quarter
on Defence, and three quarters on Law and Justice! Eight and a quarter
on Defence, and one on Government and Legislation! Eight millions and a
quarter on Defence, and half a million on Public Works! O,
monstrous!—too monstrous a sin to be charged on any ruler, or body of
rulers, or succession of bodies of rulers! The broad shoulders of the
whole civilized world must bear this tremendous reproach:—the world
which has had Christianity in it these eighteen hundred years, and whose
most Christian empire yet lays out more than half its serviceable
expenditure in providing the means of bloodshed, or of repelling
bloodshed! The proportion would be enormous, even if all the other items
were of righteous signification,—if the proper proportion of the three
and a half millions for Collection went to Education; if Law were
simple, and Justice cheap; if the real servants of Government were
liberally paid, and all idle hangers-on shaken off; if there were no
vicious diplomatic and colonial patronage; and no jobbing in the matter
of Public Works. If all else were as it should be, this item might well
make us doubt what age of the world we are living in, and for what
purpose it is that Providence is pleased to humble us by leaving such a
painful thorn of barbarism in the side of our majestic civilization.
Long must it be before it can grow out. Meantime, let us not boast as if
the whole body were sound; or as if we were not performing as humbling
and factitious a duty in paying our defence-taxes as the bondman of old
in following the banner of the cross to the eastern slaughter-field. The
one was the bondman’s duty then; and the other is the citizen’s duty
now; but the one duty is destined to become as obsolete as the
other.—What glory in that day, to reverse the order of expenditure!
Education, Public Works, Government and Legislation, Law and Justice,
Diplomacy, Defence, Dignity of the Sovereign. When this time shall come,
no one can conjecture; but that we shall not always have to pay eight
millions a year for our defence is certain; if the voice of a wise
man,—(which is always the voice of an awakening multitude,)—say true.
“Human intelligence will not stand still: the same impulse that has
hitherto borne it onwards, will continue to advance it yet further. The
very circumstance of the vast increase of expense attending national
warfare has made it impossible for governments henceforth to engage in
it, without the public assent, expressed or implied; and that assent
will be obtained with the more difficulty, in proportion as the public
shall become more generally acquainted with their real interest. The
national military establishment will be reduced to what is barely
sufficient to repel external attack; for which purpose, little more is
necessary than a small body of such kinds of troops as cannot be had
without long training and exercise; as of cavalry and artillery. For the
rest, nations will rely on their militia, and on the excellence of their
internal polity; for it is next to impossible to conquer a people,
unanimous in their attachment to their national institutions.” Nor will
any desire to conquer them while our example of the results of conquest
is before the eyes of nations. Then the newspapers will not have to give
up space to notices of military reviews; and gentry whose names have no
chance of otherwise appearing in print will not have the trouble of
looking for themselves in the list of army promotions. The pomp of
defence will be done away, while the support will remain in the hearts
and hands of the people.
What a blessed thing it is that as soon as the people do not choose to
pay for pomp, pomp will be done away! What a blessed thing that they
cannot be put out of the question, as Henry VIII.’s people were, by
sending their representatives to the wars as often as they disliked
paying for the King’s gold and silver beards, or the Lady Mary’s fool’s
cap and bells! What a blessing that they can be no longer feared and yet
defied, as when Charles II. did without a parliament because he was
afraid to tell them of the bribes he had taken, and the loans he had
asked, and the cheats he had committed, and the mad extravagance of his
tastes and habits! Here, I see, we are content to pay for
“_Robes, collars, badges, &c., for Knights of the several Orders._
”_Repairing the King’s crown, maces, badges, &c., and gold and silver
sticks._
“_Plate to the Secretary of State._
”_Plate and various equipage money to the Lord Lieutenant and Lord
Chancellor of Ireland._"
This is the people’s own doing. No grown man can be supposed to care for
crowns and gold sticks, and robes and collars, in themselves. It is the
people who choose to preserve them as antiquarian curiosities. So be it,
as long as their taste for antiquities takes this turn, and they can
find grown men good-natured enough to dress up to make a show for their
gratification. But, in another reign or two, it will be necessary to
have dolls made to save busy and grave legislators the toil and
absurdity of figuring in such an exhibition; or perhaps cheap theatres
will by that time be allowed, where those who now act pantomimes, will
not be above exhibiting these other mummeries on Christmas nights.
Meantime, if the people choose to have their functionaries surrounded
with pomp and parade, they must pay the purchase money with thanks.
Whenever they shall become disposed to dispense with guards, trappings,
and pageantry, to respect simplicity, and obey the laws for the sake of
something more venerable than maces and wigs, they have only to say so,
and doubtless the King will feel much relieved, and his ministers very
thankful. The laws will work quite as well for the judges looking like
other people; in the same manner as it is found that physicians’
prescriptions are worth full as much as formerly, though the learned
gentlemen now wear their own hair. We tried this method of simplicity in
our own North American Colonies, less than a century ago. Their total
expenditure was under 65,000_l._ per annum. We shall not have held those
colonies for nothing if we learn from our own doings there how cheap a
thing government may be made, when removed from under the eyes and the
hands of a born aristocracy.
What a rich, stirring, happy-looking country this is before my eyes,
where the people hold up their heads and smile,—very differently, I
fancy, from what they did when the proud Cardinal made a progress
through it, or when whispers of the sale of Dunkirk circulated in
advance or in the rear of the sovereign who bartered away his people’s
honour! How times are changed, when, instead of complaining that the
King and his Ministers sacrifice the nation to their own pomps and
vanities, the people only murmur at an insufficiency of courage and
despatch in relieving them of the burdens imposed by the mal-
administration of a former age! What a change, from being king-ridden,
courtier-ridden, priest-ridden, minister-ridden, to being,—not king-
ridden, less courtier-ridden, priest-ridden only while it is our
pleasure to be so, and ruled by a ministry, every tittle of whose power
hangs upon the breath of the people! One may bear even the debt, for a
short space, with patience, while blessed with the sober certainty that
the true instrument of rectification,—the responsibility of rulers to
the ruled, is at length actually in our hands. One might almost wish
long life to the sinecure pensioners, and be courteous about the three
millions and a half consumed in tax collecting, if one rested in a
comparison of the present with the past. But there is enough before
one’s eyes to remind one how much remains to be done before the nation
shall receive full justice at the hands of its guardians. By small
savings in many quarters, or by one of the several decided retrenchments
which are yet possible and imperative, some entire tax, with its cost of
collection, might ere this have been spared, and many an individual and
many a family who wanted but this one additional weight to crush them,
might now have been standing erect in their independence. What a list of
advertisements is here! Petitions for relief,—how piteous! Offers of
lodging, of service, literary, commercial, and personal, how eager! What
tribes of little governesses, professing to teach more than their young
powers can possibly have achieved! What trains of servants, vehemently
upholding their own honesty and accomplishments,—the married boasting of
having got rid of their children to recommend themselves to their
employers,—ay, even the mother advertising for sale the nourishment
which God created for her first-born! There is no saying how much of all
this is attributable to the weight of public burdens, or to the mode of
their pressure: but it is enough that this craving for support co-exists
with unnecessary public burdens. It is enough, were the craving
aggravated a thousand-fold, and the needless burden extenuated to the
smallest that could be estimated,—it is enough to prove that no
worthless pensioner,—worthless to the nation at large,—should fill his
snuff-box at the public charge, while a single tax-payer is distressed.
For my part, I have no doubt that many of the cases in this long list of
urgent appeals owe their sorrow to this cause. I have no doubt that many
a young girl’s first grief is the seeing a deeper and a deeper gloom on
her father’s brow, as he fails more and more to bear up against his
share of the public burden, and finds that he must at length bring
himself to the point, and surrender the child he has tenderly nurtured,
and dismiss her to seek a laborious and precarious subsistence for
herself. I have no doubt that many of these boasting servants would have
reserved their own merits to bless their own circle, but for the
difficulty that parents, husbands and brothers find in living on taxed
articles. While these things co-exist with the needless expenditure of a
single farthing, I, for one, shall feel that, however thankful we may
and ought to be for our prodigious advance in freedom and moral dignity,
we have still to pray, day and night, that the cry of the poor and the
mirth of the parasite do not rise up together against us. Too fearful a
retribution must await us, if we suffer any more honest hearts to be
crushed under the chariot wheels of any ‘gay, licentious proud’—who must
have walked barefoot in the mud, if their condition had been determined
by their deserts.
What place _is_ this? I was not aware that these pretty villas, and
evergreen gardens, and trim causeways stretched to so great a distance
on any London road. Bless me! where can we be? I know that old oak. I
must have been dreaming if we have passed through Croydon without my
perceiving it. I shall be early at G.’s after all. No! not I! It is some
two hours later than I thought. Travelling alone is the best pastime,
after all. I must tie up these newspapers. It is a wonder they have not
been claimed for the Blue Lion yet.
My wife would say this is just the light for the Abbey; but she has said
so of every light, from the broadest noon sunshine to the glimmer of the
slenderest crescent at midnight. Long may the Abbey stand, quiet amidst
the bustle of moving life, a monitor speaking eloquently of the past,
and breathing low prophecies of the future! It is a far nobler
depository of records than the Tower: for here are brought into
immediate contrast the two tribes of kings,—the sovereigns by physical
force, and the sovereigns by moral force,—the royal Henries, and the
thrice royal Shakspeare and Locke and Wilberforce;—and there remains
also space for some one who perchance may unite the attributes of
all;—who, by doing the highest work of a ruler in making the people
happy, may discharge the commission of a seraph in leading them on to be
wise. Let not the towers totter, nor the walls crumble, till such an one
is there sung to his rest by the requiem of a virtuous people! But the
noblest place of records can never be within four walls, shut in from
the stars. There is one, as ancient, may be, as the Abbey; and perhaps
destined to witness its aisles laid open to the sunrise, and its
monuments to the shifting moonlight,—the old oak that we passed just
now. My wife pities it, standing exposed in its old age to the glare and
the dust, when it was perhaps, in its youth, the centre of a cool, green
thicket. But it is worth living through all things to witness what that
oak has seen. If no prophetic eye were given to men, I think I would
accept the _elixir vitæ_ for a chance of beholding the like. As soon as
that oak had a shade to offer, who came to court it? The pilgrim on his
painful way to the southern shrine,—turning aside to pray that the
helpless might not be ravaged by the spoiler in his absence? The nun who
mourned within her cell, and trembled in God’s sunshine, and passed her
blighted life in this sad alternation? The child who slept on the
turf,—safely, with the adder in the neighbouring grass, and the robber
looking down from the tree in envy of its innocence; innocence which,
after all, was poisoned by a worse fang than the adder’s, and despoiled
by the hand of a ruder bandit,—tyranny?—Who came in a later age?—The
soldier reeking from the battle, and in search of some nook in which to
pray for his little ones and die? The maiden, fleeing from royal lust,
and her father outlawed by royal vengeance? What tales were brought when
the neighbouring stems mouldered away, and left space for the winds to
enter with their tidings from afar? Rumours of heaped battle-fields
across the sea, and of the murmurings of the oppressed in their
comfortless homes, and the indignant remonstrance of captives silenced
in their proclamation of the truth? And then, did weary sailors come up
from the sea, and, while they rested, talk of peace? And merchants of
prosperity? And labourers of better days?—And now that the old oak
yields but a scanty shade,—children come to pick up its acorns, and to
make a ladder of its mouldering sides; and even these infant tongues can
tell of what the people feel, and what the people intend, and what the
King desires for the people, and what the ministers propose for the
people. The old oak has lived to see the people’s day.—O! may the breath
of heaven stir it lightly;—may the spring rains fall softly as the
wintry snow;—may the thunderbolt spare it, and the flash not dare to
crisp its lightest leaf, that it may endure to witness something of that
which is yet to come!—of the wisdom which shall issue sternly from the
abyss of poverty, smoothing its rugged brow as it mounts to a milder and
brighter region; and of pleasure descending from her painted cloud,
sobering her mien as she visits rank below rank, till she takes up her
abode with the lowliest in the form of content. If every stone of yonder
Abbey can be made to murmur like the sea-shell to the awakened ear,
disclosing echoes of the requiems of ages, yet more may this oak whisper
from every leaf its records of individual sorrows, of mutual hopes, and
now of common rejoicing;—a rejoicing which yet has more in it of hope
than of fulfilment. The day of the people is come. The old oak survives
to complete its annals,—the Abbey has place for a record—whether the
people are wise to use their day for the promotion of the great objects
of national association,—public order and social improvement.
It was too late to dine at G.’s; so Reid turned into the Abbey, and
staid there till his own footfall was the only sound that entertained
the bodily ear.
_Summary of Principles illustrated in this volume._
It is necessary to the security and advancement of a community that
there should be an expenditure of a portion of its wealth for purposes
of defence, of public order, and of social improvement.
As public expenditure, though necessary, is unproductive, it must be
limited. And, as the means of such expenditure are furnished by the
people for defined objects, its limit is easily ascertained.
That expenditure alone which is necessary to defence, public order, and
social improvement, is justifiable.
Such a direction of the public expenditure can be secured only by the
public functionaries who expend being made fully responsible to the
party in whose behalf they expend.
For want of this responsibility, the public expenditure of an early
age,—determined to pageantry, war, and favouritism,—was excessive, and
perpetrated by the few in defiance of the many.
For want of a due degree of this responsibility, the public expenditure
of an after age,—determined to luxury, war, and patronage,—was
excessive, and perpetrated by the few in fear of the many, by deceiving
and defrauding them.
For want of a due degree of this responsibility, the public expenditure
of the present age,—determined chiefly to the sustaining of burdens
imposed by a preceding age,—perpetuates many abuses: and, though much
ameliorated by the less unequal distribution of power, the public
expenditure is yet as far from being regulated to the greatest advantage
of the many, as the many are from exacting due responsibility and
service from the few.
When this service and responsibility shall be duly exacted, there will
be—
Necessary offices only, whose duties will be clearly defined, fully
accounted for, and liberally rewarded:
Little patronage, and that little at the disposal of the people:
No pomp,—at the expense of those who can barely obtain support: but
Liberal provisions for the advancement of national industry and
intelligence.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
Hyphens appearing on a line or page break have beem removed if the
preponderance of other occurrences are unhyphenated. Those words
occurring midline are retained regardless of other occurrences. The
following variants were retained: schoolhouse / school-house, grandchild
/ grand-child, eyebrows / eye-brows, evildoers / evil-doers, bedside /
bed-side, headache / head-ache.
On some occasions, a word spans a line break, but the hyphen itself has
gone missing. These fragments are joined appropriately without further
notice here.
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and
are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.
BRIERY CREEK.
26.21 [“]There goes Dods! Removed.
73.20 if it did not come too late.[”] Added.
94.5 Dr. Sneyd was very thankf[n/u]l> for his aid. Inverted.
97.3 she had grown p[ro/or]megranates Transposed.
101.10 a damsel dressed in tawd[r]y finery Inserted.
109.10 which must give way.[”] Removed.
152.3 to be so remembered.[”] Added.
THE THREE AGES.
50.27 for his Maje[s]ty’s service was more Inserted.
55.2 in order to build[ing] a new one Removed.
97.10 the animal should be immediately sacrifi[c]ed Inserted.
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