iifiil ^ Ctyi 0.(^-/^6^ a...s^,.j^ i^^. ^ 7^ ^y LEISUEE HOUES IN TOWN *jig *jif ^ ^ yTK TTK yrn 3f\ SJ£ S^ SJ£ Sfti yrK TTK Uniform with this Volume. THE RECREATIONS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. FIRST AND SECOND SERIES. Two VOLUMES 12mo. $1.25 each. TICKNOR AND FIELDS. ^«Ji> if f Mff/lc^cl. LEISURE HOURS IN TOWN BY THE AUTHOR OF THE RECREATIONS OF A COUNTRY PARSON J.R K - y^y^ BOSTON TICKNOR AND FIELDS 1862 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by TiCKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's OfiSce of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. :ii r l^ 6 KIVER3IDE, OAMBRIDOE: STEREOTtPED AND PRINTED BY U. 0. HOUGHTON. CONTENTS. -♦- CHAPTER I. PAGB CONCERNING THE PARSON'S LEISURE HOURS IN TOWN 7 CHAPTER II. CONCERNING VEAL ; A DISCOURSE OF IMMATURITY . 16 CHAPTER III. CONCERNING THINGS SLOWLY LEARNT 57 CHAPTER IV. GONE 93 CHAPTER V. CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE 103 CHAPTER VI. CONCERNING PEOPLE WHO CARRIED WEIGHT IN LIFE : WITH SOME THOUGHTS ON THOSE WHO NEVER HAD A CHANCE 138 CHAPTER VII. COLLEGE LIFE AT GLASGOW 172 CHAPTER VIII. CONCERNING THE WORLD'S OPINION, WITH SOME THOUGHTS ON COWED PEOPLE 210 vi CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. PAQB CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD .... 244 CHAPTER X. THE ORGAN' QUESTION IN SCOTLAND 274 CHAPTER XI. THORNDALE ; OR, THE CONFLICT OF OPINIONS . . . 295 CHAPTER XH. CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER .... 334 CHAPTER XIII. OULITA THE SERF 371 CHAPTER XIV. SCOTCH PECULIARITIES 405 CONCLUSION 435 CHAPTER L CONCERNING THE PARSON'S LEISURE HOURS IN TOWN. HIS is Friday evening. It has been a gloomy November day. And now, about nine o'clock, I hear the wind moaning as if there were to be a stormy night. But the fire is blazing, and the curtains are drawn : and here, in this little room, once the study of a wit and a poet, things are almost as quiet as if it were miles away from the great city in which it is. You might hear an occasional shout, from a street which is not far distant : and I am aware of a sound which appears to originate in the beating of carpets in the lane behind this row of houses. But the door-bell, which rings perpetually in the forenoon, and very frequently in the evening, is not likely to be rung any more to-night by any one whose business is with me: and no humble parishioner, inter- rupting the thread of one's thoughts, is likely to come now upon his little errand to his minister. This is indeed an hour of leisure : and oh, what a rest and relief such an hour is, to the man who has it only now and then ! Both my sermons for Sunday are ready ; and they are in a drawer in this table on which I write. I have seen, I believe, every sick person in the congregation on some day during this week. As for the parish, that is by far 8 CONCERNING THE too large and populous to be personally overtaken by any single clergyman ; but I have the great comfort of being aided by a machinery of district visitation, which does not suffer one poor person in the parish to feel that he is for- gotten in his parish church. I cannot, at this moment, think of any one matter of ministerial duty which de- mands instant attention : though of course I have the vague sense, which I suppose will never be absent, that there are many duties impending ; many things which Monday morning at the latest will bring. Surely, then, if such are ever to come in a large town parish, here is one of ray leisure hours. When a country parson, leaving a little rustic cure, undertakes the charge of such a parish, if he be a man whose heart is in his work, he is quite certain greatly to overwork himself. It is indeed a total change, from the quiet of a country parish, where dwellings are dotted singly here and there, with great fields between them, to the town, where street after street of tall houses is flUed with your parishioners, all entitled to some measure of your care and thought. And with that change, there comes a sudden acceleration of the wheels of life. You begin to live in a hurry. Your mind gets into a feverish state. You live under a constant feeling of pressure. You think, while you are doing anything, that something else is waiting to be done. It need not be said that such a feeling is, with most men, quite fatal to doing one's best : more particularly with the pen. And if you be of an anxious temperament, the time never comes in which you can sit down and rest, feeling that your work is done. You sit down sometimes and rest, through pure fatigue and exhaustion : but all the while you are thinking of something else which demands to be done, and which you PARSON'S LEISURE HOURS IN TOWN. 9 are anxious to do. You will often wish for the precious power possessed by some men, of taking things easily : you may even sometimes sigh for the robust resolution of Lord Chancellor Thurlow. " I divide my work," he said, "into three parts. Part I do: part does itself: and part I leave undone." But many men could not for their lives resolve to do this last. They go with a hearty will at their work, till body and mind break down. There is no work so hard, to a conscientious man, as that which he may make as easy or as hard as he chooses. It is a great blessing to have one's task set ; and to be able to feel, when you have done it, that your work is done, and that you may rest with a clear conscience. But in the Church, that can never be. There is always something more that might be done. What clergyman can say that he has done for the good of his parish all that is possible for man to do ; — that there is no new religious or benevolent agency which by energy yet more unsparing might be set in operation ? It may here be said, that I do not in any degree approve the system of trying to dragoon people, whether poor or rich, into attention to their religious duties and interests, which is attempted by some good people whose zeal exceeds their discretion : and that I have no fancy for making a church, what with perpetual meetings, endless societies, and ever- recurring collections of money for this and that purpose, look like nothing so much as a great cotton-mill, with countless wheels whirring away, and dazing the brain by their ceaseless motion. It is fit to recognize the fact, that the poorest folk are responsible beings ; and that intelligent artisans will not submit to be treated like chil- dren, even by people who wish to make them good chil- 10 CONCERNING THE dren. And you know that a boy, who has learnt to swim by the aid of corks and bladders, is very apt to sink when that support is taken away. His power of swimming is not worth much. It seems to me to be even so witli that form of religion, which can be kept alive only by a con- stant series of visits, exhortations, tracts, and week-day church-services. I venture to judge no man : but give me, say I, not the sickly exotic, but the hearty evergreen, that can bear frosts and winds. But the faithful clergy- man, even trying to hold this principle in view, will find, in a large parish in a great city, work that would occupy him profitably, were each of his days as long as a week, and had he the strength of half a score of men. I firmly believe, that almost all the clergymen I know do day by day their very utmost to overtake that overwhelm- ing duty. And now and then, there comes a special sense of the clergyman's weighty responsibility, and of the momentous consequences that may depend upon his exertions : and under that stimulus, resolving " to spend and be spent" in the work to which he has given him- self, you will find him laboring in a fashion that endan- gers health and life. Now, it is not right to do that. Even setting apart the consideration of the duty he owes his children, his duty to the Church is to work in that fashion in which he may hope to labor longest and most efiiciently. And that fashion is not the breathless and feverish one. Yet nothing but constant watchfulness and firmness can pre- vent the town clergyman's life from growing one of chronic hurry and weariness. It is not merely his preaching, and his preparation for preaching: but the other calls of duty are innumerable. Pound after pound is added, till the camel labors along with weary foot : or PARSON'S LEISURE HOURS IN TOWN. 11 even till the camel's back is broken. It is the rule in large towns, so far as I have known them, that the clergy shall be overwrought. Not that they are overdriven by the unreasonable expectations of their pai-ishioners ; though that may sometimes be the case : but that they are spurred on by the exactions of their own conscience. Then, every now and then, you will find one making a stand against this over-pressure : feeling that he is break- ing down ; and determining that he must have some leisure. You will find him beginning to take an hourts daily walk ; or resolutely setting himself to maintain some acquaintance with the literature of the day. You will find him resolving to see a little of his fellow-crea- tui'es, besides what he sees of them in the way of his duty ; and wondering if many men know what it is to feel, for days together, every word they speak an effort, and almost every step they walk. But all this is as when you determine to break yourself of the bad habit of walking too fast. You are walking along at five miles an hour. You pull up, and resolve you shall walk slowly. You set off" at a moderate pace. But in a few minutes you cease to think of the rate at which you are progress- ing: and in a quarter of an hour you find of a sudden that you are going on at your old unreasonable speed again. Going through your duty at this high pressure, you will, in a few months, find what will follow. Your brain gets fevered : your mind is confused : you cannot take a calm and deliberate view of any large subject : and by degrees your heart (I speak literally, not morally) tells you that this will not do. You seem almost to have lost the power of sleeping. And you find, that if you are to live and labor much longer in this world, you must do 12 CONCERNING THE one of two things : either you must go back again to the country, or you must make a definitive arrangement that you shall have some appreciable amount of leisure in town. You may probably find, on looking back, that for a long time you have had none at all : except, in- deed, in that autumnal holiday, which will not suffice to keep up for a whole year's work : and whose good effect you have probably used up within three weeks after its close. Yes, you must have leisure : a little of it every day : a half-holiday at least once a week. And I do not call it satisfactory leisure, when, at the close of a jading day, you sit down, wearied beyond talking, reading, or thinking: and feeling the presence even of your chil- dren too much for your shaken nerves. I call it leisure, when you can sit down in the evening, tired indeed, but not exhausted beyond chasing your little boy or girl about the lobby, and thinking of the soft green turf of quieter days. I call it leisure to sit down in your easy-chair by the fireside, and to feel that you may peacefully think, and dream if you please : that you may look vacantly into the fire : that you may read the new review or magazine by little bits: that you may give your mind total rest And to this end, let us fix it in our remembrance, that all our Master requires of us is to do what we can : and that if after we have done our utmost, there still remains much more we would wish to do, we must train ourselves to look at it without disquiet, even as we train ourselves to be submissive in the presence of the inexplicable mys- teries and the irremediable evils which are inherent in the present system of things. No doubt, it is hard to do this ; but it is the clergyman's duty to do it. You have no more right to commit suicide by systematically over- tasking your constitution, than by swifter and coarser PARSON'S LEISURE HOURS IN TOWN. 13 means. Life is given to you as a trust to make the best of; and probably the worst you can make of it is to cut it short, or to embitter it by physical exhaustion and de- pression. I dare say many clergymen with large parishes have known what it is to delight in a day of dreadful rain and hurricane : I mean a day when chimney-pots and slates are flying about the streets; and when no question can be raised, even by the most exacting moral sense, as to whether it is possible to go out or not. A forenoon of leisure comes so very seldom, that it is very precious and enjoyable when it comes. The leisure hours commonly attainable are in the evening. If you sit at your desk from ten o'clock in the morning till one or two in the afternoon : and if you then go out to your pastoral work till six : you may very fairly lay it down as a general rule, that at six the day's work shall be deemed over. In addition to this, it may be well to make the afternoon of Saturday a time of recreation. You will be much fitter for your Sunday work, which implies a good deal of physical fatigue as well as mental wear. And I begin to doubt if it be good or safe to begin the round of labor again on Monday after breakfast : and to think that pos- sibly as much work would be done, and better done, if the forenoon of that day were given to recruiting one's energies after the Sunday duty. And I am not claiming these seasons of leisure for the clergymen, merely for Aristotle's reason : merely because " the end of work is to enjoy leisure:" merely because leisure is pleasant, and the hard-working parson has earned it fairly. I think not merely' of the pleasure of the pastor, but of the profit of the flock. I do not think it expedient that a Christian congregation should get almost all its relig- 14 CONCERNING THE ious instruction from a fevered and overdriven mind. I have been struck, in listening to the preaching of one or two very able and very laborious friends, by a certain lack of calmness and sobriety of thought : by a some- thing that reminded one of the atmosphere of a hot- house, and that seemed undefinably inconsistent with the realities of daily life. And it seemed to me that all this came of the fact, that they lived, worked, and wrote, in chronic excitement and hurry. I trust that my non-clerical readers will pardon all this professional matter: it is a comfort to talk out one's mind even to friends whom one will never see. I dare say discerning folk will know, that the writer has been de- scribing his own constant temptation ; and that, however needful he may feel these seasons of rest to be, it is only now and then that he can train himself to lake them. And he has found that nothing gives the mind more effectual rest, than change of employment. You have heard, doubtless, of that mill-horse, which all days of the week but Sunday was engaged in walking round and round a certain narrow circle. You may remember what was the Sunday's occupation of that sagacious creature. An unthinking person might have surmised that the horse, which had perpetually to walk on working days, would have chosen on its day of rest to lie still and do nothing. But the horse knew better. It spent Sun- day in walking round and round, in the opposite direc- tion from that in which it walked on week-days. It found rest, in short, not in idleness ; but in variation of employment. I commend that horse. I have tried to do something analogous to what it did. These essays have been to me a pleasant change, from the writing of many sermons. And even in leisure hours, if it be (as PARSON'S LEISURE HOURS IN TOWN. 15 Sydney Smith said) " the nature of the animal to write," the pen will be taken up naturally and habitually. I can say sincerely, that more important duties have never been postponed to the production of these chap- ters : and I please myself with the belief, that the hands into which this volume is likely to fall, will not be those of total strangers. You may perhaps find, my friendly reader, that these essays of an old friend, whom you knew in the days when be was a country parson, have somewhat changed their character, in consistence with his total change of life. But I have reason to cherish a quiet trust, that they have done good to some of my fellow-creatures. I suppose the like happens to all au- thors, who write in sincerity and in kindness of heart : but I cannot forget what numbers of men and women, otherwise unknown, from either side of the Atlantic, have cheered and encouraged the writer, sometimes in weary hours, by thanking him for some little good impression left by these pages upon heart and life. I have not been able to forego the great delight of trying to pro- duce what might afford some pleasure and profit to friends far beyond the boundaries of my parish : nor have I been able to think that it was my duty to do so. CHAPTER 11. CONCERNING VEAL: A DISCOURSE OF IMMATURITY, HE man who, in his progress through life, has listened with attention to the conversa- tion of human beings ; wlio has carefully read the writings of the best English au- thors ; who has made himself well acquainted witli the history and usages of his native land ; and who has meditated much on all he has seen and read ; must have been led to the firm conviction that by Veal, those who speak the English language intend to denote the flesh of calves ; and that by a calf is intended an immature ox or cow. A calf is a creature in a tempo- rary and progressive stage of its being. It will not always be a calf; if it live long enough, it will as- suredly cease to be a calf. And if impatient man, arrest- ing the creature at that stage, should consign it to the hands of him whose business it is to convert the sentient animal into the impassive and unconscious meat, the nu- triment which the creature will afford will be nothing more than immature beef. There may be many qualities of Veal ; the calf which yields it may die at very differ- ent stages in its physical and moral development ; but provided only it die as a calf — provided only that its CONCERNING VEAL. 17 meat can fitly be styled Veal — this will be character- istic of it, that the meat shall be immature meat. It may be very good, very nutritious and palatable ; some people may like it better than beef, and may feed upon it with the liveliest satisfaction ; but when it is fairly and deliberately put to us, it must be admitted even by such as hke Veal the best, that Veal is but an immature pro- duction of nature. I take Veal, therefore, as the em- blem of Immaturity ; of that which is now in a stage out of which it must grow ; of that which, as time goes on, will grow older, will probably grow better, will cer- tainly grow very different. That is what I mean by Veal. And now, my reader and friend, you wmU discern the subject about which I trust we are to have some pleasant and not unprofitable thought together. You will readily believe that my subject is not that material Veal which may be beheld and purchased in the butcher's shops. I am not now^ to treat of its vai'ied qualities, of the suste- nance which it yields, of the price at which it may be procured, or of the laws according to which that price rises and falls. I am not going to take you to the green fields in which the creature which yielded the veal was fed, or to discourse of the blossoming hawthorn hedges from whose midst it was reft away. Neither shall I speak of the rustic life, the toils, cares, and fancies of the farm-house near which it spent its brief lifetime. The Veal of which I intend to speak is Moral Veal, or (to speak with entire accuracy), Veal Intellectual, Moral, and ^sthetical. By Veal I understand the immature productions of the human mind ; immature compositions, immature opinions, feelings, and tastes. I wish to think of the work, the views, the fancies, the emotions, which 2 18 CONCERNING VEAL. are yielded by the human soul in its immature stages ; while the calf (so to speak) is only growing into the ox ; while the clever boy, with his absurd opinions and fever- ish feelings' and fancies, is developing into the mature and sober-minded man. And if I could but rightly set out the thoughts which have at many different times occurred to me on this matter, if one could cateh and fix the vague glimpses and passing intuitions of solid un- changing truth, if the subject on which one has thought long and felt deeply were always that on which one could write best, and could bring out to the sympathy of others what a man himself has felt, what an excellent essay this would be ! But it will not be so ; for as I try to grasp the thoughts I would set out, they melt away and elude me. It is like trying to catch and keep the rainbow hues you have seen the sunshine cast upon the spray of a waterfall, when you try to catch the tone, the thoughts, the feelings, the atmosphere of early youth. There can be no question at all as to the fact, that clever young men and women, when their minds begin to open, when they begin to think for themselves, do pass through a stage of mental development which they by and by quite outgrow ; and entertain opinions and be- liefs, and feel emotions, on which afterwards they look back with no sympathy or approval. This is a fact as certain as that a calf grows into an ox, or that veal, if spared to grow, will become beef. But no analogy be- tween the material and the moral must be pushed too far. There are points of difference between material and moral Veal. A calf knows it is a calf. It may tliink itself bigger and wiser than an ox, but it knows it is not an ox. And if it be a reasonable calf, modest, and CONCERNING VEAL. 19 free from prejudice, it is well aware that the joints it will jield after its demise, will be very different from those of the stately and well-consolidated ox which ruminates in the rich pasture near it. But the human boy often thinks he is a man, and even more than a man. He fancies that his mental stature is as big and as solid as it will ever become. He fancies that his mental productions — the poems and essays he writes, the political and social views he forms, the moods of feeling with which he regards things — are just what they may always be, just what they ought always to be. If spared in this world, and if he be one of those whom years make wiser, the day comes when he looks back with amazement and shame on those early mental pro- ductions. He discerns now how immature, absurd, and extravagant they were ; in brief, how vealy. But at the time, he had not the least idea that they were so. He had entire confidence in himself; not a misgiving as to his own ability and wisdom. You, clever young student of eighteen years old, when you wrote your prize essay, fancied that in thought and style it was very like Macau- lay ; and not Macaulay in that stage of vealy brilliancy in which he wrote his essay on Milton, not Macaulay the fairest and most promising of calves, but Macaulay the stateliest and most beautiful of oxen. Well, read over your essay now at thirty, and tell us what you think of it. And you, clever, warm-hearted, enthusiastic young preacher of twenty-four, wrote your sermon ; it was very ingenious, very brilliant in style, and you never thought, but that it would be felt by mature-minded Christian people as suiting their case, as true to their inmost ex- perience. You could not see why you might not preach as well as a man of forty. And if people in middle age 20 CONCERNING VEAL. had complained that, eloquent as your preaching was, they found it suited them better and profited them more to listen to the plainer instructions of some good man with gray hair, you would not have understood their feel- ing ; and you might perhaps have attributed it to many motives rather than the true one. But now, at five-and- thirty, find out the yellow manuscript, and read it care- fully over ; and 1 will venture to say, that if you were a really clever and eloquent young man, writing in an am- bitious and rhetorical style, and prompted to do so by the spontaneous fervor of your heart and readiness of your imagination, you will feel now little sympathy even with the literary style of that early composition ; you will see extravagance and bombast where once you saw only elo- quence and graphic power. And as for the graver and more important matter of the thought of the discourse, I think you will be aware of a certain undefinable shallow- ness and crudity. Your growing experience has borne you beyond it. Somehow you feel it does not come home to you, and suit you as you would wish it should. It will not do. That old sermon you cannot preach now, till you have entirely recast and rewritten it. But you had no such notion when you wrote the sermon. You were satisfied with it. You thought it even better than the discourses of men as clever as yourself, and ten or fifteen years older. Your case was as though the youthful calf should walk beside the sturdy ox, and think itself rather bigger. Let no clever young reader fancy from what has been said, that I am about to make an onslaught upon clever young men. I remember too distinctly how bitter and indeed ferocious I used to feel, about eleven or twelve years ago, when I have heard men of more than middle CONCERNING VEAL. 21 age and less than middling ability speak with contemptu- ous depreciation of the productions and doings of men considerably their juniors, and vastly their superiors; describing them as boys, and as clever lads, with looks of dark malignity. There are few more disgusting sights, than the envy and jealousy of their juniors, which may be seen in vai'ious malicious, commonplace old men ; as there is hardly a more beautiful and pleasing sight than the old man hailing, and counselling, and encouraging the youthful genius which he knows far surpasses his own. And I, my young friend of two-and-twenty, who relatively to you, may be regarded as old, am going to assume no preposterous airs of superiority. I do not claim to be a bit wiser than you ; all I claim is to be older. I have outgrown your stage ; but I was once such as you, and all my sympathies are with you yet. But it is a difficulty in the way of the essayist, and, indeed, of all who set out opinions which they wish to be received and acted on by their fellow-creatures, that they seem, by the very act of offering advice to others, to claim to be wiser and better than those whom they advise. But in reality it is not so. The opinions of the essayist or of the preacher, if deserv- ing of notice at all, are so because of their inherent truth, and not because he expresses them. Estimate them for youi'self, and give them the weight which you think their due. And be sure of this, that the writer, if earnest and sincere, addressed all he said to himself as much as to any one else. Tliis is the thing which redeems all didactic writing or speaking from the charge of offensive assump- tion and self-assertion. It is not for the preacher, whether of moral or religious truth, to address his fel- lows as outside sinners, worse than himself, and needing to be reminded of that of which he does not need to be re- 22 CONCERNING VEAL. minded. No, the earnest preacher preaches to himself as much as to any in the congregation ; it is from the picture ever before him in his own weak and w^ayward heart, that he learns to reach and describe the hearts of othei-s, if in- deed he do so at all. And it is the same with lesser things. It is curious and it is instructive to remark how heartily men, as they grow towards middle age, despise' themselves as they were a few years since. It is a bitter thing for a man to confess that he is a fool ; but it costs little eifort to declare that he ivas a fool, a good while ago. Indeed, a tacit compliment to his present self is involved in the latter confession ; it suggests the reflec- tion what progress he has made, and how vastly he has improved, since then. When a man informs us that he was a very silly fellow in the year 1851, it is assumed that he is not a very silly fellow in tlie year 1861. It is as when the merchant with ten thousand a year, sitting at his sumptuous table, and sipping his '41 claret, tells you how, when he came as a raw lad from the country, he used often to have to go without his dinner. He knows that the plate, the wine, the massively elegant apartment, the silent servants so alert yet so impassive, will appear to join in chorus with the obvious suggestion, " You see he has not to go without his dinner now ! " Did you ever, when twenty years old, look back at the diary you kept when you were sixteen ; or when twenty-five at the diary you kept when twenty ; or at thirty, at the diary you kept when twenty-five ? Was not your feeling a singular mixture of humiliation and self-complacency ? What extravagant, silly stufl" it seemed that you had thus written five years before ! What Veal ; and oh what a calf he must have been who wrote it ! It is a difficult CONCERNING VEAL. 23 question, to which the answer cannot be elicited, Who is the greatest fool in this world ? But every candid and sensible man of middle age, knows thoroughly well the answer to the question, Who was the greatest fool that he himself ever knew ? And after all, it is your diary especially if you were wont to introduce into it poetical remarks and moral reflections, that will mainly help you to the humiliating conclusion. Other things, some of which I have already named, will point in the same direction. Look at the pi'ize essays you wrote when you were a boy at school ; look even at your earlier prize essays written at college (though of these last I have something to say hereafter) ; look at the letters you wrote home when away at school or even at college, es- pecially if you were a clever boy, trying to write in a graphic and witty fashion ; and if you have reached sense at last (which some, it may be remarked, never do), I think you will blush even through the unblushing front of manhood, and think what a terrific, unutterable, con- ceited, intolerable blockhead you were. It is not till peo- ple attain somewhat mature years that they can rightly understand the wonderful forbearance their parents must have shown in listening patiently to the frightful nonsense they talked and wrote. I have already spoken of ser- mons. If you go early into the Church, say at twenty- three or twenty-four, and write sermons regularly and diligently, you know what landmarks they will be of your mental progress. The first runnings of the stream are turbid, but it clears itself into sense and taste month by month and year by year. You wrote many sermons in your first year or two ; you preached them with entire confidence in them, and they did really keep up the at- tention of the congregation in a remarkable way. You 24 CONCERNING VEAL. accumulate in a box a store of that valuable literature and theology, and when by and by you go to another parish, you have a comfortable feeling that you have a capital stock to go on with. You think that any Mon- day morning when you have the prospect of a very busy week, or when you feel very weary, you may resolve that you shall write no sermon that week, but just go and draw forth one from the box. I have already said what you will probably find, even if you draw forth a discourse which cost much labor. You cannot use it as it stands. Possibly it may be structural and essential Veal ; the whole framework of thought may be imma- ture. Possibly it may be Veal only in style ; and by cutting out a tui'gid sentence hei*e and there, and above all, by cutting out all the passages which you thought particularly eloquent, the discourse may do yet. But even then, you cannot give it with much confidence. Your mind can yield something better than that now. I imagine how a fine old orange-ti-ee, that bears oranges Avith the thinnest possible skin and with no pips, juicy and rich, might feel that it has outgrown the fruit of its first years, when the skin was half an inch thick, the pips innumerable, and the eatable portion small and poor. It is with a feeling such as that that you read over your early sermon. Still, mingling with the sense of shame, there is a certain satisfaction. You have not been stand- ing still ; you have been getting on. And we always like to think that. What is it that makes intellectual Veal ? What are the things about a composition wliich stamp it as such ? Well, it is a certain character in thought and style hard to define, but strongly felt by such as discern its presence CONCERNING VEAL. 25 at all. It is strongly felt by professors reading the com- positions of their students, especially the compositions of the cleverest students. It is strongly felt by educated folk of middle age, in listening to the sermons of young pulpit orators, especially of such as think for themselves, of such as aim at a high standard of excellence, of such as have in them the makings of striking and eloquent preachers. Dull and stupid fellows never deviate into the extravagance and absurdity which I specially under- stand by Veal. They plod along in a humdrum manner : there is no poetry in their soul ; none of those ambitious stirrings which lead the man who has in him the true spark of genius to try for grand things and incur severe and ignominious tumbles. A heavy dray-horse, walking along the road, may possibly advance at a very lagging pace, or may even stand still ; but whatever he may do, he is not likely to jump violently over the hedge, or to gallop off at twenty-five miles an hour. It must be a thorough-bred who will go wrong in that grand fashion. And there are intellectual absurdities and extravagances which hold out hopeful promise of noble doings yet : tlie eagle, which will breast the hurricane yet, may meet various awkward tumbles before he learns the fashion in which to use those iron wings. But the substantial goose, which probably escapes those tumbles in trying to fly, will never do anything very magnificent in the way of flying. The man who in his early days writes in a very inflated and bombastic style, will gradually sober down into good sense and accurate taste, still retaining something of liveliness and eloquence. But expect little of the man who as a boy was always sensible, and never bombastic. He will grow awfully dry. He is sure to fall into the unpardonable sin of tiresomeness. The rule 26 CONCERNING VEAL. has exceptions ; but the earliest productions of a man of real genius are almost always crude, flippant, and affect- edly smart ; or else turgid and extravagant in a high degree. Witness Mr. Disraeli ; witness Sir E. B. Lyt- ton ; witness even Macaulay. The man who as a mere boy writes something very sound and sensible, will prob- ably never become more than a dull, sensible, common- place man. Many people can say, as they bethink themselves of their old college companions, that those who wrote with good sense and good taste at twenty, have mostly settled down into the dullest and baldest of prosers ; while such as dealt in bombastic flourishes and absurd ambitiousness of style, have learned as time went on to prune their early luxuriances, while still retaining something of raciness, interest, and ornament. I have been speaking very generally of the character- istics of Veal in composition. It is difficult to give any accurate description of it that shall go into minuter de- tails. Of course it is easy to think of little external marks of the beast — that is, the calf. It is Veal in style when people, writing prose, think it a line thing to write o'er instead of over, ne\r instead of never, poesie instead of poetry, and methinks under any circumstances whatsoever. References to the heart are generally of the nature of veal, also allusions to the mysterious throb- bings and yearnings of our nature. The word grand has of late come to excite a strong suspicion of Veal ; and when I read the other day in a certain poem something about a great grand man, I concluded that the writer of that poem is meanwhile a great grand calf. The only case in which the words may properly be used together is in speaking of your great grandfather. To talk about CONCERNING VEAL. 27 mine affections, meaning my affections, is Veal ; and mine bonnie love was decided Veal, though it was written by Charlotte Bronte. To say mayhap, when you mean per- haps, is Veal. So is it also to talk of human ken, when you mean human knoivledge. To speak of something higher ami holier is invariably Veal : and it is usually Veal to speak of something deeper. Wife mine is Veal, though it stands in The Caxtons. I should rather like to see the man who in actual life is accustomed to address his spouse in that fashion. To say Not, oh never, shall we do so and so, is outrageous Veal. Sylvan grove or sylvan vale in ordinary conversation is Veal. The word glorious should be used with caution ; when applied to trees, mountains, or the like, there is a strong suspicion of Veal about it. But one feels that in saying these things we are not getting at the essence of Veal. It is Veal in thought that is essential Veal, and that is very hard to define. Beyond extravagant language, beyond absurd fine things, it lies in a certain lack of reality and sobriety of sense and view — in a certain indefinable jejuneness in the mental fare provided, which makes mature men feel that somehow it does not satisfy their cravings. You know what I mean better than I can express it. You have seen and heard a young preacher, with a rosy face and an unlined brow, preaching about the cares and tibials of life. Well, you just feel at once he knows uotliing about them. You feel that all this is at second-hand. He is saying all this because he sup- poses it is the right thing to say. Give me the pilot to direct me who has sailed through the difficult cliannel many a time himself! Give me the friend to sympathize with me in sorrow, who has felt the like. There is a hollowness, a certain want, in the talk about much trib- 28 CONCERNING VEAL. ulation of the very cleverest man who has never felt any great sorrow at all. The great force and value of all teaching lie in the amount of personal experience which is embodied in it. You feel the difference be- tween the production of a wonderfully clever boy and of a mature man when you read the first canto of Childe Harold and then read Philip van Artevelde. I do not say but that the boy's production may have a liveliness and interest beyond the man's. Veal is in certain re- spects superior to beef, though beef is best on the whole. I have heard vealy preachers whose sermons kept up breathless attention. From the first word to the last of a sermon which was unquestionable Veal, I have wit- nessed an entire congregation listen with that audible hush you know. It was very different indeed from the state of matters when a humdrum old gentleman was preaching, every word spoken by whom was the maturest sense, expressed in woi'ds to which the most fastidious taste could have taken no exception ; but then the whole thing was sleepy ; it was a terrible effort to attend. In the case of the Veal there was no effort at all. I defy you to help attending. But then you sat in pain. Every second sentence there was some outrageous offence against good taste ; every third statement was absurd or over- drawn or almost profane. You felt occasional thrills of pure disgust and horror, and you were in terror what might come next. One thing which tended to carry all this off was the manifest confidence and earnestness of the speaker. He did not think it Veal that he was say- ing. And though great consternation was de[)icted on the faces of some of the better educated people in church, you could see that a very considerable part of the con- gregation did not think it Veal either. There can be no CONCERNING VEAL. 29 doubt, my middle-aged friend, if you could but give your early sermons now with the confidence and fire of the time when you wrote them, they would make a deep impression on many people yet. But it is simply impos- sible for you to give them ; and if you should force your- self some rainy Sunday to preach one of them, you would give it with such a sense of its errors, and with such an absence of corresponding feeling, that it would fall very flat and dead. Your views are maturing : your taste is growing fastidious ; the strong things you once said you could not bring yourself to say now. If you could preach those old sermons, there is no doubt they would go down with the mass of uncultivated folk, — go down better than your mature and reasonable ones. We have all known such cases as that of a young preacher who, at twenty- five, in his days of Veal, drew great crowds to the church at which he preached ; and who at thirty -five, being a good deal tamed and sobered, and in the judgment of competent judges vastly improved, attracted no more than a respectable congregation. A very great and eloquent preacher lately lamented to me the uselessness of his store of early discourses. If he could but get rid of his present standard of what is right and good in thought and language, and preach them with the enchaining fire with which he preached them once ! For many hearers remain immature, though the preacher has matured. Young people are growing up, and there are people whose taste never ripens beyond the enjoyment of Veal. There is a period in the mental development of those who will be ablest and maturest, at which vealy thought and language are accepted as the best. Veal will be highly appreciated by sympathetic calves ; and the great- est men, with rare exceptions, are calves in youth, while 30 CONCERNING VEAL. many human beings are calves forever. And here I may remark, as something which has afforded me conso- lation on various occasions within the last year, that it seems unquestionable that sermons which are utterly revolting to people of taste and sense, have done much good to large masses of those people in whom common sense is most imperfectly developed, and in whom taste is not developed at all ; and accordingly, wherever one is convinced of the sincerity of the individuals, however foolish and uneducated, who go about pouring forth those violent, exaggerated, and all but blasphemous discourses of which I have read accounts in tiie newspapers, one would humbly hope that a Power which works by many means, would bring about good even through an instru- mentality which it is hard to contemplate without some measure of horror. The impression produced by most things in this world is relative to the minds on which the impression is produced. A coarse ballad, deficient in rhyme and rhythm, and only half decent, will keep up the attention of a rustic group to whom you might read from In Memoriam in vain. A waistcoat of glaring scarlet will be esteemed by a country bumpkin a garment every way preferable to one of aspect more subdued. A nigger melody will charm many a one who would yawn at Beethoven. You must have rough means to move rough people. The outrageous revival-orator may do good to people to whom Bishop Wilberforce or Dr. Caird might preach to no purpose ; and if real good be done, by whatever means, all right-minded people should rejoice to hear of it. And this leads to an important practical question, on which men at different periods of life will never agree. CONCERNING VEAL. 31 When shall thought be regarded as mature ? Is there a standard by which we can ascertain beyond question whether a composition be Veal or Beef? I sigh for fixity and assurance in matters a^sthetical. It is vexatious that what I think very good my friend Smith thinks very bad. It is vexatious that what strikes me as supreme and unapproachable excellence, strikes another person at least as competent to form an opinion, as poor. And I am angry with myself when I feel that I honestly regard as inflated commonplace and mystical jargon, what a man as old and (let us say) nearly as wise as myself thinks the utterance of a prophet. You know how, when you con- template the purchase of a horse, you lead him up to the measuring-bar, and there ascertain the precise number of hands and inches which he stands. How have I longed for the means of subjecting the mental stature of human beings to an analogous process of measurement ! Oh for some recognized and unerring gauge of mental calibre ! It would be a grand thing if somewhere in a very conspic- uous position — say on the site of the National Gallery at Charing-cross - — there were a {)illar erected, graduated by some new Fahrenheit, on which we could measure the height of a man's mind. How delightful it would be to drag up some pompous pretender who passes off at once upon himself and others as a profound and able man, and make him measure his height upon that pillar, and understand beyond all cavil what a pigmy he is ! And how pleasant, too, it would be to bring up some man of unacknowledged genius, and make the v/orld see the I'each of Ms intellectual stature ! The mass of educated people even are so incapable of forming an estimate of a man's ability, that it would be a blessing if men could be sent out into the world with the stamp upon them, 32 CONCERNING VEAL. telling what are their weight and value, plain for every- one to see. But of course there are many ways in which a book, sermon, or essay, may be bad without be- ing Vealy. It may be dull, stupid, illogical, and the like, and yet have nothing of boyishness about it. It may be insufferably bad, yet quite mature. Beef may be bad, and yet undoubtedly beef. And the question now is, not so much wliether there be a standard of what is in a literary sense good or bad, as whether there be a stand- ard of what is Veal and wliat is Beef. And there is a great difficulty here. Is a thing to be regarded as mature when it suits your present taste ; when it is approved by your present deliberate judgment ? For your taste is al- ways changing : your standard is not the same for three successive years of your early youth. The Veal you now despise you thought Beef when you wrote it. And so, too, with the productions of other men. You cannot read now witiiout amazement the books which used to enchant you as a child. I remember when I used to read Her- vey's Meditations with great delight. That was when I v.as about five years old. A year or two later I greatly affected Macpherson's translation of Ossian. It is not so very long since I felt the liveliest interest in Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy. Let me confess tliat I retain a kindly feeling towards it yet ; and that I am glad to see that some hundreds of thousands of readers appear to be still in the stage out of which I passed some years since. Yes, as you grow older your taste changes : it becomes more fastidious ; and especially you come to have always less toleration for sentimental feeling and for flights of fancy. And besides this gradual and constant progression, which holds on uniformly year after year, there are changes in mood and taste sometimes from day CONCERNING VEAL. 33 to day find from hour to Iiour. The man who did a very silly thing thought it was a wise thing when he did it. He sees the matter differently in a little while. On the evening after the battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wel- lington wrote a certain letter. History does not record its matter or style. But history does record that some years afterwards the Duke paid a hundred guineas to get it back again ; and that on getting it he instantly burnt it, exclaiming that when he wrote it he must have been the greatest idiot on the face of the earth. Doubtless, if we had seen that letter, we should have heartily coincided in the sentiment of the hero. He teas an idiot when he wrote it, but he did not think that he was one. I think, however, that there is a standard of sense and folly ; and that there is a point at which Veal is Veal no more. But I do not believe that thought can justly be called mature only when it has become such as to suit the taste of some desperately dry old gentleman with as much feeling as a log of wood, and as much imagination as an oyster. I know how intolerant some dull old fogies are of youthful fire and fancy. I shall not be convinced that any dis- course is puerile because it is pronounced such by the venerable Di*. Dryasdust. I remember that the vener- able man has written many pages, possibly abundant in sound sense, but which no mortal could read, and to which no mortal could listen. I remember that though that not very amiable individual has outlived such wits as he once had, he has not outlived the unbecoming emo- tions of envy and jealousy ; and he retains a strong ten- dency to evil-speaking and slandering. You told me, unaraiable individual, how disgusted you were at heai'- ing a friend of mine who is one of the best preachers in Britain, preach one of his finest sermons. Perhaps you 3 34 CONCERNING VEAL. really were disgusted : there is such a thing as casting pearls before swine, who will not appreciate them highly. But you went on to give an account of what the great preacher said ; and though I know you are extremely stupid, you are not quite so stupid as to have actually fancied that the great preacher said what you reported that he said : you were well aware that you were grossly misrepresenting him. And when I find malice and in- sincerity in one respect I am ready to suspect them in another : and I venture to doubt whether you were dis- gusted. Possibly, you were only ferocious at finding yourself so unspeakably excelled. But even if you had been really disgusted ; and even if you were a clever man ; and even if you were above the suspicion of jeal- ousy; I should not think that my friend's noble discourse was puerile because you thought it so. It is not wiien the warm feelings of earlier days are dried up into a cold, time-worn cynicism, that I think a man has become the best judge of the products of the human brain and heart. It is a noble thing when a man grows old, retain- ing something of youtliful freshness and fervor. It is a fine thing to ripen without shrivelling: to reach the calm- ness of age, yet keep the warm heart and ready sympa- thy of youth. Show me such a man as that, and I shall be content to bow to his decision whether a thing be Veal or not. But as such men are not found very frequently, I should suggest it as an approximation to a safe criterion, that a thing may be regarded as mature when it is de- liberately and dispassionately approved by an educated man of good ability, and above thirty years of age. No doubt a man of fifty may hold that fifty is the age of sound taste and sense : and a youth of twenty-three may maintain that he is as good a judge of human doings now CONCERNING VEAL. 35 as he will ever be. I do not claim to have proposed an infallible standard. I give you my present belief, being well aware that it is very likely to alter. It is not desirable that one's taste should become too fastidious, or that natural feeling should be refined away. And a cynical young man is bad, but a cynical old one is a great deal worse. The cynical young man is probably shamming; he is a humbug, not a cynic. But the old man probably is a cynic, as heartless as he seems. And without thinking of cynicism, real or affected, let us remember that though the taste ought to be refined and daily refining, it ought not to be refined beyond being practically serviceable. Let things be good ; but not too good to be workable. It is expedient that a cart for conveying coals should be of neat and decent appear- ance. Let the shafts be symmetrical, the boards well- planed, the whole strong yet not clumsy ; and over the whole let the painter's skill induce a hue rosy as beauty's cheek, or dark-blue as her eye. All that is well ; and while the cart will carry its coals satisfactorily, it will stand a good deal of rough usage, and it will please the eye of the rustic who sits in it on an empty sack, and whistles as it moves along. But it would be highly inex- pedient to make that cart of walnut of the finest grain and marking, and to have it French-polished. It would be too fine to be of use ; and its possessor would fear to scratch it ; and would preserve it as a show, seeking some plainer vehicle to carry his coals. In like manner, do not refine too much either the products of the mind, or the sensibilities of the taste which is to appreciate them. I know an amiable professor very different from Dr. Dry- asdust. He was a country clergyman ; a very interest- ing plain preacher. But when he got his chair, he had 36 CONCERNING VEAL. to preach a good deal in the college chapel ; and by way of accommodating his discourses to an academic audience, he re-wrote them carefully ; rubbed oif all the salient points ; cooled down whatever warmth was in them to frigid accuracy ; toned down everything striking. The result was that his sermons became eminently classical and elegant; only they became impossible to attend to, and impossible to remember. And when you heard the good man preach, you sighed for the rough and striking heartiness of former days. And we have all heard of such a thing as taste refined to that painful sensitiveness, that it became a source of torment ; that is, unfitted for common enjoyments and even for common duties. There was once a great man, let us say at Melipotamus, who never went to church. A clergyman once in speaking to a friend of the great man, lamented that the great man set so bad an example before his humbler neighbors. " How can that man go to church," was the reply ; " his taste and his entire critical faculty, is sharpened to that degree, that in listening to any ordinary preacher, he feels outraged and shocked at every fourth sentence he hears, by its inelegance or its want of logic ; and the entire ser- mon torments him by its unsymmetrical structure, its want of perspective in the presentment of details, and its general literary badness." I quite believe that there was a moderate proportion of truth in the excuse thus urged ; and you will probably judge that it would have been better had the great man's mind not been brought to so painful a polish. The mention of dried-up old gentlemen reminds one of a question which has sometimes perplexed me. Is it Vealy to feel or to show keen emotion ? Is it a precious result and indication of the maturity of the human mind, CONCERNING VEAL. 37 to look as if you felt nothing at all ? I have often looked with wonder, and with a moderate amount of veneration, at a few old gentlemen whom I know well, who are lead- ing members of a certain legislative and judicial council, held in great respect in a country of which no more need be said. I have beheld these old gentlemen sitting ap- parently quite unmoved when discussions were going on in which I knew they felt a very deep interest, and when the tide of debate was setting strongly against their pe- culiar views. There they sat, impassive as a Red Indian at the stake. I think of a certain man, who, while a smart speech on the other side is being made, retains a countenance expressing actually nothing ; he looks as if he heard nothing, felt nothing, cared for nothing. But when the other man sits down, he rises to reply. He speaks slowly at first, but every weighty word goes home and tells : he gathers warmth and rapidity as he goes on, and in a little you become aware that for a few hundred pounds a year, you may sometimes get a man who would have made an Attorney-General or a Lord Chancellor ; you discern that under the appearance of almost stolidity, there was the sharpest attention watching every word of the argument of the other speaker, and ready to come down on every weak point in it; and the other speaker is (in a logical sense) pounded to jelly by a succession of straight-handed hits. Yes, it is a wonderful thing to find a combination of coolness and earnestness. But I am inclined to believe that the reason why some old gentle- men look as if they did not care, is that in fact they don't care. And there is no particular merit in looking cool while a question is being discussed, if you really do not mind a rush which way it may be decided. A keen, unvarying, engrossing regard for one's self, is a great ;j8 CONCERNING VEAL. safeguard against over-excitement in regard to all the questions of the day, political, social, and relig- ious. It is a curious but certain fact, that clever young men, at that period of their life when their own likings tend towards Veal, know quite well the difference between veal and beef; and are quite able, when necessary, to produce the latter. The tendency to boyishness of thought and style may be repressed, when you know you are writing for the perusal of readers with whom that will not go down. A student of twenty, who has in him great talent, no matter how undue a supremacy his im- agination may meanwhile have, if he be set to producing an essay in Metaphysics to be read by professors of phi- losophy, will produce a composition singularly free fi-om any trace of immaturity. For such a clever youth, though he may have a sti-ong bent towards Veal, has in him an instinctive perception that it is Veal ; and a keen sense of what will and will not do for the particular read- ers he has to please. Go, you essayist who carried olF a host of university honors ; and read over now the prize essays you wrote at twenty-one or twenty-two. I think the thing that will mainly strike you will be, how very mature these compositions are ; how ingenious, how ju- dicious, how free from extravagance, how quietly and accurately and even felicitously expressed. T'hey are not Veal. And yet you know, that several years after you wrote them you were still writing a great deal which was Veal beyond all question. But then a clever youth can produce material to any given standard ; and you wrote the essays not to suit your own taste, but to suit what you intuitively knew was the taste of the grave and even CONCERNING VEAL. 39 smoke-dried professors who were to read them and sit in judgment on them. And though it is very fit and right that the academic standard should be an understood one, and quite different from the popukr standard, still it is not enough that a young man should be able to write to a standard against which he in his heart rebels and protests. It is yet more important that you should get him to approve and adopt a standard which is accurate, if not severe. It is quite extraordinary what bombastic and immature sermons are preached in their first years in the Church by young clergymen who wrote many academic compositions in a style the most classical. It seems to be essential that a man of feeling and imagination should be allowed fairly to run himself out. The course apparently is, that the tree should send out its rank shoots, and then that you sliould prune them, rather than that by some repressive means you should prevent the rank slioots coming forth at all. The way to get a high-spii-ited horse to be content to stay peaceably in its stall, is to allow it to have a tearing gallop, and thus get out its superfluous nervous excite- ment and vital spirit. Let the boiler blow off its steam. All repression is dangerous. And some injudicious folk, instead of encouraging the highly-charged mind and heart to relieve themselves by blowing off in excited verse and extravagant bombast, would (so to speak) sit on the safety valve. Let the bursting spriiig flow ! It will run turbid at first ; but it will clear itself day by day. Let a young man write a vast deal : the more he writes, the sooner will the Veal be done with. But if a man write very little the bombast is not blown off; and it may re- main till advanced years. It seems as if a certain quan- tity of fustian must be blown off before you reach the 40 CONCERNING VEAT,. good material. I have heard a mercantile man of fifty read a paper he had written on a social subject. He had written very little save business letters all his life. And I assure you that his paper was bombastic to a de- gree that you would have said was barely tolerable in a youth of twenty. I have seldom listened to Veal so out- rageous. You see he had not worked through it in his youth ; and so here it was now. I have witnessed the like phenomenon in a man who went into the Church at five-and-forty. I heard him preach one of his earli- est sermons, and I have hardly ever heard such boyish rodomontade. The imaginations of some men last out in liveliness longer than those of others ; and the taste of some men never becomes perfect ; and it is no doubt owing to these things that you find some men producing Veal so much later in life than others. You will find men who are very turgid and magniloquent at five-and- thirty, at forty, at fifty. But I attribute the phenome- non in no small measure to the fact that such men had not the opportunity of blowing off their steam in youth. Give a man at four-and-twenty two sermons to wiite a week, and he will very soon work through his Veal. It is probably because ladies write comparatively so little, that you find them writing at fifty poetry and prose of the most awfully romantic and sentimental strain. We have been thinking, my friend, as you have doubt- less observed, almost exclusively of intellectual and aesthetical immaturity, and of its products in composition, spoken or written. But combining with that immaturity, and going veiy much to affect the character of that A'eal, there is moral immaturity, resulting in views, feelings, and conduct, which may be described as Moral A^eal. CONCERNING VEAL. 41 But indeed it is very difficult to distinguish between the different kinds of immaturity ; and to say exactly what in the moods and doings of youth proceeds from each. It is safest to rest in the general proposition that, even as the calf yields Veal, so does the immature human mind yield immature productions. It is a stage which you outgrow, and therefore a stage of comparative im- maturity, in which you read a vast deal of poetry, and repeat much poetrj' to yourself when alone, working yourself up thereby to an enthusiastic excitement. And very like a calf you look when some one suddenly enters the room in which you are wildly gesticulating or mood- ily laughing, and thinking jourself poetical and indeed sublime. The person probably takes you for a fool ; and the best you can say for yourself is that you are not so great a fool as you seem to be. Vealy is the period of life in which you filled a great volume with the verses you loved ; and in which you stored your memory, by frequent reading, with many thousands of lines. All that you outgrow. Fancy a man of fifty having his commonplace book of poetry ! And it will be instruc- tive to turn over the ancient volume, and to see how year by year tlie verses copied grew fewer, and finally ceased entirely. I do not say that all growth is progress ; some- times it is like that of the muscle which once advanced into manly vigor and usefulness, but is now ossifying into rigidity. It is well to have fancy and feeling under com- mand : it is not well to have feeling and fancy dead. That season of life is vealy in which you are charmed by the melody of verse quite apart from its meaning. And there is a season in which that is so. And it is cu- rious to remark what verses they are that have charmed many men. For they are often verses in which no one 42 CONCERNING VEAL. else could have discerned that singulai* fascination. You may remember how Robert Burns has recorded that in youth he was enchanted by the melody of two lines of Addison's : — For though in dreadful whirls we hung, Higli on the broken wave. Sir Walter Scott felt the like fascination in youth (and he tells us it was not entirely gone even in age), in Mickle's stanza : — The dews of summer night did fall ; The moon, sweet regent of the sky, Silvered the walls of Cumnor Hall, And many an oak that grew thereby. Not a remarkable verse, I think. However, it at least presents a pleasant picture. But I remember well the enchantment which, when twelve years old, I felt in a verse by Mrs. Hemans, which I can now see presents an excessively disagreeable picture. I saw it not then ; and when I used to repeat that verse, I know it was without the slightest perception of its meaning. You know the beautiful poem called the Battle of Morgarten. At least 1 remember it as beautiful ; and I am not going to spoil my recollection by reading it now. Here is the verse : — Oh ! the sun in heaven tierce havoc viewed, When the Austrian turned to fly: And the brave, in the trampling multitude. Had a fearful death to die ! As I write that verse (;it which the critical reader will smile), I am aware that Veal has its hold of me yet. I see nothing of the miserable scene the poet describes; but I hear the waves murmuring on a distant beach, and I see the hills across the sea, the first sea I ever beheld ; I see the school to which I went daily ; I see CONCERNING VEAL. 43 the class-room and the place where I used to sit ; I see the feces and hear the voices of my old companions, some dead, one sleeping in the middle of the great At- lantic, many scattered over distant parts of the world, almost all far away. Yes, I feel that I have not quite cast off the witchery of the Battle of Morgarten. Early associations can give to verse a charm and a hold upon one's heart which no literary excellence, however high, ever could. Look at the first hymns you learned to repeat, and which you used to say at your mother's knee ; look at the psalms and hymns you remember hearing sung at church when you were a child : you know how impossible it is for you to estimate these upon their literary merits. They may be almost doggrel ; but not Mr. Tennyson can touch you like them ! The most effective eloquence is that which is mainly done by the mind to which it is addressed : it is that which touches chords which of themselves yield matchless music ; it is that which wakens up trains of old remembrance, and which wafts around you the fragrance of the hawthorn that blossomed and withered many long years since. An English stranger would not think much of the hymns we sing in our Scotch churches : he could not know what many of them are to us. There is a magic about the words. I can discern, indeed, that some of them are mawkish in sentiment, faulty in rhyme, and on the whole what you would call extremely unfitted to be sung in pubhc worship, if you were judging of them as new things : but a crowd of associations which are beautiful and touching gathers round the lines which have no great beauty or pathos in themselves. You were in an extremely vealy condition when, having attained the age of fourteen, you sent some verses to the 44 CONCERNING YEAL. county newspaper, and with simple-hearted elation read them in the corner devoted to what was termed "Original Poetry." It is a pity you did not preserve the newspapers in which you first saw yourself in print, and experienced the peculiar sensation which accompanies that sight. No doubt your verses expressed the gloomiest views of life, and told of the bitter disappointments you had met in your long intercourse with mankind, and especially with womankind. And though you were in a flutter of anx- iety and excitement to see whether or not your verses would be printed, your verses probably declared that you had used up life and seen through it ; that your heart was no longer to be stirred by aught on earth ; and that, in short, you cared nothing for anything. You could see nothing line, then, in being good, cheerful, and happy ; but you thought it a grand thing to be a gloomy man, of a very dark complexion, with blood on your conscience, upwards of six feet high, and accustomed to wander from land to land, like Childe Harold. You were ex- tremely vealy when you used to fancy that you were sure to be a very great man ; and to think how proud your relations would some day be of you, and how you would come back and excite a great commotion at the place where you used to be a schoolboy. And it is be- cause the world has still left some impressionable spot in your hearts, my readers, that you still have so many fond associations with " the schoolboy spot, we ne'er forget, though we are there forgot." They were vealy days, thougli pleasant to remember, my old school companions, in which you used to go to the dancing-school (it was in a gloomy theatre, seldom entered by actors), in which you fell in love with several young ladies about eleven years old ; and (being permitted occasionally to select CONCERNING VEAL. 45 your own partners) made frantic rushes to obtain the hand of one of the beauties of that small society. Those were the days in which you thought that when you grew up it would be a very fine thing to be a pirate, bandit, or corsair, rather than a clergyman, barrister, or the like ; even a cheerful outlaw like Robin Hood did not come up to your views ; you would rather have been a man like Captain Kyd, stained with various crimes of extreme atrocity, which would entirely preclude the possibility of returning to respectable society, and given to moody laughter in solitary moments. Oh, what truly asinine developments the human being must go through before arriving at the stage of common sense ! You were very vealy, too, when you used to think it a fine thing to as- tonish people by expressing awful sentiments, such as that you thought Mahommedans better than Christians, that you would Hke to be dissected after death, that you did not care what you got for dinner, that you liked learning your lessons better than going out to play, that you would rather read Euclid than Ivanhoe, and the like. It may be remarked that this peculiar vealiness is not confined to youth ; I have seen it appearing very strongly in men with gray hair. Another manifestation of veali- ness, which appears both in age and youth, is the en- tertaining a strong belief that kings, noblemen, and baronets, are always in a condition of ecstatic happi- ness. I have known people pretty far advanced in life, who not only believed that monarchs must be perfectly happy, but that all who were permitted to continue in their presence would catch a considerable degree of the mysterious bliss which was their portion. I have heard a sane man, rather acute and clever in many things, seriously say, " If a man cannot be happy in 46 CONCERNING VEAL. the presence' of his Sovereign, where can he be hap- py?" And yet, absurd and foolish as is moral vealiness, there is something fine about it. Many of the old and dear as- sociations most cherished in human hearts, are of the nature of Veal. It is sad to think that most of the romance of life is unquestionably so. All spooniness, all the preposterous idolization of some one who is just like anybody else, all love (in the narrow sense in which the word is understood by novel readers), you feel when you look back, are Veal. The young lad and the young girl, whom at a pic-nic party you have discerned stealing off under frivolous pretexts from the main body of guests, and sitting on the grass by the riverside, enraptured in the prosecution of a conversation which is intellectually of the emptiest, and fancying that they two make all the world, and investing that spot with remembrances which will continue till they are gray, are (it must in sober sadness be admitted) of the nature of calves. For it is beyond doubt that they are at a stage which they will outgrow, and on which they may possibly look back with something of shame. All these things, beautiful as they ai'c, are no more than Veal. Yet they are fitting and ex- cellent in their time. No, let us not call them veal, they are rather like lamb, which is excellent though immature. No doubt, youth is immaturity ; and as you outgrow it you are growing better and wiser ; still youth is a fine thing, and most people would be young again if (hey could. How cheerful and light-hearted is immaturity! How cheerful and lively are the little children even of si- lent and gloomy men ! It is sad, and it is unnatural, when they are not so. I remember yet, when I was at school, with what interest and wonder I used to look at two or CONCERNING VEAL. 47 three boys, about twelve or thirteen years old, who were always dull, sullen, and unhappy-looking. In those days, as a general rule, you are never sorrowful without know- ing the reason why. You are never conscious of the dull atmosphere, of the gloomy spirits, of after-time. The youthful machine, bodily and mental, plays smoothly ; the young being is cheery. Even a kitten is very different from a grave old cat ; and a young colt, from a horse sobered by the cares and toils of years. And you pic- ture fine things to yourself in your youthful dreams. I remember a beautiful dwelling I used often to see, as if from the brow of a great hill. I see the rich valley be- low, with magnificent woods and glades, and. a broad river reflecting the sunset ; and in the midst of the valley, the vast Saracenic pile, with gilded minarets blazing in the golden light. I have since then seen many splendid habitations, but none in the least equal to that. I can- not even yet discard the idea that somewhere in this world there stands that noble palace, and that some day I shall find it out. You remember also the intense de- light with which you read the books that charmed you then : how you carried off the poem or the tale to some solitary place, how you sat up far into the night to read it, how heartily you believed in all the stoiy, and sympa- thized with the people it told of. I wish I could feel now the veneration for the man who has written a book which I used once to feel. Oh that one could read the old vol- umes with the old feeling! Perhaps you have some of them yet, and you remember the peculiar expression of the type in which they were printed : the pages look at you with the face of an old friend. If you were then of an observant nature, you will understand how much of the effect of any composition upon the human mind de- 48 CONCERNING VEAL. pends upon the printing, upon the phicing of the points, even upon the position of the sentences on the page. A grand, high-flown, and sentimental chraax ought always to conclude at the bottom of a page. It will look ridicu- lous if it ends four or five lines down from the top of the next page. Somehow there is a feeling as of the differ- ence between the night before and the next morning. It is as though the crushed ball-dress and the dishevelled locks of the close of the evening re-appeared, the same, before breakfast. Let us have homely sense at the top of the page, pathos at the foot of it. What a force in the bad type of the shabby little Childe Harold you used to read so often ! You turn it over in a grand illustrated edition, and it seems like another poem. Let it here be said, that occasionally you look with something like in- dignation on the volume which enchained you in your boyish days. For now you have burst the chain. And you have somewhat of the feeling of the prisoner towards the jailer who held him in unjust bondage. What ri^onable enough, appeared stricken into a state approaching idiocy, and that the sentence which he had begun in a rational and intelli- gible way was ending in a maze of wandering Avords, signifying nothing in particular. You had been looking in another direction, but in sudden alarm you look straight at the old gentleman to see what on earth is the matter ; and you discern that his eyes are fixed on some passer-by, possibly a young lady, perhaps no more than a magistrate or the like, who is by this time a good many yards off, with the eyes still following, and slowly revolving on their axis so as to follow without the head being turned round. It is this spectacle which has drawn off your friend's attention ; and you notice his whole figure twisted into an ungainly form, intended to be dig- nified or easy, and assumed because he fancied that the passer-by was looking at him. Oh the pettiness of hu- man nature ! Then you will find people afraid that they have given offence by saying or doing things which the party they suppose offended had really never observed that they had said or done. There are people who fancy that in church everybody is looking at them, when in truth no mortal is taking the trouble to do so. It is an amusing though irritating sight to behold a weak-minded lady walking into church and taking her seat under this delusion. You remember the affected air, the downcast eyes, the demeanor intended to imply a modest shrinking from notice, but through which there shines the real de- sire, " Oh, for any sake, look at me ! " There are people whose voice is utterly inaudible in church six feet off, who will tell you that a whole congregation of a thousand or fifteen hundred people was listening to their singing. THINGS SLOWLY LEARNT. 75 Such folk will tell you that they went to a church where the singing was left too much to the choir, and began to sing as usual, on which the entire congregation looked round to see who it was that was singing, and ultimately proceeded to sing lustily too. I do not remember a more disgusting exhibition of vulgar self-conceit than I saw a few months ago at Westminster Abbey. It was a week- day afternoon service, and the congregation was small. Immediately before me there sat an insolent boor, who evidently did not belong to the Church of England. He had walked in when the prayers were half over, having with ditRculty been made to take off his hat, and his manifest wish was to testify his contempt for the whole place and service. Accordingly he persisted in sitting, in a lounging attitude, when the j^t^op'e stood, and in standing up and staring about with an air of curiosity while they knelt. He was very anxious to convey that he was not listening to the prayers ; but rather inconsist- ently he now and then uttered an audible grunt of disap- proval. No one can enjoy the choral service more than I do, and the music that afternoon was very fine ; but I could not enjoy it or join in it as I wished for the disgust I felt at the animal before me, and for my burning desire to see him turned out of the sacred place he was profan- ing. But the thing which chiefly struck me about the individual was not his vulgar and impudent profanity ; it was his intolerable self-conceit. He plainly thought that every eye under the noble old roof was watching all his movements. I could see that he would go home and boast of what he had done, and tell his friends that all the clergy, choristers, and congregation had been awe- stricken by him, and that possibly word had by this time been conveyed to Lambeth or Fulham of the weakened 76 CONCERNING influence and approaching downfall of the Church of England. I knew that the very thing he wished was that some one should rebuke his conduct, otherwise I should certainly have told him either to behave with decency or to be gone. I have sometimes witnessed a curious manifestation of this vain sense of self-importance. Did you ever, my reader, chance upon such a spectacle as this: a very com- monplace man, and even a very gi-eat blockhead, stand- ing in a drawing-room where a large party of people is assembled, with a grin of self-complacent superiority upon his unmeaning face ? I am sure you understand the thing I mean. I mean a look which conveyed that, in virtue of some hidden store of genius or power, he could survey with a calm, cynical loftiness the little conversa- tion and interests of ordinary mortals. You know^ the kind of interest with which a human being would survey the distant approaches to reason of an intelligent dog. or a colony of ants. I have seen this expression on the face of one or two of the greatest blockheads I ever knew. ' I have seen such a one wear it while clever men were carrying on a conversation in which he could not have joiniMl to have saved his life. Yet you could see that (who can tell how ?) the poor creature had somehow per- suaded liim-elf that he occuj)ied a position from which he could look down upon his fellow-men in general. Or was it rather that the poor creature knew he was a fool, and fancied that thus he could disguise the fact? I dare say there was a mixture of both feelings. You may see many indications of vain self-importance in the fact that various persons, old ladies for the most part, are so ready to give opinions which are not wanted, on matters of which they are not competent to judge. THINGS SLOWLY LEARNT. 77 Clever young curates suffer much annoyance from these people : they are always anxious to instruct the young curates how to preach. I remember well, ten years ago, when I was a curate (which in Scotland we call an as- sistant) myself, what advices I used to receive (quite unsought by me) from well-meaning but densely stupid old ladies. I did not think the advices worth much, even then ; and now, by longer experience, I can discern that they were utterly idiotic. Yet they were given with entire confidence. No thought ever entered the head of these well-meaning but stupid individuals, that possibly they were not competent to give advice on such subjects. And it is vexatious to think that people so stupid may do serious harm to a young clergyman by head-shakings and sly innuendos as to his orthodoxy or his gravity of deportment. In the long run they will do no harm, but at the first start they may do a good deal of mischief. Not long since, such a person complained to me that a talented young preacher had taught unsound doctrine. She cited his words. I showed her that the words were taken verhatlm from the Confession of Faith, which is our Scotch Thirty-nine Articles. I think it not un- likely that she would go on telling her tattling story just the same. I remember hearing a stupid old lady say, as though her opinion were quite decisive of the question, that no clergyman ought to have so much as a thousand a year ; for if he had, he would be sure to neglect his duty. You remember what Dr. Johnson said to a woman who expressed some opinion or other upon a matter she did not understand. " Madam," said the moralist, " be- fore expressing your opinion, you should consider what your opinion is worth." But this shaft would have glanced harmlessly from off the panoply of the stupid 78 CONCERNING and self-complacent old lady of whom I am thinking. It was a fundamental axiom with her that hex* opin- ion was entirely infallible. Some people would feel as though the very world were crumbling away under their feet, if they realized the fact that they could go wrong. Let it here be said, that this vain belief of their own, importance which most people cherish, is not at all a source of unmixed happiness. It will woi'k either way. When my friend, Mr. Snarling, got his beautiful poem printed in the county newspaper, it no doubt pleased him to think, as he walked along the street, that every one was pointing him out as the eminent literary man who was the pride of the district ; and that the whole town was ringing with that magnificent effusion. Mr. Ten- nyson, it is certain, felt that his crown was being reft away. But on the other hand, there is no commoner form of morbid misery than that of the poor nervous man or woman who fancies that he or she is the sub- ject of universal unkindly remark. You will find peo- ple, still sane for practical purposes, who think that the whole neighborhood is conspiring against them, when in fact nobody is thinking of them. All these pages have been spent in discussing a single thing slowly learnt : the remaining matters to be consid- ered in this essay must be treated briefly. Another thing slowly learnt is that we have no reason or right to be angry with people because they think poorly of us. This is a truth which most people find it very hard to accept, and at which, probably, very few arrive without pretty long thought and experience. Most peo- ple are angry when they are informed that some one has said that their ability is small, or that their proficiency in THINGS SLOWLY LEAKNT. 79 any art is limited. Mrs. Malaprop was very indignant when she found that some of her friends had spoken lightly of her parts of speech. Mr. Snarling was wroth when he learned that Mr. Jollikin thought him no great preacher. Miss Brown was so on hearing that Mr. Smith did not admire her singing ; and Mr. Smith on learning that Miss Brown did not admire his horsemanship. Some authors feel angry on reading an unfavorable I'eview of their book. The present wi-iter has been treated very, very kindly by the critics ; far more so than he ever de- served ; yet he remembers showing a notice of him which was intended to extinguish him for all coming time, to a warm-hearted friend, who read it with gathering wrath, and vehemently starting up at its close, exclaimed (we knew who wrote the notice) " Now, I shall go straight and kick that fellow ! " Now all this is very natural ; but assuredly it is quite wrong. You understand, of course, that I am thinking of unfavorable opinions of you, honestly held, and expressed without malice. I do not mean to say that you would choose for your special friend or companion one who thought meanly of your ability or your sense ; it would not be pleasant to have him always by you ; and the very fact of his presence would tend to keep you from doing justice to yourself. For it is true, that when with people who think you very clever and wise, you really are a good deal cleverer and wiser than usual ; while with people who think you stupid and silly, you find yourself under a malign in- fluence which tends to make you actually so for the time. If you want a man to gain any good quality, the way is to give, him credit for possessing it. If he has but little, give him credit for all he has, at least ; and you will find him daily get more. You know how Ai-nold made boys 80 CONCERNING truthful ; it was by giving them credit for trutli. Oh that we all fitly understood that the same grand prin- ciple should be extended to all good qualities, intel- lectual and moral ! Diligently instil into a hoy that he is a stupid, idle, bad-hearted blockhead, and you are very likely to make him all that. And so you can see that it is not judicious to choose for a special friend and associate one who thinks poorly of one's sense or one's parts. Indeed, if such a one honestly thinks poorly of you, and has any moral earnestness, you could not get him for a special friend if you wished it. Let us choose for our companions (if such can be found) those who think well and kindly of us, even though we may know within ourselves that they think too kindly and too well. For that favorable estimation will bring out and foster all that is good in us. There is between this and the unfavorable judgment all the difference between the warm, genial sunshine, that draws forth the flowers and encourages them to open their leaves, and the ni{)ping frost or the blighting east-wind that represses and dis- heartens all vegetable life. But though thus you would not choose for your special companion one who thinks poorly of you, and though you might not even wish to see him very often, you have no reason to have any angry feeling towards liim. He cannot help his opinion. His opinion is determined by his lights. His opinion, possibly, founds on those aesthetic considerations as to which people will never think alike, with which there is no reasoning, and for which there is no accounting. God has made him so that he dislikes your book, or at least cannot heartily appreciate it ; and that is not his fault. And, holding his opinion, he is quite entitled to express it. It may not be polite to express it to yourself. By THINGS SLOWLY LEARNT. 81 common consent it is understood that you are never, ex- cept in cases of absolute necessity, to say to any man that which is disagreeable to him. And if you go, and, without any call to do so, express to a man himself that you think poorly of him, he may justly complain, not of your unfavorable opinion of him, but of the malice which is implied in your needlessly informing him of it. But if any one expresses such an unfavorable opinion of you in your absence, and some one comes and repeats it to you, be angry with the person who repeats the opinion to you. not with the person who expressed it. For what jou do not know will cause you no pain. And all sensible folk, aware how estimates of any mortal must differ, will, in the long run, attach nearly the just weight to any opinion, favorable or unfavorable. Yes, my friend, utterly put down the natural tendency in your heart to be angry with the man wlio thinks poorly of you. For you have, in sober reason, no right to be angry with him. It is more pleasant, and indeed more profitable, to live among those who think highly of you. It makes you better. You actually grow into what you get credit for. Oh how much better a clergyman preaches to his own congregation, who listen with kindly and sym- pathetic attention to all he says, and always think too well of him, than to a set of critical strangers, eager to find faults and to pick holes ! And how heartily and pleas- antly the essayist covers his pages, which are to go into a magazine whose readers have come to know him well, and to bear with all his ways ! If every one thought him a dull and stupid person, he could not write at all. Indeed, he would bow to the general belief, and accept the truth that he is dull and stupid. But further, my reader, let us be reasonable when it is pleasant; and let us some- 6 82 CONCERNING times be irrational wlien that, is pleasant too. It is natural to have a very kindly feeling to those who think well of us. Now, though, in severe truth, we have no more reason for wishing to shake hands with the man who thinks well of us, than for wishing to shake the man who thinks ill of us ; yet let us yield heartily to the for- mer plea-ant impulse. It is not reasonable, but it is all right. You eannot help liking peoi)le who estimate you favorably, and say a good word of you. No doubt we might slowly learn not to like them more than anybody else ; but we need not take the trouble to learn that les- son. Let us all, my readers, be glad if we ean reach that cheerful position of mind at which various authors have arrived, that we shall be extremely gratified when we find ourselves favorably reviewed, and not in the least angry when we find ourselves reviewed unfavorably ; that we shall have a very kindly feeling towards such as think well of us, and no unkind feeling whatever to those who think ill of us. Thus, whenever we have written an article in a magazine, at the beginning of the month shall we look with equal minds at the newspaper notices of it ; we shall be soothed and exhilarated when we find ourselves described as sages, and we shall be amused and interested when we find ourselves shown up as little bet- ter than geese. Of course, it makes a difference in the feeling with which you ought to regard any unfavorable opinion of you, whether spoken or written, if the unfavorable opinion which is expressed be plainly not honestly held, and be maliciously expiessed. You may occasionally hear a judgment expressed of a young girl's music or dancing, of a gentleman's horses, of a preacher's sermons, of an author's books, which is manifestly dictated by personal THINGS SLOWLY LEARNT. 83 spite and jealousy, and which is expressed with the in- tention of doing mischief and giving pain to the person of whom the judgment is expressed. You will occasion- ally find such judgments supported by wilful misrepresen- tation, and even by pure invention. In such a case as this, the essential thing is not the unfavorable opinion ; it is the malice which leads to its entertainment and expres- sion. And the conduct of the offending party should be regarded with that feeling which, on calm thought, you discern to be the right feeling with which to regard malice, accompanied by falsehood. Then is it well to be angry here ? I think not. You may see that it is not safe to have anj communication with a person who will abuse and misrepresent you ; it is not safe, and it is not pleasant. But don't be angry. It is not worth while. That old lady, indeed, told all her friends that you said, in your book, something she knew quite well you did not say. Mr. Snarling did the like. But the offences of such people are not worth powder and shot ; and besides this, my friend, if you saw the case from their point of view, you might see that they have something to say for themselves. You failed to call for the old lady so often as she wished you should. You did not ask Mr. Snarling to dinner. These are bad reasons for pitching into you ; but still they are reasons ; and Mr. Snarling and the old lady, by long brooding over them, may have come to think that they are very just and weighty reasons. And did you never, my friend, speak rather unkindly of these two persons ? Did you never give a ludicrous account of their goings-on, or even an ill-set account, which some kind friend was sure to repeat to them ? Ah, my reader ; don't be too hard on Snarling ; possibly you have your- self done something very like what he is doing now. 84 CONCERNING Forgive, as you need to be forgiven ! And try to attain tliat quite attainable temper, in Avhich you will read or listen to the most malignant attack upon you, with curios- ity and amusement, and with no angry feeling at all. I suppose great people attain to this. I mean cabinet ministers and the like, who are daily flayed in print somewhez'e or other. They come to take it all quite easily. And if they were pure angels, somebody would attack them. Most people, even those who differ from him, know that if this world has a humble, conscientious, pious man in it, that man is the present Archbishop of Canterbury. Yet last night I read in a certain powerful journal, that the great characteristics of that good man, are cowardice, trickery, and simple rascality ! Honest Mr. Bumpkin, kind-hearted Miss Goodbody, do you fancy that you can escape ? Then we ought to try to fix it in our mind, that in all matters into which taste enters at all, the most honest and the most able men may hopelessly, diametrically, differ. Original idiosyncrasy has so much to say here ; and train- ing has also so much. One cultivated and honest man has an enthusiastic and most real love and enjoyment of Gothic architectui'e, and an absolute hatred for that of the classic revival ; another man equally cultivated and honest, has tastes which are the logical contradictory of these. No one can doubt the ability of Byron, or of Sheridan ; yet each of them thought very little of Shaks- peare. The question is, what suits you ? You may have the strongest conviction that you ought to like an author ; you may be ashamed to confess that you don't like him ; and yet you may feel that you detest him. For my- self, I confess with shame, and I know the reason is in myself, I cannot for my life see anything to admire in the THINGS SLOWLY LEARNT. 86 writings of Mi'. Carlyle. His style, both of thought and language, is to me insufferably irritating. I tried to read the Sartoi' Resartus, and could not do it. So if all peo- ple who have learned to read English were like me, Mr. Carlyle would have no readers. Happily the majority, in most cases, possesses the normal taste. At least there is no furtlier appeal than to the deliberate judgment of the majority of educated men. I confess, furthei", that I would rather read Mr. Helps than Milton : I do not say that I think Mr. Helps the greater man, but that I feel he suits me better. I value the Autocrat of the Break- fast-taUe more liighly than all the writings of Shelley put together. It is a curious thing to read various reviews of the same book ; particularly if it be one of those books which, if you like at all, you will like very much, and which if you don't like you will absolutely hate. It is curious to find opinions flatly contradictory of one another set forth in those reviews by very able, cultivated, and unprejudiced men. There is no newspaper published in Britain which contains abler writing than the Edinburgh Scotsman. And of course no one need say anything as to the litei'ary merits of the Times. Well, one day with- in the last few months, the Times and the Scotsman each published a somewhat elaborate review of a certain book. The reviews were flatly opposed to one another ; they had no common ground at all ; one said the book was extremely good, and the other that it was extremely bad. You must just make up your mind that in matters of taste there can be no unvarying standard of truth. In aesthetic matters, truth is quite relative. What is bad to you, is good to me perhaps. If you, my reader, are a wise and kind-hearted pei'son (as I have no doubt whatever but you are), I think you 8G CONCEUNING would like very much to meet and converse with any per- son who has formed a bad opinion of you. You would take great pleasure in overcoming such a one's prejudice against you ; and if the person were an honest and worthy person, you wrould be almost certain to do so. Very few folk are able to retain any bitter feeling towards a man they have actually talked with, unless the bitter feeling be one which is just. And a very great proportion of all the unfavorable opinions which men entertain of their fellow-men found on some misconception. You take up somehow an impression that such a one is a conceited, stuck-up person : you come to know him, and you find he is the frankest and most unaffected of men. You had a belief that such another was a cynical, heartless being, till you met him one day coming down a long black stair in a poor part of the town from a bare chamber in which is a little sick child, with two large tears running dovvn his face ; and when you enter the poor apartment you learn certain facts as to his quiet benevolence which compel you suddenly to construct a new theory of that man's cliarac- ter. It is only people who are radically and essentially bad whom you can really dislike after you come to know them. And the human beings who are thus essentially bad are very few. Something of the original Image lin- gers yet in almost every human soul. And in many a homely, commonplace person, what with vestiges of the old, and a blessed planting-in of something new, there is a vast deal of it. And every human being, conscious of honest intention and of a kind heart, may well wish that the man who dislikes and abuses him could just know him. But there are human beings whom, if you are wise, you would not wish to know you too well. 1 mean the human beings ( if such there should be ) who think very THINGS SLOWLY LEARNT. 87 highly of you ; who imagine you very clever and very amiable. Keep out of the way of such ! Let them see as little of you as possible. For when they come to know you well, they are quite sure to be disenchanted. The entliusiastic ideal which young people form of any one they admire is smashed by the rude presence of facts. I have got somewhat beyond the stage of feeling enthusias- tic admiration, yet there are two or three living men whom I should be sorry to see. I know I should never admire them so much any more. I never saw Mr. Dickens : I don't want to see him. Let us leave Yarrow unvisited : our sweet ideal is fairer than the fairest fact. No hero is a hero to his valet : and it may be questioned whether any clergyman is a saint to his beadle. Yet the hero may be a true hero, and the clergyman a very ex- cellent man : but no human being can bear too close in- spection. I remember hearing a clever and enthusiastic young lady complain of what she had suffered on meeting a certain great bishop at dinner. No doubt he was digni- fied, pleasant, clever ; but the mysterious halo was no longer round his head. Here is a sad circumstance in the lot of a very eminent man : I mean such a man as Mr. Tennyson or Pi'ofessor Longfellow. As an elephant walks through a field, crushing the crop at every step, so do these men advance through life, smashing, every time they dine out, the enthusiastic fancies of sevei'al romantic young people. Tliis was to have been a short essay. But you see it is already long ; and I have treated only two of the four Things Slowly Learnt which I had noted down. The other two liiust be very briefly stated. The first of the two things is a practical lesson. It is 88 CONCERNING this : to allow for human folly, laziness, carelessness, and the like, just as you allow for the properties of matter, such as weight, friction, and the like, without being sur- prised or angry at them. You know that if a man is lifting a piece of lead he does not think of getting into a rage because it is heavy ; or if a man is dragging a tree along the ground he does not get into a rage because it plows deeply into the earth as it comes. He is not sur- prised at these things. They are nothing new. It is just what he counted on. But you will find that the same man, if his servants are lazy, careless, and forget- ful ; or if his friends are petted, wrong-headed, and im- practicable; will not only get quite angry, but will get freshly angry at each new action which proves that his friends or servants possess these characteristics. Would it not be better to make up your mind that such things are characteristic of humanity, and so that you must look for them in dealing with human beings? And would it not be better, too, to regard each new proof of laziness, not as a new thing to be angry with, but merely as a piece of the one great fact that your servant is lazy, with which you get angry once for all, and have done witii it ? If your servant makes twenty blunders a day, do not re- gard them as twenty separate facts at which to get angry twenty several times. Regard them just as twenty proofs of the one fact, that your servant is a blunderer ; and be angry just once, and no more. Or if some one you know gives twenty indications in a day that he or she (let us say she) is of a petted temper, regard these merely as twenty proofs of one lamentable fact, and not as twenty differ- ent facts to be separately lamented. You accept the fact that the person is petted and ill-tempered : you re- gret it and blame it once for all. And after this once THINGS SLOWLY LEARNT. 89 you take as of course all new manifestations of petted- ne>s ami ill-temper. And you are no more surprised at them, or angry with them, than you are at lead for being heavy, or at down for being light. It is their nature, and you calculate on it, and allow for it. Then the second of the two remaining things is this — that you have no right to complain if you are postponed to greater people, or if you are treated with less consid- eration than you would be if you were a greater person. Uneducated people are very slow to learn this most ob- vious lesson. I remember hearing of a proud old lady, who was proprietor of a small landed estate in Scotland. She had many relations, some greater, some less. The greater she much affected, the less she wholly ignored. But they did not ignore her ; and one morning an indi- vidual arrived at her mansion-house, bearing a large box on his back. He was a travelling peddler ; and he sent up word to the old lady that he was her cousin, and hoped she would buy something from him. The old lady indignantly refused to see him, and sent orders that he should forthwith quit the house. The peddler went ; but on reaching the court-yard, he turned to the inhospitable dwelling, and in a loud voice exclaimed, in the ears of every mortal in the house, " Ay, if I had come in my carriage-and-four, ye wad have been proud to have ta'en me in ! " The peddler fancied that he was hurling at his relative a scathing sarcasm : he did not see that he was simply stating a perfectly unquestionable fact. No doubt earthly, if he had come in a carriage-and-four, he would have got a hearty welcome, and he would have found his claim of kindred eagerly allowed. But he thought he was saying a bitter and cutting thing, and (strange to 90 CONCERNING say) the old ladj fancied .she was listening to a bitter and cutting thing. He was merely expressing a certain and innocuous truth. But though all mortals know that in this world big people meet greater respect than small (and quite right too), most mortals seem to find the prin- ciple a very un[)leasant one when it comes home to them- selves. And we learn but slowly to acquiesce in seeing ourselves plainly subordinated to other people. Poor Oliver Goldsmith was very angry when at the club one night he was stopped in the middle of a story by a Dutchman, who had noticed that the Great Bear was rolling about in preparation for speaking, and who ex- claimed to Goldsmith, '• Stop, stop ; Toctor Shonson is going to speak ! " Once I arrived at a certain railway station. Two old ladies wei-e waiting to go by the same train. I knew them well, and they expressed their de- light that we were going the same way. " Let us go in the same carriage," said the younger, in earnest tones ; "and will you be so very kind as to see about our lug- gage?" After a few minutes of the lively talk of the period and district, the train came up. I feel the tremor of the platform yet. I handed my friends into a car- riage, and then saw their baggage placed in the van. It was a station at which trains stop for a few minutes for refreshments. So I went to the door of the carriage into which I had put them, and waited a little before tak- ing my seat. I ex|)ected that my friends would proceed with the conversation which had been interrupted ; but to my astonishment I found that I had become wholly invisible to them. They did not see me or speak to me at all. In the carriage with them was a living peer, of wide estates and great rank, whom they knew. And so thoroughly did he engross their eyes and thoughts and THINGS SLOWLY LEARNT. 91 words, that they had become unaware of my presence, or even my existence. The stronger sensation rendered them unconscious of the weaker. Do you tliink I i'elt angry ? No, I did not. I felt very much aniu.-ed. I recognized a slight manifestation of a grand principle. It was a straw showing how a current sets, but for which Britain would not be the country it is. I took my seat in another carriage, and placidly read my Times. There was one lady in that carriage. I think she inferred, from the smiles which occasionally for the first few miles overspread my countenance without apparent cause, that my mind was slightly disordered. These are the two things already mentioned. But you cannot understand, friendly reader, what an effort it has cost me to treat them so briefly. The experienced critic will discern at a glance that the author could easily have made a great many pages out of the material you have here in very few. The author takes his stand upon this — that there are few people who can beat out thought so thin, or say so little in such a great number of words. I remember how a dear friend, once the editor of a cer- tain well-known magazine (whom all who knew him well miss more and more as days and weeks go on, and never will cease to miss), used to remark this fact in various warm-hearted and playful letters, with wonder not un- mixed with indignation. And I remember how a very great prelate (who could compress all I have said into a page and a half) once comforted me by telling me that for the consumption of many minds it was desirable that thought should be very greatly diluted ; that quantity as well as quality is needful in the dietetics both of the body and the mind. With this soothing reflection I close the present essay. 92 CONCERNING THINGS SLOWLY LEARNT. Annotations on the foregoing Chapter. By the Archbishop of Dublin. (1.) The Indian Brahmin who purchased, for a great price, an elaborate microscope which had shown him that he swallowed multitudes of minute animalcula? in every draught of water, dashed it to pieces, saying it should never inflict that misery upon others it had upon him. (2.) E. S. (now Lord St. L.), is the son of a hairdresser, said to have been very eminent in his own way. A gen- tlemali asked the man who was cutting his hair whether he remembered anything of him, " Oh, yes ; I remem- ber him very well when I was an apprentice. Wonderful man ! Had half-a-guinea for cutting hair! Nobody like him since ! " " Well," said the other, " his son is a very eminent man too in his way." " Oh, is he, sir ? " " Yes ; the first lawyer in England." " Oh, is he, sir — 1 never heard of him." (3.) A gentleman who was fond of attending at the Lord Mayor of London's, to hear the trials and petitions and memorials that were going on, heard a memorial sent in by some Chimney-Sweepers, who com[)lained of an interference which encroached on their annual May-Day festival, on which they dress themselves up and go round to receive contributions from their customers. They complained that their place had been usurped by certain Dustmen and other low fellows pretending to be Chimney- sweepers I w CHAPTER IV. GONE. ;e^ DGAR ALLAN FOE thought the most C'^ touching of all words, Nevermore ; which, in American fashion, he made one word. American writers do the like with Forever, I think with bad effect. EUesmere, in that most beauti- ful story of Gretchen, tells of a sermon he heard in Ger- many, in which " that pathetic word verloren (lost) oc- curred many times." Every one knows what Dr. Johnson wrote about The Last. It is, of course, a question of individual associations, and how it may strike different minds ; but I stand up for the unrivalled reach and pathos of the short word Gone. There is not very much difference, you see, between the three words. All are on the suburbs of the same idea. All convey the idea of a state of matters wdiich existed for a time, and which is now over. All suggest that the inmost longing of most human hearts is less for a future, untried happiness than for a return, a resurrec- tion, beautified and unalloyed with care, of what has already been. Somehow, we are ready to feel as if we were safest and surest with that. It is curious, that the saddest and most touching of human thoughts, when we run it up to its simplest form, is of so homely a thing as a material object existing in a 94 GONE. certain space, and then removing from that space to anotlier. That is the essential idea of Gone. Yet, in the commonest way, there is something touch- ing in that : something touching in the sight of vacant space, once filled by almost anything. You feel a blank- ness in the landscape when a tree is gone that you have known all your life. You are conscious of a vague sense of something lacking when even a post is pulled up that you remember always in the centre of a certain field. You feel this yet more when some familiar piece of fur- niture is taken away from a room which you know well. Here that clumsy easy-chair used to stand : and it is gone. You feel yourself an interloper, standing in the space where it stood so long. It touches you still more to look at the empty chair which you remember so often filled by one who will never fill it more. You stand in a large railway station : you have come to see a train depart. There is a great bustle on the platform, and there is a great quantity of human life, and of the interests and cares of human life, in those twelve or fourteen carriages, and filling that little space between the rails. You stand by and watch the warm interiors of the carriages, looking so large, and so full, and as if they had so much in them. There are people of every kind of aspect, children and old folk, multitudes of railway rugs, of carpet-bags, of portmanteaus, of parcels, of newspapers, of books, of magazines. At length you hear the last bell ; then comes that silent, steady pull, which is always striking, though seen ever so often. The train glides away : it is gone. You stand, and look vacantly at the place where it was. How little the space looks ; how blank the air ! There are the two rails, just four feet eight and a half inches apart: how close together they look ! You can hardly think that GONE. 95 there was so much of life, and of the interests of life, in so little room. Yon feel the power upon the average human being of the simple, commonplace fact, that some- thing has been here, and is gone. Then I go away in thought, to a certain pier : a pair of wooden piles, running two hundred yards into the sea, at a quiet spot on a lovely coast, where various steam- vessels call on a summer day. You stand at the seaward end of the pier, where it broadens into a considerable platform : and you look down on the deck of a steamer lying alongside. What a bustle : what a hive of liuman beings, and their children, and their baggage, their hopes, fears, and schemes, fills that space upon the water of a hundred and fifty feet long and twenty-five wide ! And what a deafening noise, too, of escaping steam fills the air ! Men with baggage dash up against you ; women shrilly vociferate above the roar of the steam ; it is a fragment of the vitality and hurry of the great city car- ried for a little to the quiet country-place. But the last rope is thrown off; the paddles turn ; the steamer moves — it is gone. There is the blank water, churned now into foam, but in a few minutes transparent green, show- ing the wooden piles, encrusted with shells, and with weeds that wave about below the surface. There you stand, and look vaguely, and think vaguely. It is a curious feeling. It is a feeling you do not understand except by experience. And to a thoughtful person a thing does not become commonplace because it is repeat- ed hundreds of thousands of times. There is something strange and something touching about even a steamboat going away from a pier at which a dozen call every day. But you sit upon the pier, you saunter upon the beach. 96 GONE. you read the newspapers ; you enjoy the sense of i-est. The day wears away, and in the evening the steamboat comes back again. It has travelled scores of miles, and carried many persons through many scenes, while you were resting and idling through these hours ; and the feeling you had when it was gone is effaced by its return. The going away is neutralized by the coming back. And to understand the full force of Gone in such a case, you must see a ship go, and see its vacant space when it is gone, when it goes away for a long time, and takes some with it who go forever. Perhaps you know by experi- ence what a choking sensation there is in looking at an emigrant vessel clearing out, even though you have no personal interest in any one on board. I have seen such a ship depart on her long voyage. I remember the confusion and hurry that attended her departure : the crowded deck, thronged with old and young ; gray-head- ed men bidding ftirewell to their native land ; and little children who would carry but dim remembrances of Britain to the distant Australian shore. And who that has witnessed such a scene can forget how, when the canvas was spread at length, and the last rope cast off, the outburst of sobs and weeping arose as the great ship solemnly passed away ? You could see that many who parted there, had not understood what parting means till they were in the act of going. You could see that the old parents who were willing, they thought, to part from their boy, because they thought his chances in life were so much better in the new country, had not quite felt what parting from him w\as, till he was gone. Have you ever been one of a large gay party who have made an excursion to some beautiful scene, and had a picnic festival ? Not that such festivals are much GONE. 97 to be approved ; at least to spots of very noble scenery. The noble scenery is vulgarized by thera. There is an inconsistency in seeking out a spot which ought to awe- strike, merely to make it a theatre for eating and drink- ing, for stupid joking and laughter. No ; let small-talk be manufactured somewhere else. And the influence of the lonely place is lost, its spirit is unfelt, unless you go alone, or go with very few, and these not boisterously merry. But let us accept the picnic as a fact. It has been, and the party has been very large and very lively. But go back to the place after the party is gone ; go back a minute after for something forgotten ; go back a month or a year after. What a little spot it is that you occupied, and how blank it looks ! The place remains, but the people are gone ; and we so lean to our kind, that the place alone occupies but a very little part in our recol- lection of any passage in our history in which there were both scenery and human life. Or go back after several years to the house where you and your brothers and sisters were children together, and you will wonder to find how small and how blank it will look. It will touch you, and perhaps deeply ; but still you will discern that not places, but persons, are the true objects of human affec- tion ; and you will think what a small space of material ground may be the scene of what are to you great human events and interests. It is so with matters on a grander scale. How little a space was ancient Greece — how" little a space the Holy Land ! Strip these of their his- tory and their associations, and they are insignificant. And history and associations are invisible ; and at the first glimpse of the place without them the place looks poor. Let the little child die that was the light and hope of a great dwelling, and you will understand the truth of 7 98 GONE. the poet's reflection on the loss of his : " 'T was strange that such a little thing, Should leave a blank so large ! " There is no place perhaps where you have such a feeling of blankness when life has gone fi-om it as in a church. It is less so, if the church be a very grand one, which compels you to attend to itself a good deal, even while the congregation is assembled. But if the church be a simple one, and the congregation a very large one, crowding the simple church, you hardly know it again when the congregation is gone. You could not believe that such a vast number of human beings could have been gathered in it. The place is unchanged, yet it is quite different. It is a curious feeling to look at the empty pulpit where a very great preacher once was ac- customed to preach. It is especially so if it be thirty years since he used to preach there ; more so, if it be many centuries. I have often looked at the pulpit whence Chalmers i^reached in the zenith of his fame ; you can no more bring up again the excited throng that sui-rounded it, and the rush of the great orator's elo- quence, than when standing under a great oak in De- cember you can call up plainly what it looked in June. And far less, standing under the dome of St. Sophia, could one recall as a present reality, or as anything but a dreamy fancy, the aspect and the eloquence of Chry- sostom, ages since gone. The feeling of blankness, which is the essential thing contained in the idea suggested by the word Gone, is one that touches us very nearly. It seems to get closer to us than even positive evil or suffering present with us. That fixes our attention : it arouses us ; and unless we be very weak indeed, awakens something of resist- ance. But in the other case, the mind is not stimulated : GONE. 90 it is receptive, not active ; and we muse and feel, va- cantly, in the thought of something gone. You are, let us suppose, a country parson ; you take your wife and children over to your railway-station, and you see them away to the seaside, whither you are not to follow for a fortnight : then you come back from the railway-station, and you reach home. The house is quite changed. How startlingly quiet it is ! You go to the nursery, usually a noisy place : you feel the silence. There are the pictures on the walls : there the little chairs : there some flowers, still quite fresh, lying upon a table, laid down by little hands. Gone ! There is something sad in it, even with the certainty of soon meeting again, — that is, so far as there is certainty in this world. You can imagine, distantly, what it would be if the little things were gone, not to return. That is the Gone con- summate. All who have heard it know the unuttera- ble sadness of the farewell of the Highland emigrant leaving his native hills. Y'ou would not laugh at the bagpipes, if you heard their wild wailing tones, blending with broken voices joining in that Macrimmon's Lament, whose perpetual refrain is just the statement of that con- summate Gone. I shall not write the Gaelic words, be- cause you could not pronounce them ; but the refrain is this : We return, ice return, loe return no more ! Yes ; Gone for ever ! And all to make room for deer ! There was a man whose little boy died. The father bore up wonderfully. But on the funeral day, after the little child was laid down to his long rest, the father went out to walk in the garden. There, in a corner, was the small wheelbarrow with its wooden spade ; and the foot-prints in the earth left by the little feet that were gone ! You do not think the less of the strongr man that at the sio;ht 100 GONE. he wept aloud : wept, as Some One Else had wept be- fore him. You may remember that Httle poem of Long- fellow's, in which he tells of a man, still young, who once had a wife and child : but wife and child were dead. There is no pathos like that of homely fact, which we may witness every day. They wei'e gone ; and after those years in their company, he was left alone. He walked about the world, with no one to care for him now, as they had cared. The life with them would seem like a dream, even if it had lasted for years. And all the sadder that so much of life might yet have to come. I do not mind about an old bachelor, in his sol- itary room. I think of the kind-hearted man, sitting in the evening in his chair by the fireside : once, when he sat down there, little pattering feet were about him and their little owners climbed upon his knee. Now, he may sit long enough, and no one will interrupt him. He may read his newspaper undisturbed. He may write his sermon, and no sly knock come to the door : no little dog walk in, with much barking quite unlike that of common dogs, and ask for a penny. Gone ! I remember, long ago, reading a poem called the Scot- tish Widow's Lament, written by some nameless poet. The widow had a husband and two little children, but one bleak winter they all went together : — I ettle whiles to spin, But wee, wee patterin' feet, Come vuniiin' out and in, And then I just maun greet. I ken ifs fancy a' And faster flows the tear, That my a' dwiiied awa', Sin' the fa' o' the year. You have said good-bye to a dear friend who has GONE. 101 stayed a few days with you, and whom you will not see again for long : and you have, for a while, felt the house very blank without him. Did you ever think how the house would seem, without yourself? Have you fancied yourself gone ; and the place, blank of that figure you know ? Wheti I am gone ; let us not say these words unless seriously ; they express what is, to each of us the most serious of all facts. The May Queen has few lines which touch me more than these : — For lying broad awake I thought of you and EflSe dear; I saw you sitting in the house, and I no longer here. Lord Macaulay, a few years before he died, had some- thing presented to him at a great pubhc meeting in Scot- land ; something which pleased him much. " I shall treasure it," he said, " as long as I live ; and after I am gone " — There the great man's voice faltered, and the sentence remained unfinished. Yet the thought at which Macaulay broke down, may touch many a lesser man more. For when we are gone, my friends, we may leave behind us those who cannot well spare us. It is not for one's own sake, that the Gone, so linked with one's own name, touches so much. We have had enough of this world before very long ; and (as Uncle Tom ex- pressed it) " heaven is better than Kentuck." But we can think of some, for whose sake we may wish to put off" our going as long as may be. " Our minister," said a Scotch rustic, " aye preaches aboot goin' to heaven ; but he'll never go to heaven as long as he can get stoppin' at Drumsleekie." No doubt, that fit of toothache may be gone ; or that unwelcome guest who stayed with you three weeks 102 GONE. whether you would or not; as well as the thing or tlie friend you most value. And there is the auctioneer's Going, going, as well as this July sun going down in glory. But 1 defy you to vulgarize the word. The water which makes the Atlantic will always be a sub- lime sight, though you may have a little of it in a dirty puddle. And though the stupid bore who comes when you are busy, and wastes your time, may tell you when you happily get rid of him, that he will often come back again to see you (ignorant that you instantly direct your servant never to admit him more), even that cannot de- tract from the beauty of Mr. Tennyson's lines, in which the dying girl, as she is going, tells her mother that after she is gone, she will (if it may be) often come back : — If I can I'll come again, mother, from out my resting-place; Though j'ou"ll not see me, mother, I shall look upon j'our face: Though I cannot speak a word, I shall hearken what you saj', And be often, often with you, when you think I'm far away. CHAPTER V. CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. I T is recorded in history that at a certain pub- lic dinner in America a Methodist preacher was called on to give a toast. It may be supposed that the evening was so far ad- vanced, that every person present had been toasted already, and also all the friends of every one present. It thus happened that the Methodist preacher was in considerable pprplexity as to the question, what being, or class of beings, should form the subject of his toast. But the good man was a person of large sympathies ; and some happy link of association recalled to his mind certain words with which he had a professional familiar- ity, and which set forth a subject of a most comprehen- sive character. Arising from his seat, the Metliodist preacher said that, without troubling the assembled com- pany with any preliminaiy observations, he begged to propose the health of All people that on Earth DO dwell. Not unnaturally, I have thought of that Methodist preacher and his toast as I begin to write this essay. For though its subject was suggested to me by various little things of very small concern to mankind in general, though of great interest to one or two individual beings^ 104 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM I now discern that the subject of this essay is in truth as comprehensive as tlie subject of that toast. I have some- thing to say Concerning People of whom More might have been Made : I see now that the class which 1 have named includes every human being. More might have been made, in some respect, possibly in many respects, of All people that on earth do dwell. Physically, intellectually, morally, spiritually, more miglit have been made of all. Wise and diligent training on the part of others ; self- denial, industry, tact, decision, promptitude, on the part of the man himself; might have made something far better than he now is of every man that breathes. No one is made the most of. There have been human beings who have been made the most of as regards some one thing ; who have had some single power developed to the utmost; but no one is made the most of, all round; no one is even made the most of as regards the two or three most impor- tant things of all. And indeed it is curious to observe that the things in which human beings seem to have at- tained to absolute perfection, have for the most part been things comparatively frivolous ; accomplishments which certainly were not worth the labor and the time which it must have cost to master them. Thus, M. Blondin has probably made as much of himself as can be made of mortal, in the respect of walking on a rope stretched at a great height from the ground. Hazlitt makes mention of a man who had cultivated to the very highest degree the art of playing at rackets ; and who accordingly played at rackets incomparably better than any one else ever did. A wealthy gentleman, lately deceased, by putting his whole mind to the pursuit, esteemed himself to have reached entire perfection in the matter of killing otters. Various individuals have probably developed the power MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. 105 of turning somersets, of picking pockets, of playing on the piano, jew's-harp, banjo, and penny trnmpet, of men- tal calculation in arithmetic, of insinuating evil about their neighbors without directly asserting anything, — to a measure as great as is possible to man. Long practice and great concentration of mind upon these things, have sufficed to produce what might seem to tremble on the verge of perfection : what unquestionably leaves the at- tainments of ordinary people at an inconceivable distance behind. But I do not call it making the most of a man, to develop, even to perfection, the power of turning som- ersets and playing at rackets. I call it making the most of a man, when you make the best of his best powers and qualities ; when you take those things about hira which are the worthiest and most admirable, and culti- vate these up to their highest attainable degree. And it is in this sense that the statement is to be understood, that no one is made the most of. Even in the best, we see no more than the rudiments of good qualities which might have been developed into a great deal more ; and in very many human beings, proper management might have brought out qualities essentially different from those which these beings now possess. It is not merely that they are rough diamonds, which might have been pol- ished into blazing ones ; not merely that they are thor- oughbred colts drawing coal-carts, which with fair train- ing would have been new Eclipses : it is that they are vinegar which might have been wine, poison which might have been food, wild-cats which might have been harmless lambs, soured miserable wretches who might have been happy and useful, almost devils who might have been but a little lower than the angels. Oh the unuttei-able sad- ness that is in the thought of what might have been ! 106 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM Not always, indeed. Sometimes, as we look back, it is with deep thankfulness that we see the point at which we were (we cannot say how) inclined to take the right turning, when we were all but resolved to take that which we can now see would have landed us in wreck and ruin. And it is fit that we should correct any morbid tendency to brood upon the foncy of how much better we might have been, by remembering also how much worse we might have been. Sometimes the present state of mat- ters, good or bad, is the result of long training ; of influ- ences that were at work tlu'ough many years ; and that produced their effect so gradually that we never remarked the steps of the process, till some day we waken up to a sense of the fact, and find ourselves perhaps a great deal better, probably a great deal worse, than we had been vaguely imagining. But the case is not unfrequently otherwise. Sometimes one testing time decided whether we should go to the left or to the right. There are in the moral world things analogous to the sudden acci- dent which makes a man blind or lame for life : in an instant there is wrought a permanent deterioration. Per- haps a few minutes before man or woman took the step which can never be retraced, which must banish thera forever from all they hold dear, and compel them to seek in some new country far away a place where to hide their shame and misery, they had just as little thought of taking that miserable step as you, my reader, have of taking one like it. And perhaps there are human beings in this world, held in the highest esteem, and with not a speck on their snow-white reputation, wl.o know within tlicmselves that they have barely es- caped the gulf; that the moment has been in which all their future lot was trembling in the balance ; and that MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. 107 a grain's weight more in the scale of evil, and by this time they might have been reckoned among the most de- graded and abandoned of the race. But probably the first deviation, either to right or left, is in most cases a very small one. You know, my friend, what is meant by the jwmfs upon a railway. By moving a lever, the rails upon which the train is advancing are, at a certain place, broadened or narrowed by about the eighth of an inch. That little movement decides whether the train shall go north or south. Twenty cai*riages have come so far together; but here is a junction station, and the train is to be divided. The first ten carriages deviate from the main line by a fraction of an inch at first ; but in a few minutes the two portions of the train are flying on, miles apart. You cannot see tiie one from the other, save by distant puffs of white steam through the clumps of trees. Perhaps ah'eady a high hill has intervened, and each train is on its solitary way — one to end its course, after some hours, amid the roar and smoke and bare ugliness of some huge manufacturing town ; and the other to come through green fields to the quaint, quiet, dreamy- looking little city, whose place is marked, across the plain, by the noble spire of the gray cathedral rising into the summer blue. We come to such points in our jour- ney through life : railway-points (as it were), which de- cide not merely our lot in life, but even what kind of folk we shall be, morally and intellectually. A hair's- breadth may make the deviation at first. Two situations are offered you at once : you think there is hardly any- thing to choose between them. It does not matter which you accept ; and perhaps some slight and fanciful con- sideration is allowed to turn the scale. But now you look back, and you can see that there was the tui-ning- 108 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM point in your life ; it was because you went there to the right, and not to the left, that you are now a great Eng- lish prehite and not a humble Scotch professor. Was there not a time in a certain great man's Hfe, at which the lines of rail diverged, and at which the question was settled, should he be a minister of the Scotch Kirk, or should he be Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain ? I can im- agine a stage in the history of a lad in a counting-house, at which the little angle of rail may be pushed in or pushed back that shall send the train to one of two places five hundred miles asunder ; it may depend upon whether he shall take or not take that half-crown, whether, thii'ty years after, he shall be taking the chair, a rubicund bar- onet, at a missionary society meeting, and receive the commendations of philanthropic peers and earnest bish- ops ; or be laboring in chains at Norfolk Island, a bru- talized, cursing, hardened, scourge-scarred, despairing wretch, without a hope for this life or the other. Oh, how much may turn upon a little thing ! Because the railway train in whicli you were coming to a certain place was stop[)ed by a snow-storm, the whole character of your life may have been changed. Because some one was in the drawing-room when you went to see Miss Smith on a certain day, resolved to put to her a certain question, you missed the tide, you lost your chance, you went away to Australia and never saw her more. It fell upon a day that a ship, coming from Melbourne, was weathering a rocky point on an iron-bound coast, and was driven close upon that perilous shore. They tried to put her about ; it was the last chance. It was a mo- ment of awful risk and decision. If the wind catches the sails, now shivering as the ship comes up, on the right side, then all on board are safe. If the wind MORE MKJIIT HAVE BEEN MADE. 109 catches the sails on the other side, then all on board must perish. And so it all depends upon which sur- face of certain square yards of canvas the uncertain breeze shall strike, whether John Smith, who is coming home from the diggings with twenty thousand pounds, shall go down and never be heard of again by his poor mother and sisters away in Scotland ; or whether he shall get safely' back, a rich man, to gladden their hearts, and buy a pretty little place, and improve the house on it into the pleasantest picture ; and purchase, and ride, and drive va- rious horses ; and be seen on market days sauntering in the High-street of the county town ; and get married, and run about the lawn before his door, chasing his little chil- dren ; and become a decent elder of the Church ; and live quietly and happily for many years. Yes : from what pre- cise point of the compass the next flaw of wind should come, would decide the question between the long homely life in Scotland, and a nameless burial deep in a foreign sea. It seems to me to l^e one of the main characteristics of human beings, not that they actually are much, but that they are something of which much may be made. There are untold potentialities in human nature. The tree cut down, concerning which its heathen owner debated wheth- er he should make it into a god or into a three-legged stool, was positively nothing in its capacity of coming to different ends and developments, when we compare it with each human being born into this world. Man is not so much a thing already, as he is the germ of something. He is (so to speak) material formed to the hand of circumstan- ces. He is essentially a germ, either of good or evil. And he is not like the seed of a plant, in whose develop- ment the tether allows no wider range than that between the more or less successful manifestation of its inherent no CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM nature. Give a young tree fair play : good soil and abundant air ; tend it carefully, in short, and yop will have a noble tree. Treat the young tree unfairly : give it a bad soil, deprive it of needful air and light, and it will grow up a stunted and poor tree. But in the case of the human being, there is more than this difference in degree. There may be a difference in kind. The human being may grow up to be (as it were) a fair and healthful fruit tree, or to be a poisonous one. There is something positively awful about the potentialities that are in human nature. The Archbishop of Canterbury might have grown up under influences which would have made him a bloodthirsty pirate or a sneaking pickpocket. The pirate or the pickpocket, taken at the right time, and trained in the right way, might have been made a pious exemplary man. You remember that good divine, two hundred years since, who, standing in the market-place of a cer- tain town, and seeing a poor wretch led by him to the gallows, said, "There goes myself, but for the grace of God." Of course, it is needful that human laws should hold all men as equally responsible. The punishment of such an offence is such an inHiction, no matter who com- mitted the offence. At least the mitigating circumstan- ces which human laws can take into account must be all of a very plain and intelligible character. It would not do to recognize anything like a graduated scale of respon- sibility. A very bad training in youth would be in a certain limited sense regarded as lessening the guilt of any wrong thing done ; and you may remember accord- ingly how that magnanimous monarch, Charles II., urged to the Scotch lords, in extenuation of the wrong things he had done, that his father had given him a very bad education. But though human laws and judges may MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. Ill vainly and clumsily endeavor to fix each wrong-doer's place in the scale of responsibility ; and though they must, hi a rough way, do what is rough justice in five cases out of six ; still we may well believe that in the view of the Su- preme Judge the responsibilities of men are most delicately graduated to their 0|)portunities. There is One who will appreciate with entire accuracy the amount of guilt that is in each wrong deed of each wrongdoer, and mercifully al- low for such as never had a chance of being anything but wrongdoers. And it will not matter whether it was from original constitution or from unhappy training that these poor creatures never had that chance. I was lately quite astonished to learn that some sincere but stupid American divines have fallen foul of the eloquent author of Elsie Venner, and accused him of fearful heresy, because he de- clared his confident belief that " God would never make a man with a crooked spine and then punish him for not standing upright." Why, that statement of the Autocrat appears to me at least as certain as that two and two make four. It may indeed contain some recondite and malignant reference which the stupid American divines know, and which I do not : it may be a mystic Shibboleth indicating far more than it asserts ; as at one time in Scotland it was esteemed as proof that a clergyman ])reached unsound doctrine if he made use of the Lord's Prayer. But, understanding it simply as meaning that the Judge of all the earth will do right, it appears to me an axiom beyond all question. And I take it as putting in a compact form the spirit of what I have been arguing for — to wit, that though human law must of necessity hold all rational beings as alike responsible, yet in the eye of God the difference may be immense. The graceful vase that stands in the drawinsc-room under a 112 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM glass shade, and never goes to the well, has no great right to despise the rough pitcher that goes often and is broken at last. It is fearful to think what malleable material we are in the hands of circumstances. And a certain Autliority, considerably wiser and incomparably more charitable than the American divines already men- tioned, has recognized the fact when lie taught us to pray, " Lead us not into temptation ! " We shall think, in a little while, of certain influences which may make or mar the human being ; but it may be said here, that I firmly believe that happiness is one of the best of disciplines. As a general rule, if people were happier, they would be better. When you see a poor cabman on a winter day, soaked with rain, and fevered with gin, violently thrashing the wretched horse he is driving, and perhaps howling at it, you may be sure that it is just because the poor cabman is so miserable that he is doing all that. It is a sudden glimpse, perhaps, of his bare home and hungry children, and of the dreary fu- ture which lies before himself and them, that was the true cause of those two or three furious lashes you saw him deal upon the unhappy screw's ribs. Whenever I read any article in a review, which is manifestly ma- lignant, and intended not to improve an author but to give him pain, I cannot help immediately wondering what may have been the matter with the man who wrote the malignant article. Something must have been mak- ing him very unhappy, I think. I do not allude to playful attacks upon a man, made in 2)ure thoughtless- ness and buoyancy of spirit ; but to attacks which indi- cate a settled, deliberate, calculating rancor. Never be angry with the man who makes such an attack ; you ougiit to be sorry for him. It is out of great misery MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. llo that malignity for tlie most part proceeds. To give the ordinary mortal a fair chance, let him be reasonably successful and happy. Do not worry a man into nerv- ous irritability, and he will be amiable. Do not dip a man in water, and he will not be wet. Of course, my friend, I know who is to you the most interesting of all beings ; and whose history is the most interesting of all histories. Tou are to yourself the cen- tre of this world, and of all the interests of this world. And this is quite right. There is no selfishness about all this, except that selfishness which forms an essential ele- ment in personality ; that selfishness which must go with the fact of one's having a self. You cannot help looking at all things as they appear from your own point of view ; and things press themselves upon your attention and your feeling as they affect yourself. And apart from anything like egotism, or like vain self-conceit, it is probable that you may know that a great deal depends upon your exer- tion and your life. There are those at home who would fare but i)oorly if you were jnst now to die. There are those who must rise with you if you rise, and sink with you if you sink. Does it sometimes suddenly strike you, what a little object you are, to have so much depending on you ? Vaguely, in your thinking and feeling, you add your circumstances and your lot to your personality ; and these make up an object of considerable extension. You do so with other people as well as with yourself. You have all their belongings as a background to the picture of them which you have in your mind ; and they look very little when you see them in fact, because you see them witiiout these belongings. I remember when a boy, how disappointed I was at first seeing the Arch- bishop of Canterbury. It was Archbishop Howley. 8 114 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM There he was, a slender pale old gentleman, sitting in an arm-chair at a public meeting. I was chiefly disap- pointed, because there was so little of him. There was just the human being. There was no background of grand accessories. The idea of the Primate of Eng- land which I had in some confused manner in my mind, included a vision of the venerable towers of Lambeth, — of a long array of solemn predecessors, from Thomas A'Becket downwards, — of great historical occasions on which the Archbishop of Canterbury had been a promi- nent figure ; and in some way I fancied, vaguely, that you would see the primate surrounded by all these things. You remember the highlander in Waverley who was much mortified when his chief came to meet an English guest, unattended by any retinue ; and who ex- claimed in consternation and sorrow, " He has come without his tail ! " Even such was my early feeling. You understand, later, that associations are not visible ; and that they do not add to a man's extension in space. But (to go back) you do, as regards youi'self, what you do as regards greater men ; you add your lot to your personality, and thus you make up a bigger ob- ject. And when you see yourself in your tailor's shop, in a large mirror (one of a series) wherein you see your figure all round, reflected several times, your feeling will probably be, what a little thing you are ! If you are a wise man, you will go away somewhat humbled, and pos- sibly somewhat the better for the sight. You have, to a certain extent, done what Burns thought it would do all men much good to do ; you have " seen yourself as others see you." And even to do so physically, is a step towards a juster and humbler estimate of yourself in more impor- tant things. It may here be said as a further illustration MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. 115 of the principle set forth, that people who stay very much at home, feel their stature, bodily and mental, much les- sened when they go far away from home, and spend a little time among strange scenes and people. For, going thus away from home, you take only yourself. It is but a small part of your extension that goes. You go ; but you leave behind your house, your study, your children, your servants, your horses, your garden. And not only do you leave them behind ; but they grow misty and un- substantial when you arc far away from them. And somehow you feel that when you make the acquaintance of a new friend some hundreds of miles off, who never saw your home and your family, you present yourself be- fore him, only a twentieth part or so of what you feel yourself to be when you have all your belongings about you. Do you not feel all that ? And do you not feel, that if you were to go away to Australia for ever, almost as the English coast turned blue and then invisible on the horizon, your life in England would first turn cloud-like, and then melt away ? But without further discussing the philosophy of how it comes to be, I return to the statement that you your- self, as you live in your home, are to 3'ourself the centre of this world ; and that you feel the force of any great principle most deeply, when you feel it in your own case. And though every worthy mortal must be often taken out of himself, especially by seeing the deep sorrows and great failures of other men, still, in thinking of people of whom more might have been made, it touches you most to discern that you are one of these. It is a very sad thing to think of yourself, and to see how much more might have been made of you. Sit down by the fire in winter ; or go out now in summer and sit down under a 116 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM tree ; and look back on the moral discipline 3'ou have gone through ; look back on what you have done and suffered. Oh how much better and happier you might have been ! And how very near you have often been to what would have made you so much happier and better! If you had taken the other turning when you took the wrong one, after much perplexity ; if you had refrained from saying such a hasty word ; if you had not thought- lessly made such a man your enemy ! Such a little thing may have changed the entire complexion of your life. Ah, it was because the points were turned the wrong way at that junction, that you are now running along a line of railway through wild moorlands, leaving the warm champaign below ever more hopelessly behind. Hastily, 'or pettedly, or despairingly, you took the wrong turning; or you might have been dwelling now amid verdant fields and silver waters in the country of contentment and suc- cess. Many men and women, in the temporary bitterness of some disappointment, have hastily made marriages which will embitter all their future life ; or which at least make it certain that in this world they will never know a joyous heart any more. Men have died as almost briefless barristers, toiling into old age in heartless wran- gling, who had their chance of high places on the bench ; but ambitiously resolved to wait for something higher ; and so missed the tide. Men in the church have taken the wrong path at some critical time ; and doomed them- selves to all the pangs of disappointed ambition. But I think a sincere man in the church has a great advantage over almost all ordinary disappointed men. He has less temptation, reading affairs by the light of after-time, to look back with bitterness on any mistake he may have made. For if he be the man I mean, he took the deci- MORE MKiHT HAVE BEEN MADE. 1 1 7 sive step not without seeking the best of guidance ; and the whole training of his mind has fitted him for seeing a higher Hand in the allotment of human conditions. And if a man acted for the best, according to the light he had; and if he truly believes that God puts all in their places in life : he may look back without bitterness upon what may appear the most grievous mistakes. I must be suf- fered to add, that if he is able heartily to hold certain great truths, and to rest on certain sure promises, hardly any conceivable earthly lot should stamp him a soured or disappointed man. If it be a sober truth, that ''all things shall work together for good " to a certain order of mankind ; and if the deepest sorrows in this world may serve to prepare us for a better ; why, then, I think that one might hold by a certain ancient philosopher (and something more), who said " I have learned, in whatso- ever state 1 am, therewith to be content ! " You see, reader, that in thinking of People of whom more might have been made, we are limiting the scope of the subject. I am not thinking how more might have been made of us originally. No doubt the potter had power over the clay. Give a larger brain, of finer qual- ity, and the commonplace man might have been a Milton. A little change in the chemical composition of the gray matter of that little organ which is unquestionably con- nected with the mind's working as no other organ of the body is, and oil, what a different order of thought would have rolled off from your pen when you sat down and tried to write your best ! If we are to believe Robert Burns, some people have been made more of than was originally intended. A certain poem records how that which, "in his homely phrase, he calls " stuflf to mak' a 118 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM swine," was ultimately converted into a very poor speci- men of a human being. The poet had no irreverent intention, I dare say ; but I am not about to go into the field of speculation which is opened up by his words. I know indeed that in the hands of the Creator each of us might have been made a different man. The pounds of material which were fashioned into Shakespeare might have made a bumpkin with little thought beyond pigs and turnips; or, by some slight difference beyond man's skill to trace, might have made an idiot. A little infu- sion of energy into the mental constitution might have made the mild, pensive day-dreamer who is wandering listlessly by the river-side, sometimes chancing upon noble thoughts, which he does not carry out into action, and does not even write down on paper, into an active worker, with Arnold's keen look, wlio would have carved out a great career for himself, and exercised a real influ- ence over the views and conduct of numbers of other men. A very little alteration in feature might have made a plain face into a beautiful one, and some slight change in the position or the contractibility of certain of the muscles might have made the most awkward of manners and gaits into the most dignified and graceful. All that we all understand. But my present subject is the making which is in circumstances after our natural disposition is fixed — the training, coming from a hun- dred quarters, which forms the material supplied by nature into the character which each of us actually bears. And setting apart the case of great genius, whose bent towards the thing in which it will excel is so strong that it will find its own field by inevitable se- lection, and whose strength is such that no unfavorable circumstances can hold it down, almost any ordinary hu- MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. 119 aian being may be formed into almost any development. I know a huge massive beam of rough iron, which sup- ports a great weiglit. Whenever I pass it, I cannot help giving it a pat with my hand, and saying to it, "You might have been hair-springs for watches." I know an odd-looking little man attached to a certain railway-sta- tion, whose business it is when a train comes in to go round it with a large box of a yellow concoction, and supply grease to the wheels. I have often looked out of the carriage-window at that odd little man, and thought to myself, "Now you might have been a chief justice." And indeed I can say from personal observation, that the stuflf ultimately converted into cabinet ministers does not at an early stage at all appreciably differ from that which never becomes more than country parsons. There is a great gulf between the human being who gratefully receives a shilling, and touches his cap as he receives it, and the human being whose income is paid in yearly or half-yearly sums, and to whom a pecuniary tip would ap- pear as an insult ; yet of course tliat great gulf is the result of training alone. John Smith tlie laborer, with twelve shillings a week, and the bishop with eight thousand a year, had, by original constitution, precisely the same kind of feeling towards that much-sought yet much-abused reality which provides the means of life. Who shall reckon up by what millions of slight touches from the hand of cir- cumstance, extending over many years, the one man is gradually formed into the giving of the shilling, and the other man into the receiving of it with that touch of his hat? Who shall read back the forming influences at work since the days in the ci'adle, that gradually formed one man into sitting down to dinner, and another man into waiting behind his chair ? I think it would be occa- 120 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM sionally a comfort if one could believe, as American planters profess to believe about their slaves, that there is an original and essential difference between men ; for truly the difference in their positions is often so tremen- dous that it is painful to think that it is the selfsame clay and the selfsame common mind that are promoted to dignity and degraded to servitude. And if yoa some- times feel that, you in whose favor the arrangement tends, what do you suppose your servants sometimes think upon the subject ? It was no wonder that the millions of Rus- sia were ready to grovel before their Czar, while they believed that he was "an emanation from the Deity." But in countries where it is quite understood that every man is just as much an emanation from the Deity as any other, you Avill not long have that sort of thing. You remember Goldsmith's noble lines, which Dr. Johnson never could read without tears, concerning the English character. It is not true that it is just because the hum- ble but intelligent Englishman understands distinctly that we are all of us people of tvhom more might have been made, that he has " learnt to venerate himself as man ! " And, thinking of influences which form the character, there is a sad reflection which has often occurred to me. It is, that circumstances often develop a character which it is hard to contemplate without anger and disgust. And yet in many such cases it is rather pity that is due. The moie disgusting the character formed in some men, the more you should pity them. Yet it is hard to do that. You easily pity the man whom circumstances have made poor and miserable ; how much more you should pity the man whom circumstances have made bad. You pity the man from whom some terrible accident has taken a limb or a hand ; but how mucii more should you pity MORE ISIIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. 121 the man from whom the influences of years have taken a conscience and a heart ! And something is to be said for even the most unamiable and worst of the race. No doubt it is mainly their own fault that they are so bad; but still it is hard work to be always rowing against wind and tide, and some people could be good only by doing that ceaselessly. I am not thinking now of pirates and pickpockets. But take the case of a sour, backbiting, malicious, wrong-headed, lying old woman, who gives her life to saying disagreeable things and making mis- chief between friends. There are not many mortals with whom one is less disposed to have patience. But yet, if you knew all, you would not be so severe in what you think and say of her. You do not know the phy- sical iri'itability of nerve and weakness of constitution which that poor creature may have inherited ; you do not know the singular twist of mind which she may have got from nature and from bad and unkind treat- ment in youth; you do not know the bitterness of heart she has felt at the polite snubbings and ladylike tortures which in excellent society are often the share of the poor and the dependent. If you knew all these things, you would bear more patiently with my friend Miss Lime- juice ; though I confess that sometimes you would find it uncommonly hard to do so. As I wrote that last paragraph, I began dimly to fancy that somewhere I had seen the idea which is its subject treated by an abler hand by far than mine. The idea, you may be sure, was not suggested to me by books, but by what I have seen of men and women. But it is a pleasant thing to find that a thought which at the time is strongly impressing one's self, has impressed other men. And a modest person, who knows very nearly what his 122 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM humble mark is, will be quite pleased to find that another man has not onl}- anticipated his thoughts, but has ex- pressed them much better than he could have done. Yes, let me turn to that incomparable essay of John Foster, On a Man's writing Memoirs of Himself. Here it is : — Make the supposition that any given number of persons, a hundred, for instance, taken promiscuously, should be able to write memoirs of themselves so clear and perfect as to explain, to your discernment at least, the entire process by which their minds have attained their pres- ent state, recounting' all the most impressive circumstances. If they should read these memoirs to j'ou in succession, while your benevo- lence and the moral principles according to which you felt and esti- mated, were kept at the highest pitch, you would often, during the disclosure, regret to observe how many things may be the causes of irretrievable mischief. Why is the path of life, you would sa}-, so haunted as if with evil spirits of every diversity of noxious agency, some of which may patiently aecompan3', or others of which may snd- denlj' cross, the unfortunate wanderer? And you would regret to ob- serve into how many forms of intellectual and moral pervcrsio"h the human mind readily yields itself to be modified. I compassionate you, would, in a very benevolent hour, be your language to the wealthy, unfeeling tyrant of a family and a neirjhbor- hood, who seeks in the overawed timidity and unretaliated injuries of the unfortunate beings within his power, the gratification that should have been sought in their alfections. Unless you had brought into the world some extraordinary refractoriness to the influence of evil, the process that you have undergone could not easily fail of being efficacious. If your parents idolized their own importance in their son so much, that they never opposed your inclinations themselves, nor permitted it to be done by any subject to their authoritj'; if the hum- ble companion, sometimes summoned to the honor of amusing you, bore your caprices and insolence with the meekness without which he had lost his enviable privilege; if j'ou could despoil the garden of some nameless dependent neighbor of the carefully reared flowers, and tor- ment his little dog or cat, without his daring to punish you or to appeal to j'our infatuated parents; if ■ aged men addressed you in a submissive tone, and with the appellation of " Sir," and their aged wives uttered their wonder at your condescension, and pushed their grandchildren awaj' from around the fire for your sake, if you hap- pened, though with the strut of pertness, and your hat on your head, MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. 123 to enter one of their cottages, perhajis to express your contempt of the homely dwelling, furniture, and fare; if, in maturer life, you associated with vile persons, who would forego the contest of equality to be your allies in trampling on inferiors ; and if, both then and since, you have been suffered to deem 3-our wealth the compendium or equivalent of ever}' ability and every good quality — it would indeed be immensely strange if you had not become, in due time, the miscreant, who may thank the power of the laws in civilized society that he is not assaulted with clubs and stones; to whom one could cordially wish the oppor- tunity and the consequences of attempting his tyranny among some such people as those submissive sons of nature in the forests of North America; and whose dependents and domestic relatives may be almost forgiven when they shall one da}- rejoice at his funeral. What do you think of that, my reader, as a specimen of embittered eloquence and nervous pith ? It is some- thing to read massive and energetic sense, in days wherein mystical twaddle, and subtlety which hopelessly defies all logic, are sometimes thought extremely fine, if they are set out in a style which is refined into mere effeminacy. 1 cherish a very strong conviction (as has been said) that, at least in the case of educated people, happiness is a grand discipline for bringing out what is amiable and excellent. You understand, of course, what I mean by happiness. "NVe all know, of course, that light hearted- ness is not very familiar to grown-up people, who are doing the work of life — who feel its many cares, and who do not forget the many risks which hang over it. I am not thinking of the kind of thing which is suggested to the minds of children, when they read, at the end of a tale, concerning its heroine and hero, that " they lived happily ever after." No ; we don't look for that. By happiness, I mean freedom from terrible anxiety and from pervading depression of spirits : the consciousness that we are filling our place in life with decent success 124 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM and approbation : religious principle and character: fair physical health throughout the family; and moderate good temper and good sense. And I hold, with Sydney Smith, and with that keen practical philosopher, Becky Sharpe, that happiness and success tend very greatly to make people passably good. Well, I see an answer to the statement, as I do to most statements ; but, at least, the beam is never subjected to the strain which would break it. I have seen the gradual working of what 1 call happiness and success in amelioiating character. 1 have known a man who, by necessity, by the pressure of poverty, was driven to write for the magazines: a kind of work for which he had no special talent or liking, and which he had never intended to attempt. There was no more miserable, nervous, anxious, disappointed being on earth than he was when he began his writing for the press. And sure enough his articles were bitter and ill- set to a high degree. They were thoi'oughly ill-natured and bad. They were not devoid of a certain cleverness ; but they were the sour products of a soured nature. But that man gradually got into comfortable circumstances : and with equal step with his lot the tone of his writings mended; till as a writer he became conspicuous for the healthful, cheerful, and kindly nature of all he produced. I remember seeing a portrait of an eminent author, taken a good many years ago, at a time when he was strug- gling into notice, and when he was being very severely handled by the critics. That jjortrait was really trucu- lent of as[)ect. It was sour, and even ferocious-looking. Years afterwards I saw that author, at a time when he had attained vast success, and was universally recognized as a great man. How improved that face ! All the sav- age lines were gone : the bitter look was gone : the great MOKE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. 125 man looked quite genial and amiable. And I came to know that he really was all he looked. Bitter judgments of men, imputations of evil motives, disbelief in anything noble or generous, a disposition to repeat tales to the prejudice of others, envy, hatred, malice, and all unchari- tableness, — all these things may possibly come out of a bad heart ; but they certainly came out of a miserable one. The happier any human being is, the better and more kindly he thinks of all. It is the man who is al- ways worried, whose means are uncertain, whose home is uncomfortable, whose nerves are rasped by some kind friend who daily repeats and enlarges upon everything disagreeable for him to hear : it is he who thinks hardly of the character and prospects of humankind, and who believes in the essential and unimprovable badness of the race. . This is not a treatise on the formation of character : it pretends to nothing like completeness. If this essay were to extend to a volume of about three hundred and eighty pages, I might be able to set out and discuss, in sometliing like a fulljmd orderly fashion, the influences under which human beings grow up, and the way in which to make the best of the best of these influences, and to evade or neutralize the worst. And if, after great thought and labor, I had produced such a volume, I am well aware that nobody would read it. So I prefer to briefly glance at a few aspects of a great subject just as they present tliemselves, leaving the complete discussion of it to solid individuals with more leisure at their command. Physically, no man is made the most of. Look at an acrobat or a boxer : there is what your limbs might have 126 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM been made for strength and agility. That is the potential which is in human nature in these respects. I never witnessed a prize-fight, and assuredly I never will wit- ness one : but I am told that when the champions appear in the ring, stripped for the combat (however bestial and blackguard-looking their countenances may be), the clear- ness and beauty of their skin testify that by skilful phy- sical discipline a great deal more may be made of that human hide than is usually made of it. Then if you wish to see what may be made of th^ human muscles as regards rapid dexterity, look at the Wizard of the North or at an Indian juggler. I am w^vy far indeed from say- ing or thinking that this peculiar pre-eminence is worth the pains it must cost to acquire it. Not that I have a w^ord to say against the man who maintains his children by bringing some one faculty of the body to absolute per- fection : I am ready even to admit that it is a very right and fit thing that one man in five or six millions should devote his life to showing the very utmost that can be made of the human fingers, or the human muscular sys- tem as a whole : it is fit that a rare man here and there should cultivate some accomplishment to a perfection that looks magical, just as it is fit that a man here and there should live in a house that cost a million of pounds to build, and round which a wide tract of country shows what may be made of trees and fields where unlimited wealth and exquisite taste have done their best to im- prove nature to the fairest forms of which it is capable. But even if it were possible, it would not be desirable that all human beings should live in dwellings like Ham- ilton Palace or Arundel Castle ; and it would serve no good end at all, certainly no end worth the cost, to have all educated men muscular as Tom Sayers, or swift of MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. 127 hand as Robert Hoiidin. Practical efficiency is what is wanted for the business of this world, not absolute per- fection : life is too short to allow any but exceptional in- dividuals, few and far between, to acquire the power of playing at rackets as well as rackets can possibly be played. We are obliged to have a great number of irons in the fire : it is needful that we should do decently well a great number of things; and we must not devote our- selves to one thing to the exclusion of all the rest. And accordingly, though we may desire to be reasonably mus- cular and reasonably active, it will not disturb us to tliink that in both these respects we are people of whom more might have been made. It may here be said that proba- bly there is hardly an influence which tends so power- fully to produce extreme self-complacency as the convic- tion that as regards some one physical accomplishment, one is a person of whom more could not have been made. It is a proud thing to think that you stand decidedly ahead of all mankind : that Eclipse is fii-st and the rest nowhere ; even in the matter of keeping up six balls at once, or of noting and remembering twenty different objects in a shop window as you walk past it at five miles an hour. I do not think I ever beheld a human being whose aspect was of such unutterable pride, as a man 1 lately saw playing the drum as one of a certain splendid military band, lie was playing in a piece in which the drum music was very conspicuous ; and even an unskilled observer could remark that his playing was absolute per- fection. He had the thorough mastery of his instrument. He did the most difficult things not only with admirable precision, but without the least appearance of effort. He was a great tall fellow : and it was I'eally a fine sight to see him standing very upi-ight, and immovable save as 128 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM to his arms, looking fixedly into distance, and his bo?om swelling with the lofty belief that out of four or five thousand persons who were present, there was not one who, to save his life, could have done what he was doing so easily. So much of physical dexterity. As for physical grace, it will be admitted that in that respect more might be made of most human beings. It is not merely that they are ugly and awkward naturally, but that they are ugly and awkward artificially. Sir Bulwer Lytton in his ear- lier writings was accustomed to maintain that just as it is a man's duty to cultivate his mental powers, so is it his duty to cultivate his bodily appearance. And doubtless, all the gifts of nature are talents committed to us to be improved ; they are things intrusted to us to make the best of It may be difficult to fix the point at which the care of personal appearance in man or woman becomes excessive. It does so unquestionably when it engrosses the mind to the neglect of more important things. But I suppose that all reasonable people now believe that scrupulous attention to personal cleanliness, fi-eshness, and neatness, is a Christian duty. The days are past almost everywhere in which piety was held as associated with dirt. Nobody would mention now as a proof how saintly a human being was, that (for the love of God) he had never washed his face or brushed his hair for thirty years. And even scrupulous neatness need bring with it no suspicion of puppyism. The most trim and tidy of old men was good John Wesley ; and he conveyed to the minds of all wiio saw him the notion of a man whose treasure was laid up beyond this world, quite as much as if he had dressed in such a fashion as to make himself an object of ridicule, or as if he had forsworn the use of soap. MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. 129 Some people fancy that slovenliness of attire indicates a mind above petty details. I have seen an eminent preacher ascend tlie pulpit, with his bands hanging over hi? right shoulder, his gown apparently put on by being dropped upon him from the vestry ceiling, and his hair apparently unbrushed for several weeks. There was no suspicion of affectation about that good man ; yet I re- garded his untidiness as a defect and not as an excel- lence.. He gave a most eloquent sermon ; yet I thought it would have been well had the lofty mind that treated so admirably some of the grandest realities of life and of immortality, been able to address itself a little to the care of lesser things. I confess that when I heard the Bishop of Oxford preach, I thought the effect of his sermon was increased by the decorous and careful fashion in which he was arrayed in his robes. And it is to be admitted that the grace of the human aspect may be in no small meas- ure enhanced by bestowing a little pains upon it. You, youthful matron, when you take your little children to have their photographs taken, and when their nurse in contem- plation of that event attired them in their most tasteful dresses, and arranged their hair in its prettiest curls, you know that the little things looked a great deal better than they do on common days. It is pure non- sense to say that beauty when unadorned is adorned the most. For that is as much as to say that a pretty young woman, in the matter of physical appearance, is a person of whom no more can be made. Now taste and skill can make more of almost anything. And you will set down Thomson's lines as flatly opposed to fact, when your lively young cousin walks into your room to let you see her before she goes out to an evening party ; and when you compare that radiant vision, in her robes of misty texture, 9 130 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM and with hair arranged in folds the most complicated — wreatlied, and satin shoed — with the homelj figure that took a walk with you that afternoon, russet-gowned, tar- tan-plaided, and shod with serviceable boots for tramping through country mud. One does not think of loveliness in the case of men, because they have not got any : but their aspect, such as it is, is mainly made by their tailors. And it is a lamentable thought, how very ill the clothes of most men are made. 1 think that the art of draping the male human body has been brought to much less ex- cellence by the mass of those who practise it, than any other of the useful and ornamental arts. Tailors, even in great cities, are generally extremely bad. Or it may be that the providing of the human frame with decent and well-fitting garments is so very difficult a thing, that (save by a great genius here and there) it can be no more than approximated to. As for tailors in little country villages, their power of distorting and disfiguring is wonderful. When I used to be a country clergyman, I remember how, when I went to the funeral of some simple rustic, I was filled with surprise to see the tall, strapping, fine young country lads, arrayed in their black suits. What awkward figures they looked in those unwonted gar- ments ! How different from their easy, natural appear- ance in their every-day fustian ! Here you would see a young fellow, with a coat whose huge collar covei'ed half his head when you looked at him from behind ; a \ery common thing was to have sleeves which entirely con- cealed the hands ; and the wi'inkled and baggy aspect of the whole suits could be imagined only by such as have seen them. It may be remarked here, that those strong country lads were in another respect people of whom more might have been physically made. Oh for a drill- MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. 131 sergeant to teach them to stand upright, and to turn out their toes ; and to get rid of that slouching, hulking gait which gives such a look of clumsiness and stupidity ! If you could but have the well-developed muscles and the fresh complexion of the country, with the smartness and alertness of the town ! You have there the rough material of which a vast deal may be made ; you have the water- worn pebble which will take on a beautiful polish. Take from the moorland cottage the shepherd-lad of sixteen ; send him to a Scotch college for four years ; let him be tutor in a good family for a year or two ; and (if he be an observant fellow) you will find in him the quiet, self-pos- sessed air and the easy address of the gentleman who has seen the world. And it is curious to see one brother of a family thus educated and polished into refinement, while the other three or four, remaining in their father's simple lot, retain its rough manners and its unsophisticated feel- ings. Well, look at the man who has been made a gen- tleman, probably by the hard labor and sore self-denial of the others ; and see in him what each of the others might have been ! Look with respect on the diamond which needed only to be polished. Reverence the unde- veloped potential which circumstances have held down. Look with interest on these people of whom more might have been made ! Such a sight as this sometimes sets us thinking how many germs of excellence are in this world turned to no account. You see the pohshed diamond and the rough one side by side. It is too late now ; but the dull color- less pebble might have been the bright glancing gem. And you may polish the material diamond at any time ; but if you miss your season in the case of the human one, the loss can never be repaired. The bumpkin who is a 132 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM bumpkin at thirty, must remain a bumpkin to threescore and ten. But another thing that makes us think how many fair possibilities are lost, is to remark the fortuitous way in which great things have often been done ; and done by people who never dreamt that they had in them the power to do anything particular. These cases, one cannot but think, are samples of millions more. There have been very popular writers who were brought out by mere accident. They did not know what precious vein of thought they had at command, till they stumbled upon it as if by chance, like the Indian at the mines of Potosi. It is not much that we know of Shakespeare, but it seems certain that it was in patching up old plays for acting that he discovered within himself a capacity for producing that which men will not easily let die. When a young mili- tary man, disheartened with the service, sought for an appointment as an Irish Commissioner of Excise, and was sadly disappointed because he did not get it, it is probable that he had as little idea as any one else had that he possessed that aptitude for the conduct of war which was to make him the Duke of Wellington. And when a young mathematician, entirely devoid of ambition, desired to settle quietly down, and devote all his life to that unexciting study, he was not aware that he was a person of whom more was to be made ; — who M'as to grow into the great Emperor Napoleon. I had other instances in my mind, but after these last it is needless to mention them. But such cases suggest to us that there may have been many Folletts who never held a brief, many Keans who never acted but in barns, many Van- dyks who never earned more than sixpence a day, many Goldsmiths who never were better than penny-a-liners, many Michaels who never built their St. Peters; and MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. 133 perhaps, a Shakespeare who held horses at the theatre door for pence, as the Shakespeare we know of did, and who stopped there. Let it here be supjgested, that it is highly illogical to conchide that you are yourself a person of whom a great deal more might have been made, merely because you are a person of whom it is the fact that very little has actually been made. This suggestion may appear a tru- ism ; but it is one of those simple truths of which we all need to be occasionally reminded. After all, the great test of what a man can do, must be what a man does. But there are folk who live on the reputation of being pebbles capable of receiving a very high polish, though from circumstances they did not choose to be polished. There are jaeople who stand high in general estimation on the ground of what they might have done if they had liked. You will find students who took no honors at the university, but who endeavor to impress their friends with the notion that if they had chosen, they could have at- tained to unexampled eminence. And sometimes, no doubt, there are great powei-s that run to waste. There have been men whose doings, splendid as they were, were no more than a hint of how much more they could have done. In such a case as that of Coleridge, you see how the lack of steady industry, and of all sense of respon- sibility, abated the tangible result of the noble intellect God gave him. But as a general rule, and in the case of ordinary people, you need not give a man credit for the possession of any powers beyond those which he has actually exhibited. If a boy is at the bottom of his class, it is probably because he could not attain its top. My friend Mr. Snarling thinks he can write much better arti- cles than those which appear in any of the magazines ; 134 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM but as be bas not done so, I am not inclined to give him credit for tbe achievement. But you can see that this principle of estimating people's abilities not by what they have done, but by what they think they could do, will be much approved by persons who are stupid, and at the same time conceited. It is a pleasing arrangement that every man should fix his own mental mark, and hold by his estimate of himself. And then, never measuring his strength with others, he can suppose that he could have beat them if he had tried. Yes, we are all mainly fashioned by circumstances ; and had the circumstances been more propitious, they might have made a great deal more of us. You some- times think, middle-aged man, who never have passed the limits of Britain, what an effect might have been pro- duced upon your views and character by foreign travel. You think what an indefinite expansion of mind it might have caused ; hoAV many narrow prejudices it might have rubbed away ; how much wiser and better a man it might have made you. Or more society and wider reading in your early youth might have improved you ; might have taken away the shyness and the intrusive individuality which you sometimes feel painfully ; might have called out one cannot say what of greater confidence and larger sympathy. How very little, you think to yourself, you have seen and known ! While others skim great libra- ries, you read the same few books over and over ; while others come to know many lands and cities, and the faces and ways of many men, you look, year after year, on the same few square miles of this world, and you have to form your notion of human nature from the study of but few human beings, and these very commonplace. Per- haps it is as well. It is not so certain that more would MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. 135 have been made of you if you had enjoyed what might seem greater advantage^^. Perhaps you learned moi'e by studying the little field before you earnestly and long, than you would have learned if you had bestowed a cur- sory glance upon fields more extensive by far. Perhaps there was compensation for the fewness of the cases you had to observe, in the keenness with which you were able to observe them. Perhaps the Great Disposer saw that in your case the pebble got nearly all the polishing it would stand ; the man nearly all the chances he could improve. If there be soundness and justice in this suggestion, it may afford consolation to a considerable class of men and w^omen. I mean those people who, feeling within themselves many defects of character, and discerning in their outward lot much which they would wish other than it is, are ready to think that some one thing would have put them right ; that some one thing would put them right even yet ; but something which they have hopelessly missed, something which can never be. There was just one testing event, which stood between them and their being made a vast deal more of. They would have been far better and far happier, they think, had some single malign influence been kept away which has darkened all their life ; or had some single blessing been given which would have made it happy. If you had got such a parish which you did not get ; if you had married such a woman ; if your little child had not died ; if you had alvvays the society and sympathy of such an energetic and hopeful friend ; if the scenery round your dwelling were of a different character ; if the neighbor- ing town were four miles off instead of fifteen ; if any one of these circumstances had been altered, what a dif- 136 CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM ferent man you might have been ! Probably many people, even of middle age, conscious that the manifold cares and worries of life forbid that it should be evenly joyous, do yet cherish, at the bottom of their heart, some vague yet rooted fancy, that if but one thing were given on which they had set their hearts, or one care removed forever, they would be perfectly happy, even here. Per- haps you overrate the effect which would have been pro- duced on your character by such a single cause. It might not have miade you much better ; it might not even have made you very different. And assuredly you are wrong in fancying that any such single thing could have made you happy ; that is, entirely happy. Nothing in this world could ever make you that. It is not God's purpose that we should be entirely happy here. " This is not our rest." The day will never come which will not bring its worry. And the possi- bility of terrible misfortune and sorrow hangs over all. There is but one place where we shall be right ; and that is far away. Yes, more might have been made of all of us ; prob- ably, in the case of most, not much more will be made in this world. We are now, if we have reached middle life, very much what we shall be to the end of the chap- ter. We shall not, in this world, be much better ; let us humbly trust that we shall not be worse. Yet, if there be an undefinablc sadness in looking at the marred material of which so much more might have been made, there is a sublime hopefulness in the contemplation of material, bodily and mental, of which a great deal more and better will certainly yet be made. Not much more may be made of any of us in life ; but who shall estimate MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. 137 what may be made of us in immortality ? Think of a *' spiritual body ; " think of a perfectly pure and happy soul ! I thought of this on a beautiful evening of this summer, walking with a much valued friend through a certain grand ducal domain. In front of a noble sep- ulchre, where is laid up much aristocratic dust, there are sculptured by some great artist, three colossal faces, which are meant to represent Life, Death, and Immor- tality. It was easy to represent death : the face was one of solemn rest, with closed eyes ; and the sculptor's skill was mainly shown in distinguishing Life* from Immor- tality. And he had done it well. There was Life, a careworn, anxious, weary face, that seemed to look at you earnestly, and with a vague inquiry for something — the something that is lacking in all things here. And there was Immortality : life-like, but oh ! how different from mortal Life ! There was the beautiful face ; calm, satisfied, self-possessed, sublime ; and with eyes looking far away. I see it yet, the crimson sunset warming the gray stone ; and a great hawthorn tree, covered with blossoms, standing by. Yes, there was Immortality ; and you felt, as you looked at it, that it was more made of LIFE ! CHAPTER VI. CONCERNING PEOPLE WHO CARRIED WEIGHT IN LIFE. WITH SOME THOUGHTS ON THOSE WHO NEVER HAD A CHANCE. , OU drive out, let us suppose, upon a cer- tain day. To your surprise and mortifica- tion, your horse, usually lively and frisky, is quite dull and sluggish. He does not get over the ground as he is wont to do. The slightest touch of whipcord, on other days, suffices to make him dart forward with redoubled speed ; but upon this day, after two or three miles, he needs positive whipping, and he runs very sulkily with it all. By and bye his coat, usually smooth and glossy and dry through all reasonable work, begins to stream like a water-cart. This will not do. There is something wrong. You investigate ; and you discover that your horse's work, though seemingly the same as usual, is in fact im- mensely greater. The blockheads who oiled your wheels yesterday have screwed up your patent axles too tightly ; the friction is enormous ; the hotter the metal gets, the greater grows the friction ; your horse's work is quad- rupled. You drive slowly home ; and severely upbraid the blockheads. There are many people who have to go through life at an analogous disadvantage. There is something in CARRYING WEIGHT IN LIFE. 139 their constitution of body or mind ; there is something in their circumstances; which adds incalculably to the ex- ertion they must go through to attain their ends ; and which holds them back from doing what they might otherwise have do'ne. Very probably, that malign some- thing exerted its influence unperceived by those around them. They did not get credit for the struggle they were making. No one knew what a brave fight they were making with a broken right arm ; no one remarked that they were running the race, and keeping a fair place in it too, with their legs tied together. All they do, they do at a disadvantage. It is as when a noble race-hoi'se is beaten by a sorry hack ; because the race- horse, as you might see if you look at the list, is carry- ing twelve pounds additional. But such men, by a des- perate effort, often made silently and sorrowfully, may (so to speak) run in the race ; and do well in it ; though you little think with how heavy a foot and how heavy a heart. There are others, who have no chance at all. They are like a horse set to run a race, tied by a strong rope to a tree ; or weighted with ten tons of extra bur- den. That horse cannot run, even poorly. The differ- ence between their case and that of the men who are placed at a disadvantage, is like the difference between setting a very near-sighted man to keep a sharp look- out, and setting a man who is quite blind to keep that sharp look-out. Many can do the work of life with difficulty ; some cannot do it at all. In short, there are PEOPLE WHO CARRY WEIGHT IN LIFE ; and there are some WHO NEVER HAVE A CHANCE. And you, my friend, who are doing the work of life well and creditably : you who are running in the front rank, and likely to do so to the end ; think kindly and 140 CONCERNING PEOPLE WHO charitably of those who have broken down in the race. Think kindly of him who, sadly over-weighted, is strug- gling onwards away half-a-mile behind you ; think more kindly yet, if that be possible, of him who, tethered to a ton of granite, is struggling hard and making no way at all ; or who has even sat down and given up the struggle in dumb despair. You feel, I know, the weakness in yourself which would have made you break down if sore- ly tried like others. You know there is in your armor the unprotected place, at which a well-aimed or a random blow would have gone home and brought you down. Yes, you are nearing the winning-post, and you are among the first ; but six pounds more on your back, and you might have been nowhere. You feel, by your weak heart and ■weary frame, that if you had been sent to the Crimea in that dreadful first winter, you would certainly have died. And you feel, too, by your lack of moral stamina, by your feebleness of resolution, that it has been your preserva- tion from you know not what depths of shame and misery, that you never were pressed very hard by temptation. Do not range youi-self with those who found fault with a certain great and good Teacher of former days, because he went to be guest with a man that was a sinner. As if He could have gone to be guest with any man who was not! There is no reckoning up the manifold iinpedimenta by which human beings are weighted for the race of life; but all may be classified under the two heads of unfavor- able influences arising out of the mental or physical na- ture of the human beings themselves, and unfavorable influences arising out of the circumstances in which the human beings are placed. You have known men who, CARRIED WEIGHT IN LIFE. 141 setting out from a very humble position, have attained to a respectable standing : but who would have reached a very much higher place but for their being weighted with a vulgar, violent, wrong-headed, and rude-spoken wife. You have known men of lowly origin, who had in them the makings of gentlemen ; but whom this single malign influence has condemned to coarse manners and a frowsy repulsive home for life. You have known many men whose powers are crippled and their nature soured by poverty ; by the heavy necessity for calculating how far each shilling will go ; by a certain sense of degradation that comes of sordid shifts. How can a poor parson write an eloquent or spirited sermon, when his mind all the while is running upon the thought how he is to pay the baker, or how he is to get shoes for his children ? It will be but a dull discourse which, under that weight, will be produced even by a man who, favorably placed, could have done very considerable things. It is only a great genius here and there who can do great things, who can do his best, no matter at what disadvantage he may be placed ; the great mass of ordinary men can make little headway with wind and tide dead against them. Not many trees would grow well if watered daily (let us say) with vitriol. Yet a tree which would speedily die under that nurture, might do very fairly, might even do magnifi- cently, if it had fair play ; if it got its chance of common sunshine and shower. Some men, indeed, though always hampered by circumstances, have accomplished much ; but then you cannot help thinking how much more they might have accomplished had they been placed more hap- pily, Pugin, the great Gothic architect, designed vari- ous noble buildings ; but I believe he complained that he never had fair play with his finest ; that he was always 142 CONCERNING PEOPLE WHO weighted by considerations of exjDense, or by the nature of the ground he had to build on, or by the number of people it was essential the building should accommodate. And so he regarded his noblest edifices as no more than hints of what he could have done. He made grand run- ning in the race ; but oh what running he could have made if you had taken off those twelve additional pounds ! I dare say you have known men who labored to make a pretty country-house on a site which had some one great drawback. They were always battling with that draw- back, and trying to conquer it ; but they never could quite succeed. And it remained a real worry and vexa- tion. Their house was on the north side of a high hill, and never could have its due share of sunshine. Or you could not reach it but by climbing a very steep ascent ; or you could not in any way get water into the landscape. When Sir Walter was at length able to call his own a little estate on the banks of the Tweed he loved so well, it was the ugliest, bleakest, and least interesting spot up- on the course of that beautiful river; and the public road ran within a few yards of his door. The noble-hearted man made a charming dwelling at last ; but he was fight- ing against nature in the matter of the landscape round it ; and you can see yet, many a year after he left it, the poor little trees of his beloved plantations, conti-asting with the magnificent timber of various grand old places above and below Abbotsford. There is something sadder in the sight of men who carried weight within themselves; and who, in aiming at usefulness or at happiness, were hampered and held back by their own nature. There are many men who are weighted with a hasty temper ; weighted with a nervous, anxious constitution ; weighted with an envious, jealous disposition ; weighted with a CARRIED WEIGHT IN LIFE. 143 Strong tendency to evil sjteaking, lying, and slander- ing ; weighted with a grumbling, sour, discontented spir- it ; weighted with a disposition to vd^oring and boasting ; weighted with a great want of common sense ; weighted with an undue regard to what other people may be think- ing or saying of them ; weighted with many like things of which more will be said by and bye. When that good missionary, Henry Martyn, was in India, he was weighted with an irresistible drowsiness. He could hardly keep himself awake. And it must have been a burning ear- nestness that impelled him to ceaseless labor, in the pres- ence of such a drag-weight as that. I am not thinking or saying, my friend, that it is wholly bad for us to carry weight ; that great good may not come of the abatement of our power and spirit which may be made by that weight. I remember a greater missionary than even the sainted Martyn, to whom the Wisest and Kindest ap- pointed that he should carry weight, and that he should fight at a sad disadvantage. And the greater missionary tells us that he knew why that weight was appointed him to carry ^ and that he felt he needed it all to save him from a strong tendency to undue self-conceit. . No one knows, now, what the burden was which he bore ; but it was heavy and painful ; it was " a thorn in the flesh ; '' three times he earnestly asked that it might be taken away ; but the answer he got implied that he needed it yet ; and that his Master thought it a better plan to strengthen the back than to lighten the burden. Yes, the blessed Redeemer appointed that St. Paul should carry weight in life ; and I think, friendly reader, that we shall believe that it is wisely and kindly meant, if the like should come to you and me. We all understand what is meant when we hear it 144 CONCERNING PEOPLE WHO is said that a man is doing very well, or has done very well, considering. I do not know whether it is a Scot- ticism to stop short* at that point of the sentence. We do it, constantly, in this country : the sentence would be completed by saying, considering the weight he has to carry, or the disadvantage at which he works. And things which are very good, considering, may range very far up and down the scale of actual merit. A thing which is very good, considering, may be very bad, or may be tol- erably good. It never can be absolutely very good ; for, if it were, you would cease to use the word considering. A thing which is absolutely very good, if it have been done under extremely unfavorable circumstances, would not be described as very good, considering ; it would be de- scribed as quite wonderful, considering, or as miraculous considering. And it is curious how people take a pride in accumulating unfavorable circumstances, that they may overcome them, and gain the glory of having overcome them. Thus, if a man wishes to sign his name, he might write the letters with his right hand ; and though he write them very clearly and well and rapidly, nobody would think of giving him any credit. But if he write his name rather badly with his left hand, people would say it was a remark- able signature, considering. And if he wrote his name, very ill indeed, with his foot, people would say the writing was quite wonderful, considering. If a man desire to walk from one end of a long building, to the other, he might do so by walking along the floor ; and though he did so stead- ily, swiftly, and gracefully, no one would remark that he had done anything worth notice. But if he choose for his path a thick rope, extended from one end of the building to the other, at a height of a hundred feet ; and if he walk rather slowly and awkwardly along it, he will be esteemed CARRIED V\'EIGHT IN LIFE. 14o as having done something very extraordinary ; while if, in addition to this, he is blindfolded, and has his feet placed in large baskets instead of shoes, he will, if in any way he can get over the distance between the ends of the building, be held as one of the most remarkable men of the age. Yes, load yourself with weight which no one asks you to carry : accumulate disadvantages which you need not face unless you choose ; then carry the weight in any fashion, and overcome the disadvantages in any fash- ion ; and you are a great man, considering ; that is, con- sidering the disadvantages and the weight. Let this be remembered : if a man is so placed that he cannot do his work, except in the face of special difficulties, then let him be praised if he vanquish these in some decent measure, and if he do his work tolerably well. But a man de- serves no praise at all for work which he has done tolera- bly or done rather badly, because he chose to do it under disadvantageous circumstances, under which there was no earthly call upon him to do it. In this case he probably is a self-conceited man, or a man of wrong-headed inde- pendence of disposition ; and in this case, if his work be bad absolutely, don't tell him that it is good, considering. Refuse to consider. He has no right to expect that you should. There was a man who built a house entirely with his own hands. He had never learned either mason work or carpentry : he could quite well have afforded to pay skilled workmen to do the work he wanted ; but he did not choose to do so. He did the whole work himself. The house was finished : its aspect was peculiar. The walls were off the peipendicular considerably, and the windows were singular in shape, the doors fitted badly, and the floors were far from level. In short, it was a very bad and awkward-looking house ; but it was a vvon- 10 146 CONCER^^IXG PEOPLE WHO derful house, cons'uleriiig. And people said that it was so, who saw nothing wonderful in the beautiful house next it, perfect in symmetry and finish and comfort, but builc by men whose business it was to build. Now, I should have declined to admire that odd house, or to ex- press the least sympathy with its builder. lie chose to run with a needless hundredweight on his back: he cliose to walk in baskets instcsad of in shoes. And if, in conse- quence of his own perversity, he did h's work badly, I should have refused to recognize it as anything but bad woik. It was quite different with Robinson Crusoe, who made his dwelling and his furniture for himself, because there was no one else to make them for him. I dare say his cave was anything but exactly square, and his chairs and tables were cumbrous enough ; but they were wonder- ful, considering certain facts which he was quite entitled to expect us to consider. Southey's CoUonian Library was all quite right ; and you would have said that tlie books were very nicely bound, considcn'ing ; for Southey could not afford to pay the regular binder's charges ; and it was better that his books should be done up in cotton of various hues by the members of his own family, tlian that they should remain not bound at all. Yuu will think, too, of the poor old parson who wrote a book which he thought of great value, but which no pub- lisher would bring out. He was determined that all his labor should not be lost to posterity. So he bought types and a printing-press, and printed his precious work, poor man ; he and his man-servant did it all. It made a great many volumes ; and the task took up many years. Then he bound the volumes with his own hands ; and carrying them to London, he [)laced a copy of his work in each of the public libraries. I dare say he might have CARRIED WEIGHT IN LIFE. 147 saved himself liis labor. How many of my readers could tell what was the title of the work, or what was the name of its author? Still, there was a man who accomplished his design, in the face of every disadvantage. There is a great point of difference between our feel- ins; towards the human being who runs his race much overweighted, and our feeling towards the inferior animal that does the like. If you saw a poor horse gamely •Struggling in a race, with a weight of a ton extra, you would pity it. Your sympathies would all be with the creature that was making the best of unfavorable circum- stances. But it is a sorrowful fact, that the drag weight of human beings not unfrequently con-ists of things which make us angry rather than sympathetic. You have seen a man carrying heavy weight in life, perhaps in the form of inveterate wrongheadedness and suspiciousness ; but instead of pitying him, our impulse would rather be to beat him upon that perverted head. We pity physical malformation or unhealthiness ; but our bent is to be angry with intellectual and moral malformation or un- heallhiness. We feel lor the deformed man, who must struggle on at that sad disadvantage ; feeling it, too, much more acutely than you would readily believe. But we have only indignation for the man weighted with far worse things ; and things which, in some cases at least, ihe can just as little help. You have known men whose extra pounds, or even extra ton, was a hasty temper, fly- ing out of a sudden into ungovernable bursts: or a moral cowardice leading to trickery and falsehood : or a special disposition to envy and evil speaking: or a very strong tendency to morbid complaining about his misfortunes and troubles : or an invincible bent to be always talking of 148 CONCERNING PEOPLE WHO his sufferings through the derangement of his digestive organs. Now, you grow angry at these things. You cannot stand them. And there is a substratum of truth to that angry feehng. A man can form his mind more than he can form his body. If a man be well-made, physically, he will, in ordinary cases, remain so : but he may, in a moral sense, raise a great hunchback where nature made none. He may foster a malignant temper, a grumbling, fretful spirit, which by manful resistance might be much abated, if not quite put down. But still, there should often be pity, where we are prone only to blame. We find a person in whom a truly disgusting character has been formed : well, if you knew all, you would know that the person had hardly a chance of being otherwise : the man could not help it. You have known people who were awfully unamiable and repulsive : you may have been told how very different they once were, — sweet-tempered and cheerful. And surely the change is a far sadder one than that which has passed upon the wrinkled old woman, who was once (as you are told) the loveliest girl of her time. Yet many a one who will look with interest upon the withered face and the dimmed eyes, and try to trace in them the vestiges of radiant beauty gone, will never think of puzzling out in violent spurts of petulance the perversion of a quick and kind heart ; or in curious oddities and pettinesses the result of long and lonely years of toil in which no one sympa- thized ; or in cynical bitterness and misanthropy, an old disappointment never got over. There is a hard knot in the wood, where a green young branch was lopped away. I have a gi-eat pity for old bachelors. Those I have known have for the most part been old fools. But the more foolish and absurd they are, the more pity is due to CARRIED WEIGHT IN LIFE. 149 them. I believe there is something to be said for even the most unamiable creatures. The shark is an unaraia- ble creature. It is voracious. It will snap a man in two. Yet it is not unworthy of sympathy. Its organiz- ation is such that it is always suffering the most ravenous hunger. You can hai'dly imagine the state of intolerable famine in which that unhappy animal roams the ocean- People talk of its awful teeth and its vindictive eye. I suppose it is well ascertained that the extremity of physi- cal want, as reached on rafts at sea, has driven human beings to deeds as barbarous as ever shark was accused of. The worse a human being is, the more he deserves our pity. Hang him, if that be needful for the welfare of society ; but pity him even as you hang. Many a poor creature has gradually become hardened and invet- erate in guilt, who would have shuddered at first had the excess of it ultimately reached been at first pi'esented to view. But the precipice was sloped off: the descent was made step by step. And there is many a human being who never had a chance of being good : many who have been trained, and even compelled, to evil from very in- fancy. Who that knows anything of our great cities, but knows how the poor little child, the toddling innocent, is sometimes sent out day by day to steal ; and received in his Avretched home with blows and curses if he fail to bring back enough : who has not heard of such poor little things, unsuccessful in their sorry work, sleeping all night in some wintry stair, because they durst not venture back to their drunken, miserable, desperate parents ? I could tell things at which angels might shed tears, with much better reason for doing so than seems to me to exist in some of those more imposing occasions on which bom- bastic writers are wont to describe them as weeping. Ah, 150 CONCERNING PEOPLE WHO there is One who knows where the responsibility for all this rests ! Not wholly with the wretched parents : far from that. Tliey, too, have gone through the like : they had as little chance as their children. They deserve our deepest pity too. Perhaps the deeper pity is not due to the shivering, starving child, with the bitter wind cutting through its thin rags, and its blue feet on the frozen pave- ment, holding out a hand that is like the claw of some beast, but rather to the bi'utalized mother who could thus send out the infant she bore. Surely the mother's condi- tion, if we look at the case aright, is the more deplorable. Would not you, my reader, rather endure any degree of cold and hunger than come to this ! Doubtless, there is blame somewhere that such things should be : but we all know that the blame of the most miserable practical evils and failures can hardly be traced to particular individuals. It is through the incapacity of scores of public servants that an army is starved. It is through the fault of mil- lions of people that our great towns are what they are : and it must be confessed that the actual responsibility is spread so thinly over so great a surface, that it is hard to say it rests very blackly upon any one spot. Oli, that we could but know whom to hang, when we find some fla- grant, crying evil ! Unluckily, hasty people are ready to be content if they can but hang anybody, without mind- ing much whether that individual be more to blame than many beside. Laws and kings have something to do here : but management and foresight on the part of the poorer classes have a great deal more to do. And no laws can make many persons managing or provident. I do not hesitate to say, from what I have myself seen of the poor, that the same short-sighted extravagance, the same recklessness of consequences, which are frequently CARRIED WEIGHT IN LIFE. 151 found in tliem, would cause quite as much misery if tliej prevailed in a like degree among people with a thousand ^3'ear. But it seems as if only tolerably well-to-do peo- ple have the heart to be provident and self-denying. A man with a ft'W hundreds annually does not many unless he thinks he can afford it : but the workman with fifteen shillings a-week is profoundly indifferent to any such cal- culation. I firml}^ believe that the sternest of all self- denial is that practised by those who, when we divide mankind into rich and poor, must be classed (I suppose) with the rich. But I turn away from a miserable sub- ject, through which I cannot see my way clearly, and on which I cannot think but with unutterable pain. It is an easy way of cutting the knot to declare that the rich are the cause of all the sufferings of the poor ; but when we look at the case in all its bearings, we shall see that that is rank nonsense. And on the other hand, it is unques- tionable that the rich are bound to do something. But what ? I should feel deeply indebted to any one who would wi-ite out, in a few short and intelligible sentences, the practical results that are aimed at in the Song of the Shirt. The misery and evil are manifest : but tell us whom to hang ; tell us what to do ! One heavy burden with which many men are weighted for the race of life, is depression of spirits. I wonder whether this used to be as common in former days as it is now. There was, indeed, the man in Homer, who walked by the sea-shore in a very gloomy mood ; but his case seems to have been thought remarkable. What is it in our modern mode of life, and our infinity of cares; what little thing is it about the matter of the brain, or the flow of the blood, that makes the difference between buoy- 152 CONCERNING PEOPLE WHO ant cheerfulness and deep depression ? I begin to think that ahiiost all educated people, and especially all whose work is mental rather than phy^-^ical, suffer more or less from this indescribable gloom. And although a certain amount of sentimental sadness may possibly help the poet, or the imaginative writer, to produce material which may be very attractive to the young and inexperienced, I suppose it will be admitted by all that cheerfulness and hopefulness are noble and healthful stimulants to worthy effort, and that depression of spirits does (so to speak) cut the sinews with which the average man must do the work of life. You know how lightly the buoyant heart carries people through entanglements and labors under which the desponding would break down, or which they never would face. Yet, in thinking of the commonness of depressed spirits, even where the mind is otherwise very free from anything morbid, we should remember that there is a strong temptation to believe that this de- pression is more common and more prevalent than it truly is. Sometimes there is a gloom which overcasts all life, like that in which James Watt lived and worked, and served his race so nobly ; like that from which the gentle, amiable poet, James Montgomery, suffered through his whole career. But in ordinary cases the gloom is temporary and transient. Even the most depressed are not always so. Like, we know, suggests like powerfully. If you are placed in some peculiar conjuncture of circum- stances, or if you pass through some remarkable scene, the present scene or conjuncture will call up before you in a way that startles you, something like itself which you had long forgotten, and which you would never have remembered but for this touch of some mysterious spring. And accordingly, a man depressed in spirits thinks that CARRIED WEIGHT IN LIFE. 153 he is always so, or at least fancies that such depression has given the color to his life in a very much greater degree than it actually has done so. For this dark sea- son wakens up the remembrance of many similar dark seasons which in more cheerful days are quite forgot, and these cheerful days drop out of memory for the time. Hearing such a man speak, if he speak out his heart to you, you think him inconsistent, perhaps you think him insincere. You think he is saying more than he truly feels. It is not so ; he feels and believes it all at the time. But he is taking a one-sided view of things : he is undergoing the misery of it acutely for the time : by and bye he will see things from quite a different ^^oint. A very eminent man (there can be no harm in referring to a case which he himself made so public) wrote and published something about his miserable home. He was quite sincere, I do not doubt. He thought so at the time. He was miserable just then ; and so, looking back on past years, he could see nothing but misery. But the case was not really so, one could feel sure. Tliere had been a vast deal of enjoyment about his home and his lot ; it was for- gotten, then. A man in very low spirits, reading over his diary, somehow lights upon and dwells upon all the sad and wounding things ; he involuntarily skips the rest, or reads them with but faint perception of their meaning. In reading the very Bible, he does the like thing. He chances upon that which is in unison with his present mood. I think there is no respect in which this great law of the association of ideas holds more strictly true, than in the power of a present state of mind, or a pres- ent state of outward circumstances, to bring up vividly before us all such states in our past histoiy. We ai-e depressed, we are worried ; and when we look back, all 154 CONCERNING PEOPLE WHO our departed days of worry and depression appear to start up and press themselves upon our view to the ex- clusion of anything else : so that we are ready to think that we have never been otherwise than depressed and worried all our life. But when more cheerful times come, they suggest only such times of cheerfulness, and no effort will bring back the depression vividly as when we felt it. It is not seltishness or heartlessness, it is the result of an inevitable law of mind, that people in happy circumstances should resolutely believe that it is a happy world after all ; for looking back, and looking around, the mind refuses to take distinct note of anything that is not somewhat akin to its present state. And so, if any ordi- nary man, wlio is not a distempered genius or a great fool, tells you that he is always miserable, don't believe him. He feels so now, but he does not always feel so. There are periods of brightening in the darkest lot. Very, very few live in unvarying gloom. Not but what there is something very pitiful (by which I mean deserving of pity) in what may be termed the Micawber style of mind ; in the stage of hysteric oscillations between joy and misery. Thoughtless readers of David Coppcrjield laugh at Mr. Micawber, and his rapid passages from t!ie depth of despair to tlie summit of happiness, and back again. But if you have seen or experienced that mor- bid condition, you would know that there is more reason to mourn over it than to laugh at it. There is acute misery felt now and then ; and there is a pervading, never-departing sense of the hoUowness of the morbid mirth. It is but a veiy faw degiees better than " moody madness, laughing wild, amid severest woe." By depres- sion of spirits, I understand a dejection without any cause that could be stated, or from causes which in a CARRIED WEIGHT IN LIFE. 155 healthy mind would produce no such degree of dejec- tion. No doubt many men can remember seasons of de- jection which was not imaginary, and of anxiety and misery whose causes were only too rt;al. You can re- member, perhaps, the dark time in which you knew quite well what it was that made it so dark. Well, better days have come. That sorrowful, wearing time, which ex- hausted the springs of life faster than ordinary living would have done, which aged you in heart and frame before your day, dragged over, and it is gone. You carried heavy weiglit, indeed, while it lasted. It Avas but poor running you made, poor work you did, with that feeble, anxious, disappointed, miserable heart. And you would many a time have been thankful to creep into a quiet grave. Perhaps that season di The Common Hall is a plain square apartment, with & gallery at each end. It is capable of containing about a thousand persons. Along one side runs a raised bench,' occupied by the professors. Tlie Principal presides at the distribution, unless when the Lord Rector is present. Long before the appointed hour, which is always ten A. M., the body of the hall is thronged with students, and the galleries with ladies. The students beguile the time by throwing volleys of peas at one another ; after a distribution, several bushels are gathered up from the floor. There is a prescriptive toleration for peas, but no other missile is permitted ; and a strong-minded man who introduced eggs, narrowly escaped expulsion. The bald heads of some of the servants present tempting marks, and are furiously assailed. At length the professors (all of whom wear gowns) enter in procession, preceded by the hedeUus, bearing a huge mace of silver. A prayer in Latin is offered by the Principal. Then the University prize essays are announced ; the letters containing the authors' names are opened, and the prizes are delivered to the successful students by the Lord Rector or Principal. The divinity prizes are given next ; then the medical, then the philosophy and classical. The proceedings are over about one o'clock ; and ere the sun has set, the last red gown, now sadly faded from its November bright- ness, has disappeared from the streets of Glasgow. The 1 Cyril Thornton. Vol. 1. pp. 215, 21U. COLLEGE LIFE AT GLASGOW. 197 students are scattered over the country ; tutors in gentle- men's families, teaching parish schools, acting as mis- sionaries or catechists under the clergy of large towns, watching sheep, busy at farm-work, and some of the more distinguished, by the time a week has passed, busy collecting materials for next year's University essays. g The names of the students stand in the class catalogue in Latin ; and the professor, in addressing a student, uses his Latinized Christian name in the vocative. There is no such thing known in Scotland as that entire sink- ing of the Christian name which is usual in the public schools of England. At one period the professors at Glasgow always addressed their students in the Latin language. The impression produced on a stranger was decidedly that of the ridiculous. Mr. Lockhart tells us that when he went to the class-room of Mr. Young, the very eminent Greek Professor at Glasgow, forty years since, the first thing done was calling over the roll of the class, which was done by one of the students : — The professor was quite silent during this space, unless where some tall, awkward Irishman, or younoj indigenous blunderer happened to make iiis entree in a manner more noisy than suited the place, on which occasion a sharp cutting voice from the chair was sure to thrill in their ears some brief but decisive query, or command, or rebuke: — " (liuil (If/as iu, in isto mif/ulo, pvdibus strepltrtns et garriens /" " Cave tu tilii, Dtujnlde J/' Quhirttr, e( tita.i res ayas ! " " N sion to a vulgar, stupid, bullying, flogging barbarian. If it prevents the manners from becoming brutal diligently to study the ingenuous arts, it appears certain that dili- gently to teach them sometimes leads to a directly con- ti-ary result. The bullying schoolmaster has now become an almost extinct animal ; but it is not very long since the spirit of Mr. Squeers was to be found, in its worst manifestations, far beyond the precincts of Dotheboys Hall. You would find fellows who showed a grim de- light in walking down a class with a cane in their hand, enjoying the evident fear they occasioned as they swung it about, occasionally coming down with a savage whack on some poor fellow who was doing nothing whatsoever. These brutal teachers would flog, and that till compelled to cease by pure exhaustion, not merely for moral of- fences, which possibly deserve it, (though I do not believe any one was ever made better by flogging,) but for mak- ing a mistake in saying a lesson, which the poor boy had done his best to prepare, and which was driven out of his head by the fearful aspect of the truculent blackguard with his cane and his hoarse voice. And how indignant, in after-years, many a boy of the last generation must have been, to find that this tyrant of his childhood was in truth a humbug, a liar, a fool, and a sneak ! Yet how that miserable piece of humanity was feared ! How they watched his eye, and laughed at the old idiot's wretched jokes ! I have several friends who have told me such stories of their school-days, that I used to wonder that they did not, after they became men, return to the school- boy spot that they might heartily shake their preceptor of other years, or even kick him ! CONCEKNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. 2o7 If there be a thing to be ^vonclerod at, it is that the human race is not mucli worse than it is. It has not a fair cliance. I am not thinking now of an original de- fect in the material provided : I am thinking only of the kind of handling it gets. I am thinking of the amount of judgment which may be found in most parents and in most teachers, and of the degree of honesty which may be found in many. I suppose there is no doubt that the accursed system of the cheap Yorkshire schools was by no means caricatured by Mr. Dickens in " Nicholas Nickleby." I believe that starvation and brutality wei'e the rule at these institutions. And I do not think it says much for the manliness of Yorkshire men and of Yorkshire clergymen, that these foul dens of misery and wickedness were suffered to exist so long without a voice raised to let the world know of them. I venture to think, that, if Dr. Guthrie of Edinburgh had lived anywhere near Greta Bridge, Mr. Squeers and his compeers would have attained a notoriety that would have stopped their trade. I can- not imagine how any one, with the spirit of a man in him, could sleep and wake within sight of one of these schools without lifting a hand or a voice to stop what was going on there. But without supposing these extreme cases, I can remember what I have myself seen of the incom- petence and injustice of teachers. I burn with indigna- tion yet, as I think of a malignant blockhead who once taught me for a few months. I have been at various schools ; and I spent six years at one venerable univer- sity (where my instructors were wise and worthy) ; and I am now so old, that I may say, without any great ex- hibition of vanity, that I have always kept well up among ray school and college companions : but that blockhead kept me steadily at the bottom of my class, and kept a 17 258 CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. frightful dunce at the fop of it, by his peculiar system. I have observed (let me say) that masters and professors who are stupid themselves have a great preference for stupid fellows, and like to keep down clever ones. A professor who was himself a dunce at college, and who has been jobbed into his chair, being quite unfit for it, has a fellow-feeling for other dunces. He is at home with them, you see, and is not afraid that they see through him and despise him. The injustice of the malignant blockhead who was my early instructor, and who succeeded in making several months of my boyiiood unhappy enough, was taken up and imitated by several lesser blockheads among the boys. I remember particu- larly one sneaking wretch who was occasionally set to mark down on a slate the names of such boys as talked in school ; such boys being punished by being turned to the bottom of their class. I remember how that sneaking wretch used always to mark my name down, though I kept perfectly silent : and how lie put my name last on the list, that I might have to begin the lesson the very lowest in my form. The sneaking wretch was bigger than I, so I could not thrash him ; and any representa- tion I made to the malignant blockhead of a schoolmaster was entirely disregarded. I cannot think but with con- siderable ferocity, that probably there are many schools to-day in Britain containing a master who has taken an inn-easonable dislike to some poor boy, and who lays himself oat to make that poor boy unhappy. And J know that such may be the case where the boy is neither bad nor stupid. And if the school be one attended by a good many boys of the lower grade, there are sure to be several sneaky boys among them who will devote therq- selves to tormenting the one whom the master hates and torments. CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. 259 It cannot be denied that there is a generous and mag- nanimous tone about the boys of a school attended ex- clusively by the children of the better classes, which is unknown among the children of uncultivated boors. I have observed, that, if you offer a prize to the cleverest and most industrious boy of a certain form in a school of the upper class, and propose to let the prize be de- cided by the votes of the boys themselves, you will al- most invariably find it fairly given : that is, given to the boy who deserves it best. If you explain, in a frank, manly way, to the little fellows, that, in asking each for whom he votes, you are asking each to say upon his honor whom he thinks the cleverest and most diligent boy in the form, nineteen boys out of twenty will an- swer honestly. But I have witnessed the signal failure of such an appeal to the honor of the bumpkins of a country-school. I was once present at the examination of such a school, and remarked carefully how the boys acquitted themselves. After the examination was over, the master proposed, very absurdly, to let the boys of each class vote the prize for that particular class. The voting began. A class of about twenty was called up : I explained to the boys what they were to do. I told them they were not to vote for the boy they liked best, but were to tell me faithfully who had done best in the class-lessons. I then asked the first boy in the line for whom he gave his vote. To my mortification, instead of voting for a little fellow who had done incomparably best at the examination, he gave his vote for a big sul- len-looking blockhead who had done conspicuously ill. I asked the next boy, and received the same answer. So all round the class : all voted for the big sullen- looking blockhead. One or two did not give their 260 CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. votes quite promptly ; and I could discern a threaten- ing glance cast at them by the big sullen-looking block- head, and an ominous clinching of the blockhead's right fist. I went round the class without remark ; and the blockhead made sure of the prize. Of course this would not do. The blockhead could not be suffered to get the prize ; and it was expedient that he should be made to remember the occasion on which he had sought to tam- per with justice and right. Addressing the blockhead, amid the dead silence of the school, I said : "You shall not get the prize, because I can judge for myself that you don't deserve it. I can see that you are the stupid- est boy in the class ; and I have seen reason, during this voting, to believe that you are the worst. You have tried to bully these boys into voting for you. Their votes go for nothing ; for their voting for you proves either that they are so stupid as to think you deserve the prize, or so dishonest as to say they think so when they don't think so." Then I inducted the blockhead into a seat where I could see him well, and proceeded to take the votes over again. I explained to the boys once more what they had to do ; and explained that any boy would be telling a lie who voted the prize unfairly. I also told them that I knew who deserved the prize, and that they knew it too, and that thoy had better vote fairly. Then, instead of saying to each boy, " For whom do you vote ? " I said to each, " Tell me who did best in the class during these months past." Each boy in replj' named the boy who really deserved the prize : and the little fellow got it. I need not record the means I adopted to prevent the sullen-looking blockhead from carrying out his purpose of itirashing the little fellow. It may suffice to say that the means were thoroughly CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. 261 effectual ; and that the blockhead was very meek and tractable for about six weeks after that memorable day. But, after all, the great cause of the sorrows of child- hood is unquestionably the mismanagement of parents. You hear a great deal about parents who spoil their children by excessive kindness ; but I venture to think that a greater number of children are spoiled by stupid- ity and cruelty on the part of their parents. You may find parents who, having started from a humble origin, have attained to wealth, and who, instead of being glad to think that their children are better off than they them- selves were, exhibit a diabolical jealousy of their chil- dren. You will find such wretched beinors insisting; that their children shall go through needless trials and mor- tifications, because they themselves went through the like. Why, I do not hesitate to say that one of the thoughts which would most powerfully lead a worthy man to value matei-ial prosperity would be the thought that his boys would have a fairer and happier start in life than he had, and would be saved the many difficul- ties on which he still looks back with pain. You will find parents, especially parents of the pharisaical and wrong-headedly religious class, who seem to hold it a sacred duty to make the little things unhappy ; who systematically endeavor to render life as bare, ugly, and wretched a thing as possible ; who never praise their children when they do right, but punisii them with great severity when they do wrong ; who seem to hate to see their children lively or cheerful in their presence ; who thoroughly repel all sympathy or confidence on the part of their children, and then mention as a proof that their children are possessed by the Devil, that their children 262 CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. always like to get away from them ; who rejoice to cut off any little enjoyment, — rigidly carrying out into practice the fundamental principle of their creed, which undoubtedly is, that " nobody should ever please him- self, neither should anybody ever please anybody else, because in either case he is sure to displease God." No doubt, Mr. Buckle, in his second volume, caricatured and misrepresented the religion of Scotland as a coun- try ; but he did not in the least degree caricature or misrepresent the religion of some people in Scotland. The great doctrine underlying ail other doctrines, in the creed of a few unfortunate beings, is, that God is spite- fully angry to see his creatures happy ; and of course the practical lesson follows, that they are following the best example, when they are spitefully angry to see their children happy. Then a great trouble, always pressing heavily on many a little mind, is that it is overtasked with lessons. You still see here and there idiotic parents striving to make infant phenomena of their children, and recording with much pride how their child i en could read and write at an unnaturally early age. Such parents are fools : not necessarily malicious fools, but fools beyond question. The great use to which the first six or seven years of life should be given is the laying the foundation of a healthful constitution in body and mind; and the instilling of those first principles of duty and religion which do not need to be taught out of any books. Even if you do not permanently injure the young brain and mind by prematurely overtasking them, — even if you do not permanently blight the bodily health and break the mind's cheerful spring, you gain nothing. Your child at fourteen years old is not a bit farther advanced CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. 263 in his education than a child who began his years after him ; and the entire resuU of your stupid driving has been to evcrcloud some days wliich should have been among the happiest of his life. It is a woful sight to jne to see the little forehead conogated with mental effort, though the effort be to do no more than master the multiplication table : it was a sad story I lately heard of a little boy repeating his Latin lesson over and over again in the delirium of the fever of which he died, and saying piteously that indeed he could not do it better. I don't like to see a little face looking unnaturally anx- ious and earnest about a horrible task of spelling ; and even when children pass that stage, and grow up into school-boys who can read Thucydides and write Greek iambics, it is not wise in parents to stimulate a clever boy's anxiety to hold the first place in his class. That anxiety is strong enough already ; it needs rather to be repressed. It is bad enough even at college to work on late into the night ; but at school it ought not to be suf- fered for one moment. If a lad takes his place in his class every day in a state of nervous tremoi', he may be in the way to get his gold medal, indeed ; but he is in the way to shatter his constitution for life. , We all know, of course, that children are subjected to worse things than these. I think of little things early set to hard work, to add a little to their parent's scanty store. Yet, if it be only work, they bear it cheerfully. This afternoon, I was walking through a certain quiet street, when I saw a little child standing with a basket at a door. The little man looked at various passers-by ; and I am happy to say, that, when he saw me, he asked me to ring the door-bell for him : for, though he had been sent with that basket, which was not a light one, he 26'i CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. could not reach up to the boll. I asked him how old he was. " Five years past," said the child, quite cheerfully and independently. " God help you, poor little man ! '' I thought ; "the doom of toil has fallen early upon you ! " If you visit much among the poor, few things will touch you more than the unnatural sagacity and trustworthiness of children who are little more than babies. You will find these little things left in a bare room by themselves, — the eldest six years old, — while the poor mother is out at her work. And the eldest will reply to your ques- tions in a way that will astonish you, till you get accus- tomed to such things. I think that almost as heart-rend- ing a sight as you will readily see is the misery of a little thing who has spilt in the street the milk she was sent to fetch, or broken a jug, and who is sitting in despair beside the spilt milk or the broken fragments. Good Samaritan, never pass by such a sight; bring out your twopence; set things completely right : a small matter and a kind woi'd will cheer and comfort an overwhelmed heart. That child has a truculent step-mother, or (alas !) mother, at home, who would punish that mishap as nothing should be punished but the gravest moral delinquency. And lower down the scale than this, it is awful to see want, cold, hunger, rags, in a little child. I have seen the wee thing shuffling along the pavement in great men's shoes, hold- ing up its sorry tatters with its hands, and casting on the passengers a look so eager, yet so hopeless, as went to one's heart. Let us thank God that there is one large city in the empire where you need never see such a sight,- and Avhere, if you do, you know how to relieve it effectu- ally ; and let us bless the name and the labors and the genius of Thomas Guthrie ! It is a sad thing to see the toys of such little childr(!n as I can think of. What CONCEENING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. 265 curious things lliey are able to seek amusement in ! I have known a brass button at the end of a string a much prized possession. I have seen a grave little boy stand- ing by a broken chair in a bare garret, solemnly arrang- ing and rearranging two pins upon tlie broken chair. A machine much employed by poor children in country- places is a slate tied to a bit of string: this, being drawn along the road, constitutes a cart; and you may find it attended by the admiration of the entire young popu- lation of three or four cottages standing in the moorland miles from any neighbor. You will not unfrequently find parents who, if they cannot keep back their children fiom some little treat, will try to infuse a sling into it, so as to prevent the chil- dren from enjoying it. They will impress on their chil- dren that ihey must be very wicked to care so much about going out to some children's party ; or they will insist that their children should return home at some pre^ posterously early hour, so as to lose the best part of the fun, and so as to appear ridiculous in the eyes of their young companions. You will find this amiable tendency in people intrusted with the care of older children. I have heard of a man wliose nepiiew lived with him, and lived a very cheerless life. When the season came round at which the lad hoped to be allowed to go and visit his parents, he ventured, after much hesitation, to hint this to his uncle. Of course the uncle felt that it was quite right the lad should go, but he grirdged him the chance of the little enjoyment, and the happy thought struck him that he might let the lad go, and at ihe same time make the poor fellow uncomfortable in going. Accordingly he conveyed his permission to the lad to go by roaring out 266 CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD in a savage manner, " Begone ! " This made the poor lad feel as if it were his duty to stay, and as if it were very wicked in him to wish to go ; and though he ulti- mately went, he enjoyed his visit with only half a heart. There are parents and guardians who take great paiiis to make their children think themselves very bad, — • to make the little things grow up in the endurance of the pangs of a bad conscience. For conscience, in children, is a quite artificial thing: you may dictate to it what it is to say. And parents, often injudicious, sometimes malig- nant, not seldom apply hard names to their children, which sink down into the little heart and memory far more deeply than they think. If a child cannot eat fat, you may instil into him that it is because he is so wicked ; and he will believe you for a while. A favorite weapon in the hands of some parents, who have devoted them- selves diligently to making their children miserable, is to frequently predict to the children the remorse which they (the children) will feel after they (the parents) are dead. In such cases, it would be difficult to specify the precise things which the children are to feel remorseful about. It must just be, generally, because they were so wicked, and because they did not sufficiently believe the infalli- bility and impeccability of their ancestors. I am re- minded of the woman mentioned by Sam Weller, whose husband disappeared. The woman had been a fearful termagant ; the husband, a very inoffensive man. After his disappearance, the woman issued an advertisement, assuring him, that, if he returned, he would be fully for- given ; which, as Mr. AVeller justly remarked, was very generous, seeing he had never done anything at all. Yes, the conscience of children is an artificial and a sensitive thing. The other day, a friend of mine, who is CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. 267 one of llie kindest of parents and the most amiable of men, told me what happened in his house on a certain Fast-day. A Scotch Fast-day, you may remember, is the institution which so completely puzzled Mr. Buckle. That historian fancied that to fast means in Scotland to abstain from food. Had Mr. Buckle known anylhing whatever about Scotland, he would have known that a Scotch Fast-day means a week-day on which people go to church, but on which (especially in the dwellings of the clergy) there is a better dinner than usual. I never knew man or woman in all my life who on a Fast-day refrained from eating. And quite right, too. The growth of common sense has gradually abolished literal fasting. In a warm Oriental climate, abstinence from food may give the mind the preeminence over the body, and so leave the mind better titted for religious duties. In our country, literal fasting would have just the contrary ef- fect: it would give the body the mastery over the soul; it would make a man so physically uncomfortable that he could not attend with protit to his religious duties at all. I am aware, Anglican reader, of the defects of my coun- ti'ymen ; but commend me to the average Scotchman for sound practical sense. But to return. These Fast-days are by many people observed as rigorously as the Scotch Sunday. On the forenoon of such a day, my friend's little child, three years old, came to him in much distress. She said, as one who had a fearful sin to confess, " I have been playing with my toys this morning;" and then be- gan to cry as if her little heart would break. I know some stupid parents who would have strongly encour- aged this needless sensitiveness ; and who would thus have made their child unhappy at the time, and prepared the way for an indignant bursting of these artiticial tram- 268 CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. mels when the child had grown up to maturity. But my friend was not of that stamp. He comforted the little thing, and told her, that, though it might be as well not to [ilay with her toys on a Fast-day, what she had done was nothing to cry about. I think, my reader, that, even if you were a Scotch minister, you would appear with considerable confidence before your Judge, if you had never done worse than failed to observe a Scotch Fast- day with the Covenanting austerity. But when one looks back and looks round and tries to reckon up the sorrows of childhood arising from parental folly, one feels that the task is endless. There are parents who will not suffer their children to go to the little feasts which children occasionally have, either on that wicked principle that all enjoyment is sinful, or because the chil- dren have recently committed some small offence, which is to be thus punished. There are parents who take pleas- ure in informing strangers, in their children's presence, about their children's faults, to the extreme bitterness of the children's hearts. There are parents who will not allow their children to be taught dancing, regarding danc- ing as sinful. The result is, that the children are awkward and unlike other children ; and when they are suft'ered to gpend an evening among a number of companions who have all learned dancing, they suffer a keen mortification which older people ought to be able to understand. Then you will find parents, possessing ample means, who will not dress their children like others, but send them out iu very shabby garments. Few things cause a more painful sense of humiliation to a child. It is a sad sight to see a little fellow hiding round the corner when some one passes who is likely to recognize him, afraid to go through the CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. 269 decent streets, and creeping out of sight by back-ways. We have all seen that. AVe have all sympathized heartily with the reduced widow who has it not in her power to dress her boy better ; and we have all felt lively indigna- tion at the parents who had the power to attire their chil- dren becomingly, but whose heartless parsimony made the little things go about under a constant sense of painful degradation. An extremely wicked way of punishing children is by shutting them up in a dark place. Dai'kness is naturally fearful to human beings, and the stupid ghost-stories of many nurses make it especially fearful to a child. It is a stupid and wicked thing to send a child on an errand in a dark night. I do not remember passing through a gi'eater trial in my youth than once walking three miles alone (it was not going on an errand) in the dark, along a road thickly shaded with trees. I was a little fellow ; but I got over the distance in half an hour. Part of the way was along the wall of a church-yard, one of those ghastly, weedy, neglected, accursed-looking spots where stupidity has done what it can to add circumstances of disgust and horror to the Christian's long sleep. Nobody ever supposed that this walk was a trial to a boy of twelve years old : so little are the thoughts of children under- stood. And children are reticent : I am telling now about that dismal walk for the very first time. And in the ill- nesses of childhood, children sometimes get very close and real views of death. I remember, when I was nine years old, how every evening, when I lay down to sleep, 1 used for about a year to picture myself lying dead, till I felt as though the coffin were closing round me. I used ft) read at that period, with a curious feeling of fascina- ivm, Blair's poem, "The Grave." But I never dreamed 270 CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. of tolling anybody about these thoughts. I believe that thoughtful children keep most of their thoughts to them- selves, and in respect of the things of which they think most are as profoundly alone as the Ancient Mariner in the Pacific. I have heard of a parent, an important mem- ber of a very strait sect of the Pharisees, whose child, when dying, begged to be buried not in a certain foul old hideous church-yard, but in a certain cheerful cemetery. This request the poor little creature made with all the energy of terror and despair. But the strait Pharisee refused the dying request, and pointed out, with polemi- cal bitterness, to the child, that he must be very wncked indeed to care at such a time where he was to be buried, or what might be done with his body after death. How I should enjoy the spectacle of that unnatural, heartless, stupid wretch tarred and feathered ! The dying child was caring for a thing about which Shakespeare cared ; and it was not in mere human weakness, but " by faith," that " Joseph, when he was a-dying, gave commandment concerning his bones." I believe that real depression of spirits, usually the sad heritage of after-years, is often felt in very early youth. It sometimes comes of the child's belief that he must be very bad, because he is so frequently told that he is so. It sometimes comes of the child's fears, early felt, as to what is to become of him. His parents, possibly, with the good sense and kind feeling which distinguish various parents, have taken pains to drive it into the child, that, if his father should die, he will certainly starve, and may very probably have to become a wandering beggar. And these sayings have sunk deep into the little heart. I re- member how a friend told me that his constant wonder, when he was twelve or thirteen years old, was this : If CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. 271 life was such a burden already, and so miserable to look back upon, how could he ever bear it when he had grown older ? But now, my reader, I am going to stop. I have a great deal more marked down to say, but the subject is growing so thoroughly distressing to me, as I go on, that I shall go on no farther. It would make me sour and wretched for the next week, if I were to state and illus- trate the varied sorrows of childhood of which I intended yet to speak : and if I were to talk out my heart to you about the people who cause these, I fear my character for good-nature would be gone wdtli you for ever. " This genial writer," as the newspapers call me, would show but little geniality : I am aware, indeed, that I have already been writing in a style which, to say the least, is snap- pish. So I shall say nothing of the first death that comes in the family in our childish days, — its hurry, its confu- sion, its awe-struck mystery, its wonderfully vivid recall- ing of the words and looks of the dead ; nor of the terri- ble trial to a little child of being sent away from home to school, — the heart-sickness and the weary counting of the weeks and days before the time of returning home again. But let me say to every reader who has it in his power directly or indirectly to do so, Oh, do what you can to make children happy ! oh, seek to give that great en- during blessing of a happy youth ! Whatever after-life may prove, let there be something bright to look back upon in the horizon of their early time ! You may sour the human spirit forever, by cruelty and injustice in youth. There is a past suffering which exalts and purifies ; but this leaves only an evil result : it darkens all the world, and all our views of it. Let us try to make every little 272 CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. child happy. The most selfish parent might fry to please a little child, if it were only to see the fresh expression of unblunted feeling, and a Hveliness of pleasurable emo- tion which in after-years we shall never know. I do not believe a great English barrister is so happy when he has the Great Seal committed to him as two little and rather ragged urchins whom I saw this very afternoon. I was walking along a country-road, and overtook them. They were about five years old. I walked slowei*, and talked to them for a few minutes, and found that they were good boys, and went to school every day. Then I produced two coins of the copper coinage of Britain : one a large penny of ancient days, another a small penny of the pres- ent age. " There is a penny for each of you," I said, with some solemnity : '' one is large, you see, and the other small ; but they are each worth exactly the same. Go and get something good." I wisli you had seen them gooff! It is a cheap and easy thing to make a little heart happy. May this hand never write another essay if it ever wilfully miss the chance of doing so ! It is all quite right in after-years to be careworn and sad. We understand these matters ourselves. Let others bear the burden which we ourselves bear, and which is doubtless good for us. But the poor little things ! I can enter in- to the feeling of a kind-hearted man who told me that he never could look at a number of little children but the tears came into his eyes. How much these young crea- tures have to bear yet ! I think you can, as you look at them, in some degree understand and sympathize with the Redeemer, who, when he " saw a great multitude, was moved with compassion toward them ! " Ah, you smooth little face, (you may think,) I know what years will make of you, if they find you in this world ! CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD. 273 And you, light little heart, will know your weight of care ! And I remember, as I write these concluding lines, who they were that the Best and Kindest this world ever saw liked to have near Him ; and what the reason was He gave why He felt most in His element when they were by His side. He wished to have little children round Him, and w^ould not have them chidden away ; and this because there was something about them that reminded Him of the Place from which He came. He liked the little faces and the little voices, — He to whom the wisest are in understanding as children. And often- times, I believe, these little ones still do His work. Oftentimes, I believe, when the worn man is led to Him in childlike confidence, it is by the hand of a little child. 18 CHAPTER X. THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND.i gEPUBLTCANS are born, not made," says 2;^^ the lively author of Kaloolah ; and so, we have long held, are true-blue Presbyte- J^^S^c<3) rians. A certain preponderance of the sterner elements, a certain lack of capacity of emotion, • and disregard of the influence of associations, — in brief, a certain hardness of character to be found only in Scotland, is needed to make your out-and-out follower of John Knox. The great mass of the educated mem- bers of the Church of Scotland have no pretension to the name of true-blue Presbyterians : Balfour of Bur- ley would have scouted them ; under the insidious in- fluence of greater enlightenment and more rapid com- munication, they have in many respects approximated sadly to " black prelacy." Dr. Candlish's book reminds us that out-and-out Presbyterians are still to be found in the northern part of this island. In arguing with such, we feel a peculiar difficulty. We have no ground in common. Things which appear to us as self-evi- dent axioms, they flatly deny. For instance, it appears 1 The Organ Question: Statements hi/ Dr. Ritchie and Dr. Porteom for ami against the use of the Organ in Public Worship, in the Proceed- ings of the Presbytery of Glasgow, 1807-8. With an introductory No- tice, by Robert S. Candlish, D.D. Edinburgh. 185G. THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. 275 to us just as plain as that two and two make four, that a church should be something essentially different in ap- pearance from an ordinary dwelling ; that there is a pecu- liar sanctity about the house of God ; that if it be fit to pay some respect to the birthday of the Queen, it cannot be wrong to pay a greater to the birthday of the Re- deemer ; that the worship of God should be made as solemn in itself as possible, and as likely as possible to impress the hearts of the worshippers ; that if music is employed in the worship of God, it should be the best music to be had ; and that if there be a noble instrument especially adapted to the performance of sacred music, with something in its very tones that awes the heart and wakens devotional feeling, that is beyond all question the instrument to have in our churches. Now all this the true-blue Presbyterian at once denies. He holds that all that is required of a church is protection from the weather, with seat-room, and, perhaps, ventilation ; he denies that any solemnized feeling is produced by noble architecture, or that the Gothic vault is fitter for a church than for a factory ; he walks into church with his hat on to show he does not care for bricks and mortar ; he taboos Christ- mas-day, with all its gentle and gracious remembrances ; be maintains that the barest of all worship is likeliest to be true spiritual service ; he holds that there is some- thing essentially evil and sinful in the use of an organ in church ; that the organ is " a portion of the trumpery which ignorance and superstition had foisted into the house of God ; " that to introduce one is to " convert a church into a concert-room," and " to return back to Judaism ; " and that " the use of instrumental music in the worship of God is neither lawful, nor expedient, nor edifying." ^ 1 The Organ Question, pp. 108, 125, 128, &c. 276 THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. We confess that we do not know how to argue with men who honestly hold these views. The things which they deny appear to us so perfectly plain already, that no argument can make them plainer. If any man say to us, "I don't feel in the least solemnized by the noble cathe- dral and the pealing anthem," all we can reply is simply, " Then you are different from human beings in general ;" but it is useless to argue with him. If you argue a thesis at all, you can argue it only from things less liable to dis- pute than itself; and in the case of all these matters attached to Presbytcrj^ though not forming part of its essence, this is impossible. Whenever we have had an argument with an old impracticable Presbyterian, we have left off with the feeling that some people are bom Presbyterians ; and if so, there is no use in talking to them. But all these notions to which allusion has been made, are attached to Presbytery by vulgar prejudice ; they form no part of its essence, and enlightened Presbyte- rians now-a-days are perfectly aware of the fact. There is no earthly connection in the nature of things between Presbyterian Church-government and flat-roofed meeting- houses, the abolition of the seasons of the Christian year, a bare and bald ritual, a vile " precentor" howling out of all tune, and a congregation joining as musically as the frogs in Aristophanes. The educated classes in Scotland have for the most part come to see this, and in Edinburgh and Glasgow, even among the Dissenters, we find church- like places of worship, decent singing, and the entire ser- vice conducted with propriety. And one of the marked signs of vanishing prejudice is, that a general wish is springing up for the introduction of that noble instru- ment, so adapted to church-music, the organ. Things THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. 277 have even gone so far that the }3rincipal ecclesiastical court of a considerable Scotch dissenting denomination, has left it to be decided by each congregation for itself, whether it will have an organ or not. And several dis- senting ministers of respectable standing and undoubted ,Presbyterianism, are pushing the matter strongly. "j We should have fancied that men of sense in North 'Britain would have been pleased to find that there is a prospect of the organ being generally introduced : and :this upon the broad ground that church-music would thus be made more solemn, more worthy of God's worship, more likely to awaken devotional feeling. We should have fancied that there was no need for special pleading on the part of the advocates of the organ, and assuredly no room for lengthened argument on the part of its oppo- nents. The entire argument, we think, may be summed up thus : Whatever makes church-music more solemn and solemnizing is good ; the organ does this : therefore, let us have the organ. If a man denies our first proposi- tion, he is a person who cannot be reasoned with. If he denies the second, he has no musical taste. If he admits both, yet denies the conclusion, then he is either preju- diced or yielding to prejudice. And so the discussion ends. And though we do not by any means hold that the majority is necessarily right, still in this world we have, after all, no further appeal than to the mass of educated men, and they have decided " the organ question." We believe that the Scotch Church and its offshoots are the only Christian sects that taboo the organ. L^ We should not have been surprised to find opposition ;lo the organ on the part of the unreasoning crowd, who regard it as a rag of Popery, and whose hatred of every- thing prelatical is quite wonderful. But it startles us to 278 THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. find reasonable and educated Scotchmen maintaining that an organ is an idol, and that its use is not only inexpe- dient, but absolutely sinful and forbidden. We have read with considerable interest, and with great surprise, Dr. Candlish's publication on The Organ Question, elicited, by " the alarm he feels at certain recent movements on behalf of instrumental music in Presbyterian worship." (p. 5.) His part in it is confined to an introductory essays reflecting little credit upon either his logic or his taste : and instead of arguing the matter for himself, he prefers to reproduce what he regards as a complete discussion of the subject, in two documents, written nearly half a cen- tury since. The circumstances under which these were written are as follows : — In the centre of a considerable square, opening out of the Salt Market of Glasgow ( indissolubly associated with the memory of Bailie Nicol Jarvie and Rob Roy), there stands the elegant church of St. Andrew. It is &, facsim- ile, on a much reduced scale, of St. Martin's-in-the-fields, at Charing Cross. Fifty years since, Dr. Ritchie, the in- cumbent of that church, in accordance with the wish of his entire congregation, one of the most intelligent in Scotland, introduced an organ. On Sunday, the 23d of August, 1807, the sole organ which has been used since the Reformation in any Scotch church in Scotland,^ was used for the first and last time. Extreme horror was excited among the ultra-Presbyterians. Dr. Ritchie was forthwith pulled up by the Presbytery of Glasgow, and 1 Organs are not unfrequently found in Scotch churches out of Scot- land. The Scotch churches maintained by the East India Company at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, are provided with organs, whicli are regularly used. The case is the same with several of the Scotch churches in the West Indies, and with one long established at Amster- dam. THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. 27!l getting frightened at his own audacity, he declared at its meeting " that he would not again use an organ in the public worship of" God without the authority of the Church." Upon this the Presbytery passed a resolution to the effect " That the Presbytery are of opinion that the use of the organ in the public worship of God, is contrary to the law of the land, and to the law and con- stitution of our Established Church, and therefore pro- hibit it in all the churches and chapels within their bounds ; and with respect to Dr. Ritchie's conduct in this matter, they are satisfied with his declaration." Dr. Ritchie gave in a paper containing his reasons of dissent ; and a committee of the Presbytery prepared a reply to it. These two papers form the substance of the book now sent forth with Dr. Candlish's name. The commotion excited in Scotland by the introduction of the organ was indescribable. Dr. Ritchie was accused of " the monstrous crime of worshipping God by images, of violating the articles of the Union, of demolishing the barriers for the security of our religion, of committing a deed of perjury to ordination vows." (p. 61.) A howl of execration was directed against the man who had exhibit- ed the flagrant insolence of introducing what John Knox had tastefully described as a " kist fu' o' whistles." Pamph- lets and caricatures wei'e numerous. Dr. Candlish thinks it worth while to preserve the remembrance of a picture " which represents Dr. Ritchie, who was about the time of these proceedings translated to Edinburgh, travelling as a street musician, with a barrel organ strapped across his shoulder, and solacing himself with the good old tune, " I'll gang nae mair to yon toun." (p. 28.) Wit and in- telligence appear to have been tolerably equal in Scotland in those days. 280 THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. Dr. Caiidlish's own sentiments are plainly enough expressed. He thinks that " cogent arguments can be urged, both from reason and Scripture, against the prac- tice of using the organ." (p. 14.) He hopes that his pres- ent publication " will make many who have been almost led away by the plausibilities that are so easily got up on the side of organs, pause before they lend themselves to what may cause a most perilous agitation." (p. 31). This is fair enough, because there may be prejudices in the mass of the Scotch people so strong that it would be inexpedient to shock them by introducing instrumental music. But Dr. Candlish goes on, in words which be- wilder us, to give his opinion on the essential merits of the question : — It is not that I am afraid of a controversy on this subject, or of its issue, so far as the merits of the question are concerned. I believe it is a question which touches some of the highest and deepest points of Christian theology. Is the temple destroyed, is the temple worship wholly superseded? Have we, or have we not, priests and sacrifices among us now? Does the Old Testament itself point to anything but the " fruit of the lips," as the peace-offering or thank-offering of gospel times? Is there a trace in the New Testament of any other mode of praise? For my part, I am persuaded that if the organ be ad- mitted, there is no barrier, in principle, against the sacerdotal system in all its fulness, — against the substitution again, in our wlwle religion, of the formal for the spiritual, the symbolical for the real ! And then, remembering that this may offend Episcopa- lians, Dr. Candlish goes on offensively to say that the Church of England never attained light enough to reject the organ, and may therefore be permitted the use of a carnal contrivance which the more enlightened Presbyte- rians would be retrograding in taking up. A position at which the organ is retained, is wonderfully well for South- rons ; but would be a wretched falling oflf in the followers of Cameron and Renwick. THE OKGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. 281 Dr. Ritchie appears from his " Statement " to have been an enlightened and educated man, somewhat in advance of his age, and who had miscalculated the con- sequences of setting up the organ. The pear was not ripe ; it is hardly so yet, after the lapse of fifty years. He adduces just such arguments in favor of instrumen- tal music, as would present themselves to any English mind, modified somewhat by his knowledge of the preju- dices of the tribunal he addressed. His statement is written with elegance, and temperately expressed. He sets out by stating that the u-e of instrumental music in worship has its foundation in the best feelings of human nature, prompting men to employ with rever- ence, according to the means they possess, all their pow- ers in expressing gratitude to their Creator. This use cannot be traced in sacred history from the time of Moses down to that of David : but David not only em- ployed instrumental music himself, but calls "on all na- tions, all the earth, to praise the Lord as he did, with psaltery, with harp, with organ, with the voice of a psalm." His psalms are constantly sung in Christian •worship ; " and can it be a sin to sing them, as was done by the original composer, with the accompaniment of an organ ? " Christ never found fault with instrumental music, neither did Paul or John ; the latter indeed tells us that he beheld in heaven " Harpers harping with their harps." During the earlier centuries, the pei'secutions to which Christians were exposed probably suffered no thought about a matter not essential : but the use of or- gans became general in the time of dawning light. At the Reformation it was felt that their use was no essen- tial part of Popery ; and thus it was retained by all the reformed churches, those of Luther and Calvin alike, ex- 282 THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. cept the Church of Scotland. Organs did not find favor in Scothind, because religious persecution had excited in that country a great horror of whatever had been used in popish or prelatical worship, as altars, crosses, organs. But although the organ was associated with Episcopacy, there is no necessary connection : — And in the use of an organ in church during public praise, I cannot, for my life, after long and serious attention to the subject, discover even an approach to any violation either of the purity or uniformity of our worship. For who will or can allege that an organ is an inno- vation upon the great object of worship? — we all, I trust, worship the one God, through the one Mediator. Or upon the subject of praise? — for we all sing the same psalms and paraphrases in the same language, all giving thanks for the same mercies. Or upon the posture of the worshippers? — for we all sit, as becomes Presbyterians. Or upon the tunes sung? — for we sing only such as are in general use. Or upon the office of the precentor? — for he still holds his rank, and employs the commanding tones of the organ for guiding the voices of the people. What, then, is it? It is a help, a support given to the precentor's voice, for enabling him more steadih', and with more dignity, to guide the voice of the congregation, and thus to preserve not only uniformity, but that unity of voice which is .so becoming in the public service, which so pleasingly heightens devout feelings, and prevents that discord which so easily distracts the attention of the worshippers. Such is an outline of Dr. Ritchie's argument. Our readers will, we doubt not, be curious to know what con- siderations, partaking of the nature of argument, can be adduced against the use of organs in church. Most peo- ple, we should think, would be more curious to know this, than to have arguments in favor of an usage for which common sense is authority sufficient. Now, had the committee of the Glasgow Presbytery assigned their true reason for rejecting the organ, it might have been very briefly set out : it was simply to be different from the Prelatists. A true-blue Presbyterian does not think of discussing the fitness of any observance on the ground THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. 283 of its own merits. He brings the matter to a shorter issue — viz. : Is it used in the Episcopal Church or is it not ? If he goes beyond that, his final question would be, What did John Knox say about it ? His mfallibility is held in Scotland much more strongly and practically than the Pope's is in Italy. If any man in a Scotch Church Court should venture to impugn anything that ever was said by the Reformer, he would draw a perfect storm of indignation upon his own head. We repeat, there is no doctrine more decidedly held in Scotland than that of the infallibility of John Knox. Perhaps that of the impec- cability of Calvin should be regarded as a companion doctrine. His vagaries as to the Sabbath preclude his reception as infallible. We have seen a paper by an eminent minister of a Scotch dissenting " body," whose purpose was to prove that Calvin was right in burning Servetus. The argument, so far as we could make it out, appeared to be that Calvin's doing so was right, because Calvin did it. Of course, had Servetus burned Calvin, it would have been quite a different thing. As for the reply to Dr. Ritchie's Statement (which was drawn up by a certain Dr. Porteous), we shall at once say of it that it appears to us characterized by ignorance, stupidity, and vulgarity, in the very highest degree. Dr. Ritchie's paper dealt with broad principles : this is mainly employed in paltry personalities and misrepresentations. Its style bristles with such descriptions of instrumental music as " will-worship," " superstitious rites," " convert- ing a church into a concert-room," " an organ tickling the ear of the audience" (the italics are the writer's own),: "the puerile amusement of pipes and organs," &c. We shall endeavor to pick out from this very tedious lucubra- tion whatever it contains in the nature of argument ; and. 284 THE OKGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. we believe that our readers will agree with us that the mere statement of the following objections to the organ is sufficient refutation of them. We give our refer- ence->, lest we should be suspected of caricaturing Dr. Porteous's argument : — 1. Instrumental music in the worship of God is as much part of the Jewish system as circumcision : there- fore, if circumcision be abolished, so is the organ, (pp. 86-7.) Instrumental music was essentially connected with sacrifice ; and as sacrifice was abolished by Christ's death, so was instrumental music abolished, (pp. 87-8.) The New Testament, by prescribing a new way of wor- shipping God, — to wit, by singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, — is to be understood as abolishing the old way, by instrumental music. (p. 91.) St. Paul, far from commending instrumental music, speaks of it with contempt — If I " have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal." (p. 96.) True, harps are spoken of by St. John as in heaven ; but St. John was drawing on his recollection of the Temple service, and is not to be literally understood, (pp. 97-8.) So much for the argument from Scripture. 2. The Christians of the early centuries would have had organs, had it been right to have them. As they had them not, " it is evident that they considered it un- lawful to employ instrumental music in the worship of God. Both Arians and orthodox would have regarded themselves as returning back to Judaism, if they had permitted it in their public worship." (p. 108.) We are surprised to find the Fathers quoted by a Presbyterian clergyman, but in this case they make in favor of his views. Justin Martyr says, " Plain singing is not cliild- ish, but only the singing with lifeless organs : whence THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. 285 the use of such instruments, and other things fit for chil- dren, is laid aside." (pp. 109-10.) Basil speaks of or- gans as " the inventions of Jubal, of the race of Cain." (p. 111.) Chrysostora says that instrumental music " was only permitted to the Jews for the imbecility and grossness of their souls : but now, instead of organs, Christians must use the body to praise God." (p. 112.) Jerome and Augustine speak in a similar strain. Tliomas Aquinas, in the Schoolman age, says, " In the old law, God was praised both with musical instruments and human voices. But the Church does not use musical instruments to praise God, lest she should seem to ju- daize." (p. 115). And we are told, on the authority of Eckhard, that Luther (among other foolish things which he said) said that " organs were among the ensigns of Baal I" (p. 119.) There is no doubt that Calvin de- clared that " Instrumental music is not fitter to be adopt- ed into the public worship of the Christian Church than the incense, the candlesticks, and the other shadows of the Mosaic law." (p. 121.) Our reply to all this is, that the Fathers, Schoolmen, and Reformers, might fall into error : if the question is to be decided by authority, we could adduce a thousand authorities in favor of the organ for every one against it ; these eminent men had no other grounds for forming their opinion than are patent to us, and it seems manifest to common sense that neither in reason nor Scripture are there any grounds to support the opinions they express. We appeal to the common sense of mankind, even from the judgment of Chrysos- tora, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin. 3. Dr. Porteous's next argument against the organ is, that the Fathers of the Scotch Church " regarded instru- mental music as the offspring of Judaism, and abhorred 286 THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. it as a relic of Popery, and too intimately connected with that prelatic form which our forefathers never could en- dure." (p. 132.) " It has been allowed by authors, for- eign and domestic, that the genius of the Scotch people is much more musical than that either of the English, the Dutch, or the French. But tlie people of Scotland abhor the blending of the inventions of man with the worship of God. They conceive instrumental music in- consistent with the purity of a New Testament Church." (p. 134.) Then "Knox and Melville, Rutherford and Henderson, offer not one word in behalf of the organ. They allow it to perish unnoticed, as a portion of that trumpery which ignorance and superstition had foisted into the house of God." (p. 140.) "The fixed, determined opposition to instrumental music " among the Scotch Re- formers " ariseth from legal, political, moral, and Scrip- tural grounds." (p. 140.) We admit at once that the founders of the Scotch Church had an inveterate dislike for the organ ; but as they give us no reason for their dislike, except the fact that the organ had been employed in prelatic worship, and the utterly groundless assertion that instrumental music was a purely Jewish observance, we cannot regard their dislike otherwise than as an ir- rational prejudice. The argument from Knox's opinion may be a very good one where men believe the infalli- bility of Knox, but with us it has no weight whatever. We regard ourselves quite as competent to form an opinion in this matter as Knox ; and the argument from mere authority will not do in a case where the authorities quoted have no special weight, and are in a minority of one to a hundred. 4. The next argument is addressed exclusive to per- sons belono-ing to the Church of Scotland. At the Re- THE OEGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. 287 volution, " Prelacy was for ever abolished in Scotland ; " and the organ is part of Prelacy, (pp. 144-5.) The people, at all events, regarded it as such. (p. 145.) And when it was stipulated at the union of the two kingdoms, that the established worship should continue, it was understood on all hands that this stipulation ex- cluded instrumental music, (pp. 150-161.) Every cler- gyman at his ordination subscribes a formula, in which he " sincerely owns the purity of worship presently au- thorized and practised in this Church, and that he will constantly adhere to the same ; and that he will neither directly nor indirectly endeavor the prejudice and sub- version thereof." (p. 162.) But this purity of worship is destroyed by introducing an organ ; for " by blending instrumental music with the human voice, the simple melody of our forefathers becomes immediately changed into a medley, composed of animate and inanimate ob- jects." (p. 165.) We do not think any comment is needful upon all this. We give another passage, which we presume is intended for an argument : — Man being a reasonable creature, and a reasonable service being de- manded from him by God, that reasonable service cannot so properly be performed by man as when he useth his voice alone. This is the vehicle which God hath given him to convey to his Jlaker the emo- tions of his soul. Musical instruments may indeed tickle the ear and please the fancy of fallen man. But is God to be likened to fallen man ? Organs are the mere invention of man, played often by hire- lings, who, while they modulate certain sounds, may possess a heart cold and hard as the nether mill-stone. You may, if you please, style such music the will-worship of the organist; but you surely cannot, in common sense, denominate it the praise of devout worshippers, singing with grace, and making melody to the Lord in the heart. , The only passage in Dr. Porteous's argument which appears to us to partake of the nature of discussion 288 THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. on the merits of the question, is the following vul- garity : — Your committee have heard j'our amateurs and dilettanti assert that their nerves have been completely overcome with the powerful tones of the organ, and the sublime crash of instrumental music in the ora- torios of Handel. Your committee are willing to allow this musical effect: but they believe, at the same time, that all the musical instru- ments that ever were used can never produce upon the devout and contemplative mind that sublime and pathetic effect which the well regulated voice of 8000 children produced, when singing the praises of Go'd in the cathedral of St. Paul's, upon the recovery of our good old religious king. Away, then, with the cant of an organ's being so wonderfull}' calculated to increase the devotion of Christians! Your committee have sometimes had an opportunity of listening to instru- mental music, in what is styled cathedral worship. It might for a little time please and surprise by its novelty; the effect, however, was very transitorv, and sometimes produced ideas in the mind very dif- ferent from devotion. Your committee believe that when the praises of God are sung b3' every individual, even of an unlettered country congregation, the effect is much more noble, and much more salutary to the mind of a Christian audience, than all the loft^- artificial strains of an organ, extiacted by a hired organist, and accompanied by a con- fused noise of many voices, taught at great expense to chant over what their hearts neither feel, nor their heads understand. Now, as it appears to us, this passage is the only one in Dr. Porteous's long treatise which touches the merits of " the organ question." Here he fairly joins issue with the supporters of the organ on the question whether the use of that instrument does or does not render God's praise more solemn and affecting. He maintains that it does not. On the strongest of all evidence, our own experience, we maintain that it does. And we have nio higher court to appeal to. We are just brought back to the principle with which we set out — the existence of two sorts or species of human constitution essentially different by nature. Dr. Porteous was a born Pres- byterian. We are not. And we can but comfort our- THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. 280 selves with the belief that were the educated population of Cliristendom polled, we should be in a majority of ten thou.-and to one. We make bold to i^ay, that were you to poll the educated people of Scotland, we should have a hundred to one in our favor. It will amuse our readers to know that this enlightened clergyman, in closing his argument, bestows a parting kick upon the idolatrous organ, by reminding us that we read in the Book of Job, that the wicked of those days " took the timbrel and the harp, and rejoiced at the sound of the organ." {Job, ch. xxi. v. 14, 15, p. 188.) And when Nebuchadnezzar erected his golden image, the signal for its worship was " the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music." {Daniel, ch. iii. v. 3, p. 189.) What on earth can we say to the man who could seriously write this ? We have thus set forth Dr. Porteous's argument against the organ, an argument which Dr. Candlish tells us, " impressed him, when he first studied it, with the sort of sense of completeness which a satisfactory demonstra- tion gives ; and a recent perusal has not lowered his opinion of it." (p. 30.) For ourselves, it has impressed us with absolute wonder to think that any reasonable man could have v/ritten a treatise so filled with bigotry and absurdity. We could not think of setting ourselves to answer arguments whose folly is apparent on the first glance at them ; indeed, our fear is, that our readers may fancy we have intentionally caricatured them, and we beg to tender the assurance that we have set them out with Bcrupulous fairness. We lament to see that minds natur- ally powerful and candid can be cramped and cribbed by gloomy prejudices to the extent exemplified in Drs. Porteous and Candlish, and we confidently make our ap- 19 290 THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. peal from them to the common sense of the people of Scotland. The great mass of educated Scotch people is fast becoming extricated from the vulgar prejudice against the organ. In every circle of polished society, the wish may be heard for its introduction, on the broad ground that it would be a great improvement, and that there is no reason whatever against it, except the prejudice of the first Scotch reformers against everything which had been used in popish or prelatic worship. The feeling is gaining ground in Scotland that this spirit of mere contrariety was allowed to go to a most unreasonable length. The spirit of the Covenanters was, " Never mind if kneeling be the natural posture of prayer, and the one we ourselves always adopt in private ; the Pre- latists kneel in church, and therefore we shall stand. Never mind if the very necessity of using the lungs points to standing as the attitude for singing God's praise : the Prelatists stand, so we shall sit." And there can be no question that the educated classes in Scotland, in laying aside the spirit of pure contrariety to Episcopacy, and looking at observances and estimating them by their own merits, are in so far departing from the true Presbyterian principle ; if we are to understand by that the principle of the gloomy fanatics who signed the Solemn League and Covenant, and thereby under- took to " endeavor the extii-pation of Popery, Prelacy, superstition, heresy, schism, and profaneness." ^ No doubt the " Cameronians " and " Original Seceders " of Scotland at the present day, are a great deal more like the Covenanters than is tlie Church of Scotland. Holding that for many i-easons Presbytery is the best form of church-government for Scotland, the great ma- 1 Solemn League and Covenant, Section II. THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. 291 jority of the clergy of the Scotch Church are equally persuaded that Episcopacy is the best form of church- government for England. And very many of the most influential among the elders of the Church of Scotland, say at once that they are Presbyterians in Scotland and Episcopalians in England. It would indeed be a wretched thing, if in days not over-friendly to eccle- siastical establishments, the Churches of England and Scotland, maintaining precisely the same doctrines, and differing solely in the non-essential of church-govern- ment, should ever cherish other than a spirit of mutual kindness and mutual support. At the same time, it will take another century of rail- way communication and intercourse with England to rub off' the horror of Pi'elacy and all its belongings which exists among the humble classes — at least, in country- places. A cross over the gable of a church, or a win- dow of stained glass, must still be introduced, in country- parishes, with great caution. We observe from a Scotch newspaper, that a country clergyman, within the last six months, introduced a choir of trained singers into his church, in the hope of improving the psalmody. Whenever the choir began the psalm, most of the con- gregation closed their books, and refused to join in the singing, and many rose and left the church. A choir was introduced in the parish church of a considerable town in the north of Scotland. Some of the people hs- tened in wonder to its first notes, and then hurried out to escape the profanation, exclaiming, " They'll be bring- ing o'er the Pope next ! " If a country minister wishes his precentor or clerk to appear in a gown and a white neckcloth, instead of entering the desk in a sky-blue coat and scarlet waistcoat, some of his parishioners are sure 292 THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. to trace in tlie arrangeinent an undue leaning towards Episcopacy. Tiie minister of a remote parish was prer sented with a pulpit gown by his people. The people naturally expected to see it next Sunday, and a larger congregation came to see the gown than would have assembled to hear the sermon. The minister, howevp^, wore no gown. Some of the chief contributors to its expense called at the manse, to express the hope of the parish that the gown might be worn. ,. " I cannot wear it," said the minister ; " it is too large for me." " Too large ! " was the reply ; " it fits elegantly." Upon which the enlightened and cultivated gentleman answered — " No, it is far too large : the tail of it reaches a' the way to Rome ! " No doubt this man would have judged an organ a blasphemous, Satanic, Jewish, Popish, and Prelatic de- vice. But we do not believe that at the present day such a person could be found among the clei'gy of the farthest presbytery of the Hebrides. We do not think that the time has come for the gen- eral introduction of the organ in Scotland. There is no use in running in the face of the prejudices of a whole people ; and while the opponents of the organ regard the question as one of principle, its supporters cannot regard the organ as more tlian a luxury. It is a step in advance that there should be in Scotland such a thing as " The Organ Question." The matter is now in debate : at one time the Presbyterian who raised it would have been knocked on the head. With the in- creasing enlightenment of the age, and the rapid com- munication that now exists between this country and THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. 293 Scotland, it is a mere matter of time till the organ shall be employed wherever its expense can be afforded. It would be highly inexpedient to press it upon the peo- ple now. It would retard the period of its general re- ception. All that can be looked for at present is, that permission should be granted to each congregation to act upon its own judgment in the matter of the organ. It will be introduced first in the churches in the fashion- able parts of Edinburgh and Glasgow, next in country parishes where the squire has been educated at Oxford, and ultimately, we doubt not, it will excite as little wonder in Scotland as it does in England now. The tide is flowing surely. But we shall not live to see that time. Half-material beings as we are, and often the worse for the material things which sunound us — which by their very solidity make spiritual things seem shadowy and unreal in the comparison — it is well when we can make (so to speak) a reprisal on the hostile territory, and get a material thing to conduce to our spiritual ad- vantage. "We cannot but think that in all the reason- ings of ultra-Presbyterians on the immorality of organs, there is woven a thread of the old Gnostic heresy of the essential evil of matter ; as though the same God who made our spirits capable of being impressed, had not made the material sights and sounds which are capable of impressing them. We are not afraid to argue " The Organ Question " with Dr. Candlish on the highest and farthest-reaching grounds, though we think it quite suf- ficiently decided by the ready appeal to common sensa But what greater harm is there in using the organ's notes to waken pious thought and feeling, than in learn- ing a lesson of our decay from the material emblem of 294 THE ORGAN QUESTION IN SCOTLAND. the fading leaf, or from the lapse of the passing river ? If it be not wrong to avail ourselves of the natural pen- siveness of the departing light, and to go forth like Isaac in the eventide to meditate upon our most solemn con- cerns, — why is it sinful or degrading to turn to use the native power which the Creator has set in the organ's tones to stir tender and holy emotion? When we can get the Material to yield us any impulse upwai'd, in God's name let us take its aid and be thankful ! And as Dr. Candlish likes authorities, we shall conclude with a better authority than that of Dr. Porteous. He tells us that the organ may " tickle the ear," but denies its power to touch the heart. Milton thought otherwise : and we believe that his words describe the normal influ- ence of the organ on the healthy human mind : — But let mj- due feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale; And love the high embowered roof, With antique pillars massy proof. And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light; There let the pealing organ blow To the full-voiced quire below, In service high and anthems clear, As may with sweetness, through mine ear, Dissolve me into ecstasies, And bring all heaven before mine eyes. CHAPTER XL THORNDALE; OR, THE CONFLICT OF OPINIONS.^ i;^^ UTHORS, moral and political, have of late years been recognizing the fact, that abstract truths become much more generally attrac- ^ tive when something of human interest is added to them. Most people feel as if thoughts and opinions gain a more substantial being, and lose their ghost-like intangibility, when we know something of the character and history of the man who entertained them, and something of the outward scenery amid which he entertained them. Very many persons feel as if, in pass- ing from fact, or what purports to be fact, to principle, they were exchanging the firm footing of solid land for the yielding and impalpable air ; and a framework of scenes and persons is like a wing to buoy them up in traversing that unaccustomed medium. And there are few indeed to whom a peculiar interest does not result when views and opinions, instead of standing nakedly on the printed page, are stated and discussed in friendly council by individual men, seated upon a real grassy slope, canopied by substantial trees, and commanding a prospect of real hills, and streams, and valleys. It is not entirely true that argument has its weight and force in 1 Thwndale ; or, the Conflict of Opinions. By William Smith. Ed- inburgh: Blackwoods. 1857. 296 THORNDALE ; OR, THE itself, quite apart from its author. In the matter of prac- tical effect, on actual human beings, a good deal depends on the lips it comes from. The author of " Tiioriidale " has recognized and acted upon this principle. Mr. Wilham Smith is a philosopher and a poet, as the readers of his tragedy, " Atlielwold," are ah-eady aware ; and whoever sits down to read his new book as an ordinary worlv of fiction to be hurried through for its plot-interest, will probably not turn many pages before closing the volume. The great purpose of the work is to set out a variety of opinions upon several matters which concern the highest interests of the individ- ual man and of the human race ; but instead of present- ing them in naked abstractness, Mr. Smith has set tliem in a slight story, and given them as the tenets or the fan- cies of different men, whose characters are so drawn that these tenets and fancies appear to be just their natural culmination and result. If we were disposed to be hyper- critical, we might say that the different characters sketched by Mr. Smith are too plainly built up to serve as the sub- strata of the opinions which they express. There is hardly allowance enough made for the waywardness and inconsistency of human conclusion and action. Given any one of Mr. Smith's men in certain circumstances, and we are only too sure of what he will do or say. The Utopian is always hopeful ; the desponding philosopher is never brightened up by a ray of hope. But this, it is obvious, is a result arrived at upon system ; for we shall find abundant proof in the volume that Mr. Smith has read deeply and accurately into human nature, in all its weaknesses, fancies, hopes, and fears. It is long since we have met with a more remarkable or worthy book. Ml". Smith is always thoughtful and suggestive : he has CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 297 been' entirely successful in carrying out his wish to pro- duce a volume in reading which a thoughtful man will often pause with his finger between the leaves, and muse upon what he has read.. We judge that the book must have been written slowly, and at intervals, from its afflu- ence of beautiful tliouglit. No mind could have turned off such material with the equable flow of a stream. We know few works in which there may be found so many tine thoughts, light-bi'inging illustrations, and happy turns df expression, to invite the reader's pencil. A delicate refinement, a simple and pathetic eloquence, a kindly sympathy with all sentient things, are everywhere appar- ent : but the construction of the book, in which the most opposite opinions are expressed by the different charac- ters without the least editorial comment, approval or dis- approval, renders it difficult to judge what are truly the opinions of the author himself. Mr. Smith's English style is of classic beauty : nothing can surpass the deli- cate grace and finish of many passages of description and reflection ; and although it was of course impossible, and indeed not desirable, that equal pains should be bestowed upon the melody of all the pages of the book, still the language is never slovenly ; the hand of the tasteful scholar is everywhere. Nor should we fail to remark the author's versatility of power. Everything he does is done with equal ease and felicity: — description of exter- nal nature, analysis of feeling and motive, close logic, large views of men and things. There is not the gentle and graceful humor of Mr. Helps : the book is serious throughout, with no infusion of playfulness. The author evidently thinks that in this world there is not much to smile at, — unless it be at everything. Let us remark, that in this volume the characters come and go as in real 298 TIIORNDALE ; OR, THE life. There is nothing of the novel's artificial working up of interest, deepening to the close. Mr. Smith may say of his book, as Mr. Bailey of his grand but unequal poern : — " It has a plan, but no plot: — Life has none." But Mr. Smith's men, after all, are not such as one commonly meets. They are all greatly occupied, and for the most part perplexed and distressed about specu- lative and social difficulties. Now in ordinary life such distresses are little felt. Are we wrong in saying that they are never felt at all, except in idleness ; — or by minds far above the average of the race ? How little are the perplexities of speculation to the busy man, anx- ious and toiling to find the means of maintaining his wife and children, of paying his Christmas bills, and generally of making the ends meet at the close of the year ! That^ whether we admit the fact or deny it, is, with the great majority even of cultivated men, the practical problem of life. And indeed it is sad to tliink how, long before middle age, in many a man who started with higher aspi- rations, that becomes the great end of labor and of thought. But it seems to be a law of mind, that as the grosser and more material wants are supplied, other wants of a more ethereal and fanciful nature come to be felt. And thus perhaps many a man, whom circimistances now compel to bestow all his energies on the quest of the supply of the day that is passing over him and his, is by those very circumstances saved from feeling wants more crushing, and from grappling with riddles and mysteries that sit with a heavy perplexity upon the heart. Let us be thankful if we are not too independent of work : let us be thankful that we are not too thoughtful and able. CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 299 Mr. Smith's book sets out with a charming description of a secluded dwelling to which a young philosophic thinker, smitten by consumption, had retired to die. On a little terrace, near the summit of Mount Posilipo, there stands a retired villa, looking from that height over the Bay of Naples. Overlooked by none, it commands a wide extent of view. Myi-tle and roses have overgrown its pillared front. The rock descends sheer down from the terrace. Charles Thorndale, the hero of the book, had been charmed by the Villa Scarpa in the course of a continental tour, made while still in health; and when stricken with the disease of which he died, and when the physicians spoke of the climate of Italy, he chose this for his last retreat. It would not be long he would be there, he knew; and in its quiet he had much to think of It is a spot, one would say, in which it would be very hard to part with this divine faculty of thought. It seems made for the very spirit of meditation. The little platform on which the villa stands is so sit- uated, that, while it commands the most extensive prospect imaginable, it is itself entireh" sheltered from observation. No house of any kind overlooks it; from no road is it visible; not a sound from the neighbor- ing city ascends to it. From one part of the parapet that bounds the terrace you may sometimes catch sight of a swarthy, bare-legged tish- erman, sauntering on the beach, or lying at full length in the sun. It is the only specimen of humanity you are likely to behold: you live solely in the eye of nature. It is with difficulty j-ou can believe that within the space of an hour you may, if you choose it, be elbowing your way, jostled and stunned, amongst the swarming population of Naples — surely the noisest hive of human beings anywhere to be found on the face of the earth. Here, on these heights, is perfect still- ness, with perfect beaut}'. What voices come to you from the upper air — the winds and the melody of birds; and not unfrequently the graceful sea-gull utters its short, plaintive cry, as it wheels round and back to its own ocean-fields. And then that glorious silent picture for ever open to the eye ! Picture ! you hastily retract the word. It is no dead picture ; it is the living spirit of the universe manifesting itself, in glorious vision, to the eye and the soul of man. 300 THORNDALE; OR, THE Thorndale was a studious man, but had not been at- tracted by either of the learned professions. His modest competency relieved him from the necessity of choosing a decided path in life. Like many meditative idlers, he intended, vaguely, to write a book ; and, indeed, he did finish a philosophical treatise more than once ; but he always became dissatisfied with it and destroyed it. But in his retirement at Villa Scarpa, a large manuscript vol- ume lay on his table, in which, ''the habit of the pen " clinging to him to the last, he was accustomed to write down his thoughts upon whatever topic interested him for the time. This book was autobiography, essay, diary, record of former conversations with friends, as the humor of the moment prompted ; and we are invited to believe that this book, having fallen into the hands of Mr. Smith, is now given to the world : — It is precisely this manuscript volume, note-book, memoir, diary, whatever it should be called, which we have to present to the reader. In it, Thorndale, though apparently with little of set purpose or de- sign, gives us a description of himself and of several friends, or rather sketches out their opinions and modes of thinking. Amongst these two may be at once particularly mentioned: Ctarence, who might be called a representative of the philosophy of hope; and Seckendorf, his com- plete contrast, and who, especially on the subject of human progress, takes the side of denial or of cavil. The author, or editor, sets before us the character of his hero, less by one complete description, than by many touches, given here and there, as he exhibits Thorndale to us in various combinations of circumstances, and at sevg eral critical points in his life. Our impression of Thorn- dale is being retouched, modified, lightened, and shadowed, on to the close of the book. He was a meditative and melancholy man, of little pith or active energy : he was shy and retiring ; overshadowed by a settled despond- CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 301 ency ; but always kind and gentle, with no trace of fret fulness or irritability. Although his character is an in- teresting and truthful one, it is essentially morbid ; and we may be glad that men like him must always be few. We sliould have no railroads, no Great Easterns, no ocean telegraphs, in a world peopled by Thorndales. The weakly physical constitution which he bore from birth, had much to do with the tone of his thought and feeling. The remark is in the main just and sound, though it was made by Boswell : — The truth is, that we judge of the happiness and misery of life dif- ferently at different times, according to the state of our cliangeable frame. I always remember a rem;irk made to me by a Tiirtcish lady educated in France: Mafoi, monsitur, notvebonheur depend de la fa^on que noire sang circide. Nor ought we to forget that deeply philosophic remark of Sydney Smith, that little stoppages in tlie bodily cir- culation are the tilings which, above all otiiers, darken our views of life and of man. A friend, said the genial physiologist, comes to him in a most depressed condition. He declares that his affairs are getting embarrassed ; that he must retrench his establishment and retire to tlie coun- try ; that his daughter's cough has settled upon the lungs; that his wife is breaking up, and his son going to the mis- chief. But Sydney only asks on what he supped the evening before ; and finds that he then partook of lob- ster to an undue degree. " All this," he says, " all these gloomy views are the lobster." Instead of seeking di- rectly to minister to a mind diseased, he does so indi- rectly, but not the less effectually. He suggests medicine, not philosophy. And next day the world is a capital world, after all ; the income is ample, the cough is gone, the wife is in rude health, and the son all that a father's 302 THORNDALE; OR, THE heart could wish. Now in the case of Thorndale, there was an entire deficiency of heahhy animalism ; and if, as a Scotch divine lately declared in a sermon published by royal command, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a dyspeptic man to be kind, gentle, and long-suflfering ; not less true is it that a well- knit, vigorous, sinewy mind, is oftentimes trammelled and hampered all through life, by being linked to a weakly, puny, jaded bod3\ How much of Sydney Smith's wit, how much of Christopher North's reckless abandonment of glee, was the result of physical organization ! How incomprehensible to many men must such despondency as Thorndale's seem ! No worldly wants or anxieties, no burden of remorse, kind friends around him, what right had he to be unhappy?^ Thorndale, in short, is a less energetic and passionate form of the nameless hero of Maud. Shall we confess that a less happy association at certain points in his history suggested itself to our mind? We thought of Mr. Augustus Moddle, of whom his historian records as follows : — He often informed Mrs. Todgers that the sun had set upon him ; that the billows had rolled over liim ; that the car of Juggernaut had crushed him ; and also that the deadly upas tree of Java had blighted him. 2 Young men, who at five-and-twenty profess that they have lost all interest in life, and that they have done with time, are by no means uncommon. But Byron's influ- 1 We remember a review of Maud which we read in a certain pro- vincial journal. The writer evidently thought the gloomy hero an ungrateful and querulous fellow for making such a moan. "Why," said the reviewer, "the man was in very comfortable circumstances: he was able to have two servants ('/ keep but a man and a maid'): and what earthly right had he to be always grumbling? If a man has two servants, ought he not to be content? " 2 Dickens's Martin Chuzzhwit. CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 303 ence is wearing out ; and tliey are pretty generally laughed at. Yet where a lad at college can say sin- cerely, as Thorndale said — For me, there was more excitement to be got out of any dingy book, thumbed over by a solitary rushlight, than from fifty ball-rooms — his mind is taking a morbid growth, which bodes no good to himself ; nor are things better when he goes on a tour to the Cumberland lakes, and instead of cheerfully enjoy- ing the scenes around him, goes on as follows : — Forgetful of lake and mountain, my eyes fixed perhaps on the top- most bar of some roadside gate which I had intended to open, or paus- ing stock-still before some hedgerow in the solitary lane, apparently intent upon the buds of the hawthorn, as if I were penetrating into the very secrets of vegetable life, I have stood for hours musing on the intricate problems which our social condition presents to us. We need not say that such a man is out of his place in England in the nineteenth century. In this age we want, not visionaries, but actors ; healthy, robust men, like Arnold, who can think and reason, and who can likewise walk five miles in the hour. Perhaps, indeed, the cry for " muscular Christianity " is passing into cant ; and we know of noble minds which, notwithstanding the clog of physical debility and suffering, bear a kindly sym- pathy towards all mankind, and make the race their debtors for the gift of elevating thoughts. But as for Thorndale — sensitive as the mimosa, ever watching with introverted eye the lights and shadows of his own mind — how could he be happy ? A certain amount of insen- sibility is in this world needful to that. We must not bear a nervous system so delicately appreciative of ex- ternal influences as to keep us ever on the flutter or on the rack. Above all, let us have the equable mind, though it should live in a light which is uniformly sub- 304 THORNDALE; OR, THE dued, rather than that which is ever alternating between April sunshine and April gloom. Justly and thought- fully did Wordsworth make this equanimity a marked characteristic of the happiness of a higher life : — He spake of love, such love as spirits feel, In worlds whose course is equable and pure: No fears to beat away, no strife to heal, The past unsighed for, arid the future sure: Spake of heroic arts in graver mood Revived, with finer harmony pursued. i- We may have faults to find with the character of Thorndale, regarded as that of a representative man : but we feel at once with what delicate accuracy the author maintains its keeping. From first to last, he never speaks or acts otherwise than he ought, under the given conditions. The malady that killed him had marked him from his birth; and he is always the same kindly, tender-hearted, meditative, unenergetic, spiritless being. Mr. Smith shows us the whole man by one happy touch. Thorndale had chosen the shores of Loch Lomond as his autumn retreat one year. He had been there only a day, when he suddenly resolved that he would return and seek the hand of a gentle cousin whom he loved, and who appears not to have been indifferent to him. He had hitherto kept silence, because her w^orldly position was higher than his own. He left Loch Lomond on the instant ; he travelled on day and night ; he seemed never to have drawn breath till he stood at the gate of the shrubbery that surrounded Sutton Manor, her home and his : — Then indeed I paused. Leaning on the half-opened gate, I saw again my own position in its true and natural light. Was it not al- 1 Laodamia. CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 305 ways known and understood that such a thing was not to be ? One after the otlier, all my fallacious reasonings deserted nie. What mad- ness could have brought me there? I hoped no one had seen me. Slowly and softly the half-opened gate was closed again. I walked away, retracing my steps as unobserved as possible through the vil- lage. Here was Thorndale himself. Like most thoughtful men, he had much of the irresolution of Hamlet, — the irresolution that comes of thinking too much. There can be no doubt that in order to act slap-dash, with prompt- ness and decision, it is best not to see a case in all its bearings. It is best to see one side clearly and strongly: — and then no lurking irresolution will retard the arm in its descent. Here was the secret of poor Thorudale's creeping away, with a sinking heart, from the only presence he cared for in this world. There is not invariable truth in the lines of Montrose, — He either fears his fate too much, Or his desert is small, Who dares not put it to the touch, And win or lose it all. We need not relate how the author explains his chanc- ing upon Villa Scarpa in wandering about Naples. The villa was then deserted ; all was over. We have no particulars recorded of Thorndale's death. We confess we feel in this omission something of cruelty on the author's part towards his hero. There is something pitiful in the story of the neglected manuscript-volume, found after the poor visionary was gone, hidden away in the roof of the abandoned house ; and in the picture which rises before us of the tender-hearted youth, lying down to die alone. He had a kind servant, indeed ; and an old friend, with his little adopted daughter, who re- appeared as evening was darkening down, may be sup- 20 80 G TIIORNDALE; OR, THE posed to have tended and soothed the last agony. But Mr. Smith, in his careful avoidance of vi'hatever might seem a clap-trap expedient to excite interest and feeling, is entirely silent as to the close. However, he chanced on the deserted Villa Scarpa : he found a despatch-box, bearing the name of Charles Thorndale, vidiom he had known, though not intimately. This despatch-box con- tained the manuscript volume already mentioned, which Thorndale seemed to have bequeathed to the first finder ; and the good-natured Italian to wliom the villa belonged, willingly gave up box and manuscript to one who said he had been Thorndale's friend. We quote a single sen- tence, for its graceful beauty, from the picture of Thorn- dale called up to the mind's eye of his editor, on thus chancing on his last retreat: — His eye was not that of which it is so often said that it looks through you, for it rather seemed to be looking out beyond you. The object at which it gazed became the half-forgotten centre round which the eddying stream of thought was flowing; and you stood there, like some islet in a river which is encircled on all sides by the swift and silent flood. The manuscript volume now published has been di- vided by its editor into five books, and each of these into several chapters. Book I. is called " The Last Re- treat:" it is given to many reflections, mostly thrown out with little arrangement, upon the Sentiment of Beauty, and upon the two Futurities, the one on this side and the other beyond the grave. In Book IL, which is called " The Retrospect," the current of thought has set away into the past ; and we have an autobiographical sketch. Book HI., called "Cyril, or the Modern Cistercian," gives an account of the conflict of thought by which a companion passed from an Evangelical Anglican to a CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 307 Roman Catholic monk. Book IV., " Seckendorf, or the Spirit of Denial," sketches the character and views of a friend who cavilled at the possibility of all human progress. In Book V., " Clarence, or the Utopian," we first read how, as strength and life had well-nigh ebbed away, Thorndale met once more with an old friend of hopeful views, who seems to have stayed by him to the last : and when Thorndale's weak hand had laid down the pen for the last time, Clarence wrote out, in the last two hundred pages of the volume, his Confessio Fidei ; — a connected view of his theory of man, the growth of the individual consciousness, and the develop- ment of the human race. The earlier part of the book is very desultory ; and the book as a whole appeals to a limited class of readers. There will never be a rush for it to the book-club in the county town. Young-lady readers will for the most part vote it a bore ; and solid old gentlemen of bread-and- butter intellect will judge Thorndale and his friends a crew of morbid dreamers, — though the book, amid sub- limer speculations, sets out here and there much common sense on the affairs of practical life. But we trust that Mr. Smith may find an audience fit, and not so few. It elevates and refines the mind to hold converse with an author of his stamp. And how much the world must have gone through before such a character as Thorn- dale's became possible ! No appliance of modern lux- ury, no contrivance of modern science, says .^o much as the conception of such a character for the civilization and artificiality of our modern life. Although the book is mainly dissertational, the reader will find in it much ex- quisite narrative, and much skilful delineation of charac- ter, in the history of the hero and his friends, their views 308 THORNDALE; OR, THE and fates. Yet, while we cordially acknowledge in Mr. Smith a man of refined and pathetic genius, we should not be doing justice to ourselves if we did not say, that in all the views of life and society, whether hopeful or desponding, which are set out in the book, we have felt strongly a great blank and void. We believe, and wi^j humbly hope we shall never cease believing, that Chris- tianity shows us the true stand-point from which to look at man, and the true lever by which to elevate him. We believe that the same influence which has raised our hopes to " life and immortality," must and will elevate and purify this mortal Ufe. We believe that it is false philosophy to ignore the existence, power, and teaching of the Christian faith ; and to take pains, before looking into the framework and the prospects of society, to ex- clude the only light which can search out the dark re- cesses, and dissipate the gloom that hangs before. Why should a man persist in wading through Chat Moss on a drenching December day, when the means are provided of flitting over it, light and warm and dry? Why should we go up to Box-hill, and declare we shall dig our way through it with our own nails and fingers (being in haste) ; when we know that it has been nobly tunnelled for us already ? The first book, entitled " The Last Retreat," consists of disjointed fragments of thought, cast upon the page with little effort at arrangement. All these fi-agments are well worthy of preservation : many of them are of striking originality and force. The dying man becomes aware that a peculiar beauty has been added to the beau- tiful scenes around him by the close approach of death. He says, — CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 309 I owe to death half the beauty of this scene, and altogether owe to im the constant serenitj' with whicli I gaze upon it. . . . Strange! ow the beauty and mystery of all nature is heightened by the near rospect of that coming darkness which will sweep It all away ! — that ight which will have no star in it! These heavens, with all their lories, will soon be blotted out for me. The eye, and that which is eliind the eye will soon close, soon rest, and there will be no more eauty, no more mystery for me. . . . Whiit an air of freshness, of ovelty, and surprise, doer each old and familiar object assume to me rhen I think of parting with it for ever! There is no more of ennui now. Time is too short, and this world 30 wonderful. Everything J behold is new and strange. If a dog )oks up at me in the face, I startle at his intelligence. " I am in a jreign land," you saj\ True, all the world has become foreign land me. I am perpetually on a voj'uge of discovery. Very true, very real, is this feelings drawn from the Quch-suggesting Nu^" yap (.px^^Tai ! We really do enjoy hings intensely, because we know we are not to have hem long. And how well does experience certify that he most familiar scene grows new and strange to us vhen we are forthwith to leave it. The room in which ve have sat day by day for years, — rise to quit it for he last time, and we shall see something about its pro- jortions, its aspect, that we never saw before. The little ft'alk we have paced hundreds of times, — how different jvery evergreen beside it will seem, when we pace it silently, knowing that we shall do so no more ! Here is an apt and happy comparison : — When the loftj' and barren mountain, says a legend I have some- where read, was first upheaved into the sky, and from its elevation looked down on the plains below, and saw the valley and the less elevated hills covered with verdure and fruitful trees, it sent up to Brahma something like a murmur of complaint, " Why thus barren? Why these scarred and naked sides exposed to the eye of man?" And Brahma answered, " The very light shall clothe thee, and the shadow of the passing cloud shall be as a royal mantle. More ver- dure would be less light. Thou shalt share in the azure of heaven, 310 THORNDALE; OR, THE and the youngest and whitest cloud of a summer day shall nestle in thy bosom. Thou belongest half to us." So was the mountain dowered. And so too have the loftiest minds of men been in all ages dowered. To lower elevations have been given the pleasant verdure, the vine, and the olive. Light, light alone, and the deep shadow of the passing cloud, — these are the gifts of the prophets of the race. Thorndale felt strongly what eveiy reflective man must feel, that the ordinary arguments for the immortality of the soul, drawn from the light of nature, are quite in- sufficient and unsatisfactory. It is upon entirely different grounds, and these grounds partaking often but little of the nature of argument, that the belief in the doctrine really rests. Still the argument fills the page ; and is appended to the doctrine much as in cheap Gothic build- ings a buttress is added to a wall which does not need its support, because it at least looks as if" it supported the wall. Thorndale's illustration is this : — In old wood-cuts one sometimes sees a vessel in full sail upon the ocean, and perched aloft upon the clouds are a number of infant cherubs, with puffed-out cheeks, blowing at the sails. The swelling canvas is evidently tilled by a stronger wind than these infant cherubs, sitting in the clouds, could supply. Thej' do not fill the sail; but they were thought to fill up the picture prettily- enough. In truth, the usual arguments for immortality are quite futile : none more so than that founded upon the imma- teriality of the soul. The soul's immateriality is assumed to be proved by a manifest petitio principii, to use the logician's phrase. The soul is immaterial, we are told, because it thinks and feels ; and matter cannot think and feel. But if the soul be material, why then matter can think and feel. Thorndale indicates as follows the foun- dation of his own belief : — I think the contemplation of God brings with it the faith in imraor- CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 311 talitj'. The mere imperfections of our happiness here, our blundering lives and inequitable societies, our unrewarded virtues and unavenged crimes, our present need of the great threat of future punishments, — ■ these do not, in my estimation, form safe grounds to proceed upon. They enter largelj' as grounds of a popular faith; but it would be un- wise to build upon them : because to rest on such arguments would lead us to the conclusion, that in proportion as society advances to perfection, and men are more wise and just, in the same proportion .•jiriU they have less presumption for the hope of immortalitj'. \. We confess that we stand in no great fear of this last ^suggestion. There is little prospect, as yet, of this world becoming too good to need another. We need now, and we shall need for many a year, all the comfort and help we can draw from " the world that sets this right." Our readers will thank us for extracting the following passage : — A fond mother loses her infant. What more tender than the hope she has to meet it again in heaven? Does she really, then, expect to find a little child in heaven? some angel-nursling, that she may eter- nallj' take to her bosom, fondle, feed, and caress? Oh, do not ask her! I would not have her ask herself. The consolatory vision springs spontaneously from the mother's grief. It is nature's own remedy. She gave that surpassing love, and a grief as poignant must follow. She cannot take away the grief: she half transforms it to a hope. It is indeed quite true, that in the attempt to define with precision the consolations and hopes which Chris- tianity affords us with respect to our departed friends, we sometimes only destroy what we desired to grasp. And it would be hard for us to say exactly how and in what form we hope to meet again the dear ones who have gone before us. Perhaps Archbishop Whately is right, when he suggests as one possible reason why revelation leaves the details so little Jilled in of the picture of im- mortality which it draws, that some margin may be left 312 THORNDALE; OR, THE for the weakness of human thought and wish ; and that in matters beside the great essential centre-truth, each may believe or may hope that which he would love the best. And in the matter of a little child's loss, we know that two quite opposite beliefs have been cherished. For ourselves, it seems more natural to think of the little thing as it left us ; we believe that, in the case of most of us, the little brother or sister that died long ago, re- mains in remembrance the same young thing forever. Many years are passed, and we have grown older and more careworn since our last sister died ; but she never grows older with the passing years ; and if God spares us to fourscore, we never shall think of her as other than the youthful creature she faded. Still there is pathos and nature in Dickens's description, how the father and mother who lost in early childhood one of two twin sis- ters, always pictured to themselves, year after year, the dead child growing in the world beyond the grave, in equal progress as the living child grew on earth. And Longfellow, in his touching poem of Resignation, sug- gests a like idea : — Day after day, we think what she is doing In those bright realms of air: Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, Behold her grown more fair. Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken The bond which nature gives, Thinking tliat our remembrance, though unspoken, May reach her where she lives. Not as a child shall we again behold her; For when, with raptures wild, In our embraces we again enfold her, She will not be a child. CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 313 It is worthy of notice, how (lie death of little children has formed the subject of several of the most touching poems in the language. Only those could have written them who have children of their own ; and few but par- ents can fully enter into their pathos. We may remind our readers of Mr. Moultrie's best poem, " The Three Sons;" of Mrs. Southey's (Caroline Bowles) beautiful picture of an infant's death-bed ; and in a volume lately published by Gerald Massey, natural feeling has kept affectation from spoiling a most touching piece, called " The Mother's Idol Broken." And no one needs to be reminded of what it is that has afforded scope for the most pathetic touches of Dickens and Mrs. Beecher Stowe. Thorndale puts a somewhat startling question as to the extent of the gift of immortality. Why must I except the alternative — all or none? Why every Hun and Scythian, or else no Socrates or Plato? Why must every corrupt thing be brought again to life, or else all hope be denied to the good and the great, the loving and the pious? Why must I measure my hopes by the hopes 1 would assign to the most weak or wicked of the race? Let the poor idiot, let the vile Tiberius, be extinct forever: must I too, and all these thoughts that stir in me, perish ? Probably Thorndale was not aware that this notion, which lie throws out on merely philosophical grounds, is one which, in a modified form, has been suggested, if not maintained, upon theological principles, by the most inde- pendent and original theologian of the age — we mean the Archbishop of Dublin. Dr. Whately has proposed it as a subject for inquiry, whether those passages of Scripture which describe the everlasting destruction of the finally impenitent, may not be justly interpreted as signifying their total annihilation ; and thus, whether evil 314 THORNDALE ; OR, THE and suffering may not entirely cease to be in God's uni- verse, not by an universal restoration of all things to the good and I'ight, but by the total disappearance of that which has been marred past the mending ? No doubt, there is something unutterably appalling in the thought of a soul in everlasting woe ; no doubt, to our finite minds, it appears the most consistent with the divine glory and happiness, that a time should come when there should be no more pain, sin, and death, anywhere ; but the Christian dares not add to or take from that which is written; and few, we think, can read the words even of the Saviour himself as bearing any other meaning than one. And as for the ditficulty suggested by Thorndale, we confess we can discern in it very little force. It is a humble thing, always and everywhere, to be a man : whether the man be Plato or the Hun. We do not look for immortality on the ground that we deserve it, or that we are fit for it. And although there may be truth in Judge Haliburton's bitter remark, that there is a greater difference between some men and some other men, than there is between these other men and some monkeys ; still, in looking down from the divine elevation, we be- lieve that the distances parting the lowest and highest, the worst and best, must seem very small. Look down from the top of Ben Nevis, and the tuft of heather which is a dozen inches higher than the heather round it, differs not appreciably from the general level. Nor should it be forgotten, that in the lowest and the worst, there is a potentiality of becoming good and noble under a certain influence which philosophy does not know of, but whose reality and power we are content to test by the logic of induction. The coarse lump of ironstone is in its essence the self-same thing as the hair-spring of a watch. CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 315 We pass to the second part of Tliorndale's manuscript, the Reti-ospect, which will be much more interesting to ordinary readers than the first book. And here we find a graceful and beautiful sketch of the history of his life, from the dawn of consciousness down to the time when he came to Villa Scarpa to die. He was the happy child of a gentle and loving mother, over whom early widow- hood had cast a shade of melancholy. His father he never knew. A poor lieutenant in the navy, he died of fever caught as his ship lay rotting off the coast of Africa. The mother's piety was deep, and her faitli undoubting; she knew nothing of the world beyond her own little daisied lawn. And the remembrance of the prayer she early taught her child to utter, has inspired one of the most beautiful passages in English literature : — Very singular and y&cy pleasing to me is the remembrance of that simple piety of childhood; of that prayer which was Siiid so punctu- ally night and morning, kneeling by the bedside. What did I think of, guiltless then of metaphysics, — what image did I bring before my mind as I repeated my learnt petition with scrupulous fidelity? Did I see some venerable Form bending down to listen? Did He cease to look and listen when I had said it all? Half prayer, half lesson, how difficult it is now to summon it back again ! But this I know, that the bedside where I knelt to this morning and evening devotion became sacred to me as an altar. I smile as I recall the innocent superstitioa which grew up in me, that the prayer must be said kneding just there. If, some, cold winter's night, I had crept into bed, thinking to repeat the petition from the warm nest itself, it would not do ! — it was felt in this court of conscience to be 'an insufficient performance:' there was no sleep to be had till I had risen, and, bedgowned as I was, knelt at the accustomed place, and said it all over again from the beginning to the end. To this day, I never see the little clean white bed in which a child is to sleep, but I see also the figure of a child kneeling in prayer at its side. And I, for the moment, am that child. No Uigii altar in the most sumjituous church in Christendom could prompt my knee to bend like that snow-white coverlet, tucked in for a child's slumber. The mother early died ; and her brother, a baronet, 316 THORNDALE ; OR, THE who dwelt in a noble house standing in a fine old English park, adopted the desolate cliild as his own. Grand were the trees and fair the shrubberies of Sutton Manor ; but its great attraction to Thorndale was his little cousin Winifred. He loved her, he tells us, before he knew what love was, and long before he knew the vast worldly distance that parted even such near relations. Lady Moberly, Winifred's mother, was a lady at once ultra- fashionable and ultra-evangelical. She was one of those of whom the sarcastic Saturday Review declared that the names of their great men must be Avritten alike in the Peerage and in the Book of Life. Thorndale was shortly placed under the charge of a country clergyman, to be prepared for Oxford. Here he had one fellow-pupil, Luxmore, a youth passionately devoted to poetry. And his tutor's library furnished an endless store of poetry, theology, and philosophy, which were all devoured with equal avidity. When the vacation approached, Thorn- dale was somewhat surprised by receiving from Lady Moberly a formal invitation to Sutton Manor. He had counted, as a matter of course, upon spending the vaca- tion there. But her ladyship was cautious ; and her letter contained a postscript, cautioning Thorndale to beware of a certain fairy who haunted the shrubbery in which he was accustomed to walk. He learned the meaning of the postscript too soon. His cousin was more charm- ing than ever ; but his love, hopeless, yet unconquerable, was on his part " a mere worship, where even the prayer was not to be spoken." And this passion served to ex- tinguish all ambition. He entered the cloisters of Mag- dalen, he tells us, — as indifferent to tlie world as any monk of tlie fourteenth century could have been. Academical honors, or the greater distinctions in CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 317 life to which they prepare the way, had no sort of charm for me. The ' daily bread ' was secured; and neither law, phj'sic, nor divinity could have given me my Winifred. A life of mere reflection, then, was to be his portion. His over-sensitive mind never recovered the frost of that early disappointment. Is it too much to say that it re- sults from the morbid body, from the weakness of physical nature, when trouble and sorrow, no matter how heavy, borne in early youth, cast their shadow over all after- years ? What a vast deal a healthy man can "get over!" True, as beautiful, are the words of Philip van Artevelde, in Mr. Taylor's noble play: — Well, well, — she's gone, And I have tamed my sorrow. Pain and grief Are transitory things, no less than joy, And though they leave us not the men we were, Yet they do leave us. You behold me here, A man bereaved, with something of a blight Upon the early blossoms of his life. And its first verdure, — having not the less A living root, and drawing from the earth Its vital juices, from the air its powers: And surely as man's health and strength are whole, His appetites re-gerniinate, iiis heart Ee-opens, and his objects and desires Shoot up renewed. ^ How many twice-married men and women can testify to the truth of Artevelde's philosophy ! Out of a ro- mance, it takes very much to kill a man, — unless, in- deed, consumption has marked him from his birth, and his physical constitution lacks the reacting spring. But Mr. Smith has made his hero feel and act just as it was fit under the conditions given. He became a solitary dreamer ; and though feeling the attraction which draws 1 Tajdor's Philip van Artevelde, Second Part, Act iii., Scene ii. 318 THORNDALE; OR, THE the moth to the flame, yet at vacation times, instead of going lo Sutton Manor, he betook himself to Wales or Cumberland, to "read." There he read, thought, wrote, destroyed. He mused deeply on the constitution of soci- ety : he longed for a time when manual labor should not be deemed inconsistent with refinement and intelligence. But he found his theory crumble at the touch of fact. As I marched triumpliantl}' along, I came to a field where men were ploughing. I had often watched the ploughman as he steps on steadily, holding the share down in its place in the soil, and felt curious to tiy the experiment myself. This time, as the countryman who approached me had a good-natured aspect, I asked him to let me take his place •within the stilts. He did so. I did not give him quite the occasion for merriment which I saw he anticipated; I held down the share, and kept it in its due position. But I had no conception of the eflrbrt it re- quired — which, at least, it cost me. When I resigned my place, my arms trembled, my hands burned, my brain throbbed; the whole frame was shaken. And something, too, was shaken in the framework of my speculations. The feasibilitj' of uniting with labors such as these much of the culture we call intellectual, was not so clear to me as it was an hour ago. I walked along less triumphantly, maintaining a sort of prudent silence with myself. Thorndale all over ! Easily driven by some little jar, even from a cherished purpose or belief. All physical constitution again. In the days when manual labor and mental cultivation are combined, men like Thorndale must be watchmakers and printers : men with more bone and sinew must go to field-work. But who does not remember the diary of Elihu Burritt, when teaching himself half a dozen languages, with its constantly re- curring entries of "Forged twelve hours to-day" — " Forged fourteen hours to-day " — the brawny black- smith, with his fore-hammer and his Hebrew lexicon side by side ? Very frankly and without reserve, Thorndale shows CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 319 US how his opinions on society swayed to and fro. He went to see Manchester, and mourned to think how, " for leave to live in habitations, where air and light, beauty and fragrance, are shut out for ever, men and women are toiling as no other animal on the face of the earth toils." And, caring little for conventional propri- eties, he sits down in London on the steps of a church — it was in Regent-street — amid the oftscourings of the population, and contemplated society from this new point of view. It looked very different ! He heard the stifled mutterings of the deadly hate which the very low- est class bear to those above them. The ground under- neath us, in truth is mined : the mine is charged. Is not the hatred natural ? We do not ask whether it is right. Without a doubt, we of the pavement, if we had our will, would stop those smooth-rolling chariots, with their liveried attendants (how we liate those clean and well-fed lackeys!), would open the carri:ige-door, and bid the riders come down to us ! — come down to share — good heaven! what? — our ruffianage, our garbage, the general scramble, the general filth. Walking another day down Regent-street, he passes an open carriage standing at a shop-door. Seated alone in it is — Winifred ! He avoids recognition, and hur- ries away. Soon he slackens his speed — stops — turns, walks back, slowly, rapidly, breathlessly ! The carriage was gone. True to the life ! He left Oxford at last, and returned to Sutton Manor. " It was the old story of the moth and the flame." He resolved that for a month his heart should have its way ; and rowing with Winifred on the river, wandering with her in the shrubbery, watching the sun go down, he had his "month of elysium." All his philosophy was in 320 THORNDALE; OR, THE those days full of hope. He wontlered at the greatness of the human capacity for happiness. At length he broke hurriedly away, and hastened to Loch Lomond. We have already seen how he returned, and with what result. Then he became a wanderer. He tells us he never ceased to think, but " a despondency crept from his life into his philosophy." He went to Germany, Switzer- land, Italy — the accustomed route — and learned to appreciate the diversity there is in human life. On the banks of the lake of Lucei-ne he met his Utopian friend, Clarence, whom he had known at Oxford ; and they spent long days in varied talk together. Clarence dwelt much upon the misery of the better or the middle classes. He thought it exceeds that of the poor wretches on the Re- gent-street steps. What ceaseless and life-wearing anx- iety and care there are in the hearts of most educated men ! Clarence did not wonder that men go mad. As life goes against them, as the income proves insufficient, as the expenses increase, as impending calamity ever jars miserably upon the shaken nerves, and as the mind is day by day racked by ceaseless fears, the only wonder is that Reason does not oftener forsake her seat, totter, and fall ! On some futile pretence of seeing his friend, Luxmore, the poet, Thorndale returned to England. Luxmore had published, and failed. Thorndale found him in a Spe- cial Pleader's office, studyitig for the bar. Luxmore held steadily to his books of Practice, till, in an evil hour (he had parted with all his poets), he bought at a stall a cheap edition of Shelley. It wakened the old spirit. He would emigrate. He would clear the forest and the jungle. He would grow corn by the Mississippi. But CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 321 he must see the South American mountains first ; and so he sailed for Rio Janeiro. Thorndale greatly doubted to the last whether he had ever " worked his way round" to the farm he had talked of. Luxmore's character and career are ably and skilfully sketched ; but we cannot say that we are especially struck by the specimens given of his poetry. In the great steamer, as it lay off Southampton, Thorndale bade his friend farewell. He had loved him he tells us, as a brother, and an elder brother. Thorn- dale's pliant nature was plastic in those robust hands. Sadly depressed, he betook himself to a little cottage at Shanklin, once more alone but for the old companion — the box of books. It was Thorndale's especial misfor- tune that, with a native craving for some attached com- panion to dwell under the same roof, he was by circum- stances always doomed to days of solitude. But a new interest now arose. Symptoms of disease, disregarded in the excitement of the last days with Luxmore, now forced themselves on his attention. Some business mat- ter compelled him to write to his uncle, thus informing his relations at Sutton Manor, for the first time, that he had returned to England. Kind messages and regrets came in reply : Winifred especially chiding him for his unsocial habits. It seemed " a wild strain of irony." Yet the few lines she wrote wakened old feelings, never quite asleep. Surely she would come and see the poor invalid ? So strong did the impression grow, that, catch- ing sight one day of a female figure in the garden, bend- ing over the flowers, he felt sure it must be Winifred ; and watched breathlessly, with violently-beating heart, till she turned her face, and the delusion was dispelled. Still, for days he cherished the vain expectation that she 21 322 THORNDALE ; OR, THE would come, and restore him, by her very presence, to life, and hope, and faith. That was all he needed. If I could see thee, 'twould be well with me ! Now there came consultations with this and that great physician : and soon the death-warrant decidedly ex- ptessed. Then was a first moment of confusion and agony ; and then followed an indescribable calm. It was now all smooth water before him. He betook him- self to his last retreat at Villa Scarpa ; but he did not see Winifred before he left England for ever. Kind letters followed him from her mother. Lady Moberly would come over to take care of hira, with a doctor in either hand. Of course she never came. And now the last days are gliding over swiftly : — The day is never long. I have, indeed, ceased to take note of the measurement of time. One hour is more genial than another; thought flows more rapidly, or these damaged lungs breathe somewhat more freely at one time than another: but where the present hour stands in the series which makes up day and night, what the clock reports of the progress of time, I have ceased to ask myself. There is but one hour that the bell has to strike for me. Yet life is not quite over, even after Thorndale has found his last harbor of refuge. Present incident proves the completion of past remembrance. The Third Book of the manuscript volume is entitled " Cyril, or the Mod- ern Cistercian." In watching a little point of beach which was visible from his terrace, Thorndale had often been struck by the figure of a youthful monk, weai'ing the white habit of the Cistercian order, who passed slowly by the sea-margin, and sometimes paused in thought. Thorndale had con- structed a whole theory of his thinking and history, and began to feel towards hira as towards a friend. At length. CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 323 in his ride, Thorndale passed two monks, one of whom had sunk exhausted by the wayside. He conveyed the monk to the monastery in his cai'riage, and recognized in him the Cistercian so often watched. A further sur- prise awaited him. On entering the Cistei'cian's cell, he recognized in him an old acquaintance — Cyril. Cyril had entered the Roman Catholic Church, through the gate of the monastery. He had sought a peaceful, pious, and harmonious life within those walls ; and he assured Thorndale that he had found all he sought. His history had been a tragical one. Brought up in a pious family, he had been assailed by sceptical doubts. His father was an enthusiast for reformatory punishment. The house was full of books on the subject. And from these Cyril imbibed the notion that one grand end of all pun- ishment should be the reformation of the criminal him- self. To punish for mere revenge was unchristian and irrational. How, then, of God's punishments inflicted in a future life ? The pious father appeared to claim for the human legislator principles more noble and enlight- ened than those he attributed to the Divine. Eternal punishment aims not at the reformation of the guilty. Cyril was plunged into all the miseries of doubt. And brought up in the conviction that unbelief was the ex- tremest sin, his anguish w^as indescribable. He became restless, gloomy, morose. And so, leaving Oxford, Thorn- dale left him. Thorndale was at Dolgelly, in Wales, when he learned that Cyril was at Barmouth, and rode over to see him. He met him, just come off the water. Cyril's joy at the meeting was extreme. They sat cheerfully down to sup- per. Cyril never had been so gay. At length, absently, he drew from the pocket of his rough greatcoat a large 324 THORNDALE ; OH, THE mas^s of iron, the fluke of an old anchor. At the sight of it, suddenly recollecting himself, he burst into a violent flood of tears. He confessed to his friend that an acci- dent only had prevented him from throwing himself into the sea, during the sail from which he had just returned. He had gone out with that purpose, driven to it by his igony of doubt, and (strange as it may seem) by the fear uf death. His fear of death was such, that he longed to make a plunge and have it over. And amid all the mis- ery of his scepticism, he says, surely with sad truth: — I am quoted by my family and my friends as a monster of impiety and guilt. I am frowned upon, avoided, expostulated with, — and pious ministers reprove me — for intellectual pride! We can well believe that a pious father or mother, deeply loving their son, would yet rather see liim laid in his coffin than see him turn doubtful of their own simple faith. What malady makes a breach so total — what leads to a doom so fearful — as unbelief? But let it be remembered that in many cases it is a malady, a disease for which a man is no more guilty than for con- sumption or for typhus. No doubt there is a wilful blindness, a preference of falsehood to truth, a flippant, hateful self-sufficiency, in the case of some : and let these be held responsible. But surely there are earnest spirits, battling for the truth — shedding tears of blood because they cannot believe, though they long to do so. Let us be thankful that in almost every such case the disease is a temporary one. It will wear away. " Unto the upright there ariseth light in darkness." Unbelief is a crisis which must he passed through by the think- ing human mind, as certainly as measles and whooping- cough by the human body. Of course a blockhead, who never thinks at all, will not be troubled by it. The CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 325 humble and earnest man comes out of it, with a faith grounded so deeply that it can never be shaken more. Let us pity, then, the young doubter : let us aid him by God's blessing: let us not accuse him, and so perhaps drive him to despair. The guilty unbelief is that of the man who knows in his conscience that he would rather not believe. There is another kind of want of faith which the Almighty will not condemn. It is that which utters the creed and the prayer together : " Lord, I be- lieve : help Thou mine unbelief." The next morning Thorndale and Cyril were to have breakfasted together. But when Thorndale went to his lodgings, he was gone, without a word ; and they met no more till they met in the Cistercian monastery. After this meeting, Cyril sometimes visited Thorndale at the Villa Scarpa. Thorndale did not seek any ac- count of the process by which the youth who could believe nothing, had passed into the monk who believed every- thing. No doubt it would have been the usual story of reaction commenced, and then a positive appetite for belief growing upon the man. In any case, belief had brought Cyril peace and rest. And the doctrine of pur- gatory had been to him a favorable distinction of the Church of Rome. It represented a reformatory nature even in punishment beyond the grave ; and the young enthusiast fancied that a special revelation had been vouchsafed to him by the Saviour, that every soul that God has made should in some way be saved at last. And coming not frequently, stealing quietly up to the terrace with his pax vobiscum, Cyril visited Thorndale to the last. But Thorndale saw the Cistercian on the strip of beach no more. Cyril had felt the difficulty which most thoughtful men 32G THOKNDALE ; OU, THE must feel, as to what conceptiou should bo formed of God: — How personify the Infinite ? I said to myself. Does not the notion of personality itself imply contrast, limitation, and must not a Person be therefore Finite ? or how personify at all, but by borrowing fi'oui the creature, and framing an ideal out of human qualities? At one moment my conception of God seemed grand and distinct, and my whole soul was filled and satisfied with it. Suddenly I was startled and abashed when I traced in it too plainly the features of humanity. These I hastened to obliterate; and the whole image was then fading into terrible obscurity. I remember one day our common friend Luxmore saying, in his wild poetic manner, that the ordinary imagination of God was but the shadow of a man thrown upwards, — the image of our best and greatest, seen larger on the concave of the sky. We remark upon this, that Luxmore, after all, was only stating in a poetical and somewhat exaggerated form, a great and fundamental religious truth. We are " created in the image of God : " and it is only because there is something in us which resembles God, that we are able to form any conception of Him and his charac- ter. But for this, we could no more conceive of God's attributes than a blind man, who never saw, can con- ceive of color. We, of course, are fallen creatures ; and our blurred and blotted qualities bear only the faintest and farthest likeness to that Divine Image in which we Were made. And further, it is true enough that when we kneel down to pray, we should only distract and dishearten ourselves by trying to form a conception of a Being in whose nature there are such elements as eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence, invisibility ; and by trying to feel that we are addressing Him. But was Luxmore entirely wrong when he said that the Hearer of prayer, to our weak minds, draws personality from a sublimed humanity ? It is not a fable, that we know the CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 327 picture of a man's character and life set out in a certain simple story, Glad Tidings to all to whom it comes: — a man towards whom we can feel kindly sympathy and warm affection : a human being like ourselves : and we are told that He is '' the image of the invisible God : " that when we picture Him to our hearts, we picture God — softened, but not degraded. We can see " the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ : " and in praying to God, we can feel as though the kind face were bent over us as we pray, — as though we were telling of our wants and sorrows to that kind and gentle heart. Do we de- sire to think clearly to whom we speak when we pray ? We are chilled and overwhelmed when we think of in- finite space and infinite time: it is not to an aggregate of such qualities as these that we can address heartfelt pleading. Let us think we are speaking to a sympa- thizing Man ; and child-like, we can bend down our head upon the knee of Jesus of Nazareth, and breathe into His ear the story of our wants and woes. We have all that the grossest idolatry ever gave of clear conception ; and yet our worship is not degraded, but sublimed. Not so pleasing is the Fourth Book of Thorndale's manuscript, entitled " Seckendorf, or the Spirit of De- nial." Long ago, in Switzerland, Thorndale found Seck- endorf in the studio of Clarence, the Utopian artist. Seck- endorf was a tall man, with gray hair and keen gray eyes, and advanced in years. He was by birth a German baron ; but he was known in England as Doctor Secken- dorf, an eminent physician and physiologist. In philos- ophy, he was just the opposite of Clai'ence : sceptical, sarcastic, hoping nothing. His philosophy was " firm as a rock, and as hard and barren." He held that what is ex- cellent never can be common, because " higher excellence 328 THORNDALE ; OE, THE is greater complication, and its manifestation must be more restricted, because a larger number of antecedent conditions are necessary for that manifestation." The Utopian's " good time coming," of universal goodness and lia[)piness, could therefore never be. And Thorn- dale thought out a sad induction of facts in corroboration of the thing : — There is more sea than land; three fourths of the globe are covered with salt water. There is more barren land than fertile; much is sheer desert, or hope- less swamp; great part wild arid steppes, or land that can only be held in cultivation by incessant toil. Where nature is most prolific, there is more weed and jungle than fruit and flower. Of the animal creation, the lowest orders are by far the most numer- ous. The infusoria, and other creatures that seem to enjoy no other sensations than what are immediately connected with food and move- ment ( if even these), far surpass all others in this respect. The tribes of insects are innumerable; the mammalia comparatively few. Of the human inhabitants of the earth, the ethnologist tells us that the Mongolian race is the most numerous, which is not certainly' the race in which the noblest forms of civilization have appeared. As in the tree there is more leaf than fruit, so in the most advanced nation of Europe there are more poor than rich, more ignorant than wise, more automatic laborers, the mere creatures of habit, than reasoning and reflective men. We do not know whether the celebrated anonymous work, entitled The Plurality of Worlds, was published be- fore Thorndale's death. If he had read it, he might have gathered from its eloquent and startling pages one in- stance more for his induction. He might have stated that there seems strong reason to believe that of all the orbs which have (if we may say so) blossomed in im- mensity, only one has arrived at fruit : that this earth is the only inhabited world in all the universe. The Creator works with a lavish hand. But as his works CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 329 grow nobler, they grow fewer. Scarcity, we all know, makes a thing more valuable : the converse holds as truly, that value makes a thing scarce. The second chapter in this Fourth Book treats ingeni- ously and strikingly of the power of money ; and also furnishes proof that Thorndale, like many men of his make, was not minutely accurate. The chapter is called " The Silver Shilling;" and over and over again we have the silver shilling repeated, as the type of money. Seck- endorf tells us where he got the name : it was from " a poem by one Phillips, ' On the Silver Shilling.' " We know, of course, what Seckendorf is referring to ; but there is no such poem as that he quotes. Most men who are tolerably well read in the poetry of the seven- teenth century, have at least heard of John Phillips's poem, IVie Splendid Shilling, an amusing j^arody of the style of Milton : it sets out thus : — Happy the man, who. void of care and strife, In silken or in leathern purse, retains A Splendid Shilling: he nor hears with pain, New oysters cried, nor sighs for cheerful ale. Our shortening space forbids our offering our readers any account of Seckendorf's cai-eer, which Mr. Smith sketches with great liveliness and interest ; or our notic- ing the topics which were discussed in council by Thorn- dale, Clarence, and Seckendorf. Seckendorf thought there is a general movement in England towards the Roman Catholic Church ; and that it is not unlikely that the ragged urchin who is chalking up " No Po- pery " on the walls of London, may live to see High Mass performed in St. Paul's Cathedral. He main- tained that fear is the root of all religion ; the unseen root, even in the happiest Christians : — that " the pil- 330 THORNDALE; OR THE lars of heaven are sunk in hell." We differ from him. We think that love and hope, rather than fear, are the guiding influences in the Christian life. We believe that though a great fear may be the thing that wakens a man up from total unconcern about religion, yet that the race once entered on, he treads " the way to Zion with his face thitherward;" — looking towards the home he seeks; and drawn by the hope before, rather than driven by the fear behind him. Thorndale's Fifth Book is called " Clarence, or the Utopian." As the invalid was wearing down from day to day, one morning he was sitting in the gardens of the Villa Reale. There a group drew his attention, — a father, and, as it seemed, his little daughter. The father was evidently an Englishman : the little girl, with fair complexion and light hair, had the dark eye of the Ital- ian. Thorndale recognized his old friend Clarence ; but with characteristic reserve, he shrunk from making him- self known. But he looked with kind feeling upon the little child ; and mused, as Dr. Arnold had done before him, on a child's power to reawaken a parent's flagging interest in life. The beaten track is no longer monoto- nous : the circle of the year looks new. Thorndale thus mused : — What beautiful things there are in life! joys that have come down to us pure and unstained from the times of the patriarchs. It is to me an eternal miracle to see the same roses year after year bloom as fresh- ly as they did in Paradise. Plant this wedded happiness, plant these roses, in every rood of ground, ye who would improve the aspect of this world ! but do not think you can change a single leaf of the plant itself. Thorndale's idea had been anticipated. James Iled- derwick thus excuses a new poem on the old theme of Love : — CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 331 The theme is old, — even as the flowers are old, That sweetly showed Their silver bosses and bright-budding gold Through Eden's sod ; — And still peep forth through grass and garden mould, As fresh from God ! Happily Thorndale and Clarence met at last. The little girl, compassionating the wan look of the consump- tive, offered him another day some flowers. Clarence followed her ; and suddenly recognizing his old com- panion, " burst into tears like a woman." He and his little Julia were afterwards constant visitors at the Villa Scarpa ; and all the beauty of the scene, which had been paling to the dying man's languid eye, suddenly revived. Morning after morning Clarence spent, painting the view from Thorndale's terrace. Julia was not his daughter : she was this adopted child. She was the daughter of an exiled Italian patriot who had come to England, mar- ried an English woman, settled down quietly in a little cottage on the borders of the New Forest, and supported himself as a sculptor. We trust that all our readers will make a point of perusing the chapter called " Julia Mon- tini," in which the story of the exile, his wife and child, is related with exquisite grace and pathos. Very beauti- fully did the simple and untaught English girl tell Clar- ence how, as there gradually grew upon her the sense of the genius and refinement of the man she had married^ she feared that he would cease to love her, so much above her as he was. She read and studied, hoping to make herself more worthy of him : but her fear proved idle ; he never loved her less. It is indeed something of a disappointment for a husband to feel there are realms of thought to which he has access, but into which a gentle and loving wife cannot enter with him : but 332 THORNDALE ; OR, THE solitude is the penalt)'^ which attaches of necessity to elevated thought. The man who climbs too high, leaves common sympathy behind him. Our readers may re- member how beautifully the author of In Memoriam has anticipated the poor young wife's thoughts and fears : — He thrids the labyrinth of the mind, He reads the secret of the star: He seems so near and yet so far: He looks so cold: she thinks him kind. For him she plays, to him she sings, Of early faith and plighted vows; She knows but matters of the house. And he, he knows a thousand things. Her faith is fixt and cannot move, She darkly feels him dark and wise: She dwells on him with faithful eyes, " I cannot understand : I love." Suddenly the sculptor and his wife died of fever ; and Clarence found the little child all alone in the deserted cottage. The quiet home, that had looked so happy, was obliterated at a stroke. Is it a morbid thing, if we find it for ourselves impossible to look at any happy home, without picturing to our mind a day sure to come ? We look at the cottage in the sunshine, amid its clustering roses, and with children's voices by. Ah, some day there will be an unwonted bustle, — straw flying about the neat walks — empty, echoing rooms — the children gone — and the peaceful home broken up for ever. It is well for those who can feel themselves secure even if they be not safe. And now Clarence and Jtilia soothe the dying man's solitude. Thorndale lies on his sofa under the acacia- CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. 333 tree ; Clarence stands near, painting ; Julia is busy gar- dening. And as Thorndale's hand turns too feeble to hold the pen, Clarence takes up his abandoned manu- script volume, and fills the remaining leaves with his own confession of faith. To notice that at all adequately, would demand an article of itself; and we shall not at- tempt to do so. But we see our last of Thorndale as we have just described him. We leave him, now with very little to come of life, under the acacia-tree. There is now only the stillness of expectation upon that terrace that looks down upon the bay. We should have been happier, we confess, had we left him with something better to support him at the last than philosophy, whether cynical or Utopian. Sui-ely he had within himself, too sacred for common talk, a hope and a belief not to be paraded for Seckendorf 's sarcasm ! Surely, when, in the last hours, the pictures of childhood came back, the perplexed and tempest-driven man was again the child that prayed by the little white bedside. We do not care if our readers should complain that the sermon peeps through the article — that the disguise of the reviewer does not quite conceal the gown and band. Let it be so : but in treating of such grave matters as those which this book suggests, we could not have for- Sfiven ourselves had we failed to notice the book's essen- tial defect. Holding the belief which we hold, we could not have written of the mystery of life, without refer- ence to that which alone can read it. CHAPTER XII. CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER.1 R. CAIRO'S name is already known to the English public as that of the author of a sermon on Religion in Common Life, which was published two or three years ago by her Majesty's command. Every Sunday during her autumn sojourn at Balmoral, the Queen and court wor- ship at the little parish church of Crathie ; and at vari- ous times several of the most popular preachers of the Church of Scotland have there preached in the presence of royalty. Dr. Norman McLeod of Glasgow, Dr. Cum- ming, Mr. Stuart, of St. Andrew's, Edinburgh, and other eminent Scotch clergymen, have officiated at Crathie Church, and in more than one instance with so favor- able an impression, that the manuscripts of the dis- courses have been required for the Queen's private perusal. But Mr. Caird was the first Scotch minister who received a royal command to give his sermon to the public ; and indeed, with the exception of the Bishop of Oxford, the first preacher who had been so distinguished during her Majesty's reign. Many circumstances, apart from the merit of the discourse, contributed to secure for it a very large circulation in England as well as in Scot- 1 Sermons. By the Rev. John Caird, M. A., Minister of the Park Church, Glasgow, Author of Religion in Common Life. Edinburgh and London; Blackwoods. 1858. CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 335 land ; and we have been informed that no single sermon published in modern times has been so extensively read. Somewhere about a hundred thousand copies of it were exhausted in Britain : a still greater number were re- quired for the United States, where our friends were eager to know what sort of religious instruction was ap- proved by a queen ; and the sermon being translated into the German tongue, was republished in Germany with a recommendatory preface by the Chevalier Bun- sen. At that period it became known for the first time to the English public that there had arisen in Scotland a new luminaiy ; a great pulpit orator who was held by many to be equal to any who had preceded him, Chal- mers and Guthrie not being excepted. And the pub- lished sermon seemed almost to justify the enthusiasm of Mr. Caird's warmest admirers. We believe that among intelligent readers there was but one opinion of it, as an ingenious, eloquent, sensible, and interesting exposition of an important practical subject. Still, we have been told that some readers thought Mr. Caird's theology very defective ; and it is not long since we read a letter in a newspaper which is the organ of a small religious sect, in which Mr. Caird was sadly torn to pieces as lacking all spiritual insight and knowledge of the gospel doc- trines. And the ingenious writer of that letter stated that nothing could be more mistaken than the popular belief that the Queen, in commanding the publication of Mr. Caird's sermon, intended to express her approval of it. On the contrary, her Majesty's purpose was (so the writer of the letter assures us) to make an appeal to the sympathies of the religious public, and to say, — " Pity me, my subjects ; here is a specimen of the kind of thing that I have to listen to in Scotland in autumn ! " 336 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. Mr. Caird made his reputation as a preacher while minister of a church in Edinburgh, but about ten years since he retired from the bustle of a city clergyman's life to the country parish of Errol, in Perthshire. From his seclusion there he occasionally emerged to preach in the large towns of Scotland, and far from being forgotten or lost sight of in his country retirement, his popularity ap- peared ever on the increase. Whenever he preached in Edinburgh or Glasgow, the crowds that followed him had hardly been equalled since the great days of Dr. Chal- mers ; and the fame to which Religion in Common Life attained did not surpass the expectations of his Scotch admirers. A few months since Mr. Caird, now a clergy- man of thirteen years' experience, was transferred from his country parish to the beautiful church recently erected in the West-end Park at Glasgow, to which we are sorry to see its builders were too Protestant to give a saint's name. There, with undiminished fire and unslackening popularity, Mr. Caird preaches twice every Sunday. The stranger in Glasgow, if he wanders on Sunday after- noon in the direction of the Park, will see a well-dressed eager crowd hurrying towards the Park Church ; and we understand that so overcrowded was the building at Mr. Caird's first coming, that it has been found necessary to furnish the congregation with tickets, no one being ad- mitted without producing one. Mr. Caird, we believe, is of opinion that in order to produce its full impression, a sermon ought not to be read, but to be delivered as if given extempore ; but as the labor of committing a dis- course to memory is great, he reads his forenoon discourse, and delivers without any manuscript that which he preaches in the afternoon. The afternoon appearance is thus the •jreat one, and it is to tliat service that strangers who wish CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 3o7 to hear the eminent preacher generally go. And although it is in the nature of things impossible that a great orator should be always at his best, we believe that hardly any one who goes to hear Mr. Caird of an afternoon, how- ever high his expectations may have been, returns dis- appointed. Let us suppose that by the kindness of some Glasgow acquaintance we have succeeded in procuring tickets of admission to the Park Church. In the midst of a throng whicii has converged from many points to the steep ascent which leads up to it, we approach the stately Gothic building, with its massive tower, which, standing on an elevated ridge of ground, looks on either hand over the distant din of thronging streets beneath to the quiet coun- try hills far away. We find our way into the church, and we have time to look around us, for there is still half an hour before service begins. Is this really a Presby- terian church? What would John Knox say to it? For all the lifrht within is the " dim religious light " of the cathedral, mellowed in its passage through the windows of stained glass : there is the lofty vaulted roof of richly carved oak, and the double line of shafts parting the side aisles : far up, the amber-tinted clerestory windows throw shafts of sunset color upon the oaken beams; and in the distance — for the church is a very long one — there is nothing less than a spacious chancel, parted from the church by a lofty pointed arcli, partly filled up by a traceried screen of stone. And at the extremity of the chancel, but (something lacking still) at the west end of the church, there is an altar-window, whose fair proportions and rich tracery might have been designed by Pugin. No galleries cut these graceful shafts, and the seats are not pews, but open benches of oak. There is no organ, 22 338 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. and no altar ; but directly in front of the cliancel a plain pulpit of oak. It is just two o'clock. Every seat is crowded, and the passages have gradually filled with people who are con- tent to stand. And as the last tones of the bell have died away Mr. Caird ascends the pulpit, wearing, as Scotch ministers do, the black silk preaching-gown and cassock. Ilis appearance is natural and unaffected. Of the middle size, with dark complexion and long black hair, good but not remarkable forehead, a somewhat careworn and anxious expression, and looking like a retiring and hard-wrought student of eight-and-tiiirty — there we have Mr. Caird. He begins the service by reading the psalm which is to be sung, and we are struck at once by the solemnity and depth of his voice, and we feel already something of the indescribable charm there is about the whole man. The psalm is sung by a choir so efficient that the lack of the organ is hardly felt. Tiien the min- ister rises, and, the whole congregation standing, offers a prayer. The Churcii of Scotland has no liturgy, and every clergyman has to prepare his own prayers. These are commonly understood to be given extemporaneously, and generally they are extemporaneous ; but as we listen to those sentences, uttered with so much feeling, solem- nity, quietude, and fluency, we soon know that the prayers, filled with happy turns of expression, containing many phrases and sentences borrowed from the Liturgy, and some (or we are much mistaken) translated from the Missal, and all conceived and expressed in the simple, beautiful liturgical spirit, have been, if not written, at least most carefully thought over at home. At one time Mr. Caird's prayers were ambitious and oratorical; but now their perfect simplicity tells of more mature judg- CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 339 merit and taste. We cannot say whether the congrega- tion has so far mastered the essential difficulty of unlitur- gical common prayer as to be projterly joining in those petitions ; but the perfect stillness, the silence and stirless- ness that prevail in church, testify that the congregation is at all events intently listening. The prayer is over — only a quarter of an hour. Then a lesson from Scrip- ture is read, chosen at the discretion of the clergyman ; then a psalm is sung ; then comes the sermon. You cannot doubt, as you see the people arranging themselves for fixed attention, what portion of the worship of God is thought in Scotland the most important. The service in that country is essentially one of instruction rather than one of devotion. The text is read ; it is genei-ally such as we feel at once to be a suggestive one ; it is some- times striking, but never odd or strange. Then Mr. Caird begins his sermon. He has no manuscript before him, not a shred of what the humbler Scotch call paper, and abhor as they abhor a vestige of Rome ; but who could for a moment be misled into imagining those felicitous sentences extemporaneous, or that masterly symmetrical discussion of the subject, so ingenious, so thoughtful, so rich in fine illustration, rising several times in the course of the sermon into a fervid rush of eloquence that you hold your breath to listen to — the excogitation of the moment ? In hearing Mr. Caird you have nothing to get over. There is nothing that de- ti'acts from the general effect; none of those disagreeable peculiarities and awkwardnesses in utterance, in gesture, in appearance, in mode of thought, which grievously detract from the pleasure with which we listen to many distinguished speakers till we get accustomed to them, and learn to forget their defects in their merits and MO CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. beauties. He begins quietly, but in a manner which is full of earnestness and feeling ; every word is touched with just the right kind and degree of emphasis; many single words, and many little sentences which when you recall them do not seem very remarkable, are given in tones which make them absolutely thrill through you : you feel that the preacher has in him the elements of a tragic actor who would rival Kean. The attention of the congregation is riveted ; the silence is breathless ; and as the speaker goes on gathering warmth till he becomes impassioned and impetuous, the tension of the nerves of the hearer becomes almost painful. There is abundant ornament in style — if you were cooler you might proba- bly think some of it carried to the verge of good taste ; there is a great amount and variety of the most expres- sive, apt, and seemingly unstudied gesticulation : it is rath- er as though you were listening to the impulsive Italian speaking from head to foot, than to the cool and unexcit- able Scot. After two or three such climaxes, with pauses between, after the manner of Dr. Chalmers, the preacher gathers himself up for his peroration, which, with the tact of the orator, he has made more striking, more touching, more impressive than any preceding portion of his discourse. He is wound up often to an excitement which is painful to see. The full deep voice, so beauti- fully expressive, already taxed to its utmost extent, breaks into something which is almost a shriek ; the gesticulation becomes wild ; the preacher, who has hitherto held himself to some degree in check, seems to abandon himself to the full tide of his emotion : you feel that not even his elo- quent lips can do justice to the rush of thought and feel- ing within. Two or three minutes in this impassioned strain and the sermon is done. A few moments of start- CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 341 ling silence ; you look round the cliurch ; every one is bending forward with eyes intent upon the pulpit ; then there is a general breath and stir. You think the ser- mon has lasted about ten minutes ; you consult your watch — it has lasted three quarters of an hour. If you are an enthusiastic Anglican you say to yourself, " Well, that comes to the mark of Melvill or Bishop Wilberforce." If an enthusiastic Scotch churchman, you say to yourself, " Well, I suppose Chalmers was better ; but / never heard preaching like it, save from Guthrie or Norman McLeod." Then follow a brief collect, a hymn, and the benedic- tion ; and you come away, having heard the great Scotch preacher. We may very fitly call him so ; for except Dr. Guthrie and Dr. McLeod, there is no one whom the popular judgment of Scotland in general places near Mr. Caird. And though every district of Scotland and every town has its popular preacher — and though many con- gregations have each their own favorite clergyman whom they prefer to all others — still the very best that the warmest admirers of other Scotch ministers can find to say of them is, that they are better than Mr. Caird. He is the Scotch Themistocles. Even those who would place another preacher first, place Mr. Caird second. It is rarely indeed that we find such a remarkable combination in one individual of the qualities which go to make an effective pulpit orator. Mr. Caird's mind has the knack of producing the precise kind of thought which shall be at once worthy of the attention of the best educated and most refined, and effective when ad- dressed to a mixed congregation. And that is the prac- tical talent for the preacher, after all. No depth, origi- nality, or power of thought will make up in a sermon for the absence of general interest. No thought or style is 342 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. good in the pulpit, which is tiresome. There is an in- sufferable but lofty order of thought, which you listen to with an effort, feel to be extremely flue, and cease listen- ing to as soon as possible. John Foster, who scattered congregations, was beyond doubt an abler preacher than Mr. Caird ; but he did scatter congregations, and there- fore he was not a good preacher, finely as his published discourses read. There are other preachers who attract crowds by preaching sermons which revolt every one who possesses good sense or good taste ; but in distinc- tion alike from the good unpopular preacher and the bad popular preacher, Mr. Caird has the talent to produce at will an order of thought elevated enough to please the most cultivated, and interesting enough to attract the masses. He has a good foundation of metafjhj-sical acumen and power ; strong practical sense ; then great powers in the way of happy and striking illustration ; in- deed, he traces analogies between the material and the spiritual with a felicity which reminds us of Archbishop Whately. Mr. Caird has also that invaluable gift of the orator — a capacity of intense feeling ; he can throw his whole soul into what he says, with an emotion which is contagious. Further, he has a remarkably telling and expressive voice, and a highly effective dramatic manner. Add to all these qualifications that, from natural bent, fostered and encouraged by unequalled success from his first entering the church, he has devoted himself stead- fastly to the single end of becoming a great and distin- guished preacher. That end he has completely attained. For at least ten years he has held in Scotland the posi- tion which he now holds ; and the fortunate incident of his preaching at Crathie extended his reputation beyond the limits of Scotland. Mr. Caird is certainly the most CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 343 generally popular preacher in the Scotch Church, and he deserves his popularity. We cannot, of course, go into the question of mute inglorious Miltons, and of flow- ers born to blush unseen. It is possible enough that among the Cumberland hills, or in curacies like Sydney Smith's on Salisbury Plain, or wandering sadly by the shore of Shetland fiords, there may be men who have in them the makings of better preachers than Bishop Wil- berforce, Mr. Melvill, Dr. McLeod, or Mr. Caird. Of course there may be Folletts that never held a brief, Angelos that never built St. Peter's, and Vandycks who never got beyond their sixpence a day. There may be, of course, and there may not be ; and what is known must for practical purposes be taken for what is. It may readily be supposed that the announcement of a forthcoming volume of sermons by so distinguished a preacher did not fail to excite much interest in the dis- trict where he is best known. Little Tom Eaves, who at different times has given Mr. Thackery so much valu- able information, assured us, on his return from a recent visit to Edinburgh, that the eminent publishers who have sent forth this volume, were content to give for its copy- right a sum which, for a volume of sermons, was quite extraordinary — as much, in fact, as Sir Walter Scott received for Marmion. Mr. Caird's book is sure to have many readers. Many educated people in England will feel curious to know what sort of preaching is at a pre- mium in the Scotch Church, where many things are so different from what they are among us. And we think we have been able to trace one or two indications in the volume, that Mr. Caird had an English audience in view. On at least two occasions we find the word Sunday (" a Sunday meditation," " Sunday-School teachers,") where 344 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. we are mistaken if most Scotch preachers would not have employed the word Sabbath, which is in almost universal use north of the Tweed. But in Scotland, no doubt, Mr. Caird will find the great majority of his read- ers. Numbers of people who have listened to the fiery orator will be anxious to find whether the discourses which struck them so much when aided by the acces- sories of a wonderfully telling manner, will stand the severer test of a quiet perusal at home. So here is Mr. Caird's volume. Here, then, we have the spent thunderbolts, motion- less and cold. Here we have the locomotive engine, which tore along at sixty miles an hour, with the fire raked out and the steam gone down. Here, in short, we have the sermons of the great Scotch pulpit orator, strip- ped of the fire, the energy, the eloquent voice, the abun- dant gesticulation, which did so much to give them their charm when delivered and heard. There is but one story told as to the share which manner has always had in producing the practical effect which has been felt in listening to all great orators, from Demosthenes to Chal- mers. Manner has always been the first, second, and third thing ; and Mr. Caird could not publish his manner. We can examine his sermons calmly, and make up our mind about their merits deliberately, now. To do so was quite impossible while we were hurried away by the rushing eloquence of the living voice. No doubt, then, this volume will disappoint the less in- telligent class of Mr. Caird's admirers, who expect to be as deeply impressed in reading these discourses as they were in hearing them. No words standing quietly on the printed page can possibly have the effect of the same words spoken by the human voice, with immense feeling. CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 345 and with all the arts of oratory. To expect that they should have an equal effect is to expect that the sword laid upon the table should cut as deeply as it did when grasped in a strong and skilful swordsman's hand. Mr. Caird's manner we know is a I'emai'kably effective one ; and of course the better the speaker's manner, the more bis speech loses by being dissociated from it. Still, after making every deduction, they are noble ser- mons ; and we are not sure but that, with the cultivated reader, they will gain rather than lose by being read, not heard. There is a thoughtfulness and depth about them which can hai'dly be appreciated, unless when they are studied at leisure ; and there are many sentences so fe- licitously expressed that we should grudge being hurried away from them by a rapid speaker, without being allowed to enjoy them a second time. And Mr. Caird, we feel as we read his pages, has succeeded in attaining a great end: he has shown that it is possible to produce sermons which shall be immensely popular, and popular with all classes of people : while yet all shall be so chaste and correct that the most fastidious taste could hardly take exception to a single word or phrase. In Mr. Caird's sermons there is nothing extravagant or eccentric either in thought or style. There is nothing unworthy of the clergyman and the scholar. There are no claptrap expedients to excite attention ; nothing merely designed to make an audience gape ; nothing that could possibly produce a titter. The solemnity of the house of God is never forgotten. Mr. Caird has no peculiar views, no special system of theol- ogy : he preaches the moderate and chastened Calvinism of the Church of Scotland, — precisely the doctrine of the Thirty-Nine Articles. He does not tell his hearei's that the world is cominfj to an end ; he finds nothin"; about 346 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. Louis Napoleon in the Book of Revelation ; he does not select queer texts, or out of the way topics for discussion. It is no small matter to have proved in this age of pulpit drowsiness on the one hand, and pulpit extravagance on the other, that sound and temperate doctrine, logical accuracy, and classical language are quite compatihle with great popularity. It is pleasant to find that dis- courses which are thoroughly manly and free from senti- mentalism or cant prove attractive to a class which is too ready to run after such preachers as Mr. Charles Honey- man ; and that sensible and judicious views, set forth in a style which is always scholarly and correct, and enforced by a manner in which there is no acting, howling, ven- triloquizing, or gymnastic posturing, can hold vast crowds in a rapt attention, which would please even that slashing critic of the pulpit, Hahitans in Sicco. Wide as the poles apart is such populai-ity as that of Mr. Caird from such popularity as that of Mi-. Spurgeon and his class. It is very often with contempt and indignation that people of sense and taste listen to " popular preachers." No doubt such preachers may be well fitted to please and even to profit the great multitude who have little sense and no taste at all ; but it is a fre:-h and agreeable sensa- tion to the reviewer when he discovers a man whose emi- nence as a preacher is the sequel to a brilliant career at the University ; whose sermons indicate a mind stored with the fruits of extensive reading and study ; who shrinks instinctively from whatever is coarse or grotesque ; who abhors all claptrap ; who is perfectly simple and sin- cere without a trace of self-consciousness ; in whose com- position there is nothing spasmodic, nothing aiming to be subtle and succeeding in being unintelligible; and who seems, so far as it is possible to judge, to be actuated by CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 347 an earnest desire to impress relif];ioiis truth upon the rainds of his hearers. And, indeed, when we think what is the great end of the preadier's endeavors, we feel that all mere literary qualities and graces are of no account whatever when compared with the presence of that effi- cacious element in the sermon which makes it such as that it shall be the means of saving souls. For ourselves, we should prefer a thousand times the magic spell which Miss Marsh (all honor to the name) exercised at Syden- ham over English Hearts, to the church-crowding elo- quence of Chalmers. And in that solemn sense, perhaps the greatest of all English preachers is the homely, pithy, earnest Mr. Ryle. We confess that we do not think sermons, generally speaking, by any means attractive reading ; and we have not read a sufficient number of them to be able to insti- tute a comparison between the printed sermons of Mr. Caird and those of other distinguished preachers. Still, we may say that we do not find in Mr. Caird the origi- nality of Mr. Melvill, or the talent of that eminent divine for eliciting from his text a great amount of striking and unexpected instruction. There is nothing of the daring ingenuity and the novel interpretations of Archbishop Whately. Mr. Caird will never found a school of disci- ples, like Dr. Arnold ; nor startle steady-going old cler- gymen, like Mr. Robertson of Brighton. He is so clear and comprehensible that he will not, like Mr. Maurice, make many readers feel or fancy the presence of some- thing very fine, if they could only be sure what the preaclun- would be at. lie hardly sets a scene before us in such life-like reakty as does Dr. Guthrie. And al- though people may go to hear him for the intellectual treat, they will never go to be amused, as by Mr. Spur- 348 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. geon. He will never point a vsentence at the expense of due solemnity, like a gi-eat Scotch preacher who con- trasted men's profession and their practice by saying, " Profession says, ' On this hang the law and the proph- ets ; ' Practice says, ' Hang the law and the prophets ! '" He will not, like Mr. Cecil, arrest attention by beginning his sermon, " A man was hanged this morning at Ty- burn ;" nor like Rowland Hill, by exclaiming "Matches! matches! matches!" — nor like somebody or other by saying as he wiped his face, " It's damned hot ! " — nor like Whitefield, by vociferating " Fire ! fire — in hell ! " He will not imitate Sterne, who read out as his text, " It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting;" and then exclaimed, as the first words of his discourse, " That I deny ! " — making it appear in a little while that such was not the preacher's own senti- ment, but what might be supposed to be the reflection of an irreligious man. He will never introduce into his discour=;es long dialogues and arguments between God and Satan, in which the latter is made to exhibit a deficiency in logical power which is, to say the least, remarkable in one who is believed not to lack intellect. He will not appear in the pulpit with his shirt-sleeves turned back over his cassock, in ball-room fashion ; and after giving out his text, astonish the congregation by bellowing, " Now, you young men there, listen to my ser- mon, and don't stare at my wrists ! " All such arts for attracting or compelling interest and attention Mr. Caird eschews. And when we read his sermons, though we feel their interest, we find it hard to say in what it lies. They are admirable sermons : but we should scarcely, a priori. Lave ventured to predict their vast popular effect. The CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 349 finely-linked thought, the completeness and symmetry of the discussion, the beautifully appropriate illustrations, none ttuck in for ornament, but all boiici Jide illustrating the subject ; the general sobriety and good sense : — these are literary characteristics which we should say would prove hardly discernible, and certainly not appreciable, save by people of considerable cultivation. Must we, then, fall back upon Manner, and suppose that the charm which gives these sermons their popular effect lies in a great measure in the touching and thrilling tones, the tears in the voice, the enchaining earnestness, with which they are poured forth by an orator who, like Whitefield, could almost melt an audience to tears by saying Mesopo- tamia ? Or may we not rather ask whether Mr, Caird, in his elaborate and fastidious preparation of these dis- courses for the press, has not cut out, or smoothed down, much which was most striking when the sermons were preached, but which might have appeared of doubtful taste when they were carefully and critically read over ? Perhaps these sermons, while gaining in Jinish and per- fection of literary construction, liave lost some of the salient points, the roughness and raciness, which added to their piquancy when delivered. We have heard Mr. Caird preach two of those now published ; and we find he has drawn his pen through several of those phrases which had stuck longest and most vividly in our memory. We think he has erred here. He has been over-cautious, over-fastidious. It is on the very borderland of good tasle that the deepest popular impression is made : and there was no fear of Mr. Caird"s crossing the border. And we believe that upon ordinary Sundays, by dis- courses of much less elaborate preparation, lie produces even a greater effect upon his congregation than could be 350 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. produced by any sermon in this volume, were it preached exactly as it is printed. The published discourses are certainly very ambitious in thought and style. There is a want of repose in them ; and when two or tlu-ee are read successively, the effect upon the mind is a little wearisome. But no doubt they were written to be preached ; and when they are listened to one at a time, and at intervals of a week, this result will not follow. It is well to have the attention riveted and the nerves tightened for half an hour in the week : but the process becomes painful when it lasts too long. We remark a little mannerism here and there. An ex- traordinary number of paragraphs begin with the word Now: and the term yearning is, we think, of much too frequent occurrence. The result of the abundant use of this word, and of the occasional heaping up of adjectives unconnected by any copulative, and of nearly the same meaning, is to leave an occasional impression of an ex- cess of the gushing'' element. There is the least shade here and there of the cant of the present day about " the response of our deepest nature," — its "instinctive throb," and its "instinctive yearnings," — phrases which to plain folk mean just nothing at all. We confess that we do not like the word fair several times applied to the Almighty — " the alone Infinitely True and Hi)Iy and Fair." The word suggests ideas which are not in harmony with so solemn an application of it. And as we are fault-finding at any rate, we may here state that in all the volume there is but a single passage which appears to us to be in glaringly and painfully bad taste : so much and so disa- greeably so that we wonder that Mr. Caird should have published it. It is that passage in which heaven is de- scribed as a place — CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 351 where, heart to heart with God, happy souls 7-evel unsated, undazzled, in the Essential Element of Love. The description appears to us most irreverent, and its entire strain most unbecoming. Mr. Spurgeon could hardly have said anything worse. We have drawn tlie pen through it in our copy, that our pleasure in reading the volume may not be interrupted by its jai'- ring and irritaling effect ; and we trust that in the future editions which are sure to be wanted, Mr. Caird will strike the entire passage out. It is most unworthy of him. We do not know whether Mr. Caird was accustomed to preach such sermons as those now published to his country congregation. There arc many phrases and sentences in them which to rustics would be quite un- intelligible. What could a ploughman make of the fol- lowing question: — What elements must we eliminate from suffering caused by sin in forming our ideal of suffering purity? — (p. 171.) But as we know that Madame liacliel, by her wonder- fully expressive gesticidation, succeeded, while in Russia, in making her meaning intelligible to people who did not understand the language which she spoke, so Mr. Caird may have been able to get country folk to understand the general drift of sentences containing many words whose sense they did not know. And indeed the late Hugh Miller maintains that sermons which are in a considerable degree over the heads of a rural congre- gation, are the most likely both to interest and improve them. By this time, we doubt not, our readers are impatient of our remarks, and would like to hear Mr. Caird speak for himself. We proceed to give a more specific account of the contents of the volume. 352 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. It contains eleven sermons, tlie fourth being divided into two parts, intended, we presume, to be preached at different times ; and a glance at the Table of Contents at once makes us suspect that the sermons have, with a view to publication, been materially changed from what they were when they were preached. Sermons in Scot- land, as in England, have a sort of average length, from which they do not deviate materially except on extra- ordinary occasions. But while Mr. Caird's first sermon occupies forty pages, the second occupies only twenty-five, the fourth twenty, and the fifth thirteen. The first ser- mon is thus three times as long as the fifth, and twice as long as the fourth. So if the fifth sermon be of the standard Scotch length of three quarters of an hour, the first would occupy in the delivery two hours and a quarter. Or if the first sermon is to be taken as the standard, the fifth would crumple up into the "just fifteen minutes." The subject of the first sermon is The Self -evidencing Nature of Divine Truth ; its text is, " By manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's con- science in the sight of God." (2 Cor. iv. 2.) It is a scholarly and masterly production ; but the thought which forms its staple is more severe than is usual in Mr. Caird's discourses. It is, in short, a view set out with consummate tact and ingenuity, of the internal evi- dence of the truth of the Christian religion. We should ask our university men and our clergy to read this ser- mon the first. Tiiey will find in it a strict and unerring logic, great skill in simplifying and illustrating abstract ideas, and a style which could scarcely be improved. But when we pass to the discourse which stands next ia order we find much clearer indications of the power of the popular oratoi*. CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 353 It is on Self-Ignorance ; the text, " Wlio can under- stand his errors." (Psalm xix. 12. ) We almost wonder in reading the (brmer sermon how Mr. Caird can be so popular ; but when we read this, more especially if we have heard Mr. Caird preach, and can imagine the fashion in which he would deliver many passages, we have less difficulty in understanding the matter. Here is the introduction, which would arrest attent'on at once : — Of all kinds of ignorance, that which is the most strange, and, in so far as it is voluntaiy, the most culpable, is our ignorance of self. For not oiily is the subject in this case that which might be expected to possess for us the greatest interest, but it is the one concerning which we have amplest facilities and opportunities of information. Who of us would not think it a strange and unaccountable story, could it be told of any man now present, that for years he had harbored under his roof a guest whose face he had never seen — a constant inmate of his home, who was yet to him altogether unknown? It is no supposition how^ ever, but an unquestionable fact, that to not a few of us, from the first moment of existence there has been present, not beneath the roof, but within the breast, a mj'sterious resident, an inseparable companion, nearer to us than friend or brother, yet of whom after all we know little or nothing. What man of intelligence amongst us would not be ashamed to have had in his possession for years some rare or univer- sally admired volume with its leaves uncut? or to be the proprietor of a repository tilled with the most exquisite productions of genius, and the rarest specimens in science and art, which yet he himself never thouglit of entering? Yet surely no book so worthy of perusal, no chamber containing objects of study so curious, so replete with interest tor us, as that which seldom or never attracts our observation — the book, the chamber of our own hearts. We sometimes reproach with folly tluise persons who have travelled far and seen much of distant countries, and yet have been content to remain comparatively unac- quainted with their own. But how venial such folly compared with that of ranging over all other depaitments of knowletige, going abroad with perpetual inquisitiveness over earth and sea and sky, whilst there is a little world within the breast which is still to us an unexplored re- gion. Other scenes and objects we can study only at intervals: they are not always accessible, or can bo reached only by long and laborious 23 354 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. journeys; but the bridt^e of couseiousness is soon crossed — we liavo but to close the eye and withdraw the thoughts from the world without in order at any moment to wander through the scenes and explore the phenomena of the still more wondrous world within. To examine other objects delicate and elaborate instruments are often necessary: the researches of the astronomer, the botanist, the chemist, can be pros- ecuted only by means of rare and costly apparatus; but the power of reflection, that faculty more wondrous than any mechanism which art has ever fashioned, is an instrument possessed by all — the poorest and most illiterate alike with the most cultured and refined have at their command an apparatus by which to sweep the inner tirmament of the soul, and bring into view its manifold phenomena of thought and feel- ing and motive. And yet with all the unequalled facilities for acquir- ing this sort of knowledge, can it be questioned that it is the one sort of knowledge that is most commonly neglected, and that, even amongst those who would disdain the imputation of ignorance in history or science or literature, there are multitudes who have never acquired the merest rudiments of the knowledge of self? By no means a faf-fetched or difficult idea, the reader must see ; and turned in many lights and brought out by a throng of illustrations ; but a good and natural intro- duction to a sermon on self-ignorance, and quite sure, if given with a sort of extetnpore air, as if each successive comparison struck the speaker just at the moment, to get the people to listen with great stillness. Then, restricting his view to the matter of a man's moral defects, Mr. Caird goes on to point out several reasons why the sinful man does not " understand his errors." The first is, that sin can be truly measured only when it is resisted. This principle indeed holds good of all forces : — The rapid stream flows smooth and silent when there arc no obsta- cles to stay its progress; but hurl a rock into its bed, and the roar and surge of the arrested current will instantly reveal its force. You can- not estimate the wind's strength when it rushes over the open plain; but when it reaches and wrestles with the trees of the forest, or lashes the sea into fury, then, resisted, you perceive its power. Or if, amid the ice-bound regions of the north, an altogether unbroken continuous CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 35o winter prevailed, comparative!}' unnoticed would be its stern domin- ion; but it is the coming round of a more genial season, when the counteracting agency of the sun begins to prevail, that reveals, by the rending of the solid masses of ice, and by the universal stir and crash, the intensity of the bj'gone winter's cold. The second reason is, that sin often makes a man afraid to know himself. The third, that sinful habits steal on men slowly and gradually. The fourth, that as character gradually deteriorates, there is a parallel dete- rioration of the standard by which we judge it. Such are the " heads " of the sermon, as they are called in Scotland. They are all very clearly brought out and abundantly illustrated, and the sermon ends with a stir- ring " practical application." It is possible now to seek the peace of self-forgetfulness, — to refuse to be disturbed, — to sink for a little longer into our dream of self- satisfaction ; but it is a peace as transient as it is unreal. Soon, at the latest, and all the more terrible for the delay, the awakening must come. There are sometimes sad awakenings from sleep in this world. It is very sad to dream by night of vanished joys, — to revisit old scenes, and dwell once more among the unforgotten forms of our loved and lost, — to see in the dreamland the old familiar look, and hear the well-remembered tones of a voice long hushed and still, and then to wake with the morning light to the aching sense of our loneliness again. It were very sad for the poor criminal to wake from sweet dreams of other and happier days, — days of innocence, and hope, and peace, when kind friends, and a happy home, and an honored or unstained name were his, — to wake in his cell on the morning of his execution to the horrible recollection that all this is gone for ever, and that to-day he must die a felon's death. But inconceivably more awful than any awakening which earthly daybreak has ever brought, shall be the awakening of the self-deluded soul when it is roused in horror and surprise from the dream of life — to meet Almighty God in judgment! or course all this has been very often said before ; but probably those who heard Mr. Caird declaim these sentences, thought that it had never before been said so forcibly. 356 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. Tlie third sermon is upon Spirittcal Influence. Its text is that passage in the Saviour's speech to Nicode^ mus, " The wind bloweth where it listeth," &c. (S. John iii. 7, 8.) Here the preacher argues in defence of the Christian doctrine of Regeneration, maintaining that whatever difficulties surround that doctrine have their parallel in Nature. The " heads " here are three. The analogy between Nature and Revelation is traced in re- gard to Supernaturalness, Sovereignly, or apparent Arbi- trariness, and Secrecy. The gist of the first head is given in a sentence towards its close : — If not the slightest movement of matter can take place without the immediate agency of God, shall we wonder that His agency is needed in the higher and more subtle processes of mind? The burden of the second head is given thus : — Marvel not nor be disquieted at your inability to explain the laws that regulate the operations of an infinite agent; for in a province much more within the range of human observation there are f;uniliar agents at work, the operations of which are equally inscrutable, arbi- trary, incalculable. Think it not strange that the ways of the Spirit of God are unaccountable to a mind by which even the common phe- nomena of the wind are irreducible to law. Then, under the third division of the discourse, Mr. Caird shows that the fact that the Holy Spirit works unseen is no reason for doubting that he does really act : — As 3'ou have surveyed the face of nature in some tranquil season, — the unbreathing summer noon or the hushed twilight hour, — every feature of the landscape has seemed suffused with calmness, every tree hung its motionless head, every unripplcd brook crept on with almost inaudible murmuring, every plant, and (lower, and leaf seemed as if bathed in repose. But anon you perhaps perceived a change passing over the scene, as if at the bidding of some invisible power; — a rush- ing sound, as of music evoked by invisible fingers from the harp of nature, began to fill your ear; the leaves began to quiver and rustle, CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 357 the trees to bend and shake, the stream to dash onward with ruffled breast and brawling sound, and from every wood, and glade, and glen, there came forth the intimation that a new and most potent agent was abroad and working around you. And yet while you marked the change ou the face of nature, did you perceive the agent that effected it? Did the wind of heaven take visible form and appear as a winged messenger of God's will, hurrying hither and thither from object to object? Do j'ou know and can you describe the way in which he worked, — how his touch fell upon the flowret and bade it wave, or Ills grasp seized the sturdy oak and strove with it til[it quivered and bent? No, you cannot. You have not penetrated so far into the se- crets of nature. You have seen onlj' the effects, but not the agent or the process of his working. You have seen the wind's influences, but not itself. But do you therefore marvel, or hesitate to believe, that it has indeed been abroad and working over the face of the earth? or do you ever doubt whether there be any such agent as the wind at all? No; you have heard the sound thereof, you have witnessed the stir and commotion of nature that told of its presence, and so you believe in its existence, though you "cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth." The tlifee " heads " having been illustrated, the ser- mon is wound up by various practical inferences, given at considerable length. Tiie fourth sermon is from the text, " No man hath seen God at any time ; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared him." (S. John i. 18.) It is divided into two parts, the subject of the foi'tner being Tlie Invisible God, and that of the latter The Manifestation of the Invisible God. The preacher, having dwelt upon the fact that God is in- visible to human eyes, and shown that not without de- stroying the character of our present state of being as a state of trial and training could the case be otherwise ; goes on to show that the Saviour, by his person, his life and character, his sufferings and death, is a visible manifestation of the invisible God. We believe that this sermon, when preached, was a 358 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. very effective one ; and probably the view which it sets out sti'uck many ordinary hearers as novel and original. It is not, however, necessary to tell the well-informed reader that Mr. Caird has here done nothing more than present, in a somewhat more popular and I'hetorical form, the substance of a sermon upon the same text by Archbishop Whately, which, being detached from its text, is now published in the first series of the Archbishop's Essays.^ The reader will find it interesting to do what we have done since writing the last sentence, — to peruse the two sermons together, and compare them. The Archbishop's sermon was addressed to a learned audi- ence : it was preached before the University of Oxford ; and accordingly it is the more critical and philosophical. Mr. Caird intended his sermon to be preached to ordi- nary congregations, and accordingly he quotes no Greek, and lengthens out his remarks upon those parts of his subject which most admit of popular illustration. Some observations early in the discourse, on the Invisibility of the Almighty, appear to have been suggested by Letter VI. in Foster's Essay, On a Man writing Memoirs of Himself, in which that topic is discussed with a power unparalleled in theological literature. And whoever wishes to find The Manifestation of the Invisible God through the personal Redeemer set out in a very in- teresting fashion, may find it in the first two chapters of a book of so popular a character as Jacob Abbott's Gorner-Sione. The view taken by Abbott is precisely that of Archbishop Whately, as may be inferred from the motto prefixed to the first chapter, which is, " The gloi'y 1 Essays on some of the Peculiarities of the Cliristian Religion. Es- say II. " On the Declaration of God in His Son," pp. 98-118. Edition of 1856. CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 359 ,;: of God in the face of Jesus Christ." It does not appear, however, that Abbott was acquainted with the Archbish- op's discourse. Ahhough we cannot give Mi-. Caird the credit of hav- ing thought out the idea which is pressed in this sermon, ._ still he is entitled to the praise of having grasped it with ♦ great force, and of having set it forth in a discourse which would produce a strong popular effect. It must be said, however, that the style of this sermon is ambi- tious to a somewhat extravagant degree ; in taste and accui'acy it is very inferior to several of the other ser- mons in the volume. We should judge it to have been a comparatively juvenile production, which its author has got so fond of that he cannot now try it by the same severe standard as his recent compositions. And we are not sure if the phrase, a woe that Deity could feel, con- tains very sound theology. Deity can feel nothing like woe. The sermon which comes next is, we think, one of the most eloquent in the book : it contains, perhaps, finer passages than any other. And although it is highly wrought up in several parts, there is not a word in it to which the severest critic could take exception. It is on The Solitariness of Christ's Sufferings : the text, " I ha^■e trodden the wine-press alone." It sets out with the fol- lowing beautiful and natural introduction : — There is always a certain degree of solitude about a great mind. Even a mere human being cannot rise preeminentlj' above the level of his fellow-uien without becoming conscious of a certain solitariness of spirit gathering round him. The loftiest intellectual elevation, indeed, is nowise inconsistent with a genial openness and simplicity of nature, nor is there anything impossible or unexampled in the combination of a grasp of intellect that could cope with the loftiest abstractions of phil- osophy, and a playfulness that could condescend to sport with a child. Yet whilst it is thus true that the possessor of a great mind may be 360 COXCEKNIXG A GREAT SCOTCH PKEACHEK. capable of sympathizing with, of entering kindly into the views and ■ feelings, the joys and sorrows of inferior minds, it imist at the same time be admitted that theie is ever a range of thought and feeling into which they cannot enter with him. They may accompany him, so to speak, a certain height np the mountain, but there is a point at which; their feebler powers become exhausted, and if he ascend bej'ond tliat, his path must be a solitarv one. What is thus true of all great minds must have been, beyond all- others, characteristic of the mind of Him who, with all his real and very humanity, could " think it no robbery to be equal with God.*' Jesus was indeed a lonely being in the world. With all the exquisite tenderness of his human sympathies, — touched with the feeling of our every sinless infirmity, — with a heart that could feel for a peasant's sorrow, and an eye that could beam with tenderness on an infant's face, — he was yet one who, Avherever he went, and by whomsoever sur- rounded, was, in the secrecy of his inner being, profoundly alone. You who are parents have, I dare say, often felt struck by the reflection, what a world of thoughts, and cares, and anxieties are constantly present to your minds into which your children cannot enter. You maj- be continually amongst them, holding familiar intercourse with them, condescending to all their childish thoughts and feelings, enter- ing into all their childish ways, — yet every day there are a thousand things passing through yonv mind, with respect, for instance, to your business or profession, your schemes and projects, your troubles, fears, hopes and ambitions in life, your social connections, the incidents and events that are going on in the world around you, — there are a thou- sand reflections and feelings on such matters passing daily through your mind, of which your children know nothing. You never dream of talking to them on such subjects, and the}' could not understand or sympaliiize with you if you did. There is a little world in which the play of their passions is strong and vivid, but beyond that their sym- pathies entirely fail. And perhaps there is no spectacle so exquisitely touching as that which one sometimes witnesses in a house of mourn- ing — the elder members of the family bowed down to the dust by some heavy sorrow, whilst the little children sport around in uncon- scious playfulness. The bearing of this illustration is obvious. What children •re to tin, mature-minded man, the rest of mankind were to Jesus. The pi-eac'Iiet- goes on to sny that he intends to follow out the thoiii^ht of Christ's solitai-iness with pai'ticular refei'ence to his sori-oivs. And he does so with eloquence CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 361 SO impressive that we regret we can find room for no fur- ther specimens of it. We liave not space to do more tlian mention the sub- jects of the remaining sermons which make up the vol- ume. The sermon which follows that on The Solitariness of Christ" s Sufferings, is a sort of companion piece, on the text " Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of the sufferings of Christ." (I Peter iv. 13.) There is a dis- course on Spiritual Rest whicli we think less happ)' ; a very able one on the text, " I wi.-h that thou niayest prosper and be in health even as thy soul prospereth," (3 John 2) ; another admirable sermon on " All things are yours," which Mr. Caird preached before the Queen last autumn. There is a temperate and judicious ser- mon on The Simplicity of Christian Ritual, in which the author cautions us against aitaching too much consequence to such things as church architecture and stately church services. At the same time Mr. Caird describes these perilous delights with such manifest gusto, that it is quite obvious he would have no serious objections to the cathe- dral worship and to York Minster. It is indeed quite true that — There is a semi-sensuous delight in religious worship imposingly con- ducted, which maybe felt by the least conscientious even more than by the sincerely devout. The soul that is devoid of true reverence to- wards God may be rapt into a spurious elation while in rich and solemn tones the loud-voiced organ peals forth his praise. The heart that never felt one throb of love to Christ may thrill with an ecstasy of sentimental tenderness while soft voices, now blending, now dividing, in combined or responsive strains, celebrate the glories of redeeming love. And not seldom the most sensual and profligate of men have owned to that strange, uiuletined. j'et delicious feeling of awe and elevation that steals over the spirit in some fair adorned temple on which all the resources of art have been lavished, where soft light floods the air and mystic shadows play over pillar and arch and vaulted roof, and the hushed and solemn stillness is broken only by the voice of prayer or praise. 362 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. All quite true ; but though no doubt such teeling as Mr. Caird describes is not religion, it may prepare the way for receiving impressions which arc properly relig- ious. Nor can we evade the grand principle, (hat we ought to consecrate to the Almighty our very best in architecture and in melody as in everything else, by the reflection that such things, like all others in this world, may be abused. And, by the way, Mi*. Caird appears to have forgotten to tell his hearers that if worshippers in the south may mistake their ajsthetic enjoyment of beautiful church-worship for true devotion, there is at least as much risk that worshippers farther north may confuse their enjoyment of the intellectual treat of listen- ing to impassioned and brilliant pulpit-oratory with a real reception of the great truths which are in such oratory set forth. If Anglicans must smash their stained-glass, board over their vaulted roofs, and turn oiF their cathe- dral choristers, then ought Mr. Caird to cut out his imagery, to destroy the rhythm of the last sentences of his pai'agraphs, and to cultivate a chronic sore-throat. If it be right for a clergyman to labor day and night to make his sermon beautiful, why not liis church as well ? And if the church must be only moderately beautiful, then the preaching must not be obtrusively so. Does Mr. Caird mean to insinuate a covert assurance, that however pleasing and admirable his discourses may be, he could, were it not for fear of exciting aesthetic emo- tion, make them a great deal better ? The last sermon in the volume is on The Comparative Injluence of Character and Doctrine. The text is '• Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine." (I Tim. iv. 16.) And Mr. Caird, not perhaps with very critical accuracy, maintains that St. Paul, in writing that text, placed the CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 363 two matters to be attended to in the order of their impor- tance : thus signifying that the life was of more moment than the instruction ; that it was the preacher's duty to take heed, fii'st to himself, and secondly to his doctrine. Whether the general principle be implied in the text or not, there is no doubt it is a sound one ; and the sermon enforces the old story, that example is better than precept, with extraordinary ability and eloquence. Thus have we endeavored, as regards these discourses of Mr. Caird, to do what we used to do every Sunday even- ing when we were children at home : to wit, to " give an account of the sermons." It was rather wearisome work then, we remember ; we trust our readers have not found it so now. Let us add, that fine as are these published sermons, we are not sure that they are Mr. Caird's best. Authors are proverbially bad judges of their own pro- ductions, and preachers are no exceptions to the rule. And we have heard from some of the author's warm ad- mirers fond recollections of sermons on the texts. Every man shall hear his oiva burden, Surely I come quickly. There shall be no more pain, All things are become new. They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them, — which are said to contain passages which for telling effect upon a congregation are not equalled by anything in the printed volume. Perhaps the great preacher thought it as well not to give his followers the opportunity of ex- amining the red-hot shot after it had grown cold. An amusing proof of Mr. Caird's great popularity is aflPorded by the number of young preachers who try to imitate him. And indeed it cannot be denied that sev- eral have succeeded in bi'ushing their hair very like him. Others can walk up the pulpit-stair very much as Mr, 3G4 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. Caird does. Several liave a liappy knack of wiping their face like him at the close of each "head," and more have succesjftdly imitated some tones of his voice, and the manner in which he pronounces certain words which he pronounces ill. The general impression left on the mind by any imitator of Mr. Caird, is that of a very fat goose attempting to fly like an eagle. It may be sup- posed that only the weakest of the aspirants to the cleri- cal office will join the class of direct imitators. But Mr. Caird's success has had a powerful influence upon young raen of a higher stamp, in leading them to cultivate a highly animated and impassioned kind of pulpit oratory. Tiie calm unexciting elegance of a former age is at a dis- count in the North. Dr. Blair would preacli to empty benches now. And it must be admitted that the standard of Scotch preaching is at this time a very high one. The sermon is so completely the great thing in the Scotch service, that extraordinary labor is often spent u[)on it. It would be easy to mention the names of a score of preachers who, if they were to sink as far as the Surrey Music Hall, could, without claptrap or bufix)onery, com- pletely eclipse Mr. Spurgeoa ia the arts of popular ora- tory. Poor as is the worldly remuneration of the Scotch clergy, it is wonderful how the most able and accomplish- ed students in the Universities of Scotland are found to devote tliemselves to that ill-paid ministry. A, who was fir.-t all through tlie classes, goes into the cluirch, tills sev- eral important charges with great ability, and dies at the ag(i of fif't}^ worn down by labor and excitement, an Edinburgh minister with six hundred a year. B, whom he easily beat in every competition, goes to the Scotch bar, does pretty fairly, is made (by the Whigs) a judge, draws his three or four thousand j"^'' onnurii, and by CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 3G5 judiciously husbanding his bodily and mental energies, is able to adorn tliat high station to the age of eighty-six. In six months after A dies, the crowds he thrilled by his eloquence have entirely forgotten him. Yet possibly the work he did is remembered somewhere : and crowds of clever young lads in the academic shades of Edinburgh and Glasgow aim rather to be A than B. A great deal has of late been said and written about preaching. It seems to be agreed on all hands that it will no longer do to have sermons such that people cannot listen to them. Assuming sound instruction as present in all sermons, the highest of all remaining qualities of the sermon is interest. Whatever literary chai'ucteristics tend to make a sermon interesting, are good ; and the very highest, if they make it uninteresting, are bad. Yet how great a proportion of the sermons one hears, — how- ever deserving in other respects, — are utterly devoid of the grand quality, interest. The sermons are able, well- thought, and well-written compositions, but they are very dry. Yet Sydney Smith's saying of literature in general holds especially good of pulpit literature, that every style is good, except the tiresome. We believe that church is the only place where people do not listen to what is said to them. " I like so much," said the laboring man in Southey's Doctor, " to go to church on Sunday : when the sermon begins I lean back in the corner, and lay up my legs, and think of nothing.^' We sympathize with that poor man. It is the clergyman's business to make his sermon such that while it is going on no one shall be able to '" think of nothing." There are two things which from our earliest youth have in our mind stood out together as equally desirable, 36G CONCEENING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. and in the nature of things equally impossible. The one is, to bring matters to such a point that it shall be pos- sible to get out of our snug warm bed on a cold winter morning without a very great effort ; the other is, that the service of the Church should be made such that it shall not be tiresome to be present at it. We believe that in the case of men in general the most insufferably tedious and wearisome hours they have ever spent, have been many of those which they have spent at church. As to the prayers of the Anglican ritual, no doubt they are very beautiful, though with a calm scholarly beauty which makes no impression upon children or uneducated people. There are likewise by far too many of them ; and we are persuaded that if the truth were told, most of our readers have experienced that sense of relief we used to feel in our youth, when our worthy pastor and master of those days reached that prayer of St. Chrysostom •which signified that the long service was nearly over. We are not going to say anything of the devotional part of the Church service ; because we fear that no beauty and no brevity will ever make that portion of it interest- ino- except to the sincerely devout ; and there we must leave the matter. But there is another part of the usual public worship which we really think need not be so hor- ribly tedious as it is in most cases, — we mean the ser- mon. When Edward Irving published a volume of discourses, instead of designating them by the usual name of sermons, he preferred to describe them on his title-page as Orations ; mentioning as his reason the well- ascertained fact, that there is something in the very name of sermon that makes people grow sleepy, and that sug- gests dulness, yawning, and tediousness to the last degree. We quite believe that in the nature of things it is CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH TREACHER. 367 properly impossible to render serious instruction as inter- esting as light amusement. Disguise it as we can, work will never be made so attractive as play. Boys are in- stantly aware when it is intended to benefit them under the pretext of amusing them ; and the revulsion is instant and conii)lete. When Dr. Chalmers said that the thing which above all others has tended to make Rohinson Crusoe such a favorite book with boys is, that no book combines to such a degree instruction with amusement, he made a statement just as absurd and false as if he had said that black was white. But while we admit all this, we believe that the pill may be gilded so far, and that sermons need not be nauseoifs as medicines are, and never to be listened to but by a conscious effort and as an irk- some task. He would be a benefactor of his race who should suc- ceed in laying down a code of rules, by obeying which men of ordinary ability might succeed in prej)aring and preaching sermons, which should be interesting to an ordinary congregation, and at the same time character- ized by good sense and good taste. These two ends have hardly ever been attained together. There are numbers of sensible and correct preachers, whom no one can listen to for ten minutes without becoming aware of that peculiar pricking of the veins, and disposition to fidget uneasily, which are associated with the last degree of weariness. There is really such a thing as acute tedi- ousness. And of the much smaller number of pulpit orators wlio succeed systematically in keeping the atten- tion of their congregations thoroughly alive from the beginning to the end of their discourses, most, if not all, deal to a great degree in what may be termed claptrap. Their sermons are often outrageously revolting to men 368 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. of refined taste, or filled with views which are extrava- gant and absurd. It is a great end to get an entire congregation to listen with interested attention from first to last of a sermon ; but this end may be attained at too considerable an ex- pense. One can easily think of various expedients that would for a time attract a crowd, and get it to gaze stu- pidly for an hour. A person from America preachc^d som.e time since in some dissenting meeting-house in this country, arrayed in skins and feathers as an Indian chief. He was described as a war-chief of the Somethingoroth- erawaws, and vast crowds, with visions of scalping-knives and wampum-belts, came to hear him, till it was under- stood that he was only a porter at a steamboat wharf on the IMississippi, and that his strange attire would have excited much more surprise in his native place than it did at Manchester. A small boy of nine or ten years old was advertised to preach in a large building in Glas- gow ; and to the disgrace of that town some three or four thousand people crowded to hear him on more occasions than one. An individual calling himself the Angel Ga- briel, held large assemblages of the Modern Athenians in breathless attention by preaching with a trumpet in his hand, which he sounded at the end of each paragraph of his sermon. The usual tedium of a church wonld be dissipated were the officiating clergyman to turn a som- ersault at intervals. Any wretched mountebank may keep attention alive by shrieks and yells, rushings about his platform, imitations of the Yankee snuffle or the gibberish of Cockayne, — in short, by degrading the pnlpit beneath the level of the stage of a minor theatre. But the ques- tion is, how may a man, without sinking the clergyman, the scholar, and the gentleman. — without becoming a CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. 3G9 buffoon or a melodramatic actor, — without eccentricity in the choice of texts and topics, in illustration or gesture, — make a sermon as interesting and attractive as in the nature of things religious instruction can be made. There is one obvious rule which is very generally vio- lated : a preacher should take some pains to make his meaning intelligible. Many a clergyman who would not think of giving orders to his man-servant in tei*ms which that person could not by possibility understand, is yet accustomed every Sunday to address a rustic congrega- tion in discourses which would be just as intelligible to it if they were preached in Hebrew. Let a preacher be direct and straightforward : let him avoid roundabout sentences ; they are much more puzzling to the dull brain of a country bumpkin than are mere big words : let him put his meaning sharply and clearly. We be- lieve that this is a great secret of interest. We might suggest the abundant use of illustration which really illustrates the subject ; but every preacher has not the faculty which enables him to use this arm. Compari- sons drawn from daily life are a tower of force. And we strongly recommend to all young clergymen whose pulpit manner is not yet hopelessly formed, the reading of a good deal of light literature. They should read that to see what kind of matter interests the majority of minds. Most preachers have a thoroughly mistaken notion on that point. A man who has brought himself to feel a deep interest in dry tomes of old Theology, or even in the more flimsy popular theological literature of the day, forgets that the human race in general takes no interest in such things ; and fancies that when producing thought which he knows or thinks would interest himself, he is all right. He is far mistaken ! Who reads Theol- 24 370 CONCERNING A GREAT SCOTCH PREACHER. ogy by choice ? Ask the publisher of ordinary sermons. Let the preacher, then, make himself familiar with the kind of thought and style which people read because attracted and interested by it. We do not say that he should take that for his model, or imitate it in any way. But let him see there what sort of pabulum suits the common appetite ; and let Iiim aim at making his ser- mons if possible as easy and pleasant to be listened to as that is to be read. We believe that the main cause why sermons are so dull is that their writers do not se- riously set it as a worthy aim to make them interest- ing. Most preachers — if we except those whose end is simply to cover their paper with the least possible trouble — aim at completeness of treatment, at elegance of style, at scholarly tone and finish, — all ends quite apart from the great end of interest. Jf interest were systematically made the great object of endeavor ; if clergymen remembered that unless they get their con- gregation to listen to them, they might as well not preach at all, — we are convinced, with average talent and aver- age industry on the preacher's part, there would be fewer dry sermons and fewer sleepers in church. CHAPTER XIII. OULITA THE SERF.i i-o^ HIS volume has no preface, and no notes \^^4 save two or three of a line's length each. Its title-page bears nothing beyond the _ words, Oiilita the Serf ; a Tragedy. But the advertisements which foretold its publication, added a fact which made us open the book with a very different feeling fi-om that with which we should have taken up an ordinary anonymous play, — a fact which at once excited higli expectations, — and which, we doubt not, has al- ready introduced Oulita to a wide circle of readers, each prepared to gauge its merits by a very severe test and a very high standard. The forthcoming volume was an- nounced as Oulita the Serf; a Tragedy : by the Author of " Friends in Council." Tlie disguise of the author of ihat work is becoming ragged. We have found, in more than one library, where a special glory of binding was bestowed upon the book and its charming sequel, tliat though the title-page bore no name, the volumes were marked with a name which is well and honorably known. And indeed there are few books which are so calculated as Friends in Council to make the reader wish to know who is their author : 1 Oidila Ihe Serf. A Tragedj', Son. 1858. London: John W. Parker and 372 OULITA THE SERF. and surely the language has none which affords its writer less reason for seeking any disguise. Yet it is not for us to add the author's name to a title-page which the author has chosen to send nameless into the world : though we may be permitted to say, that in common with an increas- ing host of readers, we cannot think of him as other than a kindly and sympathetic friend. Accordingly, we expected a great deal from this new work. We were not entirely taken by surprise, indeed, when we saw it announced ; for Ellesraere, in Friends in Council, makes several quotations from the works of " a certain obscure dramatist," which are likely to set the thoughtful reader inquiring. And whoever shall care- fully collate the advertisements of the late Mr. Picker- ing's publications, will discover that the author of Oulita published fifteen years ago a historical drama, entitled King Henry the Second; and a tragedy entitled Cather- ine Douglas, whose heroine is the stiong-hearted Scottish maiden who thrust her arm into the staple of a door from which the bolt had been removed, in the desperate hope of thus retarding for a moment the entrance of the con- spirators who murdered James the First. But these plays are comparatively unknown ; and probably very many readers who have been delighted by that graceful, unaffected prose, were quite unaware that its writer was endowed with the faculty of verse. We could not fail, indeed, to discern in his prose works the wide, genial sympatliy, the deep thoughtfulness, the delicate sensitive- ness, of the true poet. And liis talent, we could also discover from these, is essentially dramatic. The ciiar- acters in Friends in Council have each their maiked individuality ; while yet that individuality is maintained and brought out, not by coarse caricature, but by those OULITA THE SERF. 373 delicate and natural touches which make us feel that we are conversing with real human heings, and not with mere names in a book. It is an extremely easy thing to make us recognize a character w-hen he reappears upon the stage, by making him perpetually repeat some silly and vulgar phrase. Smith is the man who never enters without* roaring " It's all serene : " Jones is the individual who always says, "Not to put too fine a point upon it." Nor is it difficult for an author to tell us that his hero is a great man, a philanthropist, a thinker, an actor : it is quite another matter to make him speak and act so that we shall find that out for ourselves. Most characters in modern works need to be labelled ; — like the sign-painter's lion, which no one would have guessed was a lion but for the words Tins is a lion, written be- neath it. Let us say at once, that this tragedy has surpassed our expectation. It is a noble and beautiful work. It is strongly marked with the same characteristics which dis- tinguish its author's former writings. Its power and ex- cellence are mainly in thoughtfulness, pathos, humor. There is a certain subtlety of thought, — a capacity gradually to surround the reader with an entire world and a complete life : we feel how heartily the writer has thrown himself into the state of things he describes, half believing the tale he tells, and using gently and ten- derly the characters he draws. We have a most interest- ing story : we see before us beings of actual flesh and blood. We do not know whether the gentle, yet resolute Oulita, — the Princess Marie, that spoiled child of for- tune, now all wild ferocity, and now all soft relenting, — the Count von Straubenheim, tliat creature of passion so deep yet so slow, so calm upon the surface, yet so im- 374 OULITA THE SERF. petuous in its under-eurrents, — ever lived save in the fancy of the poet : but to us they are a reality, — far more a reality than half the men who have lived and died in fact, but who live on the page of history the mere blood- less life of a word and an abstraction. We find in this tragedy the sharp knowledge of life and human nature for which we were prepared : a certain tinge of sadness and resignation which did not surprise us : a kindly yet sorrowful feeling towards the very worst, which we are persuaded comes with the longer and fuller experience of the strange mixture of the lovable and the hateful which is woven into the constitution of the race. Here and there, we find the calm, self possessed order of thought with which we have elsewhere grown familiar, gradually rise into eloquent energy, and vigor of expression wliich startles. But the hero is not one who raves and stamps. And indeed the fastidious taste of the writer, shrinking instinctively from the least trace of coarseness or extrav- agance, has perhaps resulted in a little want of the terrible passion of tragedy : for we can well believe that many an expression, and many a sentiment, which, heard just for once from eloquent lips, would thrill even the most refined, would be struck out by the remorseless pen, or at least toned down, when calmly, critically, and repeat- edly read over by such an author as ours, when the fever of creative inspiration was past. We remark, as a char- acteristic of the plot, and a circumstance vitally affecting the order of its interest, that the catastrophe is involved in the characters of the actors. It is not by the arbitrary appointment of the author, that things run in the course they do. There is something of the old Greek sense of the inevitable. We feel from the beginning that the end is fixed as fate. Like Frankenstein, the poet has bodied OUUTA THE SERF. 375 out beings whom he has not at his command : and not without essentially changing their natures, could he mate- rially modify what they say and do, or materially alter the path along which they advance to the pi'ecipice in the distance. Given such beings, placed in Russian life and under Russian government : and not without a jarring sacrifice of truthfulness could the story advance or end otherwise than as it does. The language of the tragedy is such as might have been expected from its author. There is not a phrase, not a word from first to last, to which the most fastidious taste could take exception. So much might be antici- pated by readers familiar with the author's prose style-: but we felt something of curiosity as to how it might adapt itself to the altered conditions of verse. Even those readers who were not aware that the author of Friends in Council had ever before published poetry, might well judge that surely these lines, so easy, so flowing, so little labored, so varied in their rhythm, so uncramped by metrical requirements, are not the pro- duction of an unpractised hand. Parts of the dialogue are in prose ; the larger portion is in blank verse ; and some graceful lyrics occur here and thei-e. A pecu- liarity of the author's blank verse is, that the lines fre- quently end in three short syllables. Our readers are of course aware that both in rhymed and blank verse, double endings of lines are very common : in dramatic blank verse, indeed, we find line after line exhibiting this formation : ^ but we are not aware that any author has 1 To be, or not to be. that is tlie question: Wtietlier 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, &c. 376 OULITA THE SERF. employed tlie triple ending to the same degree, or indeed has employed it at all except on very rare occasions. In the first page, we find it said that the end of government should be, not to govern overmuch, but To make men do with the least show of governing. Other examples are, In foreign Courts 'tis ever\'thing, t\\\s precedence. From trappings overgreat for poor humnnity. E'en to 3'ourseir must be unknown your btnejits. Alone and undisturbed, upon her loveliness. And there is one instance of an ending in four short syllables : — In evidence against us, marking pre2}aration. "We have been interested by finding here and there, throughout the tragedy, several thoughts upon matters more or less important, with which we had become ac- quainted in the writer's former works. It is plain that the writer thinks the discomfort arising from fashions of dress a not insignificant item in the tale of human suffer- ing : he would agree with Teufelsdrockh himself as to the undeserved neglect in which men have held the " philosophy of clothes." We find the men-servants at a Boyard Prince's chateau busily engaged in trying on their new liveries, which have been prepared for a grand occasion. The Prince enters, and finds but little progress made. He rates his domestics for their slowness ; where- upon the " Small Wise Man," a dwarf attached to his es- tablishment, thus excuses his fellows : — Oh! the happy peasants are so uncomfortable, my little father, in their happy new clothes, that they put otf the squeezing themselves into them to the last moment. It's a nice thing a new shoe, now; and not so very unlike a marriage, my little mother. OULITA THE SERF. 377 The author had thought upon this subject before : — My own private opinion is, that the discomfort caused by injudicious dress, worn entirely in deference to the most foolish of mankind, would outweigh many an evil that sounds verv big. Tested by these perfect returns, which I imagine might be made by the angelic world, if they regard human affairs, perhaps our every-day shaving, severe shirt- collars, and other ridiculous garments, are equivalent to a great Euro- pean war once in seven years; and we should find that women's stays did as much harm, i. e. caused as much suffering, as an occasional pes- tilence, — say, for instance, the cholera.i In graver mood, we find something of the philosophy of worldly progress and quietude, in words which sug- gest (how truly) that the man who would get on in life had better not think to carve out a way for himself, but should rather keep to the track which many other feet have beaten into smoothness and firmness. The hero of the tragedy says, — To preserve one's quietude. It needs that one should travel in the ruts That form the ordinary road, for else The wheels stick fast. The analogy is so apt and true, that it had previously suggested itself : — Get, if you can, into one or other of the main grooves of human af- fairs. It is all the difference of going by railway, and walking over a ploughed field, whether you adopt common courses, or set one up for yourself. You will see very inferior persons highly placed in the army, in the church, in office, at the bar. They have somehow got upon the line, and have moved on well with very little original motive power of their own. 2 We find that the author, very naturally, makes his hero express tastes which he himself feels strongly. One of 1 Companions of my SoUftide. Chap. III. And see the same sub- ject discussed in the essa}' on Conformity, in Chap. II. of Fiienda in Council. 2 Ibid. Chap. IV. 378 OULITA THE SERF. these tastes, which appears repeatfdly in his former writ- ings, is for woodland scenery. " There is scarcely any- thing in nature," he says, " to be compared with a pine- wood." Once, in approaciiing a certain continental city, the author passed through what the guide-books described as a most insipid country. But the guide-books did not know what were his personal likings ; leaving his car- riage at the little post-house, he walked on, promising to be in the way when it should overtake him. The road led through a wood, chiefly of pines, varied, however, occasionally by other trees. Into this wood I strayed. There was that ahiiost indescribably soothing noise (the Romans would have used the word susttrrus), the aggregate of manj' gentle movements of gentle creatures. The birds hopped but a few paces off as I approached them: the brilliant butterflies wavered hither and thither before me: there was a soft breeze that day, and the tops of the tall trees swayed to and fro politely to each other. I found many delightful resting- places. It was not all dense wood; but here and there were glades (such open spots I mean as would be cut through by the sword for an army to pass); and here and there stood a clump of trees of different heights and foliage, as beautifully arranged as if some triumph of the art of landscape had been intended, though it was only Nature's way of healing up the gaps in the forest. For her healing is a new beauty. 1- Thus speaks the author in his own person : and his hero passing alone through a wood, speaks as follows : — I ever loved a wood ; and here I 've mused, Pressing with lightest footfall the crisp leaves, In bovhood's daj's, when life seemed infinite, And every fitful sound a song of joy. Great is the sea, but tedious; rich the sun. But one gets tired of him, too; joyous the wind. But boisterous and intrusive; — while, the wood Divides the sun, and air, and sky; and, like A perfect woman, naught too much revealed. Nor aught too much concealing. 1 Companions of my Holilude. Chap. VI. OULITA THE SERF. 379 We shall be content to quote one other instance of parallelism, in the notice given to a matter which every one who lives in a wooded district must often have re- marked in his woodland wanderings. The hero of the tragedy is asked to tell of what he has been thinking, as he has been traversing the wood which he enjoys ?o much : here is his reply : — Mere melancholy thoughts, fit for a servitor: How this tree here hemmed in its puny neighbor, Drinking the air and light from it; how that, The vagrant branches into shapes grotesque Constrained, insisted yet on being beautiful. And like a homely girl with one charm only. Took care to make that charm discernible. In saying this, the hero of the play is repeating what had before been said by its author. And it appears to us an indication of the lifelike reality with which the author depicted to himself the man whom he drew as he paced along, looking at the gray stems and the long grass below, and the green leaves and blue glimpses of sky above : — Yes, Ellesmere, my love for woods is unabated. There is so much largeness, life, and variety in them. Even the way in which the trees interfere with one another, the growth which is hindered, as well as that which is furthered, appears to me most suggestive of human life; and I see around me things that remind me of governments, churches, sects, and colonies. We should not be doing justice to Oidita, if we failed to remark, as something singular in these days, that it is a purely and perfectly original work. Its author has constructed his own plot, and imagined his own charac- ters. It is very well for writers who have no higher aim than to supply the immediate exigencies of the stage, to quarry in the abundant mine of French invention ; and to copy, borrow, or adapt, as the phrase now runs. But 380 OULITA THE SERF. we should have been greatly surprised had the autlior of Friends in Council resorted to that clieap method of producing a dramatic work. It cannot be denied that several dramatic writers of the day have shown consid- erable tact in toning French characters and modifying French plots, till they should hit the English taste, and not sound absurdly upon English ground. But to do that is a knack, a sort of intellectual sleight of hand : it argues no invention, no dramatic genius : it comes rather of much practical acquaintance with the tricks and effects of the theatre. The author of this play has essayed a higher flight. He has resolved to give the English stage a really original work : and holding firmly, as we know from his former writings, that some kind of amusement is a pure necessary of life, and that there is in human nature an instinctive leaning to the dramatic as a source of amusement, he has sought to show, by example, that without becoming namby-pamby, — without making the well-intentioned degenerate into the twaddling, — and •without making the great school-boys of mankind scent the birch-rod and the imposition under the disguise of cricket-bats and strawberry tarts, — it is possible to make a play such as that in amusing it shall also instruct, re- fine, and elevate. It is not by coarsely tacking on a moral to a tragedy that you will enforce any moral teach- ing. You must so wrap up the improving and instruc- tive element in the interesting and attractive, tiiat the mass of readers or listeners shall never know when they have overstepped the usually well-marked limit that parts work and play. And we think that the author of OuJifa has succeeded in this. A refreshing and elevating in- fluence sinks into the mind, like a siiower upon a newly- mown lawn, as we read his pages. You feel, but cannot OULITA THE SERF. 381 define it. But many worthy people would cram improve- ment, a thick porridge, down their humbler neighbors' throats, — like Mrs. Squeers's treacle and sulphur. As the reader would expect from the title of the hook, the scene of the tragedy is in Russia. Its time is the beginning of the present century. And the author has, in virtue of his hearty sympathy with humanity under all conditions, thrown himself completely into Russian life, and brought his readers into an entire world of scene^, things, and men and women. Yet, though the scene be in Russia, and though we know from his other works how much the author hates slavery, we find proof of the calm balance of his mind in the fashion in which he represents serfdom. His honesty will not permit him to coarsely daub his picture for the sake of popular effect, or to rep- resent the " peculiar institution " as more glaringly bad than he has ground for believing it practically is, in or- der to render it more abhorrent to our feeling. Nor do we find any violent exhibition of despotic sway. We do not believe that the author would sympathize in the least with the childish cry for Imperialism which lately arose in this country. We trust the nation has passed through that crisis, like a child through the cow-pox, and that we are fairly done with it. Still, in the play, the Emperor of Russia is represented in a very favorable light, as kind- hearted, accessible, willing to listen to reason, and even to accusation of himself; and though autocratic, yet en- chained by an overmastering and tyrannic sense of what is right and just, which drags him against his dearest wishes. We have said that there is no putting of serf- dom in its coarser and more repellent features. OulUa, the Serf, is the pride and pet of the old Prince to whom she belongs ; and the chosen companion and friend of 382 OULITA THE SERF. the Princess his daughter. No cruelties are described as actually inflicted upon any serf" in the course of the action of the drama: — we can imagine that the sensi- tive nature of the author would shrink from any such description : yet we feel keenly the hard iron links which are present beneath the soft velvet surface. We never entirely forget the difference that parts the serf, however indulged, from the freeman, however degraded. The gentle confidante is liable to be handed over, at the capri- cious word of her spoiled-child mistress, to the execution- er's lash. And the naturally noble heart of the Princess is well-nigh ruined by the long possession of unlimited power. We are not sure but that to the thoughtful reader, serfdom is made as incurably bad in this volume, as it could have been in the picture of a Legree. The way to make us feel that a thing is hopelessly bad, is to show us that it is bad at its very best. If it be a sad thing to be in bondage to a mild, silly old gentleman who would not hurt a fly, and to a warm-hearted girl who kisses more than she scolds, — what must it be when the whip is in the hand of a coarse, brutal, swearing, drunken reprobate ! The first scene of the tragedy shows us Baron Grub- ner, the Russian Minister of Police, seated at his desk in his bureau at St. Petersburg. He is inveighing against tlie Count Von Stniubenheim, who is on terms of intimate friendship v\ith th(^ Emperor, and who has been instilling into the autocrat's mind certain political doctrines of much too advanced a character for Griib- ner's taste. Griibner is the type of the old Continental politician : the Count belongs to the school of progress ; and Griibner, fearing lest the Count's influence with the Emperor should bring to an end the reign of police ad- OULITA THE SERF. 383 ministration, has organized a system of espionage, in the hope of detecting the Count in some proceeding which may lead to his downfall. We feel, at once, that the ground is mined beneath our feet, and that we are in a region over which broods the unseen but ali-seein"; presence of a secret police. We never escape the feel- ing on to the end of the play. A spy enters, and informs Griibner that the Emperor again i-eceives the obnox- ious Count that evening. The vulgar spy has his infor- mation from a certain baroness, a spy of a higher class. The spy leaves, and Griibner thus goes on : — Far into The distant future this wise man looked forward, And saw a time, he told the Emperor, When half the world would not employ itself , In worrying the other half. Great sage ! He meant that for a sneer at the Police; And when good honest men would not sit down At meat with titled spies — that means the Baroness; Or with the men who pay them — that means me. Another spy entei's, one Erraolai, whom Griibner has got into the Count's employ as his secretary, to maintain a constant watch over his pri\ate doings. Ermolai com- plains that his post is a sinecure. There is nothing to report. The Count spends all his time in reading. He reads theology. That, Griibner thinks, is an important point. If the Couni succeeds in indoctrinating the Em- peror with his theories, down goes Griibner, and with him (of course he is a most di.-interested man) Russia. Tlie Count, Griibner says, is to be married : so the Emperor and he have resolved : then he is to go as ambassador to England, where he will probably make some mistake that will ruin him, or at least where he will be beyond the Emperor's reach. Griibner dismisses Ermolai, ordering 384 OULITA THE SERF. him to maintain a most minute watch, and chuckles at his own skill in getting the Count to take a police tool for his secretary. The second scene carries us to the Count von Strau- benheim's library. He is among his favorite books. He lays down his volume, and muses as follows: — One reads, and reads, and reads: one seldom gets Right into tlie lieart of things — there's so much floss And fluf}' ; and few can tell what the}- do know. Long histories: wear^^ biographies: They only teach us what I partly guessed Before — that men were most times miserable, And simple thoroughly, wasting their souls In plaguing other men, and seldom living What I call life — an ugly dream it is; And yet, with all my faculty for sarcasm, I must confess that men, the worst of men. This scoundrel horde of conquerors, for instance, Have something very lovable about them. The deeper that one goes, the more one's pit}' Falls like a gentle snow upon the plain Flooded with blood, and strewed with cruel carnage Leaving the outlines beautiful, and just Concealing what 'twere better never had Been done — concealing only, not erasing: 'Tis a mixed brood. We speedily find that the recluse student is not so simple after all. He knows all about Elrmolai being a spy upon him. He sends for Ermolai : says he is about to marry the beautiful daughter of Prince Lanskof Er- molai discourages the marriage, and says, — I've heard a saying Of some sagacious world-versed man, — that marriage Must he pronounced a thing so hazardous. The odds so much against one, tliat it were As if a man should dip his h;ind within A bag of snakes, where one eel lies concealed; And mostlj' he draws back his injured hand Without the innocent eel. OULITA THE SERF. 385 The Count is anxious to repudiate any notion save of a prosaic marriage of convenience ; but at tlie same time he beautifully depicts what he says he never had felt : — I have a distant notion of what love Might be. I know the dreams about the thing. That there is one whose every look and word Is fascination, graceful as the clouds, Bright as the morn, and tender as the eve, — Whose lightest gesture, as she moves across The room, seems like a well-known melody, — And whom you need not talk to much, for that's The touchstone, — to whom j-ou've nothing to explain, Because she always thinks too well of you. In answer to the Count's question where he shall find such a paragon, the Secretary mentions the name of the singing-girl at Moscow, Oulita. The Count remembers her well. But he speedily passes to talk of the embassy to England ; and then bids Ermolai prepare a sumptuous retinue for his visit to the chateau of Prince Lanskof, the father of his intended bride. Ermolai goes : and then we learn from a speech of the Count's that he is quite aware that the marriage and embassy are a design of Griibner's to compass his ruin. But he will fight Griibner with his own weapons. He will pluck from his bosom the remembrance of Oulita, wed the Princess, come back with credit from his embassy, and do good to his country. If he shall succeed, well. And if not, life is already as dull as it well can be. We next find ourselves in the hall of Prince Lanskof 's chateau. The servants are trying on their new liveries : the dancing-girls are practising their steps. The " Small Wise Man," a dwarf belonging to the Prince, a jester of more than usual jest, and deeper than ordinary wisdom, 25 38G OULITA THE SERF. makes his first appearance. All is bustle : the Count is to arrive in thiee hours. Oulita appears along with the Princess, the latter promising her that she shall not have to join in the dances. The Prince drills his domestics in a manner that reminds us of Mr. Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer. He is a fussy, silly old gentleman, proud of his daughter, and picturing the grand figure she is to make at the English Court as the Russian am- bassadress. Meanwhile Oulita has strayed into a wood near the chateau ; and there the Count, who has chosen to dismiss his retinue and walk through the wood alone, hears her well-remembered voice as she sings. The Count accosts her with some light badinage, of which Oulita has the best. Then they talk more gravely. Mitchka, the ex- ecutioner at the chateau, watches them from behind a tree. Oulita recognizes in the Count the man who fol- lowed her about at Moscow. He tells her that he came in the Count's train. Then we are carried to the hall at the chateau, where the Small Wise Man is addressing the servants. He speaks from a barrel, on which he is seated : — The illustrious Count Von Straubenheim, who, with our permission, is about to niarrj' into our family, intends to give to every member of the household — something which shall be good for him : great guer- don, liberal largesse. For you Melchior, Nicholas, and Petrovitch (pointing out three fat men), he intends to ask for a week's fast, and three weeks' out-of-door's work in the woods. For you, Theodore, a sound scourging at the hands of gentle Mitehka, that you may know how to manage your horses better, and what are the feelings of an animal when it is whipped. For you, Dimitri, our illustrious son-in- law has thought deeply, and intends to ask the Prince to have your wife brought home from his other estate, because j'ou always lived so happily together. No wonder that the Small Wise Man held his own in OULITA THE SERF. 387 that household. We doubt not the servants feared his tongue nearly as much as Mitchka's scourge. The Prince, Princess, and their attendants enter ; as do the Count, Ermolai, and their people. The Small Wise Man catechizes the Count in a jocular manner as to his qualifications for marrying and becoming ambassador ; "and when the Count and Prince go together to the ban- quet, he muses in a very different strain. He is pleased with the Count's appearance : — A noble presence and a thoughtful eye, But sad. And Oulita entering, he speaks to her vpisely and kindly, in a fashion which reveals strongly to us the grand want which every thoughtful serf must never cease to feel. " Study to get free, girl," he says ; " free, free, free, free ! " We now overhear a conversation between the execu- tioner Mitchka, and Vasili Androvitch, Prince LanskoPs steward ; from which we find that the steward has prom- ised to pay Mitchka three thousand roubles if he can catch Oulita in any fault which may bring her under his lash. The steward's hope is, that in such a case he may compel Oulita to become his wife, as the reward of hie procuring her pardon. Vasili is quite aware that Oulita hates him ; but that does not matter, in his estimation. In the crowd of dancers in the hall, the Count again meets Oulita : a confidence has grown up fast between them, and she tells her longing to be free. The Count declares that she shall be, and gives Oulita his ring as a pledge. He has mingled unnoted with the throng in the hall, and Oulita is still unaware who he is. But she telle us she feels entranced and bewildered. Meanwhile the Count seeks Ermolai, and has an ex- 388 OULITA THE SERF. planation with him. Erraolai is startled to find that the Count has been quite aware that he was a spy of Griib- ner's, and is penetrated with remorse at the thought that, while aware of all this, the Count saved him from drown- ing in the Neva. He always loved the Count ; and from this time forward he is his faithful ally and friend. The Count tells him he loves Oulita, and is determined to make her free. He has thought of several plans. An adroit serf, Stepan, disguised as a merchant, will come to buy her. That scheme failing, the Count's servants are to create some great alarm, and bear her off in the tu- mult. Meanwhile there is to be a great hunt of several days' duration. Ermola'i is to remain behind : to send for Stepan, for money, for horses of the Ukraine breed : to watch Mitchka, to grow familiar with every corner of the huge chateau. And then the Count, left alone, soliloquizes. He is determined to go through with his design, but he is not in the least blinded to the wrong he is doing : — I am a knave, a double-dealing scoundrel, To woo one girl the while I love another, For I do love her — What should I say of any other man ? But then our own misdeeds are quite peculiar, White at the edges, shading into darkness, Not wholly black like other men's enormities. Theirs are the thunder-clouds ; ours but the streaks Across the setting sun — No, no ! I'm not A fool like that. I know full well 'tis base. Supremely base; natheless it shall be done. If there were time, some other course we might Devise; but that's what scoundrels always say — If there were time, they would replace, repay, In Virtue's silver}' path they would walk leisurely. I am not duped by that. Seeing it all. Foreseeing all the misery, the mischief, I'll do't, I saj', and take the guilt upon me. She shall be free. OULITA THE SERF. 389 Thus ends the First Act. It has indeed wrought an extraordinary change on the Count's feelings and posi- tion. The cool, pensive, unenergetic student of theologi- cal books, whose great aim was the progress of Russia, has had the latent fire of his nature touched at last. In the Second Act we have the working of the Count's scheme. The hunt is over : the Prince and Count have returned to the chateau. The Small Wise Man has pre- ceded them : cautioned the Princess that a merchant has arrived to buy Oulita and her fine voice for the Impe- rial Opera : advised that Oulita should not sing her best in his presence. Stepan, a shrewd fellow, appears : tells the Prince he has heard of Oulita, and with many dispar- aging remarks, desires to hear her sing. The Count, consulted by the Prince, speaks slightingly of Oulita, and artfully suggests that the Prince's hunting-ground was somewhat hemmed in by an adjoining property, which might be bought. Oulita sings : but she has overheard the Count's remarks : she now knows who he is, and she wilfully sings to the very best of her power. She sings two songs : we extract the foi'mer as a specimen of the author's lyric art. It gives us the story of The End of the Rebel Stenho-Razin's Love : a story which is exactly true. The barge was moored on Volga's sliore, the stream Went murmuring sorrowfully past, The water-lilies played amidst the gleam Their golden armor, moon-lit, cast. Mute sat the Persian captive by her mate, And gazed at her lover askance; A little of love and something of hate Were couched in that dubious glance. " Base that I am," he cried, " dear stream, to thee. Who, rebel too, with willing waves 390 OULITA THE SERF. Hast borne my armies up to victory, And floated down the gold and slaves." He mused; he turned; and smiling on her charms, He met that look of love and hate; Lightly he took her in his mailed arms, And casting, left her to her fate. One lily more went shimmering 'midst the gleam Their golden armor, moon-lit, cast; That lily slowly sank beneath the stream; Volga went sadly murmurmg past. " Murmur no more," the chief replied, " no more; What I loved best to thee I gave." His fierce men shuddered, but from fear forbore The Persian ladj''s life to save. The songs are received with great applause, and when silence follows Stepan criticizes in true musical cant : — There is a something, and there is not a something. There is a feeling and there is not a feeling. But there are makings, makings, makings. The G is better than the Freduccini's G. And after more in the like tone, he offers the Prince thirty thousand roubles. But the old gentleman is ,so vain of Oulita's triumph, that he absolutely refuses to part with her on any terms : and thus fails the Count's first idea. But instant action becomes necessary. Tiie Princess upbraids Oulita severely for singing so well, contrary to her arrangement ; and goes on to speak of her meet- ing the Count in the wood. Oulita replies sharply : the Princess sentences her to Mitchka's lash in the morning. The Count upon this determines to rescue her that night. He is well aware of the risk he runs in the hands of the old Prince's vassals : but will brave it all. Oulita comes to him, and begs his intercession for her. He replies OULITA THE SERF. 391 coldly : but conveys in whispered interjected sentences his plan for her rescue. A striking scene follows, in which Vasili, who thinks he has Oulita in his power, tries en- treaties and threats with equal unsuccess to gain her con- sent to be his wife. The Count and Ermolai deliberate. They have arranged to fire the chateau in the night, and carry Oulita away. Ermolai, with his tastes formed un- der Griibner, is delighted with the tact exhibited in the Count's plan : and when he leaves to Arrange with the men, the Count thus speaks : — We shall succeed — I will not let a doubt Intrude upon my mind, — we shall succeed. This one injustice ma}' be remedied. But then the things that have been — why they come Upon me now I wot not : hideous deeds Long numbered with the past. The Earth may smile, And deck herself each May, vain thing ! with flowers, And seem forgetful of the cruelties Enacted on her ever-changing stage, Till every spot upon the stoned surface Is rank with tragic memories : beauteous slaves, Like dear Oulita, forced to endure, half-crazed, Caresses which the}' loathe — and children slain Before their mother's eyes — and women murdered (Happj' if murdered soon) in the dear presence Of those who till that moment ever looked at them With reverent tenderness, and now dare not look; Whose corded limbs, straining in agon}'. Have lost — the wretch's last resort — the power To give them death. The earth may smile, I say. But like a new-made widow's mirth, it shocks one. And she, the earth, should never quit her weeds; And should there come a happier race upon her, Ever there'll be a sighing of the wind, A moaning of the sea, to hint to that More favored race what we poor men have suffered. There must have been a history, they'll say, To be interpreted by all these sighs And moans. 392 OULITA THE SERF. It is indeed a strange inconsistency, between the beauty and gayety of external nature, and the wickedness and misery of man. And it has existed ever since the Fall. The Vale of Siddim was " as the garden of the Lord," — fair as another Eden: the black blot there was man. And the natural beauty and the human wickedness had to be dashed from Creation together. " At tliat one spot, it is far towards four thousand years, since Nature bloomed and Man sinned, — for the last time." ^ We remember, too, what thought it was that came sadly to the mind of Bishop Heber, as he breathed the spicy air of Ceylon. Many a sad heart must have felt the sun- shine and the green leaves a dreary mockery of the gloom within. And how hard it is to feel, that beyond that cheerful veil, there is hidden a Being of infinite power and infinite justice, who looks down quietly on the scene, and lets the world go on ! Well, things will be set right some day. His plans being thus arranged, the Count proceeds to the Hall, where there is a grand banquet. The Gov- ernor of the province proposes the health of the Count and his affianced bride, in a speech which is a happy imitation, by no means caricatured, of the speeches com- mon in England after public dinners. In the middle of the banquet, somewhat prematurely, the flames break out. Great confusion follows, amid which Stepan bears off Oulita. But he is intercepted and brought back by Mitchka, who, as well as Vasili, had suspected the Count's design. The Count kills Mitchka : then he and Stepan bind Vasili, whom the latter must now take with him, as a refractory serf. Then the Count hurries Ou- lita off, with the words which close the Second Act. 1 Foster. OULITA THE SERF. 393 I said you should be free, and free you are. Your horses wait; the road is clear to Moscow. He goes with you {jtohttiiifj to Stepan), and will insure your safety, Nearer: a word! I loathe this hateful marriage. 'Tis forced upon me by the Czar. Escape I may, and then — No ! this is not the time — When you are wholly free, you can reject me. In the Third Act we are at Moscow. Griibner has guessed correctly as to the share the Count had in the fire at the Prince's chateau, about which the Prince has been constantly complaining to the police. Neither the Prince nor Princess has had the slightest suspicion. Ou- Hta has been safely conveyed to Moscow, and is under the Count's care. The Count is maintaining appearances with the Princess ; but is afraid of Siberia, to which the arson and homicide at the chateau would certainly send him, if brought home to him ; and is perplexed how to deal honorably with the Princess, whose nature, with its fierce mixture of good and evil, is not one to be trifled with. Griibner has stated his suspicions to the Princess, who resolves to have an explanation with the Count. Accordingly, we have a striking scene, in which the Princess tells the Count that the police are on Oulita's track, and threatens fearful vengeance upon her when taken. The Count manfully avows what he has done, and leaves the Princess in a whirl of rage. But she ad- mires and loves the Count still ; and it is on Oulita that she determines her vengeance shall be wreaked. However, she relents. A little later, while the Count is with Oulita, the police enter the house and seize her, to carry her back to Prince Lanskof But their plans are disconcerted by Stepan producing a bill of sale, signed in due form by the Prince, which shows that Ou- 394 OULITA THE SERF. lita has been fairly sold to Stepan. The Princess, at a masked ball in the Kremlin, had placed this in the Count's hand. The police have to give up their prey. And when Grijbner enters after a while with a file of soldiers, he finds that he is duped, and that Oulita is be- yond his reach. At the beginning of the Fourth Act, we find that the Count feels the meshes of the police closing round him. He is in his house at St. Petersburg, when Stepan enters to tell him that spies are now watching his house on every side. The Count feels that the odds against him are too great, and he must be beaten at last. The Czar, too, is becoming cold. We next find Oulita in a room at St. Petersburg, work- ing at embroidery. She is perfectly happy ; but change is near. The Small Wise Man has found out her retreat, and comes to tell her of the Princess's wrath, and the storming and vaporing of her fathei'. And now it breaks on poor Oulita's mind what peril the Count is incurring for her sake. She resolves to leave him, lest she should bring him to ruin ; and as a last resort, asks the Small Wise Man to give her poison which she might have within her reach. Then a most beautiful scene follows between Oulita and the Count. Her eyes, now awak- ened, see the traces of ceaseless anxiety and alarm on his altered face ; and he, wearied out, falls into deep sleep as he is telling her of his travels in other lands. Half- awaking, he thinks he is speaking to the Czar, and tells him that " if he but knew her, he would pardon all." He sinks to sleep again ; and Oulita, resolute, though broken-hearted, leaves her farewell written, and hastens away. OULITA THE SERF. 395 She has taken a desperate resolution. We next find the Princess in her chamber, brooding upon her wrongs, and wrought up to a tigress-fury. Even as she is declar- ing what fearful vengeance she would take of Oulita, Oulita enters and kneels at her feet. The scene which follows is one of the most striking in the play ; and the more so that our extracts have been only of detached speeches, we shall quote this dialogue entire. Oulita. Madam, an outcast girl implores the pardon She dares not hope for. Princess. Ha ! He has left you then: And you return, in those becoming robes, To penitence and virtue — rather late, Methinks. Speak, girl, unless you wish me to call Mitchka. Mitchka is dead, j'ou think ; there lives another. Say, has the Count forsaken you ? What Count? Oulita {lisiny). The Count! Princess. Why this surpasses patience ! What Count, minx, — That Count who was to be my husband, wretch; That Count who, to his eminent dishonor. Stole you away — set fire to his friend's palace — Slew that friend's servants — decked you out, great lady, In this fine garb — who broke his plighted word For you, — the Count von Straubenheim. Oulita. You know, then? Princess. There is no thread of his and your intrigues Unknown to me. He told me of your love. 396 OULITA THE SERF. OULITA. Permit me DOW to speak. Of a return, You spoke, to virtue. Ttiere is no return. A woman mij^lit liave thought more charitably, Of any sister-woman, though a serf: Madam, there's no return, I say, to virtue, And none to penitence, though much to sorrow. I I loved the Count, 'tis true, yet not to love I fled, but to escape a shame one maiden Should hardly have inflicted on another. I saw the Count again. I listened — who Would not? — to his fond words and vows repeated To make this slave in other climes his wife. But soon the bloodliounds were upon the track. I heard, or seemed to hear, the avenger's baying, Marked the ignoble lines of care — his care For me — indenting that majestic brow: 'Twas then that I divined his danger, sought To save his life, nyself surrendering To all j'our sternest cruelty might do. I am too late, and am prepared to bear The now most thriftless, useless penalty. But hear: men are most wayward in their fancies; He should have worshipped at your shrine, great Princess. Perhaps it was your very excellence Made him decline to such a thing as me. He ever spoke of you with tenderest homage. Princess. He did? OULITA. He did; and one there was who sat beside him, Who joyed to hear your praises, for the Count Said ever you were most magnanimous, — Great as a foe, and splendid as a friend. Princess. And nothing else, the while he played with those Fair tresses, said the Count, — nothing about My furious temper, and the difference 'twixt Mine and the soft Oulita's, — nothing, girl? Sealing his pretty sayings with a kiss — The false, the perjured man. OULITA THE SERF. 397 OULITA. Not false, nor perjuted. Princess. Ah, now we stir the meek one. OULITA. What he said In rare disparagement of your great charms, Was such indeed as might make any woman Desire the more to win the man who said it. — By that dread suflering image that looks down On us this moment, I would die to win His love for you; would worm myself into His heart, to tind an entrance there for you, And thus insure his safety and your joy: That safet}' being — for I'll not deceive you, — The chiefest aim in life for me. Dear Princess — [Ptits her arm round the PRINCESS. You used to let me call you dear, — be true To your great mind. Let's set our women's wits To work, to make the man love you. There only His safety lies — and there his happiness. 'Tis you alone are worthy of the Count. With 3''ou to aid his plans, to fix his purposes, Partake success with him, console in failure. Cheering with j-our bright wit his melancholy, He will become the greatest man in Russia. Princess. How blind is pride! The Count was right, Oulita, Were I a man I should have loved you best. Save him we will, but not for me, Oulita. I am not worthy of him, nor of you. Nay, let me kneel to you. Could you but know What savage thoughts I've had, you ne'er could love me. Let me but kiss — that shudder was not wickedness, — I do not grudge his fondness for that cheek. I meant that I must love what he had loved, And I do love it [fo'sses her]. We'll rest together, dear. And early mom shall tind us planning rescue. His peril is most urgent. I did not Betray him ; nay, I saved him once. Your Marie 398 OULTTA THE SERF. Was not in all things bad, — not always wicked. Ah, could you but have known, that fatal day My heedless passion threatened you with stripes — [Puts her hand before her eyes. I am ashamed to look at you, and say The base word stripes, — could j'ou have known how tenderly I felt to you, never so much before, And how I roamed and roamed about in agony, Contriving some excuse to make you ask Your pardon, and none came, you must, yoa would Have pitied me. Down at your feet I could have humbly knelt, Imploring you to kneel at mine, Oulita; Indeed I could. But then my odious pride Stiffened my soul again. Oulita. But more, you say, Than ever, then, you loved your own Oulita. Princess. What is the worth of my love that could do So little battle with my pride? Oulita. We poor ones, Who from our infancy are curbed and bent, And bounded in, know little of the pangs The great endure in mastering their pride Long-seated, deep-engrained. Princess. Generous Oulita, Always some foolish, fond excus^e for me, I almost feel I love the Count the more For being wise and great enough to love thee, Discerning thy rare qualities beneath The sorry mask of serfdom — The world would scarce believe its mocking eyes If it could see two women loving madly One man, and yet the fonder of each other. Is it not so, Oulita V Oulita. Dearest, it is. OULITA THE SERF. 399 Princess. Not dearest, I must tell the Count if you Say that fond word to any other soul. [OuLiTA hides her head on the Princess's breast. TJiey embrace — they kneel before the image in the corner of the room. The curtain falls. Thus the noble womanhood of the Princess's nature asserts itself: and thus the Fourth Act ends. At the beginning of the Fifth Act, the Count, awaking from a fearful dream, finds Oulita's letter, telling him she has fled to save him from ruin, and begging that he would never let it be known that he had aided her in her escape. Even as he reads it, Griibner and his men are upon him. The Count retains his firmness, but tells Griibner that he is beaten. He is carried away, to be placed before the Czar. And now, in Prince Lanskof's house, Oulita meets the Small Wise Man, and claims his promise to pro- vide her poison. He gives her what, rubbed upon the lips, will in three minutes cause death ; but he speaks as follows : — Promise me this. Before You use this fatal gift of mine, bring back — Bring clearly back — to a calm mind, the days When first your mother's smile was dear, when first She trusted to your care j'our little brother, And anxiously the little nurse upheld The child, as you both strayed beside the stream — • I've often wandered there — which marked your garden, To you a world of waters; then your father. The ponderous man, laid his large hand upon Your head, saying you were his wise Oulita — Then think, was this the end for which they toiled, And if, on thinking thus, you can resolve In one rash moment to obliterate What they so prized — why then God's blessing on you. I can say nothing more. 400 OULITA THE SERF. We are next carried to the palace, where we find the Emperor and Griibner in conversation. We find that the Count is ah-eady on his way into Siberian exile ; but the Emperor, who loves him, bitterly laments that there is no loophole for pardoning him. Griibner goes, and then a serf almost forces her way into the imperial presence. It is Oulita, now resolute in despair. A noble scene follows, which we regret we cannot find space to extract. She boldly tells the Emperor that greater men than the Count have loved where they should not ; she justifies the Count against the charge of arson and murder ; says Mitchka fell in fair fight ; and appealing to the Emperor closely, declares that if the Countess whom he loved were sentenced to be scourged, and he burnt down a city to save her, she would not think less of the Czar. The Czar thinks she wishes to follow the Count ; but is astonished when he learns that what she wishes is that he should wed the Princess. The Emperor grasps at the idea : says all might then be hushed ; but adds that neither Princess nor Count would consent. But the poor Princess, the gentle woman at last, has come with Oulita in a page's dress ; and when the Emperor asks her if she will marry the Count, reminding her at the same time of her own slighted affection and her father's wrongs, she replies humbly that she will, and not seek his love, nor ask him to live with her. The Emperor instantly signs a pardon, and tells them to hasten with it along the road to Siberia. Still he fears that the Count, however much he loves liberty, will hardly make a marriage serve as a means of safety. But he bids them God speed, and says at least they may try. Then we are at a village on the road to Siberia. OULITA THE SERF. 401 We hear in the distance the " Song of the Exiles ; " and a train of exiles enters, among whom is the Count. Ermolai is there, kindly attending his fallen master ; and the Count eagerly asks him of Oulita. There enter Oulita, the Princess veiled, and the Small Wise Man. They look anxiously among the prisoners, and at length recognize the Count. The Count sees Oulita, and bursts into a joyful speech, assuring her that the evil dreaded so much dwindles when it haps at last. She tells the Coinit of the conditional pardon she bears, and entreats him to marry the Princess. He declares that he is in- capable of such baseness. Oulita then brings the Small Wise Man, hoping that his reasonings may move the Count : but the Count states the case to him ; and he declares the Count is right. The Count then speaks to Oulita; says he will yet return and claim her: — If not, I have a loving memory always by me, Something to think of when I sit beside My hut, amidst the unheeded falling snow, Of evenings, when my sorry work is done. Better so sit, so thinking, than in palaces — A thought of inextinguishable baseness Fast clinging round the soul. Then he asks Oulita if she had often thought of him : — Once only, Edgar; — But that thought lasted long. And still entreating him to wed the Princess, and so save himself for usefulness and honor, she applies the poison to her lips, and dies as vshe joins their hands. Poor Oulita judged that by thus unselfishly sacrificing herself, she would make the Count feel himself free. It was a useless sacrifice. He tells the Princess he loves her now, for her true love for the dead ; but he 26 402 OULITA THE SERF. has no heart to offer. No word says the Princess, her haughty spirit quite cowed and broken ; Erraolai receives his master's last request to bury Oulita where she died, and to mark her grave; and as the sad song of the exiles is resumed, the Count, seemingly stunned beyond present sense of his utter desolation, kisses Oulita's face, and resumes his march towards Siberia. Ah, the agony and wildness of grief will be upon him to-morrow ! And by the fair serf's corpse, in whose sad lot and noblest heart we have grown to feel an interest so profound, there sits, with covered face, the Small Wise Man ; — a jester to smile at no more, but a figure of overwhelming pathos. L'honneur oblige ! How hard some men would find it to understand the invisible restraints that drove the Count into exile, while fortune, fame, and power were beckoning him back if he would but come ! And how hard, too, to understand Oulita's noble self-devotion ; and the self-de- votion of the Princess, scarcely less complete ! And now, as we draw our notice of the tragedy to a close, we turn over the pages once more : and, as at every opening of the volume, our eye falls upon some beautiful felicity of expression, some lifelike incident that almost startles by the every-day reality it gives the story, some thought so deep, gentle, and kind, wherein the author's own mind speaks to his reader, — we feel how far such an abstract as our space enables us to give, falls short of the effect which would be produced by the perusal of the play itself on the heart of every gener- ous man and gentle woman. We do not think that our nerves are shattered into a morbid facility of emotion, and the hand that writes these lines is not a woman's ; OULITA THE SERF. 403 yet we should hardly like to tell how often the tear has started as we read this book, — how many hours it kept sleep away, — or even how often and how long we have paused and mused with the finger in the half-closed vol- ume. We do not pretend to much acquaintance with stage-craft ; and it is possible enough that the very thoughtfulness which makes Oulita so fascinating to the solitary scholar, might detract from its power of "popular effect were it represented on the stage. For ourselves, we do not think it would. There is incident rapid and stirring enough to keep attention ever on the stretch : and the reflections are such that while arresting the thoughtful reader who can follow the track along which they point, they will touch the mind and heart of average humanity. Of course, if Hamlet were pub- lished at the present day, many critics would call it dull and heavy, and many theatrical managers would not risk its presentation on their boards. And the variety of rhythm and cadence, the occasional abruptness and de- viation from common metrical rules, which render the versification of a vigorous drama such as some judges would call unmusical, seem to our mind a beauty and an excellence in verse which is meant to be spoken and heard, rather than to be read ; which represents real and passing life ; which is put in the mouth of many di- verse characters ; and which is to be listened to without intermission for two or three successive hours. Smooth- ness, in Pope's use of the word, would pall and disgust by so long continuance. And only great variety of met- rical character — even the occurrence of occasional dis- cords — can furnish the similitude of life. When one goes to the Opera, one must be content to leave common sense at the door, and to take for granted that all that 404 OULITA THE SERF. passes shall go on the basis of an extreme convention- ality. But in the case of a tragedy, if the writing and the presentation be worthy, the spectator should forget that he is not looking at reality. The author of Oulita has kept this in view. Yet while remembering that un- varied melody of rhythm would result in satiety and tediousnesp, no one knows better how to add the charm of music to thoughts with which it accords. Very beau- tifully, in the lines which follow, have we Mr. Thacke- ray's evei'-recurring philosophy of the affections, even in the trimness of modern life : — So dear that in the memory she remains, Like an old love, who would, indeed, have been Our only love, but died ; and all the past Is full of her untried perfections, while Amidst the unknown recesses of our hearts Enthroned she sits, in tenderest mist of thought, Like the soft brilliancy of autumn haae, Seen at the setting of the sun. CHAPTER XIV. SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. BEING AN EPISTLE TO THE EDITOR OF "ERASERS MAGAZINE," FROM HIS FRIEND, CHARLES ARDER- SIER-MACDONALD, ESQ., OF CRAIG-HOULAKIM, NEAR WHISTLE-BINKIE, N. B. 'HEN I was a Country Parson, my dear friend the Editor of a certain eminent maga- zine came one autumn to pay me a visit. Among my most valued neighbors was a certain country squire, whom (for various reasons) I shall call Mr. Macdonald of Craig-Houlakim. When the Editor and Mr. Macdonald met, it appeared that they were old college friends, though they had died out of acquaintance for some years. The meeting was a very pleasant one : and the Editor was much amused by Mr. Macdonald's description of some of our Scotch institutions. Mr. Macdonald promised to give the Editor an account in writing of some of these : and thus origi- nated the following letter. I may say, that in the main, I concur in the views it sets out : though they seem to me expressed with a little too much vehemence. And let me add, that Mr. Macdonald did not reside in my parish : so you will not find in his letter any reference to me. 406 SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. My Dear Editor, — When you paid us a visit last autumn, and renewed so pleasantly an old college ac- quaintance which " change of place and change of folk " had interrupted for eight or ten years, you were wont, in your usual saturnine vein, to laugh at the completeness with which I had fallen into Scotch ways of thinking and acting. I have indeed become so familiar with the usages of my adopted country, that I see nothing very wonderful now in things which utterly astonished you, and which indeed had a similar effect upon myself when I was a freshly-imported Saxon. Quantum mutatus ah illo, I know you thought, who ten years since walked in your company the quadrangles of Oxford, bent upon those classical studies which (owing entirely to the bad ar- rangements of the University) failed to get me so dis- tinguished a degree as my sisters and my grandmother thought I deserved, — not a little given to Puseyite no- tions in church matters, and in a state of total ignorance as to Scotch affairs. But time (as philosophers have on several occasions observed) works wonders. It is not yet ten years since the death of a distant and eccentric rela- tive, whom I had never seen, made me the possessor of this property, in a district of Scotland which, I think, yields to none in beauty and interest. It is less than that time since I resolved to patch up this quaint old baronial dwelling, and make it my head-quarters for the greater part of the year. And I dare say you were sur- prised to find me so completely transformed into the Scotch country squire, — walking you after breakfast daily to the stables, and boring you with long stories about the hocks and pasterns of my horses ; not a little vain of my turnips ; quite proud of my shaggy little bul- locks (finer animals than deer, I always maintain) ; and SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. 407 full of statistics about the yearly growth of my young plantations, and the girth of the noble old oaks and horse-chestnuts on the lawn. But I am sure you were much more surprised to find that I had settled down into a douce elder of the Kirk, — quite au fait in Scotch ecclesiastical polity, much interested in matters parochial, and loud in praise of Professor Robertson and the En- dowment Scheme ; and though still a warmly-attached member of the Church of England, yet a good Presby- terian when in Scotland, and quite persuaded that in all essential points the Church of England and the Kirk of Scotland are thoroughly at one. I have been fortunate in my parish clergyman, whom you met more than once while here, and whom you found, I dare say, quite dif- ferent from the violent, Covenating, true-blue Knoxite you probably expected. You found him, I am sure, quite of our way of thinking in regard to most things sacred and civil : quite anxious to have his church as ecclesiastical in appearance as even Mr. Beckett Denison would wish ; quite friendly to the introduction of an or- gan ; not hostile to the restoration of the Liturgy ; and, indeed, not so much shocked as he ought to have been when you and I speculated as to the probable time that must elapse before the peaceable reception of episco- pal government. Let me add to these points of aesthetic nature that, like most of his brethren, he goes through all his parochial duties with great assiduity, and conducts the church-service of each Sunday with a propriety which would be excellent even on your side of the Tweed. When you went with me to the parish church, you were somewhat shocked at seeing the country-people coming in with their hats on, and rushing out as though the place were on fire, the instant the last " Amen " was 408 SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. spoken ; and I did not expect that you would like the bare and bald ritual of the Kirk as much as your own beautiful service. Still, in the carefully-prepared prayers you heard, there was nothing of that rambling rigmarole of extemporaneous extravagance which makes one long for a Liturgy to keep people to common sense. And as for the sermon you heard from Mr. Smith, I think that, save for its not being read, and for a shade more warmth of manner in the delivery of it, it was very much such as your excellent rector gives you every Sunday morn- ing. And though I am not much delighted with some of Lord Palmerston's recent ecclesiastical appointments, and cannot understand why such men as Mr. Melvill and Mr. Chenevix Trench are not raised to the episcopal bench in the abundance of recent vacancies, still I have grown so much of a Presbyterian in feeling, that I am pleased to find a Scotchman, brought up in the Scotch Kirk, made your metropolitan bishop. Dr. Tait has, I believe, two brothers who are elders of the Kirk ; one of them. Sheriff Tait, being a prominent speaker in the General As- sembly. The change has come upon me by degrees ; and real- ly, till you were here in September, I was hardly aware how far, by familiarity with Scotch modes of thinking and acting, I had grown into a development which must seem strange in an old friend's eyes. As you know, I go little to England : my wife and weans (the latter of whom often loudly express their hope that you will soon come back again) are a tie to home ; and one great pleasure of a country life is, that every day of the year, winter as well as summer, brings with it something to intei'est one. Horses, cows, pigs, dogs, pheasants, wheat, potatoes, newly-planted trees and evergreens, are a constant SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. 409 source of occupation : there is always a host of little changes and improvements going on about a country- place, which there is a pleasure in overseeing. Yet one need not grow a mere clod, like some of my thick-headed neighbors whom you met, who had never heard of Mr. Tliackeray or of Fraser's Magazine, and who thought that Mr. Ruskin was a slang name for the Emperor of Russia. IMy daily hours of work in my library make me enjoy all the more a scamper on horseback, a stroll to the home-farm, or a walk through the young plantations. And notwithstanding your pity for me, cut off, as you thought, from the world of intellect, I assure you, my dear Editor, when you told me of all your toils and cares, pleasant and elevating as they may be, I thought it would be well for you, mentally and physically, to spend six months at Craig-Houlakim, where your pulse would get to beat more leisurely, where the fiame of life would burn away less fast, and, like wise old Walton, you might " study to be quiet." And I put it to you, as an intelligent being, if my own personal appearance did not, by its healthy animalism, say a great deal for this calm mode of life. I don't think I am any stupider than I used to be when we were companions long ago ; but am I not twice as strong, twice as active — ay, and twice as rosy, though I never drink whiskey-toddy ? There is no doubt of it, my dear fellow, that Scotland and England are very different countries, after all. I do not know what may be the particular train of reflection which is started in the mind of people in general by wit- nessing the departure of the Scotch mail-train from Euston-square at nine p. m. ; but for myself, the thought which always impresses me is, what opposite states of things that train forms a link between. The carriage 410 SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. which bears the little board on its side, with London AND Edinburgh, will in the next few hours run not merely out of one country into another, with another climate and scenery ; but also into another race of men, another religion, another church, another law, another way of thinking upon all conceivable subjects. Scot- land and England, in short, are quite different countries. Many things which are quite familiar in each, are un- known in the other. And though between the educated classes of the two countries there is now much similar- ity, still it will be long before electric wires and express trains shall assimilate Pall-Mail and Prince's-street, St. Giles's and the Goosedubs. It has always been an interesting thing to me to wit- ness the departure of the great trains for the North. My feeling is, that the dignity and poetry of a railway train are in direct proportion to the distance it has to run. Who cares about the departure of a Greenwich train, that will reach its journey's end in ten minutes ? It is quite different with one that, after quitting the brightly-lighted and bustling station, is to go on and on, hour after hour through the long dark night, score after score of miles through the wide blank country, and be- tween the lights of fifty sleeping towns. By the side of the broad smooth platform is the long row of low dark carriages, so snug-looking internally with their warm lamp-light, their thick blue cushions, their heaps of wraps of all kinds. There is a crowd of passengers hur- rying to and fro ; a rapid whirl of barrows of luggage ; a display of men and women in every variety of dress which has the association of warmth. At length we are all stowed in our places ; rugs are folded over knees, travelling caps are endued, reviews and newspapers are SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. 411 cut up ; and the train is off, gliding with a fluent motion through the dark. For an hour or two passengers read, and even talk a little ; then gradually drop off into a sleep, which is disturbed at intervals through the night by the glare and thunder of some passing engine, fear- fully snorting and panting, or by the chilly rush of raw air as the guard opens the door to ask a sight of the tick- ets at some large station on the road. Thus we sweep through the rich heart of England : along the valley of the Trent — through Staffordshire — through crowded Lancashire ; and at length waken to full consciousness among the Cumberland hills, where the passing train sends the sheep scampering, and startles the hare from her resting-place. Then comes the comfortable though hurried breakfast in that most baronial refreshment-room at Carlisle ; a few miles further on we cross the little river Sark, enter Dumfries-shire, and are in Scotland. Wild hills yet, which give the new-comer a dreary im- pression, and a very unfair one, of the country he has entered ; ninety or a hundred miles are rapidly skimmed over ; and at the end of twelve or thirteen hours from Euston-square, we hear a howling of Embra' or Gleska, as the case may be, and we emerge from the carriage to which we had grown quite attached, and find ourselves in a new world. No educated Englishman needs to be told nowadays that Scotchmen do not wear tartan, — that the figures one sees at the doors of tobacco-shops in Lon- don have no prototypes in the North, — that a kilt is seen just as frequently in Regent-street as on the Calton-hill, and that those persons who describe themselves when in England as The Mac Toddy or The Mac Loskt, know rather better than to make fools of themselves by assuming such designations when at home. Still we 412 SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. have things among us here which you know nothing about ; and I am going to give you some idea of one or two of our " peculiar institutions." I have before my eyes the recent fate of Mr. Macaulay, when he recorded certain unpalatable truths in regard to Scotland, his " re- spected mither." But what I say shall be said in all good-nature ; and I do not believe that the sensible por- tion of my adopted compatriots forms such a genus irrita- bile as you might fancy from reading about the doings of the Society for maintaining Scottish Rights. Do you remember one morning when you were here, the post-bag yielding a Glasgow newspaper, which hav- ing glanced at I pitched with indignation into the fire ? The reason was, that it contained a long report of a pro- ceeding which no acquaintance with it will ever make tol- erable to me, or indeed make anything but revolting and disgusting : I mean what is called a Congregational Soi- ree in the City Hall at Glasgow. Such things are very common among the dissenters ; and I am soi-ry to say they are not quite unknown in the church. There are some congregations consisting exclusively of the lower orders, whose ministers maintain a certain popularity by dint of roaring and ranting, and every kind of wretched claptrap which appeals to the mob. And these men find it expedient to have a soiree (pronounced surree, with a strong accent on the latter syllable) annually. I need not tell you that the more dignified and respectable among the clergy utterly abhor such things. I could no more fancy my excellent friend. Dr. Muir of Edinburgh, spouting nonsense on a platform to excite the laughter of maid-servants, than I could picture the Archbishop of Canterbury preaching while standing on his head. But let me try to give you some idea of what the thing is. SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. 413 I have had occasion once or twice to see the City Hall at Glasgow. Whenever the fi-eedom of the city is given to any eminent man, the cfereraony takes place there, the Lord Provost making a speech on the occasion. It is a large ugly building, in a street called the Candleriggs, which runs out of the Trongate, the main artery of Glasgow traffic. It is very large, holding some three or four thousand people. It is simply a huge square room, with a flat ceiling. Galleries surround it on three sides: on the foui'th side is a large platform, backed by a fine organ. It has a cheerful appearance, being painted throughout in white and gold. This Hall is used for all kinds of purposes ; tlie Corporation, very shabbily I think, making a profit by letting it out to any one who may want it. There the Wizard of the North was wont for many a day to perform his tricks : there did Mr. Bar- num exhibit Tom Thumb : there have Jenny Lind and Grisi sung : there does Jullien yearly give a course of concerts : there has Kossuth spoken, and there Mr. Macaulny, Lord Elgin, the Duke of Argyle, Mr. Dick- ens, and a greater man than all, Sir Archibald Alison : there has Mr. George Thompson howled : there has the Anti-State-Church Association made itself ridiculous : there next day have the friends of the Kirk rallied by thousands ; and on the day after, the advocates of the Democratic and Social Republic: there have been held cattle-show dinners and Crimean banquets ; and there soirees in honor of all sorts and conditions of men, from Mrs. Beecher Stowe down to Mr. Stiggins (who became a dissenting minister in Whistlebinkie after his historic kicking by the senior Mr. Weller) : and after this pleas- ing variety of engagements during the week, the Hall is let for divine service on Sunday. There hath the Rev. 414 SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. Dr. Bahoo wept, and the Rev, Mr. Spurgeon bellowed : there hath a young scamp of ten years old preached to a congregation of thousands f and thence hath the Rev. Mr. McQuack retired with a collection of £3 15s. 2frf. for the mission to send flannel waistcoats and moral pocket-handkerchiefs to the uninstructed Howowov/s. The first announcement of the approaching festival is an advertisement in the Glasgow newspapers that a Con- gregational Soiree of St. Gideon's Church will be held in the City Hall upon a certain evening: The Rev. Dr. Baiioo, M. A., D. D., LL.D., in the chair. Addresses will be delivered by the Rev. Melchisedec Howler, the Rev. Jeremy Diddler (Missionary to Borrioboolagha), the Rev. Roaring Buckie (of Yellington-cum-Bellow), the Rev. Soapy Sneaky (domestic chaplain to the Hon. Scapegrace Blackleg), and the Rev. Mountybanke Buf- fune. By the kind permission of Col. Blazes, the band of the gallant 969th will attend. Tickets, including a paper of sweeties, a cooky, two figs, and five cups of tea, price, eight pence each. N. B. — A collection at the door, to prevent confusion. The proceedings begin at six o'clock upon the ap- pointed evening, by which hour the people are seated at long tables arranged in the Hall, displaying a large assortment of tea-cups of many varied patterns. Each person on entering has received a paper-bag, containing the promised cooky (you would call it a penny-bun), the figs, and the sweeties. The platform is covered with men, the leading individuals of the congregation, and the speak- ers of the evening. T/iat is Mr. Soapy Sneaky, with the long lank hair, the blue spectacles, and the diabolical squint. That fat, round little man is Dr. Bahoo, already affected to tears by the contemplation of so many tea- SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. 415 cups, and by the reflection that they will all be broken within the next hundred years. That is Melchisedec Howler, with tremendously-developed jaws and a bull- neck, but hardly any perceptible forehead. And that is Mr. Buckie, with the apoplectic face, and corpulent figure. First, a Psalm is sung ; then a long prayer is offered. The band of the OG'Jth then plays a polka. Next greasy men go round, and pour tea of uninviting appearance out of large kettles into the numberless tea- cups. The men on the platform partake of the same cheering beverage. A great clatter of crockery is heard : many of the guests, ere they have finished their fifth cup (they are breakfast-cups) become visibly distended : most of the children find it expedient to stand up. Tea being over, the military band plays the " March of the Cameron Men," or "■ Bonnie Dundee," amid great shout- ing and stamping. The Rev. Dr. Bahoo, the minister of the congregation, then gets up and makes a speech in the nature of a sermon, with a few jokes thrown in. The reverend gentleman gets much excited. He frequently weeps during his speech, and in a little laughs again. He tells the people how hawppee he is to see them awl : how many additional seats have been let in St. Gideon's Church during the past year : how many scores of Sawba schule teachers and Sawba scholars are connected with the congregation. A Psalm is then sung by the people : a polka follows : then there is a pause to allow the figs to be eaten. Then the Rev. Melchisedec Howler addresses the meeting. He shouts and stamps : he bel- lows out his ungrammatical fustian with perfect confi- dence. Happy man, he is so great a fool that he has not the faintest suspicion that he is a fool at all. Streams of perspiration flow down his face. In leaving the Hall, 416 SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. you will hear the general remark among the enliglitened audience, " "Wasna' yon gran' ? " " Oh, but he swat ex- traordinar" The meeting goes on for three or four hour.-;, with the same strange jumble of prayers and polkas, religion and buffoonery, tears of penitence and roars of laughter. At length, about ten or eleven at night, after three cheers for the chairman, the benedic- tion is pronounced, and the festival is ended. Well, my dear Editor, is not that a peculiar institution, with a vengeance? I assure you I am not exaggerating or caricaturing, in my description of the hateful exhibi- tion.- Anything more irreverent and revolting than what I have myself witnessed (for I went out of curiosity to two or three such scenes) cannot be. I have seen cler- gymen say and do things at them which were just as de- grading as if they had shaved their heads, painted their faces with ochre, put on a spangled dress, and tumbled head over heels. I have stated that the more staid and reputable clergy utterly eschew such meetings: most of the ministers wiio appear at them are men prepared to have recourse to the very lowest and most contemptible means in order to gain a wretched popularity with the least intelligent of the community. Don't you feel that Dr. Bahoo and Mr. Howler would preach standing on their heads, if that would draw a crowd to the scene of their buffooneries ? Don't you feel that they would sev- erally sing Hot codlins from tiie pulpit, rather than see the boxes deserted and the pit empty 'f They are simply tenth-rate melodramatic actors ; and I will speak of them as such. Now for another Scotch peculiarity. I remember well your look of amazement when, one SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. 417 day as we drove past a whitewashed barn a few miles off, I said to you, " That is the parish church of Tiramer- stane-parva." You thought at first that I wished to prac- tise on your credulity, in return for certain wicked mys- tifications which you practised upon me in our college days. But I spoke in sober sadness. We have abun- dance of churches in Scotland which no mortal would ever guess were churches ; buildings without one trace of Christian character ; whitewashed barns externally, with a belfry at one end ; and internally, just four walls and a flat roof, with a higgledy-piggledy of rickety pews, and a rude box at one end to serve for a pulpit. Now I have no doubt that you thought all this was the remaining leaven of the sour Puritan spirit : and that you supposed that the mass of the Scotch people really think that God is most likely to be worshipped in sincerity between walls green with damp and streaming with moisture, and under a flat ceiling whence large pieces of plaster are wont to detach themselves during divine service. You were quite mistaken if you took up any such impression. There are one or two bigoted sects which have inherited the spirit of the Covenanters, among which a good deal of stupid prejudice still lingers ; and the people of these sects would very probably prefer Timmerstane Kirk to York Minster, But I am sure the well-filled pews you saw in our parish church testify that Scotch people will come very willingly to a decent church when they can find one ; and if you knew what frantic efforts the dis- senting congregations in large towns make to imitate our cathedrals in cheap lath-and-plaster Gothic, you would be convinced that it is no preference for shabbiness and dirt on the part of the people that keeps numbers of Scotch kirks the disreputable places they are. No, my 27 418 SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. dear Editor ; I wish to reveal to you, and through you to your countless readers, including so great a portion of the intelligence and refinement of England, what is the real blight of Scotch church architecture. It is, in brief, the abominable, mean, dirty, and contemptible shabbiness and parsimony of a great many of the heritors of Scotland. But what are the heritors, you will say, and what have they to do with the churches ? I will tell you all about it. The heritors of a parish are the proprietors of land within it. They are bound by law to build and main- tain*the church and parsonage. They likewise pay the stipend of the clergyman. Now, of course, when they or their fathers bought their estates, they got them for so much less in consideration of these circumstances. The primary charge upon all the land of Scotland is the Church Establishment; and in rendering its due to the church, the heritors are simply fulfilling the condition on which they hold their property, — doing what it would be dishonest not to do ; and they are, manifestly, no more entitled to take credit for maintaining the church and clergyman, than the farmer is entitled to flap his wings and cry aloud, " I am a virtuous man ; I am a hero in morality ; I actually pay my landlord his rent ! " Now many heritors forget all this: they fancy that the church is a burden upon them ; and they endeavor by every shabby dodge to render that burden as light as possible. You see I don't spare the class to which I myself belong: as a general rule, in all church matters, we are about as mean a set as you can find in Europe. Very many of us are dipped in debt, and are struggling to maintain an appearance quite beyond our means, I have in my mind's eye at this moment at least a score of men who SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIAEITIES. 419 are the verj ideal of Mr. Thackeray's Country Snoh. We really have not a sixpence to spare ; and we must sav6 all we can off the Kirk. And the rascally barns which in so many places do duty as parish churches, tes- tify to our shabbiness and that of our fathers. No doubt there are many noble exceptions to what I have been saying. Here and thei'e one finds a really beautiful and ecclesiastical church, testifying to the liberality of Mr. Stirling of Keir, Mr. Tyndall Bruce of Falkland, or Colonel Cathcart of Craigengillan. And the Duke of Buccleugh, a nobleman in the best sense of the phrase, is a splendid instance of liberality in all church matters. A writer in The Times told us lately that we country gentlemen of Scotland were such a race of snobs, that if the duke became a Mormon, we should all believe in Joe Smith too. I have no doubt a great many of us would. But you won't find us imitating that eminent personage when the act to be imitated consists in putting our hand in our pocket. No : we are independent men, who think for ourselves when it comes to that/ And an especial evil is, that at a meeting of the heritors of a parish, each person has an equal voice. A man with ten thousand a year has one vote only, and so has the proprietor of a pigsty. Neighboring proprietors don't like to come to loggerheads, and divisions are avoided at such meetings. And so, as the weakest link in a chain is the limit of its strength, the shabbiest heritor at a meeting is generally the limit of its liberality. I have been reading with great interest and pleasure Mr. Beckett Denison's Lectures on Church-building. If that accomplished gentleman would pay me a visit, I think I could astonish him. I could show him men, pass- ably intelligent on other topics, who in the matter of 420 SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. church-building utterly gainsay and deny those elemen- tary principles which appear to Mr. Denison and myself as indisputable as any axiom in morals. I will back a meeting of Scotch heritors against any collection of men anywhere in the world, for dense ignorance, dogged ob- stinacy, and comfortable self-conceit. I should imagine the feelings of a man driving a large flock of refractory pigs to market, must be much what mine were when I first set to work to persuade my brother heritors of this parish to build the handsome church you saw here. I don't believe that Lord Clarendon needed more diplo- matic skill to manage matters at the Paris Congress, than was requisite to talk over some of the miserable little scrubs of small proprietors into common sense. The upshot was, that Sir and I agreed to bear the entire expense, provided the matter were left to our own management. About two thirds of the parish belong to us ; the remainder being parcelled out among some five-and-forty heritors. We paid the share of these men in addition to our own ; and though they were not in- volved in the work to the extent of a sixpence, they still cast every vexatious annoyance in our way. Let me try to give you an idea of a meeting of heri- tors. It is held in the church. About ten minutes be- fore the appointed hour, we see three or four blue-nosed pragmatical-looking old fellows approaching, arrayed in long brown great-coats of remote antiquity, each man wearing a shocking bad hat. These are some of the smaller heritors, each possessor of a few bare acres of moor-land in some wild part of the parish. They are certainly Dissenters, probably Cameronians ; and quite ready at a word to smite the prophets of Baal, as they would call your amiable bishop or your good rector. SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. 421 They look around in a hostile and perverse manner, and snuff the air like wild asses' colts. A little after conies a man with a red pimply face, a hoarse voice, and a bul- lying manner. He is the factor of some proprietor who is ashamed to do dirty work himself, but does not ob- ject to having it done for him. Then comes a little withered anatomy of a man, a retired Manchester trades- man, who has bought a few fields, planted them with hoaks and hashes, and built there an Ouse from his own design, a great work of hart. Half-a-dozen more blue- nosed small heritors, two or three more factors, and one or two gentlemen, complete the meeting. Suppose they are examining the drawings of the new kirk. Oh, rare are their critical remarks. " Aw doant see ony need for a speere," says one low fellow. " Whawt 's that croass doin' aboove the gabble ? " says another ; " we're no gangin' to havvve a I'awg o' papistry in this pawrish." " If that's the way to build a church," says a pig-headed blockhead who never saw a decent church in his life, " I know nothing aboot church- building." Sober truth the creature utters ; but he fan- cies he is talking sarcastically. Something is said of an open roof. " Wha ever saw a roof like thawt?" says one of the blue-nosed men ; " thawt's jist like maw barrrn." A Caraeronian elder says, in a discordant whine, " Goad is to be wurshupped in spurrit and in trewth : whawt house will ye big unto him ? Habakkuk thirteenth and fifth." " Stained glass," says a pert little shopkeeper from Whistlebinkie, " is essentially Popish and Anti- christ." Finally a burst of coarse laughter follows the witticism, from an individual with a strong smell of whis- key, — " If Mr. Macdoanald wants the kirk sae fine, let him pye for it himself. Aw heer he was bred at 422 SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. Ooxfurd ; maybe he wants us a' to turn prelatists. He had better gang awa' bawk to Inglan' wi' his papisb notions." At this juncture the honorable proprietor's utterance becomes indistinct, and in a Httle a loud snor- ing proclaims that he is asleep. While the discussion is going on, some of the heritors are spitting emulously at a pew door about a dozen feet off- They generally hit it, with a dexterity resulting from long practice. What wonder if educated men and gentlemen avoid such meetings ? And thus, unhappily, the management of matters falls into the hands of some blowsy village demagogue, whose impertinence has driven the squire or baronet of the parish away ; or of two or three of the withered old Cameronians with the long brown great- coats. The Scotch are not a demonstrative race. I do not believe that among our laboring class here in the coun- try, there is any want of real heart and feeling; but there is a great awkwardness and stiffness in the expres- sion of it. People here do not give utterance to their emotion like your volatile Frenchman : they have not words to say what they feel ; and they would be ashamed {blate, in their own phrase) to use these words if they had them. I have had a touching instance of this within the last few days. Do you remember our taking a walk together one beautiful afternoon to the cottage of one of my people, a poor fellow who was dying of consumption ? You sat upon a stile, I recollect, and read a proof, while 1 went in and sat with him for a few minutes. It seemed to cheer him a little to have a visit from the laird, and I often went to see him. After you left us he sank gradu- ally, — it was just the old story of that hopeless malady, SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIAKITIES. 423 — till at last, after a few days in bed, he died. I hate all cant and false pretence ; but there was earnest reality in the simple faith which made my humble friend's last hours so calm and hopeful. When he felt himself dying he sent for me, and I went and stayed beside him for several hours. The clergyman's house was some miles off; and apart from private regard, it was a part of my duty as an elder of the kirk to go and pray as well as 1 could with the poor fellow. He was only thirty-two, but he had been married eight or nine years, and he had four little children. After lying silent for a while, he said he would like to see them again ; and his wife brought them to his bedside. I know well that no dying father ever felt a more hearty affection for the little things he was leaving behind, or a more sincere desire for their welfare after he had left them. He was not so weak but that he could speak quite distinctly ; and I thought that he would try and say something to them in the vvay of a parting advice, were it only to bid them be good children, and be kind and obedient to their mother. Yet all he did was just to shake each of the three elder children by the hand, and to say Gude-day. As for the youngest, a wee thing of two years old, he said to it, " Will you gie me a bit kiss ? " and the mother lifted up the wondering child to do so. " Say Ta-ta to your feyther," she said. " Ta-ta," said the poor little boy, in a loud, cheerful voice, and then ran out of the cottage to play with some companions. The story, I feel, is nothing to tell ; but the little scene affected me much. I believe I have told you the exact words that were said ; and then the dying man turned away his face and closed his eyes, and I saw many tears running down his thin cheeks. I knew it was the very abundance of that poor man's heart that choked his utter- 424 SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. ance, and brought down liis last farewell to a common- place greeting like that with which he might have parted from a neighbor for a few hours. Gude-day was his farewell for ever ! lie felt that he had so very much to say, that he did not know where to begin it ; and so his weary heart shrank from the task, and he said almost nothing. I thought how your friend Mr. Tennyson could have interpreted that Gude-day. How much of unutter- able affection — how much of good advice and fatherly warning — how much of prayer for them to the gieat Father of the orphans — was implied in poor David's Gude-day ! I read a paragraph in Tlie Times, a few weeks since, in which it was stated that the late Bishop of London had informed a certain congregation, which had the choice of its clergyman, that he would not upon any account per- mit a succession of candidates for the living to preach in the parish church. I think the Bishop was right. There is something most degrading to the clerical character, and inconsistent with the nature of preaching, in the practice of persons " holding forth " to a congregation to let the people see how well they can do it, the congregation meanwhile sitting in a critical and judicial capacity. And I lament to tell you that what is a very rare and excep- tional thing in England, is a very common thing in Scot- land — the practice of hearing candidates, as it is termed. You are aware that, at different periods, a great row has been made in this country about the existence of church patronage ; the people always agitating to get the selec- tion of their ministers put in their own hands. In one shape or another, this agitation has been the source of all the secessions from the Scotch Kirk. Ever since the SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. 425 great secession in 1843, most patrons have been anxious to make popular appointments, for fear of driving the people away from church to some of the multitudinous neighboring conventicles ; and instead of directly present- ing a clergyman to a vacant benefice, they have in some way consulted the wishes of the parishioners. In the Case of the parish in which I reside, and of which I pos- sess the patronage, I did not take this course. I took every pains to find a clergyman who should be a good preacher, a scholar, and a gentleman ; and then I pre- sented him without consulting the people in any way. I knew thoroughly that, had I given them their choice, I should simply have been devolving my privilege of ap- pointing a minister upon Smout the baker. Swipes the publican, and Muttonhead the butcher. They would, to a certainty, have directed the judgment of the humbler parishioners ; and I conceived myself to be a more com- petent judge of clerical qualifications than these gentle- men. And though the people grumbled a little at first, their good sense and Mr. Smith's faithfulness triumphed in the long run, and he is now extremely popular with all classes. I did not choose to allow Smout, Swipes, and Muttonhead to give me for a parish clergyman some bel- lowing boor, whom I should have been ashamed to ask to meet my friends at my table. When a patron is more desirous of immediate popu- larity than I was, he follows one of two courses : he ap- points three or four individuals, each of whom he thinks suitable for the cure, and allows the people to select one of these ; or he says to the parishioners, " You may nom- inate three clergymen, and I shall take my choice of these." The former course, which is called " giving a leet," is the moi-e usual, I believe. In either case, a 426 SOaiE TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. preaching-matcli follows, and the people select by com- parative trial. In the case of some town churches, where the congregations have the entire matter in their own hands, Avith no patron to keep them within reasonable limits, forty or fifty candidates have sometimes been heard. Then, by a process of elimination, that number is reduced to two or three ; these two or three are asked to preach a second time ; and, finally, the election is com- pleted, amid all the degrading circumstances which attend most contested elections. Don't crow over us, my dear Oliver, for I see that you have lately had in London a similar discreditable course of procedure. Each of the competing candidates of course does his best to make a favorable impression. "With congrega- tions of the lower orders the victory lies with him who possesses the strongest lungs and the emptiest head. It is a great stroke in preaching as a candidate to repeat the sermon entirely from memory ; a successful claptrap is to shut the Bible with a bang immediately after giving out the text. It very generally happens that the upshot is the division of the parishioners into two violently opposed parties ; the educated and respectable people declaring for some preacher of cultivated mind and gen- tleman-like manner, and the lower classes for some huge, raw-boned, yelling, and perspiring animal, with intense vulgarity in his every tone and gesture, whom they re- gard as one of themselves. After some weeks of excite- ment and diplomacy, something like unanimity is gen- erally arrived at; the patron generally holding it in terrorem over the people, that if they do not agree with- in a given time, he will appoint a minister without con- sulting them. The hearing-candidate system has a most degrading effect upon those preachers who seek to get SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. 427 preferment by it. It tempts directly to every coarse ex- pedient for pulpit effect, and every sneaky means to gain the private good-will of the rabble. Still the system works in practice a shade better than might be antici- pated a priori ; and though sometimes permanent splits result, the minority going off to the Dissenting meeting- house, yet this is far from being the general rule. I need not tell you that no clergyman of any standing would " preach as a candidate " for any living. Candi- date preachers are for the most part drawn from the class of newly-fledged licentiates ; and from that species of much-perspiring, loud-howling, flabby-faced, and big- jawed preachers, who formed the dunces of the philoso- phy-classes at college, and who now constitute the parlia- mentary train of the Kirk. I have been so little in England of late years, that I do not know whether the institution which I am about to describe is a Scotch peculiarity, or whether it exists on your side of the border : I mean what may be called the testimonial nuisance. There is hardly anybody left in this country who has not had a snuff-box, watch and chain, purse of sovereigns, tea-kettle, claret-jug, book- case, gig-whip, saddle and bridle, pony, horse, cow, pig, dog-cart, set of harness, timepiece, Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Scriptures, load of meal, cart of po- tatoes, pig's face, German-silver pencil-case, everlasting gold pen, pulpit-gown and cassock, case of mathematical instruments, tea-tray, set of teacups, dozen of teaspoons, dozen of shirts, dozen of pocket handkerchiefs, or dozen of flannel waistcoats, presented to him by a circle of friends and admirers, and the presentation chronicled at great length in the local newspaper. Country gentlemen. 428 SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. clergymen, railway guards, drivers of stage-coaches, gamekeepers, shepherds, local poetasters, farmers, news- paper reporters, keepers of public-houses, schoolmasters, turnpike-gatekeepers, railway signal-men, stokers of coasting steamers, are among the people most frequently honored in this way. When a testimonial is presented to a man in the humbler walks of life, it is usually fol- lowed by a supper, concerning which the Whistlehinkie Gazette never fails to record that the arrangements re- flected the utmost credit on mine host of the Blue Boar ; the evening was spent most harmoniously, Mr. Ronald McCracken favoring the company with liis favorite song, "Jenny dang the weaver;" and at a late hour all parties went home, " happy to meet, sorry to part, and happy to meet again." Whenever a new minister comes to any parish, on the day of his induction he is presented with a superb pulpit gown (made by Messrs. Roderick, Doo, and Co., our enterprising fellow-townsmen), and a pulpit Bible and psalm-book (purchased at the establishment of Mr. McLamroch, bookseller, 91, High-street). On going away, he receives a timepiece or silver salver, (furnished, we understand, by Messrs. Waxy and Jollikin, Chrono- meter-makers, Saltergate) ; and if a poor man, perhaps a purse of sovereigns (the purse made by the fair fin- gers of Miss Jemima McCorkle, daughter of the much esteemed surgeon of that name). The handsome gift (we invariably learn) was presented in a few brief but pithy retaarks by Mr. James McWilliam, farmer in Cleugh-Lochacher ; and the reverend gentleman, who appeared much overcome by his feelings, made an affect- ing and suitable reply. Occasionally we find it recorded that the tenantry on the estate of Netherwoodie and Clanjamfry proceeded to the Mansion House, and pre- SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. 429 sented Skipness Alexander Skipness, Esq., their esteemed landlord, with his portrait, drawn in the first style of art by Cosmo Saunders, Esq., R. S. A. They likewise pre- sented an elegant cairngorm brooch to Mi-s. Skipness ; a whip to Master Sholto Skipness Skipness ; and a hum- ming top to Master Reginald Comyne Skipness, the lat- ter gentleman aged one year and eight months. Mr. Skipness, much affected (recipients of testimonials in this country are always much affected), made a suitable reply. He felt his merits were greatly over-estimated. If indeed it were true that he had been the first to in- troduce into the county an improved breed of pigs, he had his reward in the whisperings of an approving con- science. Turnips had for years occupied much of his attention ; nor had cheese passed without many serious thoughts. Onions and carrots, he might say, had rarely been absent from his mind. Still, much remained to be done. There was no limit to the fat which might be carried by the Clanjamfry breed of cattle ; and whatever might be the feeling of others, he, for one, would always connect the gimmers and hogs of this district with the future prosperity of the country. The tenantry were then entertained at the hospitable board of Netherwoodie, and left at a late hour, having spent an evening which will long be cherished as a green spot in memory's waste. Do you remember one morning glancing over the Whistlebinkie Guardian, and reckoning up thirty-eight testimonials which had been presented in the preceding week to different individuals in the county ? I doubt not that, in your simplicity, you fancied that this district contained an immense number of deserving characters, surrounded by a most generous public. Quite a mistake. Most of the recipients deserved nothing particular : most 430 SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. of the subscribers were lugged into giving sorely against their will. Let me explain to you the philosophy of the matter. A, let us say, wants a testimonial for himself. It would not do, however, to endeavor directly to get one up. A therefore goes to B, and proposes to get up a testimonial to C. Now C never did anything remark- able in all his life ; and B does not want to give him anything. But it would be a most invidious thing to re- fuse to subscribe : and so, for fear of giving offence, B, D, E, F, G, and H, severally put down their shilling or their pound, as the case may be : the present is given ; the supper or dinner comes off; and the Gazette and Guardian report the proceedings. In a few months C, who has been made aware who it was that set his own testimonial on foot, feels himself called upon to get up one to A. Then B gets up one to D ; D reciprocates ; and so on all round. Thus, you see, the balance of property in the district is not disturbed ; for each man gets as much as he gives. Neither are people's relative positions and estimations altered ; for no man is distin- guished above his neighbor. The secret vanity of each individual is gratified : a kindly spirit is maintained in the neighborhood ; and in the long run the truth is not prejudiced, for these testimonials come to be valued at pretty nearly what they are worth. The mention of testimonials reminds me of another Scotch peculiarity, about which I may tell you some- thing. All sorts of people in this country are fond of making what they call a collection of testimonials or certificates, setting forth their qualifications and merits. They apply to any one who may be in a prominent posi- tion, whether he knows much of them or not ; and re- ceive a sheet of note-paper inscribed with the most out- SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. 431 rageous and exaggerated compliments. Each person who is asked to give a certificate considers what good qualities the man ought to have in order to be fit for the place he is aiming at, or what good qualities the man would like to be thought to possess; and incontinently sets his signature to a declaration that the man does pos- sess the very highest degree of all these good qualities. A really profligate disregard of truth prevails in Scot- land as to this matter. One constantly finds men, even of established reputation, asserting in written testimonials what, if you ask them their real opinion in private, they will confess to you is absurd and untrue. We all under- stand that in newspaper reports all sermons are eloquent and impressive, all landlords are liberal, all county mem- bers are unweared in their attention to their duties, all professors are learned, all divines are pious, all magis- trates are worthy, all military men are gallant, all royal dukes are illustrious. We all understand what such statements are worth ; nor does any man but the most verdant care a straw for the critical notices of the Whistlebinkie Gazette, which assure us that Mr. Snooks, the local poet, is a much greater man than Mr. Tenny- son ; and that Mr. Green, our talented young townsman, has already surpassed Turner as a landscape-painter. I don't suppose that you are much elevated when the Guardian of our county town declares, at the beginning of a month, that " Fraser holds on its way with a ringing and jubilant wildness and manliness of fierceness and ter- ror," — whatever all that may mean, which I confess I don't know. But the Scotch system of exaggerated and (in short) false declarations, made by grave divines and high-spirited gentlemen, as to the qualifications of Smith, Jones, and Robinson, ought to be put down. It deceives 432 SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. and misleads : it is calculated and, I believe, intended to deceive and mislead. I feel strongly on the subject, for I take a warm interest in the schools of this parish ; and when I first came here, I was most thoroughly taken in by the flaming characters which several teachers brought, who afterwards proved shamefully incompetent. A lad of very deficient intellect and education, and quite devoid of common sense, applying for a teacher's place, comes with a long array of testimonials from clergymen and professors, which, if true, would prove him a prodigy of talent, industry, amiability, and all other virtues under heaven. An extremely bad preacher and wretched scholar, applying for a living (I had no end of such applications when this parish was vacant), brings with him testimonials which tend to show that the human race cannot be expected to produce many such wonders in a single century. The result of all this is, that written testimonials now mostly go for nothing — at least, with people of any experience. They are sometimes even re- garded with suspicion. If a teacher in a parish school becomes a candidate for another parish school, and brings with him a very higli certificate from the heritors and clergyman of the parish where he is at present, tlie fear is that they have given him this strong recommendation in order to get rid of him. A story is told apropos of this. A teacher came to the parish of X, bringing an immensely strong certificate from the parish of Y, in which he was at present settled. On the strength of this certificate, the heritors of X elected him to tlieir vacant school. It should be mentioned that the parishes of X and Y are many miles apart. The teacher began his work at X, and speedily proved worth nothing — a lazy, stupid, useless incubus on the parish. SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. 433 One of the heritors of X met a heritor of Y, and inquired, with some indignation, what on earth the heritors of Y meant by giving such a flaming certificate to an utterly incapable teacher ? " Why," said Mr. Y, with great cool- ness, " We gave that certificate to get you to take him oflP our hands ; and, let me tell you, you people of X will have to give him a far higher character before you will get rid of him ! " I do not vouch for the story's tx'uth : and I believe that good-nature, and unwillingness to give pain by a refusal, are the origin of most of these undeserved panegyrics. When a poor fellow asks you to give a certificate of fit- ness for some place for which you know he is not fit, but which he has yet set his heart on, it is hard to say no. The temptation is strong to stretch a point in order to say a good word for him ; or at any rate to write a few sen- tences which, without meaning anything, sound as though they meant something in his praise. And now, my dear fellow, I dare say you are wearied of all this gossip about our Scotch Peculiarities. I have a vast deal more to sajf, but I think I had better stop for the present. I hope soon to see you here again. It is curious how arbitrarily the memory singles out little inci- dents and keeps them vividly alive, when worthier things have perished. When I look back upon your late visit to us, I am ashamed to say that the thing which comes out in strongest relief is, not any of your wise and witty say- ings, not any of your philosophical reflections, not any of the grand or beautiful scenes on which we looked together. None of these : but I see you yet, with a doubtful expression on your usually serene face, eating a plate of oatmeal porridge, and assuring my wife that you liked it. Well I knew that in your secret soul you 28 434 SOME TALK ABOUT SCOTCH PECULIARITIES. would rather have read the very dullest article in the Balaam-box. Believe me, Ever your sincere friend, C. A. M. Crais-Houlakiin, November 24th, 1856. Conclusion. HESE were the kind of thoughts that passed through my mind in the leisure hours of various months in town. The hours, in- deed, in which I have been free from the pressure of duty, were short ; and they were not many : yet, by regular use, one may turn even these to some ac- count. All kinds of hours, morning and evening, of every day of the week except Saturday and Sunday, have gone to the production of these pages. I have not an ever- green now, though I have planted so many ; nor am I the ■possessor of a single tree of any kind. And when I go and visit the pleasant homes of certain friendly country parsons, I feel my loss ; and I sigh a little for the days that are gone. And so these pages have not been thought out amid the sunshiny and breezy places where I wrote certain other pages which possibly you have read. Many of them were thought out by a city fireside ; some of them in solitary half-hour walks on quiet winter evenings in a certain broad gas-lit street, re- markable for that absence of passers-by which is charac- teristic of many of the streets of this beautiful city. But especially I remember many restful hours, happily com- bining duty with leisure, which are within the reach of every unambitious Scotch clergyman. I mean the hours 436 CONCLUSION. which on one day in each month he may spend in attend- ing the Presbytery to which he belongs. The Presby- tery, possibly you do not know, is a court of the Scotch Church ; consisting of the clergymen of a number of adjoining pai'ishes, witli a lay member from each parish besides. This court exercises over a certain district of country the authority which in England is exercised by a Bishop. It is the duty of every member to be pres- ent : so that while attending its sittings you have a pleas- ant sense that you are in the way of your duty. The business of this Ecclesiastical Court is of deep interest to those who feel a deep interest in it. And a weighty responsibility rests with those members of it whose ex- perience and administrative ability are such as entitle them and fit them to lead their brethren. But a good many of the clergy, especially of the younger clergy, have no vocation that way : and the very eloquent and remarkably long speeches which are often made, would be somewhat wearisome if you tried to listen to them. But if you do not try to listen to them, unless at some specially interesting juncture, or when some one is speak- ing whose words carry special weight, you may have many hours of leisure there ; and think of material for various chapters like those you have been reading. I have found my hours at the Pi'esbytery very favorable to contemplation, as well as a delightful rest to body and mind. You are in the path of duty : and yet you feel that your insignificance makes your responsibility quite inappreciable. You do your work, we may hope, as a parish clergyman, diligently and not unsuccessfully. But as an ecclesiastical lawyer and legislator, in all probabil- ity, your influence is very properly at zero. You have entire confidence that the affairs of the district are being CONCLUSION. 437 managed by wise and good men, who are your seniors in age and your superiors in wisdom. So you may enjoy a day of rest : and of rest happily combined with duty. I liave a very great veneration and affection for the Church of England : but I do not think that grand Estab- lishment affords her clergy any season, recurring regularly and not unfrequently, during which they may feel that they are attending to their clerical duty, while yet they are quite free from any sense of responsibility, and from any feeling that they are doing anything whatever. And so I commend these chapters to the kindly reader, hoping that they are not the last. THE END. [X^ Any Books in this list will be sent free of postage, on receipt of price. * Boston, 135 Washington Street, March, 1862. A LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY TICKNOR AND FIELDS. Sir Walter Scott. Illustrated Household Edition of the Waver- LEY Novels.* 50 volumes. In portable size, 16mo. form. Now Complete. Price 75 cents a volume. The paper is of fine quality; the stereotype plates are not old ones repaired, the type having been cast expressly for this edi- tion. 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