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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Side Lights, by James Runciman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Side Lights
+
+Author: James Runciman
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2005 [EBook #15762]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIDE LIGHTS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Steven Gibbs and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+SIDE LIGHTS
+
+
+By JAMES RUNCIMAN
+
+
+
+_WITH MEMOIR BY GRANT ALLEN,
+AND INTRODUCTION BY W.T. STEAD.
+EDITED BY JOHN F. RUNCIMAN_
+
+
+London
+T. FISHER UNWIN
+PATERNOSTER SQUARE
+MDCCCXCIII
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR. BY GRANT ALLEN
+
+AN INTRODUCTORY WORD ABOUT THE BOOK. BY W.T. STEAD
+
+    I. LETTER-WRITERS
+
+   II. ON WRITING ONESELF OUT
+
+  III. THE DECLINE OF LITERATURE
+
+   IV. COLOUR-BLINDNESS IN LITERATURE
+
+    V. THE SURFEIT OF BOOKS
+
+   VI. PEOPLE WHO ARE "DOWN"
+
+  VII. ILL-ASSORTED MARRIAGES
+
+ VIII. HAPPY MARRIAGES
+
+   IX. SHREWS
+
+    X. ARE WE WEALTHY
+
+   XI. THE VALUES OF LABOUR
+
+  XII. THE HOPELESS POOR
+
+ XIII. WAIFS AND STRAYS
+
+  XIV. STAGE-CHILDREN
+
+   XV. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY: PAST AND PRESENT
+
+  XVI. "RAISING THE LEVEL OF AMUSEMENTS"
+
+ XVII. A LITTLE SERMON ON FAILURES
+
+XVIII. "VANITY OF VANITIES"
+
+  XIX. GAMBLERS
+
+   XX. SCOUNDRELS
+
+  XXI. QUIET OLD TOWNS
+
+ XXII. THE SEA
+
+XXIII. SORROW
+
+ XXIV. DEATH
+
+  XXV. JOURNALISM
+
+
+
+
+A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR.
+
+BY GRANT ALLEN.
+
+
+I knew James Runciman but little, and that little for the most part
+in the way of business. But no one could know that ardent and eager
+soul at all, no matter how slightly, without admiring and respecting
+much that was powerful and vigorous in his strangely-compounded
+personality. His very look attracted. He had human weaknesses not
+a few, but all of the more genial and humane sort; for he was
+essentially and above everything a lovable man, a noble, interesting,
+and unique specimen of genuine, sincere, whole-hearted manhood.
+
+He was a Northumbrian by birth, "and knew the Northumbrian coast,"
+says one of his North-Country friends, "like his mother's face." His
+birthplace was at Cresswell, a little village near Morpeth, where he
+was born in August, 1852, so that he was not quite thirty-nine when he
+finally wore himself out with his ceaseless exertions. He had a true
+North-Country education, too, among the moors and cliffs, and there
+drank in to the full that love of nature, and especially of the sea,
+which forms so conspicuous a note in his later writings. Heather and
+wave struck the keynotes. A son of the people, he went first, in his
+boyhood, to the village school at Ellington; but on his eleventh
+birthday he was removed from the wild north to a new world at
+Greenwich. There he spent two years in the naval school; and
+straightway began his first experiences of life on his own account as
+a pupil teacher at North Shields Ragged School, not far from his
+native hamlet.
+
+"A worse place of training for a youth," says a writer in _The
+Schoolmaster_, "it would be hard to discover. The building was
+unsuitable, the children rough, and the neighbourhood vile--and the
+long tramp over the moors to Cresswell and back at week ends was,
+perhaps, what enabled the young apprentice to preserve his health of
+mind and body. His education was very much in his own hands. He
+managed in a few weeks to study enough to pass his examinations with
+credit. The rest of his time was spent in reading everything which
+came in his way, so that when he entered Borough-road in January,
+1871, he was not only almost at the top of the list, but he was the
+best informed man of his year. His fellow candidates remember even now
+his appearance during scholarship week. Like David, he was ruddy of
+countenance, like Saul he towered head and shoulders above the rest,
+and a mass of fair hair fell over his forehead. Whene'er he took his
+walks abroad he wore a large soft hat, and a large soft scarf, and
+carried a stick that was large but not soft."
+
+To this graphic description I will add a second one. "He was a
+splendid all-round athlete," says another friend, who knew him at this
+time, in the British and Foreign School Society's London college. "Six
+feet two or three in height, and with a fine muscular development, he
+could box, wrestle, fence, or row with all comers, and beat them with
+ridiculous ease. No one could have been made to believe that he would
+die, physically worn out, before he was forty. His intellectual
+mastery was as unquestioned as his physical superiority; he always
+topped the examination lists, to the chagrin of some of the lecturers,
+whom he teased sadly by protesting against injustice the moment it
+peeped out, by teaching all the good young men to smoke prodigiously,
+by scattering revolutionary verses about the college, and finally by
+collecting and burning in one grand bonfire every copy of an obnoxious
+text-book under which the students had long suffered."
+
+This was indeed the germ of the man as we all knew him long afterwards.
+
+Runciman left the college to take up the mastership of a London Board
+School in a low part of Deptford; and here he soon gained an
+extraordinary influence over the population of one of the worst slums
+in London. Mr. Thomas Wright, the "Journeyman Engineer," has already
+told in print elsewhere the story of Runciman's descent into the
+depths of Deptford, how he set about humanising the shoeless,
+starving, conscience-little waifs who were drafted into his school,
+and how, before many months had passed, he never walked through the
+squalid streets of his own quarter without two or three loving little
+fellows all in tatters trying to touch the hem of his garment, while a
+group of the more timid followed him admiringly afar off. From the
+children, his good influence extended to the parents; and it was an
+almost every-day occurrence for visitors from the slums to burst into
+the school to fetch the master to some coster who was "a-killin' his
+woman." The brawny young giant would dive into the courts where the
+police go in couples, clamber ricketty stairs, and "interview" the
+fighting pair. "His plan was to appeal to the manliness of the
+offender, and make him ashamed of himself; often such a visit ended in
+a loan, whereby the 'barrer' was replenished and the surly husband set
+to work; but if all efforts at peacemaking were useless, this new
+apostle had methods beyond the reach of the ordinary missionary--he
+would (the case deserving it) drop his mild, insinuating, persuasive
+tones, and not only threaten to pulp the incorrigible blackguard into
+a jelly, but proceed to do it."
+
+Runciman, however, was much more in fibre than a mere schoolmaster. He
+worked hard at his classes by day; he worked equally hard by night at
+his own education, and at his first attempts at journalism. He
+matriculated at London University, and passed his first B.Sc.
+examination. At one and the same time he was carrying on his own
+school, in the far East End, contributing largely to an educational
+paper, _The Teacher_, and writing two or three pages a week in
+_Vanity Fair_, which he long sub-edited. His powers of work were
+enormous, and he systematically overtaxed them.
+
+It is not surprising that, under this strain and stress, even that
+magnificent physique showed signs of breaking down, like every other
+writer's. A long holiday on the Mediterranean, and another at Torquay,
+restored him happily to his wonted health; but he saw he must now
+choose between schoolmastering and journalism. To run the two abreast
+was too much, even for James Runciman's gigantic powers. Permanent
+work on _Vanity Fair_ being offered to him on his return, he decided
+to accept it; and thenceforth he plunged with all the strength and
+ardour of his fervid nature into his new profession.
+
+"It was during this period of insatiable greed for work," says the
+correspondent of a Nottingham journal, "that I first knew him. You may
+wonder how he could possibly get through the tasks which he set
+himself. You would not wonder if you had seen him, when he was in the
+humour, tramp round the room and pour out a stream of talk on men and
+books which might have gone direct into print at a high marketable
+value. The London correspondent of a Nottingham paper says that
+Runciman was justly vain of the speed of his pen. That is true. He
+considered that a journalist ought to be able to dictate an article at
+the rate of 150 words a minute to a shorthand writer. I doubt whether
+anybody can do that, but Runciman certainly thought he could. He loved
+to settle a thing off on the instant with one huge effort. Here is an
+authentic story that shows his method. It is a physical performance,
+but he tackled journalistic obstacles in the same spirit:
+
+"A parent, who fancied he had a grievance, burst furiously into the
+schoolroom one day, and startled its quietness with a string of oaths.
+'That isn't how we talk here,' said Runciman, in his quiet way. 'Will
+you step into my room if you have anything to discuss?' Another volley
+of oaths was the reply, and the unwary parent added that he wasn't
+going out, and nobody could put him out. Runciman was not the man to
+allow such a challenge of his authority and prowess to be issued
+before his scholars and to go unanswered. Without another word, he
+took the man by the coat-collar with one hand, by the most convenient
+part of his breeches with the other hand, carried him to the door,
+gave him a half-a-dozen admonitory shakings, and chucked him down
+outside. Then he returned and made this cool entry in the school
+log-book: 'Father of the boy ---- came into the school to-day, and was
+very disorderly. I carried him out and chastised him.'"
+
+It was while he was engaged on _Vanity Fair_ that I first met
+Runciman--I should think somewhere about the year 1880. He then edited
+(or sub-edited) for a short time that clever but abortive little
+journal, _London_, started by Mr. W.E. Henley, and contributed to
+by Andrew Lang, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edmund Gosse, and half a dozen
+more of us. Here we met not infrequently. I was immensely impressed by
+Runciman's vigorous personality, and by his profound sympathy with the
+troubles and trials and poverty of the real people. He called himself
+a Conservative, it is true, while I called myself a Radical; but,
+except in name, I could not see much difference between our democratic
+tendencies. Runciman appeared to me a most earnest and able thinker,
+full of North-country grit, and overflowing with energy.
+
+His later literary work is well known to the world. He contributed to
+the _St. James's Gazette_ an admirable series of seafaring sketches,
+afterwards reprinted as "The Romance of the North Coast." He also
+wrote "special" articles for the _Standard_ and the _Pall Mall_, as
+well as essays on social and educational topics for the _Contemporary_
+and the _Fortnightly_. The humour and pathos of pupil-teaching were
+exquisitely brought out in his "School Board Idylls" and "Schools and
+Scholars"; his knowledge of the sea and his experience of fishermen
+supplied him with materials for "Skippers and Shellbacks" and for
+"Past and Present." He was always a lover of his kind, so his work has
+almost invariably a strong sympathetic note; and perhaps his
+best-known book, "A Dream of the North Sea," was written in support of
+the Mission to Fishermen. He produced but one novel, "Grace Balmaign's
+Sweetheart"; but his latest work, "Joints in our Social Armour,"
+returned once more to that happier vein of picturesque description
+which sat most easily and naturally upon him.
+
+The essays which compose the present volume were contributed to the
+columns of the _Family Herald_. And this is their history:--For
+many years I had answered the correspondence and written the social
+essays in that excellent little journal--a piece of work on which I
+am not ashamed to say that I always look back with affectionate
+pleasure. Several years since, however, I found myself compelled by
+health to winter abroad, and therefore unable to continue my weekly
+contributions. Who could fill up the gap? Who answer my dear old
+friends and questioners? The proprietor asked me to recommend a
+substitute. I bethought me instinctively at once of Runciman. The work
+was, indeed, not an easy one for which to find a competent workman. It
+needed a writer sufficiently well educated to answer a wide range of
+questions on the most varied topics, yet sufficiently acquainted with
+the habits, ideas, and social codes of the lower middle class and the
+labouring people to throw himself readily into their point of view on
+endless matters of life and conduct. Above all, it needed a man who
+could sympathise genuinely with the simplest of his fellows. The love
+troubles of housemaids, the perplexities as to etiquette, or as to
+practical life among shop-girls and footmen, must strike him, not as
+ludicrous, but as subjects for friendly advice and assistance. The
+fine-gentleman journalist would clearly have been useless for such a
+post as that. Runciman was just cut out for it. I suggested the work
+to him, and he took to it kindly. The editor was delighted with the
+way he buckled up to his new task, and thanked me warmly afterwards
+for recommending so admirable and so gentle a workman. Those who do
+not know the nature of the task may smile; but the man who answers the
+_Family Herald_ correspondence, stands in the position of confidant
+and father-confessor to tens of thousands of troubled and anxious souls
+among his fellow-countrymen, and still more his fellow-countrywomen.
+It is, indeed, a _sacerdoce_. The essays are usually contributed by
+the same person who answers the correspondence; and the collection of
+Runciman's papers reprinted in this little volume will show that they
+have often no mean literary value.
+
+For many years, however, Runciman had systematically overworked, and
+in other ways abused, his magnificent constitution. The seeds of
+consumption were gradually developed. But the crash came suddenly.
+Early in the summer of 1891, he broke down altogether. He was sent to
+a hydropathic establishment at Matlock; but the doctors discovered he
+was already in a most critical condition, and four weeks later advised
+his wife to take him back to his own home at Kingston. His splendid
+physique seemed to run down with a rush, and when a month was over, he
+died, on July --th, a victim to his own devouring energy--perhaps,
+too, to the hardships of a life of journalism.
+
+"This was a man," said his friendly biographer, whom I have already
+quoted. No sentence could more justly sum up the feeling of all who
+knew James Runciman. "Bare power and tenderness, and such sadly human
+weakness"--that is the verdict of one who well knew him. I cannot
+claim to have known him well myself; but it is an honour to be
+permitted to add a memorial stone to the lonely cairn of a
+fellow-worker for humanity.
+
+G.A.
+
+
+
+
+AN INTRODUCTORY WORD ABOUT THE BOOK.
+
+BY W.T. STEAD.
+
+
+James Runciman was a remarkably gifted man who died just about the
+time when he ought to have been getting into harness for his life's
+work. He had in him, more than most men, the materials out of which
+an English Zola might have been made. And as we badly need an English
+Zola, and have very few men out of whom such a genius could be
+fashioned, I have not ceased to regret the death of the author of
+this volume. For Zola is the supreme type in our day of the
+novelist-journalist, the man who begins by getting up his facts at
+first-hand with the care and the exhaustiveness of a first-rate
+journalist, and who then works them up with the dramatic and literary
+skill of a great novelist. Charles Reade was something of the kind in
+his day; but he has left no successor.
+
+James Runciman might have been such an one, if he had lived. He had
+the tireless industry, the iron constitution, the journalist's keen
+eye for facts, the novelist's inexhaustible fund of human sympathy. He
+was a literary artist who could use his pen as a brush with brilliant
+effect, and he had an amazing facility in turning out "copy." He had
+lived to suffer, and felt all that he wrote. There was a marvellous
+range in his interests. He had read much, he improvised magnificently,
+and there was hardly anything that he could not have done if only--but,
+alas! it is idle mooning in the land of Might-Have-Beens!
+
+The collected essays included in this volume were contributed by Mr.
+Runciman to the pages of _The Family Herald_. In the superfine
+circles of the Sniffy, this fact is sufficient to condemn them unread.
+For of all fools the most incorrigible is surely the conventional
+critic who judges literary wares not by their intrinsic merit or
+demerit, but by the periodical in which they first saw the light. The
+same author may write in the same day two articles, putting his best
+work and thought into each, but if he sends one to _The Saturday
+Review_ and the other to _The Family Herald_, those who relish
+and admire his writing in-the former would regard it as little less
+than a _betise_ to suggest that the companion article in _The
+Family Herald_ could be anything but miserable commonplace, which
+no one with any reputation to lose in "literary circles" would venture
+to read. The same arrogance of ignorance is observable in the
+supercilious way in which many men speak of the articles appearing in
+other penny miscellanies of popular literature. They richly deserve
+the punishment which Mr. Runciman reminds us Sir Walter Scott
+inflicted upon some blatant snobs who were praising Coleridge's poetry
+in Coleridge's presence. "One gentleman had been extravagantly
+extolling Coleridge, until many present felt a little uncomfortable.
+Scott said, 'Well, I have lately read in a provincial paper some
+verses which I think better than most of their sort.' He then recited
+the lines 'Fire, Famine, and Slaughter' which are now so famous. The
+eulogist of Coleridge refused to allow the verses any merit. To Scott
+he addressed a series of questions--'Surely you must own that this is
+bad?' 'Surely you cannot call this anything but poor?' At length
+Coleridge quietly broke in, 'For Heaven's sake, leave Mr. Scott alone!
+I wrote the poem'" (p. 39).
+
+Such lessons are more needed now than ever. Only by stripes can the
+vulgar pseudo-cultured be taught their folly.
+
+The post of father-confessor and general director to the readers of
+_The Family Herald_ which Mr. Runciman filled in succession to
+Mr. Grant Allen is one which any student of human nature might envy.
+There is no dissecting-room of the soul like the Confessional, where
+the priest is quite impalpable and impersonal and the penitent secure
+in the privacy of an anonymous communication. The ordinary man and
+woman have just as much of the stuff of tragedy and comedy in their
+lives as the Lord Tomnoddy or Lady Fitzboodle, and as there are many
+more of them--thank Heaven!--than the lords and ladies, the masses
+afford a far more fertile field for the psychological student of life
+and character than the classes. They are, besides, much less
+artificial. There are fewer apes and more men and women among people
+who don't pay income tax than among those who do. As Director-General
+of the Answers to Correspondents column of _The Family Herald_
+Mr. Runciman was brought into more vitalising touch with the broad and
+solid realities of the average life of the average human being, with
+all its wretched pettiness and its pathetic anxieties, its carking
+cares and its wild, irrational aspirations, than he would have been if
+he had spent his nights in dining out in Mayfair and lounged all day
+in the clubs of Pall Mall.
+
+The essays which he contributed to _The Family Herald_ were therefore
+adjusted to the note which every week was sounded by his innumerable
+correspondents. He was in touch with his public. He did not write above
+their heads. His contributions were eminently readable, bright,
+sensible, and interesting. He always had something to say, and he said
+it, as was his wont, crisply, deftly, and well. And through the chinks
+and crevices of the smoothly written essay you catch every now and then
+glimpses of the Northumbrian genius whose life burnt itself out at the
+early age of thirty-nine.
+
+For James Runciman was anything but a smug, smooth, sermonical
+essayist. He was a Berserker of the true Northern breed, whose fiery
+soul glowed none the less fiercely because he wore a large soft hat
+instead of the Viking's helmet and wielded a pen rather than sword or
+spear. Like the war-horse in Job, he smelled the battle afar off, the
+thunder of the captains and the shouting. His soul rejoiced in
+conflict, in the storm and the stress of the struggle both of nature
+and of man. It was born in his blood, and what was lacking at birth
+came to him in the north-easter which hurled the waves of the Northern
+Sea in unavailing fury against the Northumbrian coast. He lived at a
+tension too great to be maintained without incessant stimulus. It was
+an existence like that of the heroes of Valhalla, who recruited at
+night the energies dissipated in the battles of the day by quaffing
+bumpers of inexhaustible mead. In these essays we have the Berserker
+in his milder moods, his savagery all laid aside, with but here and
+there a glint, as of sun-ray on harness, to remind us of the sinking
+in the glory and pride of his strength.
+
+The essays abound with traces of that consummate mastery of English
+which distinguished all his writings. He, better than any man of our
+time, could use such subtle magic of woven words as to make the green
+water of the ocean surge and boil into white foam on the printed page.
+As befitted a dweller on the north-east coast, he passionately loved
+the sea. The sea and the sky are the two exits by which dwellers in
+the slums of Deptford and in North Shields can escape from the inferno
+of life. He was a close observer of nature and of men. In his pictures
+of life in the depths he was a grim and uncompromising realist, who,
+however, was kept from pessimism by his faith in good women and his
+knowledge of worse men in the past than even "the Squire" and the
+valet-keeping prize-fighters of our time.
+
+There was a sensible optimism about James Runciman, Conservative
+though he styled himself,--although there are probably few who would
+suspect that from such an essay as the bitter description of English
+life in "Quiet Old Towns" or his lamentation over the unequal
+distribution of wealth. His sympathy with the suffering of the
+poor--of the real poor--was a constant passion, and he showed it quite
+as much by his somewhat Carlylean denunciation of the reprobate as by
+his larger advocacy of measures that seemed to him best calculated to
+prevent the waste of child-life.
+
+More than anything else there is in these essays the oozing through of
+the bitter but kindly cynicism of a disillusionised man of the world.
+His essay, for instance, entitled "Vanity of Vanities," is full of the
+sense of vanity of human effort. And yet against the whole current of
+this tendency to despondency and despair, we have such an essay as
+"Are we Wealthy?" in which he declared the day of declamation has
+passed, but that all things are possible to organisation. "In many
+respects it is a good world, but it might be made better, nobler,
+finer in every quarter, if the poor would only recognise wise and
+silent leaders, and use the laws which men have made in order to
+repair the havoc which other men have also made." But he reverts to
+the note of sad and kindly cynicism as he contemplates this supreme
+ironic procession of life with the laughter of gods in the background,
+even although he hastens to remind us that much may be made of it if
+we are wise.
+
+These prose sermons by a tamed Berserker remind us somewhat of a
+leopard in harness. But they are good sermons for all that, veritable
+_tours de force_ considering who is their author and how alien to
+him was the practice of preaching. His essay entitled "A Little Sermon
+on Failures" might be read with profit in many a pulpit, and "Vanity
+of Vanities" would serve as an admirable discourse on Ecclesiastes.
+They illustrate the manysidedness of their gifted author not less than
+his sympathetic treatment of distress and want in "Men who are Down."
+
+These fragments snatched from the mass of his literary output need no
+introduction from me. Mr. Grant Allen has written with friendly
+appreciation of the man. I gladly join him in paying a tribute of
+posthumous respect and admiration to James Runciman and his work.
+
+W.T.S.
+
+
+
+
+SIDE LIGHTS.
+
+
+I.
+
+LETTER-WRITERS.
+
+
+Since old Leisure died, we have come to think ourselves altogether too
+fine and too busy to cultivate the delightful art of correspondence.
+Dickens seems to have been almost the last man among us who gave his
+mind to letter-writing; and his letters contain some of his very best
+work, for he plunged into his subject with that high-spirited
+abandonment which we see in "Pickwick," and the full geniality of his
+mind came out delightfully. The letter in which he describes a certain
+infant schoolboy who lost himself at the Great Exhibition is one of
+the funniest things in literature, but it is equalled in positive
+value by some of the more serious letters which the great man sent off
+in the intervals of his heavy labour. Dickens could do nothing by
+halves, and thus, at times when he could have earned forty pounds a
+day by sheer literary work, he would spend hours in answering people
+whom he had never seen, and, what is more remarkable, these
+"task"-letters were marked by all the brilliant strength and
+spontaneity of his finest chapters. He was the last of the true
+correspondents, and we shall not soon look upon his like again. With
+all the contrivances for increasing our speed of communication, and
+for enabling us to cram more varied action into a single life, we have
+less and less time to spare for salutary human intercourse. The
+post-card symbolises the tendency of the modern mind. We have come to
+find out so many things which ought to be done that we make up our
+minds to do nothing whatever thoroughly; and the day may come when the
+news of a tragedy ruining a life or a triumph crowning a career will
+be conveyed by a sixpenny telegram. In the bad old days, when postage
+was dear and the means of conveyance slow, people who could afford to
+correspond at all sat down to begin a letter as though they were about
+to engage in some solemn rite. Every patch of the paper was covered,
+and every word was weighed, so that the writer screwed the utmost
+possible value for his money out of the post-office. The letters
+written in the last century resembled the deliberate and lengthy
+communications of Roman gentlemen like Cicero: and there is little
+wonder that the good folk made the most of their paper and their time.
+We find Godwin casually mentioning the fact that he paid twenty-one
+shillings and eightpence for the postage of a letter from Shelley;
+readers of _The Antiquary_ will remember that Lovel paid twenty-five
+shillings postage for one epistle, besides half a guinea for the
+express rider. _Certes_ a man had good need to drive a hard bargain
+with the Post Office in those pinching times! Of course the "lower
+orders"--poor benighted souls--were not supposed to have any
+correspondence at all, and the game was kept up by gentlemen of
+fortune, by merchants, by eager and moneyed lovers, and by stray
+persons of literary tastes, who could manage to beg franks from
+members of Parliament and other dignitaries. One gentleman, not of
+literary tastes, once franked a cow and sent her by post; but this
+kind of postal communication was happily rare. The best of the
+letter-writers felt themselves bound to give their friends good worth
+for their money, and thus we find the long chatty letters of the
+eighteenth century purely delightful. I do not care much for Lord
+Chesterfield's correspondence; he was eternally posing with an eye on
+the future--perhaps on the very immediate future. As Johnson sternly
+said, "Lord Chesterfield wrote as a dancing-master might write," and
+he spoke the truth. Fancy a man sending such stuff as this to a raw
+boy--"You will observe the manners of the people of the best fashion
+there; not that they are--it may be--the best manners in the world,
+but because they are the best manners of the place where you are, to
+which a man of sense always conforms. The nature of things is always
+and everywhere the same; but the modes of them vary more or less in
+every country, and an easy and genteel conformity to them, or rather
+the assuming of them at proper times and proper places, is what
+particularly constitutes a man of the world, and a well-bred man!" All
+true enough, but how shallow, and how ineffably conceited! Here is
+another absurd fragment--"My dear boy, let us resume our reflections
+upon men, their character, their manners--in a word, our reflections
+upon the World." It is quite like Mr. Pecksniff's finest vein. There
+is not a touch of nature or vital truth in the Chesterfield letters,
+and the most that can be said of them is that they are the work of a
+fairly clever man who was flattered until he lost all sense of his
+real size. If we take the whole bunch of finikin sermons and compare
+them with the one tremendous knock-down letter which Johnson sent to
+the dandy earl, we can easily see who was the Man of the pair. When we
+return to Walpole, the case is different. Horace never posed at all;
+he was a natural gentleman, and anything like want of simplicity was
+odious to him. The age lives in his charming letters; after going
+through them we feel as though we had been on familiar terms with that
+wicked, corrupt, outwardly delightful society that gambled and drank,
+and scandalised the grave spirits of the nation, in the days when
+George III. was young. Horace Walpole was the letter-writer of
+letter-writers; his gossip carries the impress of truth with it; and,
+though he had no style, no brilliancy, no very superior ability, yet,
+by using his faculties in a natural way, he was able to supply
+material for two of the finest literary fragments of modern times. I
+take it that the most stirring and profoundly wise piece of modern
+history is Carlyle's brief account of William Pitt, given in the "Life
+of Frederick the Great." Once we have read it we feel as though the
+great commoner had stood before us for a while under a searching
+light; his figure is imprinted on the very nerves, and no man who has
+read carefully can ever shake off an impression that seems burnt into
+the fibre of the mind. This superlatively fine historic portrait was
+painted by Carlyle solely from Walpole's material--for we cannot
+reckon chance newspaper scraps as counting for much--and thus the
+gossip of Strawberry Hill conferred immortality on himself and on our
+own Titanic statesman. But Walpole's influence did not end there.
+Whoever wants to read a very good and charming work should not miss
+seeing Sir George Trevelyan's "Life of Charles James Fox." To praise
+this book is almost an impertinence. I content myself with saying that
+those who once taste its fascination go back to it again and again,
+and usually end by placing it with the books that are "the bosom
+friends" of men. Now the grim Scotchman lit up Horace's letters with
+the lurid furnace-glow of his genius; Sir George held the serene lamp
+of the scholar above the same letters, and lo, we have two pieces that
+can only die when the language dies! What a feat for a mere
+letter-writer to achieve! Let ambitious correspondents take example by
+Horace Walpole, and learn that simplicity is the first, best--nay, the
+only--object to be aimed at by the letter-writer.
+
+We have forgotten the easy style of Walpole; we do not any longer care
+much for Johnson, though his letters are indeed models; we have no
+time for lovely whimsical elaborations like those of Cowper or Charles
+Lamb; but still some of us--persons of inferior mind perhaps--do
+attempt to write letters. To these I have a word to say. So far as I
+can judge, after passing many, many hundreds and thousands of letters
+through my hands, the best correspondents nowadays are either those
+who have been educated to the finest point, and who therefore dare not
+be affected, or those who have no education at all. A little while ago
+I went through a terrific letter from a young man, who took up
+seventeen enormous double sheets of paper in trying to tell me
+something about himself. The handwriting was good, the air of educated
+assurance breathed from the style was quite impassive, and the total
+amount of six thousand eight hundred words was sufficient to say
+anything in reason. Yet this voluminous writer managed to say nothing
+in particular excepting that he thought himself very like Lord Byron,
+that he was fond of courting, and that his own talents were supreme.
+Now a simple honest narrative of youthful struggles would have held me
+attentive, but I found much difficulty in keeping a judicial mind on
+this enormous effusion. Why? Because the writer was a bad
+correspondent; he was so wrapped up in himself that he could not help
+fancying that every one else must be in the same humour, and thus he
+produced a dull, windy letter in spite of his tolerable smattering of
+education. On the other hand, I often study simple letters which err
+in the matter of spelling and grammar, but which are enthralling in
+interest. A domestic servant modestly tells her troubles and gives the
+truth about her life; every word burns with significance--and
+Shakespeare himself could do no more than give music of style and
+grave coherence to the narrative. The servant writes well because she
+keeps clear of high-sounding phrases, and writes with entire
+sincerity. It is the sincerity that attracts the judicious reader, and
+it is only by sincerity that any letter-writer can please other human
+creatures. Beauty of style counts for a great deal; I would not
+sacrifice the exquisite daintiness of epistolary style in Lamb or
+Coleridge or Thackeray or Macaulay for gold. But style is not
+everything, and the very best letter I ever read--the letter which
+stands first in my opinion as a model of what written communications
+should be--is without grammar or form or elegance. It is simply a
+document in which the writer suppresses himself, and conveys all the
+intelligence possible in a limited space. To all letter-writers I
+would say, "Let your written words come direct from your own mind. The
+moment you try to reproduce any thought or any cadence of language
+which you have learned from books you become a bore, and no sane man
+can put up with you. But, if you resolve that the thought set down
+shall be yours and yours alone, that the turns of phrase shall be such
+as you would use in talking with your intimates, that each word shall
+be prompted by your own knowledge or your belief, then it does not
+matter a pin if you are ignorant of spelling, grammar, and all the
+graces; you will be a pleasing correspondent." Look at the letters of
+Lady Sarah Lennox, who afterwards became the mother of the brilliant
+Napiers. This lady did not know how to put in a single stop, and her
+spelling is more wildly eccentric than words can describe, yet her
+letters are enthralling, and natural fire and fun actually seem to
+derive piquancy from the schoolgirlish errors. If you sit down to
+write with the intention of being impressive, you may not make a fool
+of yourself, but the chances are all in that direction; whereas, if
+you resolve with rigid determination to say something essential about
+some fact and to say it in your own way, you will produce a piece of
+valuable literature. Of course there are times when dignity and
+gravity are necessary in correspondence, but even dignity cannot be
+divorced from simplicity. Supposing that, by an evil chance, a person
+finds himself bound to inflict an epistolary rebuff on another, the
+rebuff entirely fails if a single affected word is inserted. The most
+perfect example of a courteous snub with which I am acquainted was
+sent by a master of measured and ornamental prose. Gibbon, the
+historian, received a very lengthy and sarcastic letter from the
+famous Doctor Priestley, of Birmingham. Priestley blamed Gibbon for
+his covert mode of attacking Christianity, and observed that Servetus
+was more to be admired for his courage as a martyr than for his
+services as a scientific discoverer. Now Gibbon knew by instinct that
+the historic style would at once become ludicrous if used to answer
+such a letter; so he deserted his ordinary majestic manner, and wrote
+thus--
+
+    "SIR--As I do not pretend to judge of the sentiments or intentions
+    of another, I shall not inquire how far you are inclined to suffer
+    or inflict martyrdom. It only becomes me to say that the style
+    and temper of your last letter have satisfied me of the propriety
+    of declining all further correspondence, whether public or private,
+    with such an adversary."
+
+A perfect sneer, a perfectly guarded and telling rebuff. But I do not
+care to speak about the literature of quarrels; my concern is mainly
+with those readers who have relatives scattered here and there, and
+who try to keep up communications with the said relatives. Judging
+from the countless letters which I see, only a small percentage of
+people understand that the duty of a correspondent is to say something.
+As a general rule, it may be taken for granted that abstract
+reflections are a bore; and I am certain that an exiled Englishman
+would be far more delighted with the letter of a child who told him
+about the farm or the cows, or the people in the street, or the
+marriages and christenings and engagements, than he would be with
+miles of sentiment from an adult, no matter how noble might be the
+language in which the sentiment was couched. Partly, then, as a hint
+to the good folk who load the foreign-bound mails, partly as a hint to
+my own army of correspondents,[1] I have given a fragment of the
+fruits of wide experience. Remember that stately Sir William Temple is
+all but forgotten; chatty Pepys is immortal. Windy Philip de Commines
+is unread; Montaigne is the delight of leisurely men all the world
+over. The mighty Doctor Robertson is crowned chief of bores; the
+despised Boswell is likely to be the delight of ages to come. The
+lesson is--be simple, be natural, be truthful; and let style, grace,
+grammar, and everything else take care of themselves. I spoke just now
+of the best letter I have ever read, and I venture to give a piece of
+it--
+
+      [1] Written when Mr. Runciman answered correspondents of the
+      _Family Herald_.
+
+    "DEAR MADAM,--No doubt you and Frank's friends have heard the sad
+    fact of his death here, through his uncle or the lady who took his
+    things. I will write you a few lines, as a casual friend that sat
+    by his death-bed. Your son, Corporal Frank H. ----, was wounded
+    near Fort Fisher. The wound was in the left knee, pretty bad. On
+    the 4th of April the leg was amputated a little above the knee;
+    the operation was performed by Dr. Bliss, one of the best surgeons
+    in the Army--he did the whole operation himself. The bullet was
+    found in the knee. I visited and sat by him frequently, as he was
+    fond of having me. The last ten or twelve days of April I saw that
+    his case was critical. The last week in April he was much of the
+    time flighty, but always mild and gentle. He died 1st of May.
+    Frank, as far as I saw, had everything requisite in surgical
+    treatment, nursing, &c. He had watchers most of the time--he was
+    so good and well-behaved and affectionate. I myself liked him very
+    much. I was in the habit of coming in afternoons and sitting by
+    him and soothing him; and he liked to have me--liked to put his
+    arm out and lay his hand on my knee--would keep it so a long
+    while. Towards the last he was more restless and flighty at
+    night--often fancied himself with his regiment, by his talk
+    sometimes seemed as if his feelings were hurt by being blamed by
+    his officers for something he was entirely innocent of--said, 'I
+    never in my life was thought capable of such a thing, and never
+    was.' At other times he would fancy himself talking, as it seemed,
+    to children and such like--his relatives, I suppose--and giving
+    them good advice--would talk to them a long while. All the time he
+    was out of his head not one single bad word or idea escaped him.
+    It was remarked that many a man's conversation in his senses was
+    not half so good as Frank's delirium. He seemed quite willing to
+    die--he had become weak and had suffered a good deal, and was
+    quite resigned, poor boy! I do not know his past life, but I feel
+    as if it must have been good; at any rate, what I saw of him here
+    under the most trying circumstances, with a painful wound, and
+    among strangers, I can say that he behaved so brave, so composed,
+    and so sweet and affectionate, it could not be surpassed.... I
+    thought perhaps a few words, though from a stranger, about your
+    son, from one who was with him at the last, might be worth while,
+    for I loved the young man, though I but saw him immediately to
+    lose him."
+
+The grammar here is all wrong, but observe the profound goodness of
+the writer; he hides nothing he knows that bereaved mother wants to
+know about her Frank, her boy; and he tells her everything essential
+with rude and noble tenderness, just as though the woman's sorrowing
+eyes were on his face. It is a beautiful letter, bald as it is, and I
+commend the style to writers on all subjects, even though a
+schoolmaster could pick the syntax to pieces.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+ON WRITING ONESELF OUT.
+
+
+Lord Beaconsfield once compared his opponents on the Treasury Bench to
+a line of exhausted volcanoes. They had taken office when they were
+full of mighty aspirations; they had poured forth measures of all
+sorts with prodigal vigour; and at last they were reduced to wait,
+supine and helpless, for the inevitable swing of the political
+pendulum. A similar process of exhaustion goes on among literary men;
+and there are certain symptoms which cause expert persons to say, "Ah,
+poor Blank seems to have written himself out!" I have occasionally
+alluded to this most distressing topic, but I have never discussed it
+fully.
+
+The subject of brain-exhaustion has a very peculiar interest for the
+public as well as for the professional penman; half the slovenly prose
+which ordinary men use in their correspondence is due to the bad
+models set by written-out men, and the agonising exhibitions made by
+some thousands of public speakers in this devoted and long-suffering
+land are also due to the purblind weakness of the exhausted man. The
+wrought-out writer is not permitted to cease from work; he goes on
+droning out his fixed quantity of mortal dreariness day by day and
+week by week until his mind spins along a particular groove, and he
+probably repeats himself every day of his life without being aware
+that he is anything but brilliantly original. I am obliged to study
+many novels, and I know many most successful workers who at this
+present time are turning out the same fiction under varied names with
+monotonous regularity. They are not quite like an old hand whom I knew
+long ago, who used to promote the characters in novelettes of his own
+and turn them on to the market again and again; the effusions of this
+genius were not of sufficient importance to attract attention from
+folk with clear memories, and I believe that he escaped detection in a
+miraculous way. His untitled country gentleman became a baronet, the
+injured heroine was similarly moved up on the social scale, and the
+noble effort came forth with a fresh name, while the knowing old
+impostor chuckled in his garret and pouched his pittance. I believe
+the funny soul has passed away; but really there are many very
+pretentious persons who do little more than vary his methods
+unconsciously. Poor James Grant delighted many a schoolboy, and
+perhaps his best work was never quite so much appreciated as it ought
+to have been. "The Black Dragoons," "The Queen's Own," and "The
+Romance of War" all contained good work, and many gallant lads
+delighted their hearts with them; I know that one youth at least
+learned "The Black Dragoons" by heart, and amused the people in a
+lonely farm-house by reciting whole chapters on winter nights, and I
+have some reason to believe that the book gave the boy a taste for
+literature which ended in his becoming a novelist. But, as Grant went
+on with machine-like regularity, how curiously similar to each other
+his books became! Narvaez Cifuentes, in "The Romance of War," is the
+type of all the villains; the young dragoons were all alike; the
+wooden heroines might have been chopped out by a literary carpenter
+from one model; the charges, the escapes, the perils of the hero never
+varied very much from volume to volume; and the fact was obvious that
+the brain had ceased to develop any strikingly original ideas and only
+the busy hand worked on. A very sarcastic personage once observed that
+"it is better for literary men to read a little occasionally." To
+outsiders the advice may seem like a piece of grotesque fun; but those
+who know much of literary work are well aware that a writer may very
+easily become possessed by a sick disgust of books which never leaves
+him. He will look at volumes of extracts, he will skim poetry, he will
+read eagerly for a few days or weeks in order to get up a subject; but
+the pure delight in literature for its own sake has left him, and he
+is as decidedly prosaic a tradesman as his own hosier. Such a man soon
+joins the written-out division, and, unless he travels much or has a
+keenly humorous eye for the things about him, he runs a very good
+chance of becoming an intolerable bore. He forgets that the substance
+of his brain is constantly fading, and that he needs not only to
+replenish the physical substance of the organ by constant care, but to
+replenish all his dwindling stores of knowledge, ideas, and even of
+verbal resources. Among the older authors there were some who offered
+melancholy spectacles of mental exhaustion; and the practised reader
+knows how to look for particular features in their work, just as he
+looks for Wouvermans' white horse and Beaumont's brown tree. These
+literary spinners forget the example of Macaulay, who was quite
+contented if he turned out two foolscap pages as his actual completed
+task in mere writing for one day. He was never tired of laying in new
+stores, and he persistently refreshed his memory by running over books
+which he had read oftentimes before. The books and manuscripts which
+Gibbon read in twenty years reached such an enormous number that, when
+he attempted to form a catalogue of them, he was compelled to give up
+the task in despair; he was constantly adding to the enormous
+reservoir of knowledge which he had at command, and thus his work
+never grew stale, and he was ready instantly with a hundred
+illustrative lights on any point which chanced to crop up either in
+conversation or in the course of his reading. The cheap and flashy
+writer is inclined to disdain the men who are thorough in their
+studies; but, while his work grows thin and poor, the judicious
+reader's becomes marked by more and more of richness and fulness.
+
+Burke kept his vast accumulations of knowledge perfectly fresh; and I
+notice in him that, instead of growing more staid and commonplace in
+his style as he increased in years, he grew more vigorous, until he
+actually slid into the excess of gaudy redundancy. I am sorry that his
+prose ever became Asiatic in its splendour; but even that fact shows
+how steadfast effort may prevent a man from writing away his
+originality and his freshness of manner. Observe the sad results of an
+antagonistic proceeding for even the mightiest of brains. Sir Walter
+Scott was building up his brain until he was forty years old; then we
+had the Homeric strength of "Marmion," the perfect art of the
+"Antiquary," the unequalled romantic interest of "Guy Mannering," "Rob
+Roy," "Ivanhoe," "Quentin Durward." The long years of steady
+production drained that most noble flood of knowledge and skill until
+we reached the obvious fatuity of "Count Robert" and the imbecilities
+of "Castle Dangerous." Any half-dozen of such books as "Redgauntlet,"
+"The Pirate," and "Kenilworth" were sufficient to give a man the
+reputation of being great--and yet even that overwhelming opulence was
+at last worn down into mental poverty. Poor Scott never gave himself
+time to recover when once his descent of the last perilous slope had
+begun, and he suffered for his folly in not resting.
+
+In Lord Tennyson's case we see how wisdom may preserve a man's power.
+The poet who gave us "Ulysses" so long ago, the poet who brought forth
+such a magnificent work as "Maud," retained his power so fully that
+thirty years after "Maud" he gave us "Rizpah." This continued
+freshness, lasting nearly threescore years, is simply due to economy
+of physical and mental resource, which is far more important than any
+economy of money. Charles Dickens cannot be said to have been fairly
+written out at any time; but he was often perilously near that
+condition; only his power of throwing himself with eagerness into any
+scheme of relaxation saved him; and, but for the readings and the
+unhappy Sittingbourne railway accident, he might be with us now full
+of years and honours. When he did suffer himself to be worked to a low
+ebb for a time, his writing was very bad. Even in the flush of his
+youth, when he was persuaded to write "Oliver Twist" in a hurry, he
+fell far below his own standard. I have lately read the book after
+many years, and while I find nearly all the comic parts admirable,
+some of the serious portions strike me as being so curiously stilted
+and bad that I can hardly bring myself to believe that Dickens touched
+them. An affectionate student of his books can almost always account
+for the bad patches in Dickens by collating the novels with the
+letters and diary. Much of the totally nauseating gush of the Brothers
+Cheeryble must have been turned out only by way of stop-gap; and there
+are passages in "Little Dorrit" which may have been done speedily
+enough by the author, but which no one of my acquaintance can reckon
+as bearable. Dickens saw the danger of exhausting himself before he
+reached fifty-four years of age, and tried to repair damages inflicted
+by past excesses; but he was too late, and though "Edwin Drood" was
+quite in his best manner, he could not keep up the effort--and we lost
+him.
+
+As for the dismal hacks who sometimes call themselves journalists, I
+cannot grow angry with them; but they do test the patience of the most
+stolid of men. To call them writers--_ecrivains_--would be worse than
+flattery; they are paper-stainers, and every fresh dribble of their
+incompetence shows how utterly written out they are. Let them have a
+noble action to describe, or let them have a world-shaking event given
+them as subject for comment, the same deadly mechanical dulness marks
+the description and the article. Look at an article by Forbes or
+McGahan or Burleigh--an article wherein the words seem alive--and then
+run over a doleful production of some complacent hack, and the
+astounding range that divides the zenith of journalism from the nadir
+may at once be seen. The poor hack has all his little bundle of
+phrases tied up ready to his hand; but he has no brain left, and he
+cannot rearrange his verbal stock-in-trade in fresh and vivid
+combinations. The old, old sentences trickle out in the old, old way.
+Our friends, "the breach than the observance," "the cynosure of all
+eyes," "the light fantastic toe," "beauty when unadorned," "the poor
+Indian," and all the venerable army come out on parade. The weariful
+writer fills up his allotted space; but he does not give one single
+new idea, and we forget within a few minutes what the article
+pretended to say--in an hour we have forgotten even the name of the
+subject treated.
+
+As one looks around on the corps of writers now living, one feels
+inclined to ask the old stale question, "And pray what time do you
+give yourself for thinking?" The hurrying reporter or special
+correspondent needs only to describe in good prose the pictures that
+pass before his eye; but what is required of the man who stays at home
+and spins out his thoughts as the spider spins his thread? He must
+take means to preserve his own freshness, or he grows more and more
+unreadable with a rapidity which lands him at last among the helpless,
+hopeless dullards; if he persists in expending the last remnants of
+his ideas, he may at last be reduced to such extremities that he will
+be forced to fill up his allotted space by describing the interesting
+vagaries of his own liver. Scores of written-out men pretend to
+instruct the public daily or weekly; the supply of rank commonplace is
+pumped up, but the public rush away to buy some cheap story which has
+signs of life in it. My impression is that it is not good for writers
+to consort too much with men of their own class; the slang of
+literature is detestable, and a man soon begins to use it at all
+seasons if he lives in the literary atmosphere. The actor who works in
+the theatre at night, and lives only among his peers during the day,
+ends by becoming a mummer even in private life; a teacher who does not
+systematically shake off the taint of the school is among the most
+tiresome of creatures; the man who hurries from race-meeting to
+race-meeting seems to lose the power of talking about anything save
+horses and bets; and the literary man cannot hope to escape the usual
+fate of those who narrow their horizon. When a man once settles down
+as "literary" and nothing else, he does not take long in reaching
+complete nullity. His power of emitting strings of grammatical
+sentences remains; but the sentences are only exudations from an awful
+blankness--he is written out. The rush after money has latterly
+brought some of our most exquisite writers of fiction into a condition
+which is truly lamentable; the very beauties which marked their early
+work have become garish and vulgarised, and, in running through the
+early chapters of a new novel, a reader of fair intelligence discovers
+that he could close the book and tell the story for himself. One
+artist cannot get away from sentimental merchant-seamen and lovely
+lady-passengers; another must always bring in an infant that is cast
+on shore near a primitive village; another must have for characters a
+roguish trainer of race-horses, an honest jockey, a dark villain who
+tampers with race-horses, and a dashing young man who is saved from
+ruin by betting on a race; another drags in a surprisingly
+lofty-minded damsel who grows up pure and noble amid the most
+repulsive surroundings; another can never forget the lost will;
+another depends on a mock-modest braggart who kills scores of people
+in a humorous way. The mould remains the same in each case, although
+there may be casual variations in the hue of the material poured out
+and moulded. All these forlorn folk are either verging toward the
+written-out condition or have reached the last level of flatness. Like
+the great painters who work for Manchester or New York millionaires,
+these novelists produce stuff which is only shoddy; they lower their
+high calling, and they prepare themselves to pass away into the ranks
+of the nameless millions whose works are ranged along miles of
+untouched shelves in the great public libraries. Fame may not be
+greatly worth trying for; but at least a man may try to turn out the
+very best work of which he is capable. Some of our brightest refuse to
+aim at the highest, and they land in the dim masses of the
+written-out.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE DECLINE OF LITERATURE.
+
+
+It may seem almost an impertinence to use such a word as "decline" in
+connection with literature at a date when every crossing-sweeper can
+read, when free libraries are multiplied, when a new novel is
+published every day all the year round, and when thousands and tens of
+thousands of books--scientific, historical, critical--are poured out
+from the presses. We have several weekly journals devoted almost
+entirely to the work of criticising the new volumes which appear, and
+the literary caste in society is both numerous and powerful. In the
+face of all this I assert that the true literary spirit is declining,
+and that the pure enthusiasm of other days is passing away.
+
+I emphatically deny that the actual literary artists in any line are
+inferior to the men of the past, and never cease to contemn the
+impudent talk of those who shake their heads and allude to the giants
+who are supposed to have lived in some unspecified era of our history.
+Lord Salisbury is greater than Dean Swift as a political writer; the
+author of "John Inglesant" is a finer stylist than any man of the last
+two centuries; as a writer of prose no man known in the world's
+history can be compared to Mr. Ruskin; with Messrs. Froude, Gardiner,
+Lecky, Trevelyan, Bishop Stubbs, and Mr. Freeman we can hold our own
+against the historian of any date; the late Lord Tennyson and Mr.
+Arnold have written poetry that must live. Then in science we have a
+set of men who present the most momentous theories, the most
+profoundly thrilling facts in language which is lucid and attractive
+as that of a pretty fairy-tale. If we turn to our popular journals, we
+find learning, humour, consummate skill in style from writers who do
+not even sign their names. Day by day the stream of wit, logic,
+artistic power flows on, and for all these literary wares there must
+be a steady sale; and yet I am constrained to declare that literature
+is declining. This may sound like juggling with words in the fashion
+approved by Dr. Johnson when he was in his whimsical humour; but I am
+serious, and my meaning will shortly appear. We have more readers and
+fewer students. The person known as "the general reader" is nowadays
+fond of literary dram-drinking--he wants small pleasant doses of a
+stimulant that will act swiftly on his nerves; and, if he can get
+nothing better, he will contentedly batten on the tiny paragraphs of
+detached gossip which form the main delight of many fairly intelligent
+people. Books are cheap and easily procured, and the circulating
+library renders it almost unnecessary for any one to buy books at all.
+In myriads of houses in town or country the weekly or monthly box of
+books comes as regularly as the supplies of provisions; the contents
+are devoured, the dram-drinkers crave for further stimulant, and one
+book chases another out of memory. Literature is as good as and better
+than ever it was in the fabulous palmy days, but it is not so precious
+now; and a great work, so far from being treated as a priceless
+possession and a companion, is regarded only as an item in the _menu_
+furnished for a sort of literary debauch. A laborious historian spends
+ten years in studying an important period; he contrives to set forth
+his facts in a brilliant and exhilarating style, whereupon the word is
+passed that the history must be read. People meet, and the usual
+inquiries are exchanged--"Have you read Brown on the Union of 1707?"
+"Yes--skimmed it through last week. But have you seen Thomson's attack
+on the Apocrypha?" And so the two go on exchanging notes on their
+respective bundles of literary lumber, but without endeavouring to
+gain the least understanding of any author's meaning, and without
+tasting in the smallest degree any one of the ennobling properties of
+ripe thought or beautiful workmanship. The main thing is to be able to
+say that you have read a book. What you have got out of it is quite
+another thing with which no one is concerned; so that in some
+societies where the pretence of being "literary" is kept up the
+bewildered outsider feels as though he were listening to the
+discussion of a library catalogue at a sale. Timid persons think that
+they would be looked on lightly if they failed to show an acquaintance
+with the name at least of any new work; and the consequences of this
+silly ambition would be very droll did we not know how much loose
+thought, sham culture, lowering deceit arise from it. A young man
+lately made a great success in literature. For his first book he
+gained nothing, but lost a good deal; for his second he obtained
+twenty pounds, after he had lost his eyesight for a time, owing to his
+toiling by night and day; his third work brought him fame and a
+fortune. He happened to be in a bookseller's shop when a lady entered
+and said, "What is the price of Mr. Blank's works?" "Thirty shillings,
+madam." "Oh, that is far too much! I have to dine with him to-night,
+and I wanted to skim the books. But he isn't worth thirty shillings!"
+Twenty discourses could not exhaust the full significance of that
+little speech. The lady was typical of a class, and her mode of
+getting ready her table talk is the same which produces confusion,
+mean sciolism, and mental poverty among too many of those who set up
+as arbiters of taste. A somewhat cruel man of letters is said to have
+led on one of the shallow pretenders in a heartless way until the
+victim confidently affected knowledge of a plot, descriptions, and
+characters which had no existence. The trick was heartless and
+somewhat dishonest; but the mere fact that it could be played at all
+shows how far the game of literary racing has done harm.
+
+Let us turn from the book-clubs, the libraries, and the swarming cheap
+editions of our own days, and hark back for about seventy-seven years.
+The great Sheriff was then in the flush of his glorious manhood, and
+it is amazing to discover the national interest that was felt in his
+works as they came rapidly out. When "Rokeby" appeared, only one copy
+reached Cambridge, and the happy student who secured that was followed
+by an eager crowd demanding that the poem should be read aloud to
+them. When "Marmion" was sent out to the Peninsula, parties of
+officers were made up nightly in the lines of Torres Vedras to hear
+and revel in the new marvel. Sir Adam Fergusson and his company of men
+were sheltered in a hollow at the battle of Talavera. Sir Adam read
+the battle-scene from "Marmion" aloud to pass away the time; and the
+reclining men cheered lustily, though at intervals the screech of the
+French shells sounded overhead. It may be said that the publication of
+a new work by Dickens was a national event only a quarter of a century
+ago. True; but somehow even Dickens was not regarded with that grave
+critical interest which private citizens of the previous generation
+bestowed on Scott. The incomparable Sir Walter at that time was
+dwelling far away amid the swamps and grim hills and shaggy thickets
+of Ashestiel. Town-life was not for him, and he grudged the hours
+spent in musty law-courts. Before dawn he went joyously to his work,
+and long before the household was astir he had made good progress. At
+noon he was free to lead the life of a country farmer and sportsman;
+the ponies were saddled, the greyhounds uncoupled, and a merry company
+set off across the hills. The talk was refined and gladsome, and
+visitors came back refreshed and improved to the cottage. And now
+comes the strange part of the story--this healthy retired sporting
+farmer was in correspondence with the greatest and cleverest men in
+the British Isles, and the most masterly criticisms of literature were
+exchanged with a lavish freedom which seems impossible to us in the
+days of the post-card and the hurried gasping telegram. In our day
+there is absolutely no time for that leisurely conscientious study
+which was usual in the time when men bought their books and paid
+heavily for them. Even Mr. Ruskin, in his retirement on the shores of
+Coniston, cannot carry on that graceful and ineffably instructive
+correspondence which was so easy to Southey, Coleridge, and the others
+of that fine company who dwelt in the Lake District. Marvellous it is
+to observe the splendid quality of the literary criticisms which were
+sent to the great ones by men who had no intention of writing or
+selling a line. In studying the memoirs of the century we find that,
+long before the education movement began, there were scores of men and
+women who had no need to make literature a profession, but who were
+nevertheless skilled and cultured as the writers who worked for bread.
+Who now talks of Mr. Morritt of Rokeby? Yet Morritt carried on a
+voluminous correspondence with Scott and the rest of that brilliant
+school. Who ever thinks of George Ellis? But Ellis was the most
+learned of antiquaries, and devoid of the pedantry which so often
+makes antiquarian discourses repellent. His polished expositions have
+the charm that comes from a gentle soul and an exquisite intellect,
+while his criticism is so luminous and just that even Mr. Ruskin
+could hardly improve upon it. Then there were Mr. Skene, Joanna
+Baillie--alas, poor forgotten Joanna!--Erskine, the Shepherd, the
+Duke of Buccleuch, Wilson, and so many more that we grow amazed to
+think that even Scott was able to rear his head above them. All the
+school were alike in their love and enthusiasm for literature; and
+really they seemed to have had a better mode of living and thinking
+than have the smart gentlemen who think that earnest and conscientious
+study is only a heavy species of frivolity. And let it be marked that
+this wide-spread company of private citizens and public writers by no
+means formed a mutual admiration society, for they criticised each
+other sharply and wisely; and the criticism was taken in good part by
+all concerned. When Ellis wrote a sort of treatise to Scott in
+epistolary form, and complained of the poet's monotonous use of the
+eight-syllable line, Scott replied with equanimity, and took as much
+pains to convince his friend as though he were discussing a thesis for
+some valuable prize. On one occasion a few of the really great men
+found themselves in the midst of a society where the practice of
+mutual admiration was beginning to creep in. The way in which two of
+the most eminent guests snubbed the mutual admirers was at once
+delightful and effective. One gentleman had been extravagantly
+extolling Coleridge, until many present felt a little uncomfortable.
+Scott said, "Well, I have lately read in a provincial paper some
+verses which I think better than most of their sort." He then recited
+the lines "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter" which are now so famous. The
+eulogist of Coleridge refused to allow the verses any merit. To Scott
+he addressed a series of questions--"Surely you must own that this is
+bad?" "Surely you cannot call this anything but poor?" At length
+Coleridge quietly broke in, "For Heaven's sake, leave Mr. Scott alone!
+I wrote the poem." This cruel blow put an end to mutual admiration in
+that quarter for some time.
+
+Byron, Southey, Wordsworth, Jeffrey--all in their several
+fashions--regarded literature as a serious pursuit, and they were
+followed by the "illustrious obscure" ones whose names are now sunk in
+the night. How the whirligig of time sweeps us through change after
+change! Any of us can buy for shillings books which would have cost
+our predecessors pounds; we can have access to all the wit, poetry,
+and learning of our generation at a cost of three guineas a year. For
+little more than a shilling per week any reader who lives far away in
+the country can have relays of books sent him at the rate of fifteen
+volumes per relay. Very satisfactory. Most satisfactory too are the
+Board-school libraries, from which a million children obtain the best
+and noblest of literature without money and without price. Still there
+remains the fact that any man who sat down and wrote long letters on
+literary subjects would be looked upon as light-headed. We are too
+clever to be in earnest, and the expenditure of earnestness on such a
+subject as literature is regarded as evidence of pedantry or folly, or
+both. Those men of former days knew their few books thoroughly and
+loved them wisely; we know our many books only in a smattering way,
+and we do not love them at all. When Mr. Mark Pattison suggested that
+a well-to-do man reasonably expend 10 per cent. of his income on
+books, he roused a burst of kindly laughter, and it was suggested that
+solitary confinement would do him a great deal of good. That was a
+fine trenchant mode of looking at the matter. When, in meditative
+hours, I compare the two generations of readers, I think that the
+mental health of the old school and the new school may be compared
+respectively with the bodily health of sober sturdy countrymen and
+effete satiated gourmands of the town. The countrymen has no great
+variety of good cheer, but he assimilates all that is best of his
+fare, and he grows powerful, calm, able to endure heavy tasks. The
+jaded creature of the clubs and the race-courses and the ball-room has
+swift incessant variety until all things pall upon him. In time he
+must begin with damaging stimulants before he can go on with the
+interesting pursuits of each day. Every device is tried to tickle his
+dead palate; but the succession of dainties is of no avail, for the
+man cannot assimilate what is set before him, and he becomes soft of
+muscle, devoid of nerve--a weed of civilisation. Are not the cases
+analogous to those of the sound reverent student and the weary _blase_
+skimmer of books? So, in sum, I say that, even if our enormous output
+of printed matter goes on increasing, and if the number of readers
+increases by millions, yet, so long as men read the thoughts of other
+men not to search for instruction and high pleasure, but to search for
+distraction and vain delirious excitement, then we are justified in
+talking of the decline of literature. Far be it from me to say that
+people should neglect the study of men and women and devote themselves
+to the strained study of books alone. The mere bookman is always more
+or less a dolt; but the wise reader who learns from the living voice
+and visible actions of his fellow-creatures as well as from the dead
+printed pages is on the way to placidity and strength and true wisdom.
+Thus much I will say--the flippant devourer of books can neither be
+wise nor strong nor useful; and it is his tribe who have discredited a
+pursuit which once was noble and of good report.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+COLOUR-BLINDNESS IN LITERATURE.
+
+
+The singular phrase at the head of this Essay came to me from a
+correspondent who wrote in great perplexity. This unhappy man was
+quite miserable because he found that his own views of the
+masterpieces of literature differed from those generally expressed;
+his modesty prevented him from setting himself up in opposition to the
+opinions of others, and he frankly asked, "Is there anything answering
+to colour-blindness which may exist in the mind as regards
+literature?" The absurd but felicitous inquiry took my fancy greatly,
+and I resolved to examine the problem with care. In particular my
+perturbed friend alluded to certain movements in modern criticism. He
+cannot admire Shelley, yet he finds Shelley placed above Byron and
+next to Shakspere; he reads a political poem by a modern master, and
+discovers to his horror that he fails to understand what it is all
+about. Moreover, this very free critic cannot abide Browning and the
+later works of Tennyson; nor can he admire Mr. Swinburne. This is
+dreadful; but worse remains behind. With grief and terror this
+penitent declares that he cannot tolerate "The Pilgrim's Progress" or
+"Don Quixote"; and he goes on to say, "How much of Milton seems trash,
+also Butler, very much of Wordsworth, and all Southey's Epics!" Then,
+with a wail of despair, he says, "These works have stood the test of
+time. Am I colour-blind?" Now this gentleman's state of mind is far
+more common than he supposes; only few people care to confess even to
+their bosom-friends that they do not accept public opinion--or rather
+the opinions of authority. The age has grown contemptible from cant,
+and traditions which are perhaps highly respectable in their place are
+thrust upon us in season and out of season. Regarding matters of fact
+there is no room for differences of opinion when once the fact is
+established; and regarding problems in elementary morality we perceive
+the same surety. No one in his senses thinks of denying that America
+exists; no one would think of saying that it is wrong to do unto
+others as we would they should do unto us; but, when we come to
+questions of taste, we have to deal with subtleties so complex that we
+are forced to deny any one's right to dogmatise. If a man says, "I
+enjoy this book," that is well; but if he adds, "You are a fool if you
+do not enjoy it too," he is guilty of folly and impertinence. These
+dogmatists have given rise to much hypocrisy. By all means let them
+hold their opinions; but at the same time let them make no claims upon
+us. Our beloved old friend Doctor Johnson had many views about
+literature which now appear to us cramped and strange, but we should
+examine his sayings with respect. When however it is found that the
+old man used to foam and bellow at persons who did not approve of his
+paradoxes, one is slightly inclined--in spite of reverence for his
+moral strength--to set him down as a nuisance, and to wonder how
+people managed to put up with him at times. In reading the
+conversations and essays of the moralist we constantly meet with
+passages which we should think over temperately were it not that we
+are informed by the critic or his biographer that only fools would
+venture to question Johnson's wisdom and insight.
+
+Take the famous article on Milton. Speaking of "Lycidas," Johnson
+coolly observes, "In this poem there is no nature, for there is no
+truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of
+a pastoral--easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting; whatever images it
+can supply are easily exhausted, and its inherent improbability always
+forces dissatisfaction on the mind. He who thus grieves will excite no
+sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour." Now this is
+blunt, positive speech, and no one would mind it much if it were left
+alone by ignorant persons; but it is a trifle exasperating when
+Johnson's authority is brought forward at second hand in order to
+convince us that a poem in which many people delight is disgusting.
+Again, the dictator said that a passage in Congreve's "Morning Bride"
+was finer than anything in Shakspere. Very good; let Johnson's opinion
+stand so far as he is concerned, but let us also consider the passage--
+
+  "How reverend is the face of this tall pile,
+  Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads
+  To bear aloft its arched and ponderous roof,
+  By its own weight made steadfast and immovable,
+  Looking tranquillity! It strikes an awe
+  And terror on my aching sight."
+
+This is the stuff which is called "noble" and "magnificent" and
+"impressive" by people who fail to see that Johnson was merely amusing
+himself, as he often did, by upholding a fallacy. The lines from
+Congreve are bald and utterly commonplace; they have no positive
+quality; and when some of us think of such gems as "When daisies pied
+and violets blue," or, "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow," or
+even the description of the Dover cliff, not to mention the thousands
+of other gems in Shakspere's great dramas, we feel inclined to be
+angry when we are asked to admire Congreve's stilted nonsense. There
+is much to be objected to in Shakspere. I hold that a man who wrote
+such a dull play as "Pericles" would nowadays be scouted; but the
+incomparable poet should not be belittled by even a momentary
+comparison with Congreve.
+
+I can readily imagine a man of real good sense and cultured taste
+objecting to "The Pilgrim's Progress." Why should he not? Millions of
+people have read the book, but millions have not; and the fact that
+many of the best judges of style love Bunyan offers no reason why the
+good tinker should be loved by everybody. As for "Don Quixote," a fine
+critic once remarked that he would choose that book if he were to be
+imprisoned for life, and if he were also allowed to choose one volume.
+Doubtless this gentleman has thrust his dictum concerning the value of
+Cervantes's work down the throats of many people who would have liked
+to contradict him. If his example were followed by critics
+universally, it would doubtless be hard to find in Britain a man
+pretending to culture who durst assert that he did not care for "Don
+Quixote." In spite of this, the grave terror with which my
+correspondent regards his own inability to appreciate a famous book is
+more than funny.
+
+Regarding Browning I can only say that, although his worshippers are
+aggressive enough, one readily pardons any person who flies from his
+poems in disgust. A learned and enthusiastic editor actually gave
+"Sordello" up in despair; and even the late Dean Church averred that
+he did not understand the poem, though he wrote lengthy studies on it.
+To my own knowledge there are men and women who do derive intense
+pleasure from Browning, and they are quite right in expressing their
+feelings; but they are wrong in attempting to bully the general public
+into acquiescence. Certain members of the public say, "Your poet
+capers round us in a sort of war-dance; he flicks off our hats with
+some muddled paradox, he leaves a line unfinished and hurts us with a
+projecting conjunction. We want him to stop capering and grimacing,
+and then we shall tell him whether he is good-looking or not." I hold
+that the dissenters are right. People with the necessary metaphysical
+faculty may understand and passionately enjoy their Browning, but only
+too many simple souls have inflicted miserable suffering on themselves
+by trying to unravel the meaning of verses at which they never should
+have looked.
+
+The fact is that we persistently neglect all true educational
+principles in our treatment of literature. Young minds have to be
+directed; but in literature, as in mechanics, the tendency of the
+force is to move along the lines of least resistance. A dexterous
+tutor should watch carefully the slightest tendencies and endeavour to
+find out what kind of discipline his charge can best receive. As the
+mind gains power it is certain to exhibit particular aptitudes, and
+these must be fostered. In the case of a student who is self-taught
+the same method must be observed, and a clever reader will soon find
+out what is most likely to improve him.
+
+To my thinking some of the attempts made to force certain books on
+young folk are shocking and deplorable; for it must be remembered that
+in literature, as in the case of bodily nutriment, different foods are
+required at different times of life. I have known boys and girls who
+were forced to read "Rasselas." Now that allegorical production came
+from the mind of a mature, powerful, most melancholy man, and it is
+intended to show the barren vanity of human wishes. What an absurd
+thing to put in the hands of a buoyant youth! The parents however had
+heard that "Rasselas" was a great and moral book, whereupon the
+children must be subjected to unavailing torture. It maybe said,
+"Would not your hints tend to make people frivolous?" Certainly not,
+if my hints are wisely used. Let it be observed that I merely wish to
+do away with hypocritical conventions whereby timid men like my
+correspondent are subjected to extreme misery and a vast waste of
+intellectual power is inflicted on the world. Suppose that some
+ridiculous guardian had taken up the modern notions about scientific
+culture, and had forced Macaulay to read science alone; should we not
+have lost the Essays and the History?
+
+That one consideration alone vividly illustrates my correspondent's
+quaint and pregnant inquiry. Macaulay was "colour-blind" to science,
+and the most painful times in his happy life were the hours devoted at
+Cambridge to mathematical and mechanical formulae. The genuinely
+cultured person is the one who thinks nothing of fashion and yields to
+his natural bent as directed by his unerring instinct. A certain
+modern celebrity has told us how his early days were wasted; he was
+first of all forced to learn Latin and Greek, though his powers fitted
+him to be a scientific student, and he was next forced to impart his
+own fatal facility to others. Thus his fame came to him late, and the
+most precious years of his life were thrown away. He was colour-blind
+to certain departments of literature which have gained a mighty
+reputation, yet he was obliged by sacred use and wont to act as though
+he relished things which he really abhorred. In a minor degree the
+same process of lavish waste is going on all around us. The most
+utterly incompetent persons of both sexes are those who, in obedience
+to convention, have tried to read everything that was sufficiently
+bepraised instead of choosing for themselves; in conversation they are
+objectionable bores, and it would puzzle the best of thinkers to
+discover their precise use in life. Take it once and for all for
+granted that no human creature attains fruitful culture unless he
+learns his own powers and then resolves to apply them only in the
+directions where they tell best; without so much of self-knowledge he
+is no more a complete man than he would be were he deficient in
+self-reverence and self-control. He must dare to think for himself, or
+he will assuredly become a mediocrity, and probably more or less
+offensive. All his possible influence on his fellow-creatures must
+depart unless he thinks for himself; and he cannot think for himself
+unless he is released from insincerity--the insincerity imposed by
+usage.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE SURFEIT OF BOOKS.
+
+
+Sir John Lubbock once spoke to a company of working-men, and gave them
+some advice on the subject of reading. Sir John is the very type of
+the modern cultured man; he has managed to learn something of
+everything. Finance is of course his strong point; but he stands in
+the first rank of scientific workers; he is a profound political
+student; and his knowledge of literature would suffice to make a great
+reputation for any one who chose to stand before the world as a mere
+literary specialist alone. This consummate all-round scholar picked
+out one hundred books which he thought might be read with profit, and,
+after reciting his appalling list, he cheerfully remarked that any
+reader who got through the whole set might consider himself a
+well-read man. I most fervently agree with this opinion. If any
+student in the known world contrived to read, mark, learn, and
+inwardly digest Sir John's hundred works, he would be equipped at all
+points; but the trouble is that so few of us have time in the course
+of our brief pilgrimage to master even a dozen of the greatest books
+that the mind of man has put forth. Moreover, if we could swallow the
+whole hundred prescribed by our gracious philosopher, we should really
+be very little the better after performing the feat. A sort of
+literary indigestion would ensue, and the mind of the learned sufferer
+would rest under a perpetual nightmare until charitable oblivion
+dulled the memory of the enormous mass of talk. Sir John thinks we
+should read Confucius, the Hindoo religious poetry, some Persian
+poetry, Thucydides, Tacitus, Cicero, Homer, Virgil, a little--a very
+little--Voltaire, Moliere, Sheridan, Locke, Berkeley, George Lewes,
+Hume, Shakspere, Bunyan, Spenser, Pope, Fielding, Macaulay,
+Marivaux--Alas, is there any need to pursue the catalogue to the
+bitter end? Need I mention Gibbon, or Froude, or Lingard, or Freeman,
+or the novelists? To my mind the terrific task shadowed forth by the
+genial orator was enough to scare the last remnant of resolution from
+the souls of his toil-worn audience. A man of leisure might skim the
+series of books recommended; but what about the striving citizens
+whose scanty leisure leaves hardly enough time for the bare recreation
+of the body? Is it not a little cruel to tell them that such and such
+books are necessary to perfect culture, when we know all the while
+that, even if they went without sleep, they could hardly cover such an
+immense range of study? Many men and women yearn after the higher
+mental life and are eager for guidance; but their yearnings are apt to
+be frozen into the stupor of despair if we raise before them a
+standard which is hopelessly unattainable by them. I should not dream
+of approving the saying of Lord Beaconsfield: "Books are fatal; they
+are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are
+nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense."
+Lord Beaconsfield did not believe in the slap-dash words which he put
+into the mouth of Mr. Phoebus, nor did he believe that the greatness
+of the English aristocracy arises from the facts that "they don't read
+books, and they live in the open air." The great scoffer once read for
+twelve hours every day during an entire year, and his general
+knowledge of useful literature was quite remarkable. But, while
+rejecting epigrammatic fireworks, I am bound to say that the habit of
+reading has become harmful in many cases; it is a sort of intellectual
+dram-drinking, and it enervates the mind as alcohol enervates the
+body. If a man's function in life is to learn, then by all means let
+him be learned. When Macaulay took the trouble to master thousands of
+rubbishy pamphlets, poems, plays, and fictions, in order that he might
+steep his mind in the atmosphere of a particular period in history, he
+was quite justified. The results of his research were boiled down into
+a few vivid emphatic pages, and we had the benefit of his labour. When
+Carlyle spent thirteen mortal years in grubbing among musty German
+histories that nearly drove him mad with their dulness, the world
+reaped the fruit of his dreary toil, and we rejoiced in the witty,
+incomparable life of Frederick II. When poor Emanuel Deutsch gave up
+his brilliant life to the study of the obscurest chapters in the
+Talmud, he did good service to the human race, for he placed before us
+in the most lucid way a summary of the entire learning of a wondrous
+people. It was good that these men should fulfil their function; it
+was right on their part to read widely, because reading was their
+trade. But there must be division of labour in the vast society of
+human beings, and any man who endeavours to neglect this principle,
+and who tries to fill two places in the social economy, does so at his
+peril.
+
+Living cheek by jowl with us, there are hundreds and thousands of
+persons who are ruining their minds by a kind of literary debauch.
+They endeavour to follow on the footsteps of the specialists; they
+struggle to learn a little of everything, and they end by knowing
+nothing. They commit mental suicide: and, although no disgrace
+attaches to this species of self-murder, yet disgrace is not the only
+thing we have to fear in the course of our brief pilgrimage. We emerge
+from eternity, we plunge into eternity; we have but a brief space to
+poise ourselves in the light ere we drop into the gulf of doom, and
+our duty is to be miserly over every moment and every faculty that is
+vouchsafed to us. The essentials of thought and knowledge are
+contained in a very few books, and the most toilsome drudge who ever
+preached a sermon, drove a rivet, or swept a floor may become
+perfectly educated by exercising a wise self-restraint, by resolutely
+refusing to be guided by the ambitious advice of airy cultured
+persons, and by mastering a few good books to the last syllable. Mr.
+Ruskin is one of our greatest masters of English, and his supremacy as
+a thinker is sufficiently indicated by Mazzini's phrase--"Ruskin has
+the most analytic mind in Europe." No truer word was ever spoken than
+this last, for, in spite of his dogmatic disposition, Mr. Ruskin does
+utter the very transcendencies of wisdom. Now this glorious writer of
+English, this subtlest of thinkers, was rigidly kept to a very few
+books until he reached manhood. Under the eye of his mother he went
+six times through the Bible, and learned most of the Book by heart.
+This in itself was a discipline of the most perfect kind, for the
+translators of the Bible had command of the English tongue at the time
+when it was at its noblest. Then Mr. Ruskin read Pope again and again,
+thus unconsciously acquiring the art of expressing meaning with a
+complete economy of words. In the evening he heard the Waverley Novels
+read aloud until he knew the plot, the motive, the ultimate lesson of
+all those beautiful books. When he was fourteen years old, he read one
+or two second-rate novels over and over again; and even this was good
+training, in that it showed him the faults to be avoided. Before his
+boyhood was over, he read his Byron with minute attention, and once
+more he was introduced to a master of expression. Byron is a little
+out of fashion now, alas! and yet what a thinker the man was! His
+lightning eye pierced to the very heart of things, and his intense
+grip on the facts of life makes his style seem alive. No wonder that
+the young Ruskin learned to think daringly under such a master! Now
+many people fancy that our great critic must be a man of universal
+knowledge. What do they think of this narrow early training? The use
+and purport of it all are plain enough to us, for we see that the
+gentle student's intellect was kept clear of lumber; his thoughts were
+not battened down under mountains of other men's, and, when he wanted
+to fix an idea, he was not obliged to grope for it in a rubbish heap
+of second-hand notions. Of course he read many other authors by slow
+degrees; but, until his manhood came, his range was restricted. The
+flawless perfection of his work is due mainly to his mother's sedulous
+insistence on perfection within strict bounds. Again, and keeping
+still to authors, Charles Dickens knew very little about books. His
+keen business-like intellect perceived that the study of life and of
+the world's forces is worth more than the study of letters, and he
+also kept himself clear of scholarly lumber. He read Fielding,
+Smollett, Gibbon, and, in his later life, he was passionately fond of
+Tennyson's poetry; but his greatest charm as a writer and his success
+as a social reformer were both gained through his simple power of
+looking at things for himself without interposing the dimness that
+falls like a darkening shadow on a mind that is crammed with the
+conceptions of other folk. Look at the practical men! Nasmyth scarcely
+read at all; Napoleon always spoke of literary persons as
+"ideologists;" Stephenson was nineteen before he mastered his Bible;
+Mahomet was totally uneducated; Gordon was content with the Bible,
+"Pilgrim's Progress," and Thomas a Kempis; Hugh Miller became an
+admirable editor without having read twoscore books in his lifetime.
+Go right through the names on the roll of history, and it will be
+found that in all walks of life the men who most influenced their
+generation despised superfluous knowledge. They learned thoroughly all
+that they thought it necessary to learn within a very limited compass;
+they learned, above all, to think; and they then were ready to speak
+or act without reference to any authority save their own intellect. If
+we turn to the great book-men, we find mostly a deplorable record of
+failure and futility. Their lives were passed in making useless
+comments on the works of others. Look at the one hundred and eighty
+volumes of the huge catalogue in which are inscribed the names of
+Shakspere's commentators. Most of these poor laborious creatures were
+learned in the extreme, and yet their work is humiliating to read, so
+gross is its pettiness, so foolish is its wire-drawn scholarship. Over
+all the crowd of his interpreters the royal figure of the poet towers
+in grand unlearned simplicity. He knew Plutarch, and he thought for
+himself; his commentators knew everything, and did not think at all.
+Compare the supreme poet's ignorance with the other men's extravagant
+erudition! Think of the men whom I may call book-eaters! Dr. Parr was
+a driveller; Porson was a sort of learned pig who routed up truffles
+in the classic garden; poor Buckle became, through stress of books, a
+shallow thinker; Mezzofanti, with his sixty-four languages and
+dialects, was perilously like a fool; and more than one modern
+professor may be counted as nothing else but a vain, over-educated
+boor.
+
+Another word, which may seem like heresy. I contend that the main
+object of reading--after a basis of solid culture has been
+acquired--is to gain amusement. No one was ever the worse for reading
+good novels, for human fortunes will always interest human beings. I
+would say keep clear of Sir John Lubbock's terrific library, and seek
+a little for pleasure. You have authoritative examples before you.
+Prince Bismarck, once the arbiter of the world, reads Miss Braddon and
+Gaboriau; Professor Huxley, the greatest living biologist, reads
+novels wholesale; the grim Moltke read French and English romances;
+Macaulay used fairly to revel in the hundreds of stories that he read
+till he knew them by heart. With these and a hundred other examples
+before us, the humblest and most laborious in the community may
+without scruple read the harmless tales of fictitious joys and
+sorrows, after they have secured that narrow minute training which
+alone gives grasp and security to the intellect.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+PEOPLE WHO ARE "DOWN"
+
+
+If any one happens to feel ashamed when he notices the far-off
+resemblances between the lower animals and man's august self, he will
+probably feel the most acute humiliation should he take an occasional
+walk through a great rookery, such as that in Richmond Park. The black
+cloud of birds sweeps round and round, casting a shadow as it goes;
+the air is full of a solemn bass music softened by distance, and the
+twirling fleets of strange creatures sail about in answer to obvious
+signals. They are an orderly community, subject to recognised law, and
+we might take them for the mildest and most amusing of all birds; but
+wait, and we shall see something fit to make us think. Far off on the
+clear gray sky appears a wavering speck which rises and falls and
+sways from side to side in an extraordinary way. Nearer and nearer the
+speck comes, until at last we find ourselves standing under a rook
+which flies with great difficulty. The poor rascal looks most
+disreputable, for his tail has evidently been shot away, and he is
+wounded. He drops on to a perch, but not before he has run the
+gauntlet of several lines of sharp eyes. The poor bird sits on his
+branch swinging weakly to and fro, humping up his shoulders in
+woebegone style. There is a rustle among the flock, a sharp exchange
+of caws, and one may almost imagine the questions and answers which
+pass. Circumstances prevent us from knowing the rookish system of
+nomenclature; but we may suppose the wounded fellow to be called
+Ishmael. Caw number one says, "Did you notice anything queer about
+Ishmael as he passed?" "Yes. Why, he's got no tail!" "He'll be rather
+a disgrace to the family if he tries to go with us into Sussex on
+Tuesday." "Frightful! He's been fooling about within range of some
+farming lout's gun. The lazy, useless wretch never did know the
+difference between a gun and a broom!" "Serves him right! Let's speak
+to the chief about him." The chief considers the matter solemnly and
+sorrowfully, and then may be understood to say, "Sorry Ishmael's in
+trouble, but we can't acknowledge him. There's an end of the matter.
+You Surrey crow, take a dozen of our mates, and drive that Ishmael
+away." The wounded bird knows his doom. He fumbles his way through the
+branches, and flies off zig-zag and low; but the flight soon mob him.
+They laugh at him, and one can positively tell that they are
+chattering in derision. Presently one of them buffets him; and that is
+the signal for a general assault. Quick as lightning, one of the black
+cowards makes a vicious drive with his iron beak, and flies off with a
+triumphant caw; another and another squawk at the wretch, and then
+stab him, until at last, like a draggled kite, Ishmael sinks among the
+ferns and passes away, while the assassins fly back and tell how they
+settled the fool who could not keep the shot out of his carcass. If
+the observer sees this often, his disposition to moralise may become
+very importunate, for he sees an allegory of human life written in
+black specks on that sky that broods so softly, like a benediction,
+over the fair world. One may easily bring forward half a score of
+similar instances from the animal kingdom. A buffalo falls sick, and
+his companions soon gore and trample him to death; the herds of deer
+act in the same way; and even domestic cattle will ill-treat one of
+their number that seems ailing. The terrible "rogue" elephant is
+always one that has been driven from his herd; the injury rankles in
+him, and he ends by killing any weaker living creature that may cross
+his path. Again, watch a poor crow that is blown out to sea. So long
+as his flight is strong and even, he is unmolested; but let him show
+signs of wavering, or, above all, let him try to catch up with a
+steamship that is going in the teeth of the wind, and the fierce gulls
+slay him at once.
+
+Do we not observe something analogous taking place in the terrible
+crush of civilised human life? To thoughtful minds there is no surer
+sign of the progress that humanity is slowly making than the fact that
+among our race the weak are succoured. Were it not for the sights of
+helpfulness and pity that we can always see, many of us would give way
+to despair, and think that man is indeed no more than a two-legged
+brute without feathers. The savage even now kills aged people without
+remorse, just as the Sardinian islanders did in the ancient days; and
+there are certain tribes which think nothing of destroying an
+unfortunate being who may have grown weakly. Among us, the merest
+lazar that crawls is sure of some succour if he can only contrive to
+let his evil case be known; and even the criminal, let him be never so
+vile, may always be taken up and aided by kindly friends for the bare
+trouble of asking.
+
+But there are still symptoms of the animal disposition to be seen, and
+only too many people conspire to show that human nature is much the
+same as it was in the days when Job called in his agony for comfort
+and found none. Wonderful and disquieting it is to see how the noblest
+of minds have been driven in all ages to mourn over the disposition of
+men to strike at the unfortunate! The Book of Job is the finest piece
+of literary work known to the world, and it is mainly taken up with a
+picture of the treatment which the Arabian patriarch met with at the
+hands of his friends. People do not look for sarcasm in the Bible, but
+the unconscious lofty sarcasm of Job is so terrible, that it shows how
+a mighty intellect may be driven by bitter wrong into transcendencies
+of wrath and scorn. "Ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with
+you." The old desert-prince will not succumb even in his worst
+extremity, and he lashes his tormentors with wild but strong bursts of
+withering satire. But Job was down, and his cool friends went on
+imperturbably, probing his weakness, sneering at his excuses, and, I
+suspect, rejoicing not a little in his wild outbreaks of pain and
+despair. The book is one of the world's monuments, and it has been
+placed there to remind all people that dwell on earth of their own
+innate meanness; it has been placed before us as a lesson against
+cruelty, treachery, ingratitude. Have we gone very far in the
+direction since Job raged and mourned? Those who look around them may
+answer the question in their own way.
+
+The world had not progressed much in Shakspere's time, at any rate.
+Like all of us, Shakspere was able to look on the work of beautiful
+and kind souls--no one has ever spoken more nobly of the benefactions
+conferred on their brethren by the righteous; but that calm immortal
+soul had in it depths of awful scorn and anger, which bubbled up only
+a very few times. Few people read "Timon of Athens"; and I do not
+blame the neglect, for it is a spirit-crushing play, and a man must be
+bold if he cares to look at it twice. But in it it is plain to me that
+Shakspere lets us see a gleam from the boiling flood of scorn that
+raged far under his serene exterior. The words bite; the abandonment
+of the satirist is complete. He puts into the mouth of the man who is
+down a whole acrid and scurrilous philosophy of success and failure;
+and there is not a passage in Swift which can equal for venom and
+emphasis the ferocious words of the Athenian misanthrope. We know
+nothing of Shakspere's mood while he was writing this cruel piece, but
+I should imagine he must have been ready to quit the world in a
+veritable ecstasy of wild passion and contempt.
+
+If we take away the literature of love and the literature of fear, we
+have but little left save the endless works that harp on one
+theme--the remorseless savagery of civilised men toward those who
+fail, or are supposed to fail, in life's grim warfare.
+
+  "Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
+  That dost not bite so nigh
+    As benefits forgot!
+  Though thou the waters warp,
+  Thy tooth is not so sharp
+    As friend remembered not!"
+
+Those lines are hackneyed until every poetaster can quote them or
+parody them at will; but very few readers consider that the bitter
+verse summarises a whole literature. From Homer to Tennyson the ugly
+tune has been played on all strings; and mankind have such a vivid
+perception of the truth uttered by the satirists, that they read the
+whole story with gusto whenever it is put into a fresh form--and each
+man thinks that he at least is not one of those for whom the poet's
+lash is meant. Novel, essay, poem, play, and sermon--all recur with
+steady persistence to one ancient topic; and yet men try their best to
+bring themselves low, as they might if Job, Shakspere, Congreve, and
+Tennyson had never written at all, and as though no warnings were
+being actually enacted all round, as on a stage.
+
+Sometimes I wonder whether the majority of men ever really try to
+conceive what it is to be down until their fate is upon them. I can
+hardly think it. It has been well said that all of us know we shall
+die, but none of us believe it. The idea of the dark plunge is
+unfamiliar to the healthy imagination; and the majority of our race go
+on as if the great change were only a fable devised by foolish poets
+to scare children. I believe that, if all men were vouchsafed a sudden
+comprehension of the real meaning of death, sin would cease.
+Furthermore, I am persuaded that if every man could see in a flash the
+burning history of the one who is down, the whole of our reasonable
+population would take thought for the morrow--drink-shops would be
+closed, the dice-box would rattle no more, and the sight of a genuine
+idler would be unknown. Not a few of us have seen tragedies enough in
+the course of our pilgrimage, and have learned to regard the doomed
+weaklings--the wreckage of civilisation, the folk who are down--with
+mingled compassion and dismay. I have found in such cases that the
+miserable mortals never knew to what they were coming; and the most
+notable feature in their attitude was the wild and almost tearful
+surprise with which they regarded the conduct of their friends. The
+pictures of these forlorn wastrels people a certain corner of the
+mind, and one can make the ragged brigade start out in lines of deadly
+and lurid fire at a moment's warning, until there is a whole Inferno
+before one. But I shall speak no more at present of the degraded ones;
+I wish to gain a thought of pity for those who are blameless; and I
+want to stir up the blameless ones, who are generally ignorant
+creatures, so that they may exercise a little of the wisdom of the
+serpent in time. Be it remembered that, although the ruined and
+blameless man is not subjected to such moral scorn as falls to the lot
+of the wastrel, the practical consequences of being down are much the
+same for him as for the victim of sloth or sin. He feels the pinch of
+physical misery, and, however lofty his spirit may be, it can never be
+lofty enough to relieve the gnawing pains of bodily privation.
+Moreover, he will meet with persecution just as if he were a villain
+or a cheat, and that too from men who know that he is honest. The hard
+lawyer will pursue him as a stoat pursues a hare; and, if he asks for
+time or mercy, the iron answer will be, "We have nothing to do with
+your private affairs; business is business, and our client's interests
+must not suffer merely because you are a well-meaning man." Even our
+dear Walter Scott, the soul of honour, one of the purest and brightest
+of all the spirits that make our joy, the gallant struggler--even that
+delight of the world was hounded to death by a firm of bill-discounters
+at the very time when he was breaking his gallant heart in the effort
+to retrieve disaster. No! The world is pitiful so far as its kindest
+hearts are concerned, but the army of commonplace people are all
+pitiless. See what follows when a man goes "down." Suppose that he
+invests in bank shares. The directors are all men of substance, and
+most of them are even lights of religion; the leading spirit attends
+the same church as our investor, and he is a light of sanctity--so
+pure of heart is he, that he will not so much as look at Monday's
+newspapers, because their production entailed Sabbath labour. Indeed,
+one wonders how such a man could bring himself to eat or sleep on
+Sunday, because his food must be carried up for him, and, I presume,
+his bed must be made. All the directors are free in their gifts to
+churches and chapels--for that is part of a wise director's
+policy--and all of them live sumptuously. But surely our investor
+should guess that all this lavish expenditure must come out of
+somebody's pocket; and surely he has skill enough to analyse a
+balance-sheet! The good soul goes on trusting, until one fine morning
+he wakes up and finds that his means of subsistence are gone. Then
+comes the bitter ordeal; his friends are grieved, the public are
+enraged, the sanctified men go to gaol, and the investor faces an
+altered world. His oldest friend says, "Well, Tom, it's a bitter bad
+business, and if a hundred is of any use to you, it is at your
+service; but you know, with my family," &c. The unhappy defrauded
+fellow finds it hard to get work of any sort; begins to show those
+pathetic signs of privation which are so easily read by the careful
+observer; hat, boots, coat, grow shabby; the knees seem to have a
+pathetic bend. Friends are not unkind, but they have their own burdens
+to bear, and if he inflicts his company and his sorrows too much on
+any one of them, he is apt to receive a hint--probably from a
+woman--that his presence can be spared; so the downward road trends
+towards utter deprivation, and then to extinction. A young man may
+recover from almost any blow that does not affect his character; and
+this was strikingly proved in the case of that brilliant man of
+science, R.A. Proctor, who was afterwards stricken out of life
+untimely. He lost his fortune in the crash of Overend and Gurney's
+company, and he immediately forgot his luxurious habits and turned to
+work with blithe courage. How he worked only those who knew him can
+tell, for no four men of merely ordinary power could have achieved
+such bewildering success as he did. But a man who is on the downward
+slope of life cannot fare like the lamented Proctor; he must endure
+the pangs of neglect, until death comes and relieves him of the dire
+torture of being down.
+
+And the harmless widows who are suddenly robbed of their protector.
+Ah, how some of them are made to suffer! Little Amelia Sedley, in
+"Vanity Fair," has her sufferings and indignities painted by a
+master-hand, and there is not a line thickened or darkened overmuch.
+The miserable tale of the cheap lodgings, and the insults which the
+poor girl had flung at her because, in the passion of her love, she
+spent trifling sums on her boy--how actual it all seems! The widow who
+may have held her head high in her days of prosperity, soon receives
+lessons from women: they call it teaching her what is her proper
+place. Those good and discreet ladies have a notion that their conduct
+is full of propriety and discretion and sound sense; but how they make
+their sisters suffer--ah, how they make the poor things suffer! I
+believe that, if any improvident man could see, in a keenly vivid
+dream, a vision of his wife's future after his death, he would stint
+himself of anything rather than run the risk of having to reflect on
+his death-bed that he had failed to do his best for those who loved
+him. Women sometimes out of pure wantonness try to exasperate a man so
+that he falls into courses which bring his end swiftly. Could those
+foolish ones only see their own fate when the doom of being down in
+the world came upon them, they would strain every nerve in their
+bodies so that their husband's life and powers of work might be spared
+to the last possible hour.
+
+What can the man do who is down? Frankly, nothing, unless his strength
+holds. I advise such a one never to seek for help from any one but
+himself, and never to try for any of the employments which are
+supposed to be "easy." Cool neglect, insulting compassion, lying
+promises, evasive and complimentary nothings--these will be his
+portion. If he cannot perform any skilled labour, let him run the risk
+of seeming degraded; and, if he has to push a trade in matches or
+flowers, let him rather do that than bear the more or less kindly
+flouts which meet the supplicant. To all who are young and strong I
+would say, "Live to-day as though to-morrow you might be ruined--or
+dead."
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+ILL-ASSORTED MARRIAGES.
+
+
+The people who joke and talk lightly about marriage do not seem to
+have the faintest rational conception of the awful nature of the
+subject. Awful it is; and, as serious men go through life, they become
+more and more impressed with the momentous results which depend on the
+choice made by a man or woman. A lad of nineteen lightly engages
+himself; he knows nothing of the gloom, the terror, the sordid horror
+of the fate that lies before him; and the unhappy girl is equally
+ignorant. In fourteen years the actual substance of that young
+fellow's very body is twice completely changed; he is a man utterly
+different from the boy who contracted the marriage; there is not a
+muscle or a thought in common between the boy and the man--yet the man
+takes all the consequences of the boy's act. Supposing that the pair
+are well matched, life goes on happily enough for them; but, alas, if
+the man or the woman has to wake up and face the ghastly results of a
+mistake, then there is a tragedy of the direst order! Let us suppose
+that the lad is cultured and ambitious, and that he is attracted at
+first by a rosy face or pretty figure only; supposing that he is thus
+early bound to a vulgar commonplace woman, the consequences when the
+woman happens to have a powerful will and an unscrupulous tongue are
+almost too dreadful to be pictured in words.
+
+Let no young folk fancy that mind counts for nothing in marriage. A
+man must have congenial company, or he will fly to company that is
+uncongenial; he must have joy of some kind, or he will fall into
+despair. The company and the joy can best be supplied by the wife to
+the husband, and by the husband to the wife. If the woman is dull and
+trivial, then her husband soon begins to neglect her; if she is meek
+and submissive, the neglect does not rouse her, and there are no
+violent consequences; but it is awful to think of the poor creature
+who sits at home and dimly wonders in the depth of her simple soul
+what can have happened to change the man who loved her. She has no
+resources--she can only love; she is perhaps kindly enough--yet she is
+punished only because she and her lad made a blundering choice before
+their judgments were formed. But, if the woman is spirited and
+aggressive, then the lookers-on see part of a hideous game which might
+well frighten the bravest into celibacy. She is self-assertive, she
+desires--very rightly--to be first, and at the first symptom of a
+slight from her husband she begins the process of nagging. The man is
+refined, and the coarseness which he did not perceive before marriage
+strikes him like a venomed point now; he replies fiercely, and perhaps
+shows contempt; then the woman tries the effect of weeping. Unhappily
+the tears are more exasperating than the scolding, and the quarrel
+ends by the man rushing from the house. Then for the first time the
+pair find that they have to deal with the whole forces of society; in
+their rage they would gladly part and meet no more--or they think
+so--but inexorable society steps in and declares that the alliance is
+fixed until death or rascality looses it. For a little while the
+estrangement lasts, and then there is a reconciliation, after which
+all goes well for a time. But the shocking thing about the
+ill-assorted marriage is that the estrangements grow longer and longer
+and the quarrels ever more bitter. Even children do but little to
+reconcile the jarring claims of man and wife, for they are a sign of
+the lasting shackle which each of the miserable beings wants to break.
+
+Worst of all in the whole terrible affair is the fact that it matters
+not who gets the mastery--both are made more wretched. If the man has
+an indomitable will and conquers the woman, he becomes a morose and
+sarcastic tyrant, who makes her tremble at his scowl, while she
+becomes a beaten drudge who makes up for long spells of submission by
+shrill outbursts of casual defiance. If the woman gains the mastery, I
+honestly believe that the cause of strict morality is better served;
+but the sight of the man's gradual degradation is so sickening that
+most people prefer keeping out of the house where a henpecked
+individual lives. As time goes by, it matters not which wins in the
+odious contest: both undergo a subtle loss of self-respect. In an
+ordinary quarrel between men reason may possibly come in to some
+degree; but in a quarrel between man and wife reason is utterly
+excluded. The man becomes feminine, the woman grows masculine, and the
+effect of this change of nature is disgusting and ludicrous to an
+outsider, but serious in the extreme to the parties principally
+concerned. By degrees indifference and rage give way to sullen, secret
+hatred, which finds a vent usually in poisonous sarcasm.
+
+Matters are not much better when the superiority is on the woman's
+side. It is delightful to see a husband who is proud of his wife's
+cleverness, and good-natured men are pleased by his innocent boasting.
+The most pleasant of households may be found in cases where a clever,
+good-humoured, dexterous woman rules over a sweet-tempered but
+somewhat stupid man. She respects his manhood, he adores her as a
+superior being, and they live a life of pure happiness. But, sad to
+say, the husband is not usually good-humouredly willing to acknowledge
+his partner's superiority, and in that case the girl's doom is a cruel
+one. She may marry a gross, stupid lout, who begins by yawning away
+his time in leisure hours, and ends by going out to meet companions of
+his own sort. By and by comes the time when the ruffian grows
+aggressive, and then the proud girl has to bear brutalities which rack
+her very soul. Steadily the work of degradation goes on, and at last
+the brutal man becomes a capricious bully, while the refined lady
+sinks into a careless draggletail.
+
+I have traversed many lands and seen men and cities, and know that the
+cruel work which I have described goes on in too many quarters. The
+ill-assorted marriage is made more wretched by the occasional glimpses
+which the man and woman get of happy homes. The loveliest sight that
+can be watched on earth is the daily life of a well-matched couple.
+They need not be even in intellect, but each must have some quality
+which gives superiority; such people, even if they have to struggle
+hard, lead a life which is almost ideally happy. The great thing which
+gives happiness is mutual confidence, and, when we see man and wife
+exhibiting quiet and mutually respectful familiarity, we may be fairly
+certain that they are to be looked on as most fortunate in the world.
+By an exquisite natural law it happens that mentally a woman is the
+exact complement of the man who is her proper mate, and her intellect
+has qualities far finer and more subtle than the man's. Among hard
+City men it is a common saying that no one would ever make a bad debt
+if he took his customer home to dinner first. That means that the wife
+would instantly measure the guest's character with that
+lightning-footed tact which women possess. No man ever yet was
+completely successful in life unless he took women's counsel in great
+affairs; and, when a man has a wife with whom he can consult, his
+chance is bettered a thousandfold.
+
+To see a household where love and unity reign drives ill-matched folk
+to madness. The man declares that his friend's wife makes the
+felicity; the woman praises the other husband; and the unhappy souls
+grow jealous together, and hate each other more cordially by reason of
+the joy which they have seen. All sorts of evil ends come to these
+wretched unions--in every workhouse, asylum, and prison the traces of
+the social catastrophe may be seen; and, even when the misery is
+hidden from general view, the tragedy is shocking to those who can
+peep behind the scenes and look at the bad play. A very wise man has
+said that "success is a constitutional trait." The phrase is a
+profound one. A man who is born with "constitutional" power of
+choosing the right mate is all but assured of success, and a woman has
+the same fortune; but, in addition to the power of choosing, both man
+and woman need training; and we cannot call a civilised being properly
+trained unless he has some idea of the way to set about his choice.
+
+The cases in which idleness, or pique, or dulness drives a man or
+woman to take alcohol are numerous and loathsome. Women who start
+married life as bright, merry, hopeful creatures become mere degraded
+animals; and the odd thing about the matter is that the husband is
+always the last to see the turn that his affairs are taking. A woman's
+name may be in the mouths of scores of people before the party most
+concerned wakes up to a sense of his position and is faced by a
+picture of helpless and lost womanhood. If the man falls into the
+alcoholic death-trap, we have once more a spectacle of dull misery
+which may be indicated but which cannot be accurately described. The
+victim grows hateful--his symptoms have been scientifically described
+by one of the finest of modern physiologists--he is uncertain in mind,
+and vengeful and revengeful. His wife is obliged to live with him,
+under his rule and power, but she finds it hopeless to meet his
+wishes, desires, fancies, and fantasies, however much she may study
+and do her best to oblige, conciliate, and concede. To persons of this
+class everything must be conceded, and yet they are neither pacified
+nor satisfied; they cannot agree even with themselves, and their homes
+are, literally speaking, hells on earth.
+
+Then we have the cases wherein a poetic and artistic spirit is allied
+to a gross and worldly soul of the lowest type. One of the most
+brilliant artists and poets of his generation was informed by his wife
+that she did not care for art and poetry and that sort of stuff. "It's
+all high-falutin' nonsense," remarked this gifted and confident dame;
+and the shock of surprise which thrilled her husband will be
+transmitted to generations of readers. Hitherto we have dwelt upon
+mere brutalities; but those who know the world best know that the most
+acute forms of agony may be inflicted without any outward show of
+brutality being visible. A generous high-souled girl with a passion
+for truth and justice is often tied to a fellow whose "company"
+manners are polished, but who is at heart a cruel boor. He can stab
+her with a sneer which only she can understand; he can delicately hint
+to her that she is in subjection, and he can assume an air of cool
+triumph as he watches her writhe. I have often observed passages of
+domestic drama which looked very like comedy at first sight, but which
+were really quivering, torturing tragedy.
+
+It is strange that the jars of married life have been so constantly
+made the subject for joking. The attitude of the ordinary witling is
+well known; but even great men have made fun out of a subject which is
+the most momentous of all that can engage the attention of the
+children of men. In running through Thackeray's works lately I was
+struck by the flippancy with which some of the most heartbreaking
+stories in literature are treated. Thackeray was one of the sweetest
+and tenderest beings that ever lived, and no doubt his jocularity was
+assumed; but minor men take him seriously, and imitate him. Look at
+the stories of Frank Berry, of Rawdon Crawley, of Clive and Rosie
+Newcome, and of General Baynes--they are sad indeed, but the tragic
+element in them is only shadowed forth by the great master. There is
+nothing droll in the history of mistaken marriages. At the very best
+each error leads to the ruin or deterioration of one soul, and that is
+no laughing matter.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+HAPPY MARRIAGES.
+
+Although a strong modern school of writers care only to talk of misery
+and gloom and frustration, I retain a taste for joy and sweetness and
+kindliness. Life has so many sharp crosses, so many inexplicable
+sorrows for us all, that I hold it good to snatch at every moment of
+gladness, and to keep my eyes on beautiful things whenever they can be
+seen. During the days when I was pondering the subject of tragic
+marriages, I read the letters of the great Lord Chatham. The mighty
+statesman was not distinguished as a letter-writer; like Themistocles,
+he might have boasted that, though he was inapt where small
+accomplishments were concerned, he converted a small state into a
+great empire. John Wilkes called our great man "the worst
+letter-writer of his age." Yet to my mind the correspondence of
+Chatham with his wife is among the most charming work that we know.
+Here is one fragment which is delightful enough in its way. He had
+been out riding with his son William, who afterwards ruled England,
+becoming Prime Minister at an age when other lads are leaving the
+University. His elder son stayed at home to study, and this is the
+fashion in which Chatham writes about his boys--"It is a delight to
+let William see nature in her free and wild compositions, and I tell
+myself, as we go, that the General Mother is not ashamed of her child.
+The particular loved mother of our promising tribe has sent the
+sweetest and most encouraging of letters to the young Vauban. His
+assiduous application to his profession did not allow him to accompany
+us in learning to defend the happy land we were enjoying. Indeed, my
+life, the promise of our dear children does me more good than the
+purest of pure air." Observe how this pompous and formal statement is
+framed so as to please the mother. The writer does not say much about
+himself; but he knows that his wife is longing to hear of her
+darlings, and he tells her the news in his high-flown manner. He was
+not often apart from the lady whom he loved so well; but I am glad
+that they were sometimes separated, since the separations give us the
+delicate and tender letters every phrase of which tells a long story
+of love and confidence and mutual pride. That unequalled man who had
+made England practically the mistress of the world, the man who gained
+for us Canada and India, the man whom the King of Prussia regarded as
+our strongest and noblest, could spend his time in writing pretty
+babble about a couple of youngsters in order to delight their mother.
+If he had gone to London, the people would have taken the horses out
+of his carriage, and dragged him to his destination. He was far more
+powerful than the king, and he was almost worshipped by every officer
+and man in the Army and Navy. Excepting the Duke of Wellington, it is
+probable that no subject ever was the object of such fervent
+enthusiasm; and many men would have lived amidst the whirl of
+adulation. But Chatham liked best to remain in the sweet quiet
+country; and the story of his life at Lyme Regis is in reality a
+beautiful poem.
+
+Why did this imperial, overbearing, all-powerful man love to stay in
+retirement when all Europe was waiting for his word? Why did he spend
+days in sauntering in country lanes, and chatting during quiet
+evenings with one loved friend alone? That question goes to the root
+of my subject. Chatham was happily married; when he was torn by bitter
+rage and disappointment, when his sovereign repulsed him, and when not
+even the passionate love of an entire nation availed to further the
+ends on which the Titan had set his heart, he carried his sorrow with
+him, and drew comfort from the goodness of the sweet soul who was his
+true mate. It is a very sweet picture; and we see in history how the
+softening home influence finally converted the, awful, imposing,
+tyrannical Chatham into a yielding, fascinating man.
+
+From the world's arbiter to the bricklayer's labourer, the same
+general law holds; the man who makes a happy marriage lives out his
+life at its best--he may fail in some things, but in the essential
+direction he is successful. The woman who makes a happy marriage may
+have trials and suffering to bear, but she also gains the best of
+life; and some of the purest and most joyous creatures I have known
+were women who had suffered in their day. When I think of some
+marriages whereof I know the full history, I am tempted to believe in
+human perfectibility; and at chance times there come to me vague
+dreams of a day when the majority of human beings will find life
+joyous and tranquil. What one wise and well-matched couple achieve in
+life may be achieved by others as the days go on. Surely jarring and
+misery are not necessary in the great world of nations or in the
+little world of the family? Confidence, generosity, and complete
+unselfishness on both sides are needed to make the life of a married
+pair serene and happy. I know that the demand is a heavy one; but, ah,
+when it is adequately met, is not the gain worth all the sacrifices a
+thousand times over? There may be petty and amusing differences of
+opinion, quiet banter, and an occasional grave conflict of judgment;
+but, so long as three central requirements--confidence, generosity,
+and unselfishness--are met, there can be no serious break in the
+procession of placid, happy days. I abhor the gushing talk sometimes
+heard about "married lovers;" the people who dignify life and honour
+the community are those who are lovers and something more. Of course
+we can all feel sympathy with Fanny Kemble when she says that the
+poetry of "Romeo and Juliet" went into her blood as she spoke on the
+stage; but there is something needed beyond wild Italian raptures
+before the ideal match is secured. Some of us are almost glad that
+Juliet passed away in swift fashion when the cup of life foamed most
+exquisitely at her lips. How would she have fared had that changeable
+firebrand Romeo taken to wandering once more? It is a grievously
+flippant question to ask when the most glorious of all love-poems is
+in question; yet I ask it very seriously, and merely in a symbolic
+way. Romeo is a shadow, the adored Juliet is a shadow; but the two
+immortal shades represent for all time the mad lovers whose lives end
+in bitterness. I say again that only reasonable and calm love brings
+happy marriages. It is as true as any other law of nature that "he
+never loved who loved not at first sight;" but the frantic, dissolute
+man of genius who wrote that line did not care to go further and speak
+of matters which wise men of the world cannot disregard. The first
+blinding shock of the supreme passion comes in the course of nature;
+but wise people live through the unspeakable tumult of the soul, and
+use their reason after they have resisted and subdued into calm
+strength the fierce impulse which has wrecked so many human creatures.
+ When writing on "Ill-Assorted Marriages," I urged that men and women
+who are about to take the terribly momentous steps towards marriage
+must be guided by reason, and I repeat my adjuration here. When Lord
+Beaconsfield said, "I observe those of my friends who married for
+love--some of them beat their wives, and the remainder are divorced,"
+he knew that he was uttering a piece of mockery which would have been
+blasphemous had it been set down in all seriousness. He meant to say
+that headlong marriages--marriages contracted in purblind
+passion--always end in misery. No marriage can bring a spark of
+happiness unless cool reason guides the choice of the contracting
+parties. A hot-headed stripling marries a handsome termagant--her
+brilliant face, her grace, and rude health attract him, and he does
+not quietly notice the ebullitions of her temper. She is divine to
+him; and, though she snarls at her younger brother, insults her
+mother, and to outsiders plainly exhibits all sorts of petty
+selfishness, yet the stripling rushes on to his fate; and at the end
+of a few miserable years he is either a broken and hen-pecked creature
+or a mean and ferocious squabbler.
+
+How different is the case of those who are not precipitate! Take the
+case of the splendid cynic whose words we have quoted. With his usual
+sagacity, Lord Beaconsfield waited, watched, and finally succeeded in
+making an ideally happy marriage in circumstances which would have
+affrighted an ordinary person. All the world knows the story now. The
+brilliant young statesman dared not risk the imputation of
+fortune-hunting; but the lady knew his worth; she knew that she could
+aid him, and she frankly threw over all the traditions of her sex and
+of society and offered herself to him. No one in England who is
+interested in this matter can fail to know every detail of a bargain
+which makes one proud of one's species, for Lord Ronald Gower has told
+us about the married life of the brilliant Hebrew who mastered
+England. The two kindred souls were bound up in each other. The lady
+was not learned or clever, and indeed her husband said, "She was the
+best of creatures; but she never could tell which came first--the
+Greeks or the Romans." But she had something more than cleverness--she
+had the confidence, generosity, and unselfishness which I have set
+forth as the main conditions of happiness. I must repeat an old story;
+for it cannot too often be repeated. Think of the woman who gathered
+all her resolution and uttered no sound, although the end of her
+finger was smashed by the closing of the carriage-door! Mr. D'Israeli
+was about to make a great speech; so his wife would not disturb him on
+his way to Westminster, though flesh and bone of her finger were
+crushed. She fainted when the orator had gone to his task; but her
+fortitude did not forsake her until her beloved was out of danger of
+being perturbed. That one authentic story is worth a hundred dramatic
+tales of stagey heroism. And we must remember how the statesman repaid
+the simple devotion of his wife. All his spare time was passed in her
+company, and the quaint pair wandered in the woods like happy boy and
+girl. Then, when the indomitable man had raised himself to be head of
+the State, and was offered a peerage, he declined; but he begged that
+his wife might be created countess in her own right. Could anything be
+more graceful and courtly? "You are the superior," the first man in
+England seemed to say; "and I am content to rejoice in your honours
+without rivalling them." All the fanciful rhymes of the troubadours
+cannot furnish anything prettier than that.
+
+If we leave the Beaconsfields and the Chathams and come among less
+exalted folk, we find that the same laws regulate happy marriages.
+Confidence, generosity, unselfishness--that is all. In this beautiful
+England of ours there are happy households which are almost
+numberless. The good folk do not care for fame or power; their
+happiness is rounded off and completed within their own walls, and
+they live as the lordly Chatham lived when he was free from the ties
+of place and Parliament. On summer days, when the quiet evening is
+closing, the wayfarer may obtain chance glimpses of such happy homes
+here and there. Some are inhabited by wealthy men, some by poor
+workmen; but the essential happiness of both classes is arrived at in
+the same way.
+
+A young man wisely waits until his judgment is matured, and then
+proceeds to choose his mate; he does not blunder into heroic fooleries
+in the way of self-abnegation; for, if his choice is judicious, the
+lady will prevent him from hurting his own prospects. Whether he be
+aristocrat or plebeian, he knows the worth of money, and he knows how
+to despise the foolish beings who talk of "dross" and "filthy lucre"
+and the rest. Mere craving for money he despises; but he knows that
+the amount of "dross" in a man's possession roughly indicates his
+resources in the way of energy, ability, and self-control. When he
+marries, his wife is reasonably free from sordid cares. It may be that
+he has only seventy pounds in a building society, it may be that his
+cheque for fifty thousand pounds would be honoured; but the principle
+is the same. When the woman settles in her new home, she is free from
+sordid anxieties, and she can give the graces of her mind play. How
+beautiful some such households are! An old railway-guard once said to
+me--"Ah, there's no talk like your own wife's when she understands
+you, and you sit one side of the fire, and she the other! It don't
+matter what kind of day you've had, she puts all right." The man was
+right--the most delightful conversation that can be held is between a
+rational man and woman who love each other, who understand each other,
+and who have sufficient worldly keenness to keep clear of lowering
+cares. A man rightly mated feels it an absolute delight to confide the
+innermost secrets of life to his wife; and the woman would feel almost
+criminal if she kept the pettiest of petty secrets from her partner.
+They are friends, gloriously mated, and all the glories of birth and
+state ever imagined cannot equal their simple but perfect joy. When
+the tired mechanic comes home at night and meets one whom he has
+wisely chosen, he forgets his sharp day of labour as soon as his
+overalls are off. No snappish word greets him; and he is incapable of
+being ill-natured with the kind soul whom he worships in his rough
+way. I have always found that the merriest and most profitable
+evenings were passed in houses where neither of the principal parties
+strove for mastery, and where the woman had the art of coaxing
+imperceptibly and discreetly. I reject the suggestion made by cynic
+men that no married pair can live without quarrelling. No married pair
+who were fools before marriage can avoid dissension; but, when man and
+wife make their choice wisely and cautiously, the notion of a quarrel
+is too horrible to dream of.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+SHREWS.
+
+
+The greatest masters who ever made studies of the shrew in fiction or
+in history have never, after all, given us a strictly scientific
+definition of the creature. They let her exhibit herself in all her
+drollery or her hatefulness, but they act in somewhat lordly fashion
+by leaving us to frame our definition from the picturesque data which
+they supply. Mrs. Mackenzie, in "The Newcomes," is repulsive to an
+awful degree, but the figure is as true as true can be, and most of
+us, no doubt, have seen the type in all its loathsomeness only too
+many times. Mrs. Mackenzie is a shrew of one sort, but we could not
+take her vile personality as the basis of a classification. Mrs.
+Raddle is one of that lower middle-class which Dickens knew so well,
+still she is not hateful or vile, or anything but droll. I know how
+maddening that kind of woman can be in real life to those immediately
+about her, but onlookers find her purely funny; they never think of
+poor Bob Sawyer's cruel humiliation; they only laugh themselves
+helpless over the screeching little woman on the stairs, who humbles
+her wretched consort and routs the party with such consummate
+strategy. Mrs. Raddle and Mrs. Mackenzie are as far apart as two
+creatures may be; nevertheless they are veritable specimens of the
+British shrew, and it should be within the resources of civilisation
+to find a definition capable of fitting both of them. As for Queen
+Elizabeth--that splendid, false, able, cruel, and inexorable
+shrew--she requires the space of volumes to give even the shadow of
+her personality and powers. She has puzzled some of the wisest and
+most learned of men. She was truly royal, and wholly deceitful;
+self-controlled at times, and madly passionate at others; a lover of
+pure literature, and yet terribly free in her own writings; kind to
+her dependants, yet capable of aiming a violent blow at some courtier
+whom she had caressed a moment before the blow came; an icy virgin,
+and a confirmed and audacious flirt; a generous mistress, and an
+odious miser; a free giver to those near her, and a skinflint who let
+the sailors who saved her country lie rotting to death in the open
+streets of Ramsgate because she could not find in her heart to give
+them either medical attendance or shelter. Was there ever such another
+being known beneath the glimpses of the moon? Some might call her
+superhuman; I am more inclined to regard her as inhuman, for her
+blending of characteristics is not like anything ever seen before or
+since among the children of men. She was a shrew--a magnificent,
+enigmatic shrew, who was perhaps the more fitted to rule a kingdom
+which was in a state of transition in that she was lacking in all
+sense of pity, shame, or remorse. She was the apotheosis of the shrew,
+and no one of the tribe can ever be like unto her again. Carlyle's
+Termagant of Spain is a shadowy figure that flits through all the
+note-books on Frederick, but we never get so near to her as we do to
+Elizabeth, and she remains to us as a vast shape that gibbers and
+threatens and gesticulates in the realms of the dead. Jael, the wife
+of Heber the Kenite, must have been a terrible shrew, and I should
+think that Heber was not master in the house where Sisera died. The
+calm deliberation, the preliminary coaxing, the quick, cool
+determination, and the final shrill exultation which was reflected in
+Deborah's song all speak of the shrew. Thackeray had a morbid delight
+in dwelling on the species, and we know that all of his portraits were
+taken from real life. If he really was intimate with all of the cruel
+figures that he draws, then I could pardon him for manifesting the
+most ferocious of cynicisms even if he had been a cynic--which he was
+not. The Campaigner, Mrs. Clapp, the landlady in "Vanity Fair," Mrs.
+Baynes, and all the rest of the deplorable bevy rest like nightmares
+upon our memory. Dickens always made the shrew laughable, so that we
+can hardly spare pity for the poor Snagsbys and Raddles and Crupps, or
+any of her victims in that wonderful gallery; but Thackeray's,
+Trollope's, Charles Reade's, Mrs. Oliphant's, and even Miss
+Broughton's shrews are always odious, and they all seem to start from
+the page alive.
+
+But I am not minded to deal with the special instances of shrewism
+which have been pronounced enough to claim attention from powerful
+masters of fiction and history; I am rather interested in the swarms
+of totally commonplace shrews who live around us, and who do their
+very best--or worst--to make the earth a miserable place. I can laugh
+as heartily as anybody at Dickens's "scolds" and female bullies; none
+the less however am I ready in all seriousness to reckon the shrew as
+an evil influence, as bad as some of the most subtle and malevolent
+scourges inflicted by physical nature. All of us have but a little
+span on earth, and we should be able to economise every minute, so as
+to extract the maximum of joy from existence; yet how many frail lives
+are embittered by the shrew! How many men, women, and children has she
+not forced to wish almost for death as a relief from morbid pain and
+keen humiliation! Our social conditions tend to foster shrewish
+temperament, for we are gradually changing the subjection of woman to
+the enslavement of man; gentle chivalry is developing into maudlin
+self-advertising self-abnegation on the part of the males who favour
+the new movement. The sweet and equable lady remains the same in all
+ages; Imogen and Desdemona and Rosalind and the Roaring Girl have
+their modern counterparts. The lady never takes advantage of the just
+homage bestowed on her; she never asserts herself; her good breeding
+is so absolute that she would not be uncontrolledly familiar with her
+nearest and dearest, and her thoughts are all for others. But the
+shrew must always be thrusting herself forward; her cankered nature
+turns kindness into poison; she resents a benefit conferred as though
+it were an insult; and yet, if she is not constantly noticed and made,
+at the least, the recipient of kindly offers, she contrives to cause
+every one within reach of her to feel the sting of her enraged vanity.
+When I think of some women who are to be met with in various quarters,
+from the "slum" to the drawing-room, I am driven to wonder--shocking
+as it may seem--that crimes of violence are not more frequent than
+they are. It is most melancholy to notice how well the shrew fares
+compared with some poor creatures of gentler nature. In the lower
+classes a meek, toil-worn, obliging woman is most foully ill-used by a
+vagabond of a husband in only too many cases; while a screaming
+selfish wretch who, in trying to madden her miserable husband,
+succeeds in maddening all within earshot, escapes unhurt, and
+continues to lead her odious life, setting a bad example to
+impressionable young girls, and perhaps corrupting a neighbourhood.
+England is the happy hunting-ground for the shrew at present; for in
+America the average social relation between the sexes has come to be
+so frank and even that a shrew would be as severely treated as a
+discourteous man. In England a sham sentiment reigns which gives
+license to the vilest of women without protecting the martyrs, who, in
+all conscience, need protection. The scoundrel who maltreats a woman
+receives far less punishment than is inflicted on a teacher who gives
+a young Clerkenwell ruffian a stripe with a switch; while the howling
+shrew who spends a man's money in drink, empties his house, screeches
+at him by the hour together, is not censured at all--nay, the ordinary
+"gusher" would say that "the agonised woman vents the feelings of her
+overcharged heart."
+
+Now let us glance at the various sorts of these awful scourges who
+dwell in our midst. It may be well to classify them at once, because,
+unless I mistake many symptoms, the stubborn English may shortly snuff
+out the sentimentalists who have raised up a plague among us. I may
+say as a preliminary that in my opinion a shrew may be fairly defined
+as "a female who takes advantage of the noblest impulses of men and
+the kindliest laws of nations in order that she may claim the social
+privileges of both sexes and vent her most wicked temper with
+freedom." First, consider the doleful shrew. This is a person not
+usually found among the classes which lack leisure; she is an
+exasperating and most entirely selfish woman, and she cannot very well
+invent her refinements of whining cruelty unless she has a little time
+on hand; her speciality is to moan incessantly over the ingratitude of
+people for whom she has done some trivial service; and, as she always
+moans by choice in presence of the person whom she has afflicted by
+her generosity, the result is merely distracting. If the victim says,
+"I allow that you have been very kind, and I am grateful," he commits
+an error in tactics, for the torturer is upon him at once. "Oh, you do
+own it then, and yet see how you behave!"--and then the torrent flows
+on with swift persistence. If, on the contrary, the sufferer cries,
+"Why on earth do you go on repeating what you have done? I owned your
+kindness once, and I do not intend to talk any more about it!" he is
+still more clearly delivered into the enemy's hands. He lays himself
+open to a charge of ingratitude, and the charge is pressed home with
+relentless fluency. Then, as to the doleful one's influence on
+children--the general modern tendency is towards making children
+happy, but the doleful one is a survival from some bad type, and takes
+a secret malign delight in wantonly inflicting pain on the minds or
+bodies of the young. Some dense people perhaps imagine that children
+cannot suffer mental agony; yet the merest mite may carry a whole
+tragedy in its innocent soul. We all know the wheedling ways of
+children; we know how they will coax little luxuries and privileges
+out of "papa" and "mamma," and most of us rather like to submit with
+simulated reluctance to the harmless extortion. If I had heard a
+certain tiny youth say, "Papa, when I'm a big man, and you're a little
+boy, I shall ask you to have some jam," I should have failed entirely
+to smother my laughter. Do you think the doleful one would have seen
+the fun of the remark if she had any power over the body or soul of
+that devoted child? Nay. She would have whined about slyness, and
+cunning hints, and greediness, and the probabilities of utter ruin and
+disgrace overtaking underhand schemers, until that child would have
+been stunned, puzzled, deprived of self-respect, and rendered entirely
+wretched. Long ago I heard of a doleful one who turned suddenly on a
+merry boy who was playing on the floor. "You're going straight to
+perdition!" observed the dolorous one; and the light went out of that
+boy's life for a time. A gladsome party of young folk may be instantly
+wrecked by the doleful shrew's entrance; and, if she cannot attract
+attention to herself amid a gathering even of sensible, cheerful
+adults, she will probably break up the evening by dint of a well-timed
+fit of spasms or something similar. Dickens made Mrs. Gummidge very
+funny; but the Gummidge of real life is not merely a limp, "lorn"
+creature--she is a woman who began by being unhealthily vain, and ends
+by being venomously malignant. I do not think that many people have
+passed through life very far without meeting with a specimen of the
+dolorous shrew, and I hope in all charity that the creature is not in
+the immediate circle of any one who reads this. In impassioned
+moments, when I have reckoned up all the misery caused by this
+species, I have been inclined to wish that every peculiarly malign
+specimen could be secured at the public expense in a safe asylum.
+
+The aggressive shrew is usually the wife of some phlegmatic man; she
+insults him at all hours and on all subjects, and she establishes
+complete domination over him until she happens to touch his conscience
+fairly, and then he probably crushes her by the sudden exertion of
+latent moral force. Shall I talk of the drunken shrew? No--not that!
+My task is unlovely enough already, and I cannot inflict that last
+horror on those who will read this. Thus much will I say--if ever you
+know a man tied to a creature whose cheeks are livid purple in the
+morning and flushed at night, a creature who speaks thick at night and
+is ready with a villainous word for the most courteous and gentle of
+all whom she may meet, pray for that man.
+
+The blue-blooded shrew is by no means uncommon. Watch one of this kind
+yelling on a racecourse in tearful and foul-mouthed rage and you will
+have a few queer thoughts about human nature. Then there is the
+ladylike shrew. Ah, that being! What has she to answer for? She is
+neat, low-spoken, precise; she can purr like a cat, and she has the
+feline scratch always ready too. Pity the governess, the servant, the
+poor flunkey whom she has at her mercy, for their bread is earned in
+bitterness. "My lady" does not raise her voice; she can give orders
+for the perpetration of the meanest of deeds without varying the
+silken flow of her acrid tongue; but she is bad--very bad; and I think
+that, if Dante and Swedenborg were at all near being true prophets,
+there would be a special quarter in regions dire for the lady-like
+shrew.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I must distinctly own that the genuine shrew endeavours to make life
+more or less unhappy for both sexes. Usually we are apt to think of
+the shrew as resembling the village scolds who used to be promptly
+ducked in horse-ponds in the unregenerate days; but the scold was an
+individual who was usually chastised for making a dead-set at her
+husband alone. The real shrew is like the puff-adder or the
+whip-snake--she tries to bite impartially all round; and she is often
+able to bite in comparative silence, but with a most deadly effect.
+The vulgar shrieker is a deplorable source of mischief, but she cannot
+match the reticent stabber who is always ready, out of sheer
+wickedness, to thrust a venomed point into man, woman, or child. I
+shall give my readers an extreme instance towards which they may
+probably find it hard to extend belief. I am right however, and have
+fullest warrant for my statement. I learn on good authority, and with
+plenitude of proof, that trained nurses are rather too frequently
+subjected to the tender mercies of the shrew. Nothing is more grateful
+to a cankered woman than the chance of humiliating some one who
+possesses superior gifts of any description, and a well-bred lady who
+has taken to the profession of nursing is excellent "game." Thus I
+find that delicate young women of gentle nurture have been sent away
+to sleep in damp cellars at the back of great town-houses; they have
+had to stay their necessarily fastidious appetites with cold broken
+food--and this too after a weary vigil in the sick-room. Greatest
+triumph of all, the nurses have been compelled to go as strangers to
+the servants' table and make friends as best they could. It is not
+easy to form any clear notion of a mind capable of devising such
+useless indignities, because the shrew ought to know that her conduct
+is contrasted with that of good and considerate people. The nurse
+bears with composure all that is imposed on her, but she despises the
+shabby woman, and she compares the behaviour of the acrid tyrant with
+that of the majority of warm-hearted and generous ladies who think
+nothing too good for their hired guests. I quote this extreme example
+just to show how far the shrew is ready to go, and I wish it were not
+all true.
+
+Next let me deal with the mean shrew, who has one servant or more
+under her control. The records of the servants' aid societies will
+show plainly that there are women against whose names a significant
+mark must be put, and the reason is that they turn away one girl after
+another with incredible rapidity, or that despairing girls leave them
+after finding life unendurable. I know that there are insolent,
+sluttish, lazy, and incompetent servants, and I certainly wish to be
+fair toward the mistresses; but I also know that too many of the
+persons who send wild and whirling words to the newspapers belong
+without doubt to the class of mean shrews. Whenever I see one of those
+periodical letters which tell of the writer's lifelong tribulation, I
+like to refresh my mind by repeating certain golden utterances of the
+man whom we regard as one of the wisest of living Englishmen--"There
+is only one way to have good servants--that is, to be worthy of being
+well served. All nature and all humanity will serve a good master and
+rebel against an ignoble one. And there is no surer test of the
+quality of a nation than the quality of its servants, for they are
+their masters' shadows and distort their faults in a flattened
+mimicry. A wise nation will have philosophers in its servants'-hall, a
+knavish nation will have knaves there, and a kindly nation will have
+friends there. Only let it be remembered that 'kindness' means, as
+with your child, not indulgence, but care." Substitute "mistress" for
+"master" in this passage of John Ruskin's, and we have a little lesson
+which the mean shrew might possibly take to heart--if she had any
+heart. What is the kind of "care" which the mean one bestows on her
+dependants? "That's my little woman a-giving it to 'Tilda," pensively
+observed Mr. Snagsby; and I suspect that a very great many little
+women employ a trifle too much of their time in "giving it to 'Tilda."
+That is the "care" which poor 'Tilda gets. Consider the kind of life
+which a girl leads when she comes for a time under the domination of
+the mean shrew. Say that her father is a decent cottager; then she has
+probably been used to plain and sufficient food, dressed in rough
+country fashion, and she has at all events had a fairly warm place to
+sleep in. When she enters her situation, she finds herself placed in a
+bare chill garret; she has not a scrap of carpet on the floor, and
+very likely she is bitterly cold at nights. She is expected to be
+astir and alert from six in the morning until ten or later at night;
+she is required to show almost preternatural activity and
+intelligence, and she is not supposed to have any of the ordinary
+human being's desire for recreation or leisure. When her Sunday out
+comes--ah, that Sunday out, what a tragic farce it is!--she does not
+know exactly where to go. If she is near a park or heath, she may fall
+in with other girls and pass a little time in giggling and chattering;
+but of rational pleasure she knows nothing. Then her home is the bare
+dismal kitchen, with the inevitable deal table, frowsy cloth, and
+rickety chairs. The walls of this interesting apartment are possibly
+decked with a few tradesmen's almanacs, whereon Grace Darling is
+depicted with magnificent bluish hair, pink cheeks, and fashionable
+dress; or his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales assumes a heroic
+attitude, and poses as a field-marshal of the most stern and lofty
+description. Thus are 'Tilda's aesthetic tastes developed. The mean
+shrew cannot give servants such expensive company as a cat; but the
+beetles are there, and a girl of powerful imagination may possibly
+come to regard them as eligible pets. Then the food--the breakfast of
+weak tea and scanty bread; the mid-day meal of horrid scraps measured
+out with eager care to the due starvation limit; the tasteless,
+dreadful "tea" once more at six o'clock, and the bread and water for
+supper! And the incessant scold, scold, scold, the cunning inquiries
+after missing morsels of meat or potatoes, the exasperating orders! It
+is too depressing; and, when I see some of the virtuous letters from
+ill-used mistresses, I smile a little sardonically, and wish that the
+servants could air their eloquence in the columns of great newspapers.
+Some time ago there was a case in which a perfectly rich shrew went
+away from home from Saturday morning till Monday night, leaving one
+shilling to provide all food for two young women. This person of
+course needed fresh servants every month, and was no doubt surprised
+at the ingratitude of the starvelings who perpetually left her. I call
+up memories of homes, refuges, emigration-agencies, and so forth, and
+do most sternly and bitterly blame the mean shrew for mischief which
+well-nigh passes credence. There is nothing more delightful than to
+watch the dexterous, healthy, cheerful maids in well-ordered
+households where the mistress is the mother; but there is very little
+of the mother about the mean shrew--she is rather more like the
+slave-driver. "Stinted means," observes some tender apologist. What
+ineffable rubbish! If a woman is married to a man of limited means,
+does that give her any right to starve and bully a fellow-creature?
+How many brave women have done all necessary housework and despised
+ignoble "gentility"! No, I cannot quite accept the "stinted means"
+excuse; the fact is that the mean shrew is hard on her dependants
+solely because her nature is not good; and we need not beat about the
+bush any longer for reasons. A domestic servant under a wise,
+dignified, and kind mistress or housekeeper may live a healthy and
+happy life; the servant of the mean shrew does not live at all in any
+true sense of the word. No rational man can blame girls for preferring
+the freedom of shop or factory to the thraldom of certain kinds of
+domestic service. If we consider only the case of well-managed houses,
+then we may wonder why any girl should enter a factory; but, on the
+other hand, there is that dire vision of the mean shrew with gimlet
+eye and bitter tongue! What would the mean shrew have made of Margaret
+Catchpole, the Suffolk girl who was transported about one hundred
+years ago? There is a problem. That girl's letters to her mistress are
+simply throbbing with passionate love and gratitude; and the phrases
+"My beloved mistress," "My dear, dear mistress," recur like sobs.
+Margaret would have become a fiend under the mean shrew; but the holy
+influence of a good lady made a noble woman of her, and she became a
+pattern of goodness long after one rash but blameless freak was
+forgotten. All Margaret's race now rise up and call her blessed, and
+her spirit must have rejoiced when she saw her brilliant descendant
+appearing in England two years ago as representative of a mighty
+colony.
+
+What shall I say about the literary shrew? Let no one be mistaken--we
+have a good many of them, and we shall have more and more of them.
+There are kind and charming lady-novelists in plenty, and we all owe
+them fervent thanks for happy hours; there are deeply-cultured ladies
+who make the joy of placid English homes; there are hundreds on
+hundreds of honest literary workers who never set down an impure or
+ungentle line. I am grateful in reason to all these; but there is
+another sort of literary woman towards whom I pretend to feel no
+gratitude whatever, and that is the downright literary shrew, who
+usually writes, so to speak, in a scream, and whose sentences resemble
+bursting packets of pins and needles. She is what the Americans would
+call "death on man," and she likes to emphasize her invectives by
+always printing "Men" with a capital "M." She is however rigidly
+impartial in her distribution of abuse, and she finds out at frequent
+intervals that English women and girls are going year by year from bad
+to worse. That the earth does not hold a daintier, purer, more
+exquisitely lovable being than the well-educated, well-bred English
+girl, is an opinion held even by some very cynical males; but the
+literary shrew rattles out her libels, and, in order to show how very
+virtuous she is, she usually makes her articles unfit to be brought
+within the doors of any respectable house. Not that she is ribald--she
+is merely so slangy, so audacious, and so bitter that no "prudent" man
+would let his daughters glance at a single article turned out by our
+emphatic shrew. As to men--well, those ignoble beings fare very badly
+at her hands. I do not know exactly what she wants to do with the poor
+things, but on paper and on the platform she insists that they shall
+practically give up their political power entirely, for women, being
+in an immense majority, would naturally outvote the inferior sex.
+Sometimes, when the shrew is more than usually capricious and enraged
+with her own sex, she may magnanimously propose to disfranchise huge
+numbers of women; but, as a rule, she is bent on mastering the
+enemy--Man. If you happen to remark that it would be rather awkward if
+a majority of women should happen to bring about a war in which
+myriads of men would destroy each other, we rather pity you; that
+argument always beats the shrew, and she resorts to the literary
+equivalent for hysterics. If the controversialist ventures to ask some
+questions about the share which women have had in bringing about the
+great wars known to history, he draws on himself more and more
+hysterical abuse. What a strange being is this! Her life is one long
+squabble, she is the most reckless and violent of fighters, and yet
+she is always crying out that Men are brutal and bloodthirsty, and
+that she and her sisters would introduce the elements of peace and
+goodwill to political relations. We may have a harmless laugh at the
+literary shrew so long as she confines herself to haphazard
+scribbling, because no one is forced to read; but it is no laughing
+matter when she transfers her literary powers to some public body, and
+inflicts essays on the members. Her life on a School Board may be
+summarised as consisting of a battle and a screech; she has the bliss
+of abusing individual Men rudely--nay, even savagely--and she knows
+that chivalry prevents them from replying. But she is worst when she
+rises to read an essay; then the affrighted males flee away and rest
+in corners while the shrew denounces things in general. It is
+terrible. Among the higher products of civilisation the literary shrew
+is about the most disconcerting, and, if any man wants to know what
+the most gloomy possible view of life is like, I advise him to attend
+some large board-meeting during a whole afternoon while the literary
+shrew gets through her series of fights and reads her inevitable
+essay. He will not come away much wiser perhaps, but he will be
+appreciably sadder.
+
+And so this long procession of shrews passes before us, scolding and
+gibbering and dispensing miseries. Is there no way of appealing to
+reason so that they may be led to see that inflicting pain can never
+bring them anything but a low degree of pleasure? No human creature
+was ever made better or more useful by a shrew, for the very means by
+which the acrid woman tries to secure notice or power only serves to
+belittle her. Take the case of a vulgar schoolmistress who is
+continually scolding. What happens in her school? She is mocked,
+hated, tricked, and despised; real discipline is non-existent; the
+bullied assistants go about their work without heart; and the whole
+organisation--or rather disorganisation--gradually crumbles, until a
+place which should be the home of order and happiness becomes an ugly
+nest of anarchy. But look at one of the lovely high schools which are
+now so common; read Miss Kingsley's most fervent and accurate
+description of the scholars, and observe how poorly the scolding
+teacher fares in the comparison. Who ever heard of a girl being
+scolded or punished in a good modern high school? Such a catastrophe
+is hardly conceivable, for one quiet look of reproach from a good
+teacher is quite sufficient to render the average girl inconsolable
+until forgiveness is granted. This illustrates my point--the shrew
+never succeeds in doing anything but intensifying the fault or evil
+which she pretends to remove. The shrew who shrieks at a drunkard only
+makes him dive further into the gulf in search of oblivion; the shrew
+who snaps constantly at a servant makes the girl dull, fierce, and
+probably wicked; the shrew who tortures a patient man ends by making
+him desperate and morose; the shrew who weeps continually out of
+spite, and hopes to earn pity or attention in that fashion, ends by
+being despised by men and women, abhorred by children, and left in the
+region of entire neglect. Perhaps if public teachers could only show
+again and again that the shrew makes herself more unhappy, if
+possible, than she makes other people, then the selfish instinct which
+is dominant might answer to the appeal; but, though I make the
+suggestion I have no great hope of its being very fruitful.
+
+After all, I fear the odious individual whose existence and attributes
+we have discussed must be accepted as a scourge sent to punish us for
+past sins of the race. Certainly women had a very bad time in days
+gone by--they were slaves; and at odd moments I am tempted to conclude
+that the slave instinct survives in some of them, and they take their
+revenge in true servile fashion. This line of thought would carry me
+back over more ages than I care to traverse; I am content with knowing
+that the shrews are in a minority, and that the majority of my
+countrywomen are sweet and benign.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+ARE WE WEALTHY?
+
+
+Among the working-classes shrewd men are now going about putting some
+very awkward questions which seem paradoxical at first sight, but
+which are quite understood by many intelligent men to whom they are
+addressed. The query "Are we wealthy?" seems easy enough to answer;
+and of course a rapid and superficial observer gives an affirmative in
+reply. It seems so obvious! Our income is a thousand millions per
+year; our railways and merchant fleets can hardly be valued without
+putting a strain on the imagination; and it seems as if the atmosphere
+were reeking with the very essence of riches. A millionaire gives
+nearly one thousand pounds for a puppy; he buys seventeen baby horses
+for about three thousand pounds apiece; he gives four thousand guineas
+for a foal, and bids twenty thousand pounds for one two-year-old
+filly; his house costs a million or thereabouts. Minor plutocrats
+swarm among us, and they all exhibit their wealth with every available
+kind of ostentation; yet that obstinate question remains to be
+answered--"Are we wealthy?" We may give the proletarians good advice
+and recommend them to employ no extreme talk and no extreme measures;
+but there is the new disposition, and we cannot get away from it. I
+take no side; the poor have my sympathy, but I endeavour to understand
+the rich, and also to face facts in a quiet way. Supposing that a ball
+is being given that costs one thousand pounds, and that within sound
+of the carriages there are twenty seamstresses working who never in
+all their lives know what it is to have sufficient food--is not that a
+rather curious position? The seamstresses are the children of mighty
+Britain, and it seems that their mother cannot give them sustenance.
+The excessive luxury of the ball shows that some one has wealth, but
+does it not also seem to show that some one has too much? The clever
+lecturers who talk to the populace now will not be content with the
+old-fashioned answer, and an awkward deadlock is growing more nearly
+imminent daily. Suppose we take the case of the sporting-man again,
+and find that he pays three guineas per week for the training of each
+of his fifty racers, we certainly have a picture of lavish display;
+but, when we see, on the other hand, that nearly half the children in
+some London districts never know what it is to have breakfast before
+they go to school, we cannot help thinking of the palaces in which the
+horses are stabled and the exquisite quality of the animal's food.
+There is not a good horse that mother England does not care for, and
+there are half a million children who rarely can satisfy their hunger,
+and who are quartered in dens which would kill the horses in a week.
+These crude considerations are not-presented by us as being
+satisfactory statements in economics; but, when the smart mob orator
+says, "What kind of parent would keep horses in luxury and leave
+children to hunger?" "Is this wealthy England?" his audience reply in
+a fashion of their own. Reasoning does not avail against hunger and
+privation. I am forced to own that, for my part, the awful problem of
+poverty seems insoluble by any logical agent; but the man of the mob
+does not now care for logic than ever he did before, and he has
+advisers who state to him the problems of life and society with
+passionate rhetoric which eludes reason.
+
+The whole world hangs together, and Chicago may be called a mere
+suburb of London. English people did not understand the true history
+of the genesis of poverty until the developments of society in America
+showed us with terrific rapidity the historical development of our own
+poverty. The fearful state of things in American cities was brought
+about in a very few years, whereas the gradual extension of our
+poverty-stricken classes has been going on for centuries. To us
+poverty, besides being a horror, was more or less of a mystery; but
+America exhibited the development of the gruesome monster with lurid
+distinctness. In the old countries the men who first were able to
+seize the land gradually sublet portions either for money or warlike
+service; the growth of manufactures occupied a thousand years before
+it reached its present extent; and with the rising of manufacturing
+centres came enormous new populations which were finally obliged to
+barter their labour for next to nothing--and thus we have the
+appalling and desolating spectacle of our slums. All that took place
+in America with the swiftness of a series of stage-scenes; so that men
+now living have watched the inception and growth of all the most
+harrowing forms of poverty and the vices arising from poverty. And now
+the cry is, "Go back to the Land--the Land for the Nation!" Matters
+have reached a strange pass when such a political watchword should be
+chosen by thousands in grave and stolid England, and we shall be
+obliged to compromise in the end with those by whom the cry is raised.
+I believe that a compromise may be arranged in time, but the leaders
+of the poor will have to teach their followers wisdom, self-restraint,
+and even a little unselfishness, impossible as the teaching of that
+last may seem to be. We have begun a great labour war, in which
+battles are being lost and won by opposing sides around us every day.
+The fighting was very terrible at the beginning; but we shall be
+forced at last to adopt a system of truces, and then the question "Are
+we wealthy?" may find its answer. At this moment, however much an
+optimist may point to our wealth, the logical opponent of established
+things can always point to the ghastly sights that seem to make the
+very name of wealth a cynical mockery.
+
+We have to take up a totally new method of meeting and dealing with
+the poor; and rich and poor alike must learn to think--which is an
+accomplishment not possessed by many of either class. In the early
+part of the century, when the ideas of the Revolution were still very
+vital, there was hope that a time might come when wealth and power
+would be shared so as to secure genuine human existence to the whole
+population. Then came the mad hopes that followed the Reform Bill,
+when grave Parliamentary men wept and huzzaed like schoolboys on
+seeing that remarkable measure passed. People thought that the good
+days had at last come, and even the workers who were still left out in
+the cold fancied that in some vague way they were to receive benefits
+worth having. The history of human delusions is a very sad one, as sad
+almost as the history of human wickedness; and all those poor
+enthusiasts had a sad awakening, for they found that the barren fights
+of placemen would still go on, that the people would continue to be
+shorn, and that the condition of the poor was uncommonly likely to be
+worse than ever. The hour of hopefulness passed away, and there
+succeeded bitter years of savage despair. The unhappy Chartists
+struggled hard; and there is something pathetic in thinking how good
+men were treated for preaching political commonplaces which are now
+deemed almost Conservative. The wild time in which every crown in
+Europe tottered was followed by another period of optimism; for the
+great religious revival had begun, and the Church resumed her ancient
+power over the people, despite the shock given by Newman's secession.
+Then once again the query "Are we wealthy?" was answered with
+enthusiasm; and even the poor were told that they were wealthy, for
+had they not the reversion of complete felicity to crown their entry
+into a future world? We must believe that there is some compensation
+for this life's ills, or else existence would become no longer
+bearable; but it was hard for people in general to think that
+everything was for the best on this earth. Soon came the day of doubt
+and bitterness, which assailed eager philanthropists and mere ordinary
+people as well. The poor folk did not feel the effects of Darwin's
+work, but those effects were terrible in certain quarters, for many
+precipitate thinkers became convinced that we must perish like the
+dumb beasts. Wherefore came the question, "Why should the poor go
+without their share of the good things of this world, since there is
+nothing for them in the next?" A very ugly query it is too, because,
+when the question of number arises, rash spirits may say, as it was
+said long ago, "Are we not many, and are you not few?"
+
+I have not any fine theories, and I do not want to stir up enmities;
+and I therefore say to the instructors of the poor, "Instead of egging
+your men on to warfare, why not teach them how to use the laws which
+they already have? No new laws are wanted; every rational and
+necessary reform may be achieved by dint of measures now on the
+statute-book--measures which seem to slumber as soon as the agitation
+raised in passing them has glorified a certain number of placemen."
+Every year we have the outcry, to which we have so often alluded,
+about disgraceful dwellings; yet there is not a bad case in London or
+elsewhere which could not be cured if the law were quietly set in
+motion by men of business. As a matter of fact, a very great portion
+of the wealth of the country is now at the service of the poor; but
+they do not choose to take it--or, at any rate, they know nothing
+about it. Look at the School Board elections, and see how many
+exercise the right to vote. Yet, if the majority elected their own
+School Board, they could divert enough charities to educate our whole
+population, and they could do as they chose in their own schools.
+Again, the Local Government Act renders it possible for the populace
+to secure any public institutions that they may want, and in the main
+they can order their own social life to their liking. What is the use
+of incessant declamation? Organisation would be a thousand times
+better. Let quiet men who do not want mere self-advertisement tell the
+people what is their property and how to get it, and there will be no
+need of the outcry of one class against another. It is a bitter grief
+for all thinking men to observe the inequalities that continue to make
+life positively accursed in many quarters, and the sights of shame
+that abound ought to be seen no more; but rage can do nothing, while
+wise teaching can do everything. The population question must be dealt
+with by the people themselves; they must resolve to crush their masses
+no more into slums; they must choose for themselves a nobler and a
+purer life--and that can be accomplished by the laws which they may
+set in action at once. Then they will be able to say, "England is
+wealthy, and we have our share."
+
+Some excellent articles have been turned out by the brilliant
+professor of biology who inspects our fisheries for us. He has done
+rare service for the people in his own way--no one better, for he was
+one of the first who eagerly advocated the education of the masses;
+but I fear he is now becoming "disillusionised." He talked once about
+erecting a Jacob's Ladder from the gutter to the university; and he
+has found that the ladder--such as it is--has merely been used to
+connect the tradesman's shop and the artisan's dwelling with the
+exalted place of education. The poor gutter-child cannot climb the
+ladder; he is too hungry, too thin, too weak for the feat, and hence
+the professor's famous epigram has become one of the things at which
+scientific students of the human race smile sadly and kindly. And now
+the professor grows savage and so wildly Conservative that we fear he
+may denounce Magna Charta next as a gross error. I know very well that
+all men are not equal, and the professor's keenest logic cannot make
+me see that point any more clearly than at present. But suppose that
+one fine day some awkward leader of the people says, "You tell us,
+professor, that we are wealthy, and that it is right that some men
+should be gorged while we are bitten with famine. If Britain is so
+wealthy, how is it that eleven million acres of good agricultural land
+are now out of cultivation, while the people whom the land used to
+feed are crushed in the slums of the towns in the case of labourers,
+or gone beyond the sea in the case of the farmers?" I want to be
+impartial, but freely own that I should not like to answer that
+question, and I do not believe the professor could. The men who used
+to supply our fighting force are now becoming extinct. If they go into
+the town and pick up some kind of work, then the second generation are
+weaklings and a burden to us; while, if they go abroad, they are still
+removed from the Mother of Nations, who needs her sons of the soil,
+even though she may feel proud of the gallant new States which they
+are rearing. And, while rats and mice and obscure vermin are gradually
+taking possession of the land on which Britons were bred, the signs of
+bursting wealth are thick among us. Is a nation rich that cannot
+afford even to keep the kind of men who once defended her? To me the
+gradual return of the land to its primitive wildness is more than
+depressing. There are districts on the borders of Hertford and Essex
+which might make a sentimental traveller sit down and cry. It all
+seems strange; it looks so poverty-stricken, so filthy, so sordid, so
+like the site of a slum after all the houses have been levelled for a
+dozen years; and this in the midst of our England! I say nothing about
+land-laws and so forth, but I will say that those who fancy the towns
+can survive when the farms are deserted are much mistaken. "Are we
+wealthy?" "Yes," and "No." We are wealthy in the wrong places, and we
+are poor in the wrong places; and the combination will end in mischief
+unless we are very soon prepared to make an alteration in most of our
+ways of living. In many respects it is a good world; but it might be
+made better, nobler, finer in every quarter, if the poor would only
+recognise wise and silent leaders, and use the laws which men have
+made in order to repair the havoc which other men have also made.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+THE VALUES OF LABOUR.
+
+
+Only about a quarter-century ago unlearned men of ability would often
+sigh and say, "Ah, if I was only a scholar!" Admirers of a clever and
+illiterate workman often said, "Why, if he was a scholar, he would
+make a fortune in business for himself!" Women mourned the lack of
+learning in the same way, and I have heard good dames deplore the fact
+that they could not read. I pity most profoundly those on whom the
+light of knowledge has never shone kindly; and yet I have a comic sort
+of misgiving lest in a short time a common cry may be, "Ah, if I was
+only not a scholar!" The matchless topsy-turvydom which has marked the
+passage of the last ten years, the tremendously accelerated velocity
+with which labour is moving towards emancipation from all control,
+have so confused things in general that an observer must stand back
+and get a new focus before he can allow his mind to dwell on the
+things that he sees. One day's issue of any good newspaper is enough
+to show what a revolution is upon us, for we merely need to run the
+eye down columns at random to pick out suggestive little scraps. At
+present we cannot get that "larger view" about which Dr. W.B.
+Carpenter used to talk; he was wont to study hundreds and thousands of
+soundings and measurements piecemeal, and the chaos of figures
+gradually took form until at length the doctor had in his mind a
+complete picture of enormous ocean depths. In somewhat the same way we
+can by slow degrees form a picture of a changed state of society, and
+we find that the faculties of body or mind which used to bring their
+possessor gain are now nearly worthless. In one column of a journal I
+find that a trained schoolmistress is required to take charge of a
+village school. The salary is sixteen pounds per annum; but, if the
+lady is fortunate enough to have a husband, work can be procured for
+him daily on the farm. This is just a little disconcerting. The
+teacher must see to the mental and moral training of fifty children;
+she must have spent at least seven years in learning before she was
+allowed to take charge of a school; then she remained two more years
+on probation, and all the time her expenses were not light. As the
+final reward of her exertions, she is offered six shillings per week,
+out of which she must dress neatly--for a slatternly schoolmistress
+would be a dreadful object--buy sufficient food, and hold her own in
+rural society! The reverend man who advertises this delectable
+situation must have a peculiar idea regarding the class into which an
+educated lady like the teacher whom he requires would likely to marry.
+An agricultural labourer may be an honest fellow enough, but, as the
+husband of an educated woman, he might be out of place; and I fancy
+that a schoolmistress whose husband pulled turnips and wore corduroys
+might not secure the maximum of deference from her scholars. In
+contrast to this grotesque advertisement I run down a list of cooks
+required, and I find that the average wage of the cook is not far from
+three times that of the teacher, while the domestic has her food
+provided for liberality. The village schoolmistress in the old days
+was never well paid; but then she was a private speculator; we never
+expected to see the specialised product of training and time reckoned
+at the same value as the old dame's, who was able to read and knit,
+but who could do little more. While we are comparing the wages of
+teachers and cooks, I may point out that the _chef_, whose training
+lasts seven years, earns, as we calculate, one hundred and thirty
+pounds per year more than the average English schoolmaster. This is
+perhaps as it should be, for the value of a good _chef_ is hardly to
+be reckoned in money; and yet the figures look funny when we first
+study them. And now we may turn to the wages of dustmen, who are, it
+must be admitted, a most estimable class of men and most useful. I
+find that the London dustman earns more than an assistant master under
+the Salford School Board, and, besides his wages, he picks up many
+trifles. The dustman may dwell with his family in two rooms at
+three-and-sixpence per week; his equipment consists of a slop,
+corduroys, and a sou'-wester hat, which are sufficient to last many a
+day with little washing. But the assistant, whose education alone cost
+the nation one hundred pounds cash down, not to speak of his own
+private expenditure, must live in a respectable locality, dress
+neatly, and keep clear of that ugly soul-killing worry which is
+inflicted by trouble about money. Decidedly the dustman has the best
+of the bargain all round, for, to say the least, he does not need to
+labour very much harder than the professional man. This instance tends
+to throw a very sinister and significant flash on the way things are
+tending. Again, some of the gangs of Shipping Federation men have full
+board and lodging, two changes of clothes free, beer and rum in
+moderate quantities, and thirty shillings per week. Does anybody in
+England know a curate who has a salary like that? I do not think it
+would be possible to find one on the Clergy List. No one grudges the
+labourers their extra food and high wages; I am only taking note of a
+significant social circumstance. The curate earns nothing until he is
+about three-and-twenty; if he goes through one of the older
+universities, his education costs, up to the time of his going out
+into the world, something very like two thousand pounds; yet, with all
+his mental equipment, such as it is, he cannot earn so much as a
+labourer of his own age. Certainly the humbler classes had their day
+of bondage when the middleman bore heavily on them; they got clear by
+a mighty effort which dislocated commerce, but we hardly expected to
+find them claiming, and obtaining, payments higher than many made to
+the most refined products of the universities! It is the way of the
+world; we are bound for change, change, and yet more change; and no
+man may say how the cycles will widen. Luxury has grown on us since
+the thousands of wealthy idlers who draw their money from trade began
+to make the stream of lavish expenditure turn into a series of rushing
+rapids. The flow of wasted wealth is no longer like the equable
+gliding of the full Thames; it is like the long deadly flurry of the
+waters that bears toward Niagara. These newly-enriched people cause
+the rise of the usual crop of parasites, and it is the study of the
+parasites which forces on the mind hundreds of reflections concerning
+the values of different kinds of labour. A little while ago, for
+example, an exquisitely comic paragraph was printed with all innocence
+in many journals. It appeared that two of the revived species of
+parasites known as professional pugilists were unable to dress
+properly before they began knocking each other about, "because their
+valets were not on the spot." I hope that the foul old days of the
+villainous "ring" may never be recalled by anything seen in our day,
+for there never were any "palmy days," though there were some ruffians
+who could not be bought. Yet the worst things that happened in the
+bygone times were not so much fitted to make a man think solemnly as
+that one delicious phrase--"their valets were not on the spot." In the
+noble days, when England was so very merry, it often happened that a
+man who has been battered out of all resemblance to humanity was left
+to dress himself as best he could on a bleak marsh, and his chivalrous
+friends made the best of their way home, while the defeated gladiator
+was reckoned at a dog's value. Now-a-days those sorely-entreated
+creatures would have their valets. In one department of industry
+assuredly the value of labour has altered. The very best of the brutal
+old school once fought desperately for four hours, though it was
+thought that he must be killed, and his reason was that, if he lost,
+he would have to beg his bread. Now-a-days he would have a valet, a
+secretary, a manager, and a crowd of plutocratic admirers who would
+load him with money and luxuries. I was tickled to the verge of
+laughter by finding that one of these gentry was paid thirty pounds
+per night for exhibiting his skill, and my amusement was increased
+when it turned out that one of those who paid him thirty pounds
+strongly objected on learning that the hero appeared at two other
+places, from each of which he received the same sum. Thus for
+thirty-six minutes of exertion per day the man was drawing five
+hundred and forty pounds per week. All these things appeared in the
+public prints; but no public writer took any serious notice of a
+symptom which is as significant as any ever observed in the history of
+mankind. It is almost awe-striking to contemplate these parasites, and
+think what their rank luxurious existence portends. Here we see a man
+of vast wealth, whereof every pound was squeezed from the blood and
+toil of working-men; he passes his time now in the company of these
+fellows who have earned a reputation by pounding each other. The
+wealthy bully and his hangers-on are dangerous to the public peace;
+their language is too foul for even men of the world to endure it, and
+the whole crew lord it in utter contempt of law and decency. That is
+the kind of spectacle to be seen in our central city almost every
+night. Consider a story which accidently came out a few weeks ago
+owing to legal proceedings and kept pleasure-seeking and
+scandalmongering London laughing for a while, and say whether any
+revelation ever gave us a picture of a more unspeakable society. A
+rich man, A., keeps a prizefighter, B., to "mind" him, as the quaint
+phrase goes. Mr. A. is offended by another prizefighter, C., and he
+offers B. the sum of five hundred pounds if he will give C. a beating
+in public. B. goes to C., and says, "I will give you ten pounds if you
+will let me thrash you, and I won't hurt you much." C. gladly
+consents, so B. pockets four hundred and ninety pounds for himself,
+and the noble patron's revenge is satisfied. There is a true tale of
+rogues and a fool--a tale to make one brood and brood until the sense
+of fun passes into black melancholy. Five hundred men worked for sixty
+hours per week before that money was earned--and think of the value
+received for the whole sum when it was spent! Truly the parasite's
+exertions are lucrative to himself!
+
+As for the market-price of book-learning or clerkly skill, it is not
+worth so much as naming. The clerk was held to be a wondrous person in
+times when the "neck-verse" would save a man from the gallows; but
+"clerk" has far altered its meaning, and the modern being of that name
+is in sorrowful case. So contemptibly cheap are his poor services that
+he in person is not looked upon as a man, but rather as a lump of raw
+material which is at present on sale in a glutted market. All the
+walks of life wherein men proceed as though they belonged to the
+leisured class are becoming no fit places for self-respecting people.
+Gradually the ornamental sort of workers are being displaced; the idle
+rich are too plentiful, but I question whether even the idle rich have
+done, so much harm as the genteel poor who are ashamed of labour. I do
+not like to see wages going downward, but there are exceptions, and I
+am almost disposed to feel glad that the searchers after "genteel"
+employment are now very much like the birds during a long frost. The
+enormous lounging class who earn nothing do not offer an agreeable
+subject for contemplation, and their parasites are horrible--there is
+no other word. Yet we may gather a little consolation when we think
+that the tendency is to raise the earnings of those who do something
+or produce something. It is not good to know that a dustman makes more
+money than hundreds of hard-worked and well-educated men, for this is
+a grotesque state of things brought about by imbecile Government
+officials. Neither do I quite like to know that a lady whose education
+occupied nine years of her life is offered less wages than a good
+housemaid. But I do assuredly like to hear how the higher class of
+manual labourers flourish; they are the salt of the earth, and I
+rejoice that they are no longer held down and regarded as in some way
+inferior to men who do nothing for two hundred pounds a year, except
+try to look as if they had two thousand pounds. The quiet man who does
+the delicate work on the monster engines of a great ocean steamer is
+worthy of his hire, costly as his hire may be. On his eye, his
+judgment of materials, his nerve, and his dexterity of hand depend
+precious lives. For three thousand miles those vast masses of
+machinery must force a huge hull through huge seas; the mighty and
+shapely fabrics of metal must work with the ease of a child's toy
+locomotive, and they must bear a strain that is never relaxed though
+all the most tremendous forces of Nature may threaten. What a charge
+for a man! His earnings could hardly be raised high enough if we
+consider the momentous nature of the duty he fulfils; he is an
+aristocrat of labour, and we do not know that there is not something
+grotesque in measuring and arguing over the money-payment made to him.
+Then there are the specially skilled hands who in their monkish
+seclusion work at the instruments wherewith scientific wonders are
+wrought. The rewards of their toil would have seemed fabulous to such
+men as Harrison the watchmaker; but they also form an aristocracy, and
+they win the aristocrat's guerdon without practising his idleness. The
+mathematician who makes the calculations for a machine is not so well
+paid as the man who finishes it; the observatory calculator who
+calculates the time of occulation for a planet cannot earn so much as
+the one who grinds a reflector. In all our life the same tendency is
+to be seen: the work of the hand outdoes in value the work of the
+brain.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+THE HOPELESS POOR.
+
+
+By fits and starts the public wake up and own with much clamour that
+there is a great deal of poverty in our midst. While each new fit
+lasts the enthusiasm of good people is quite impressive in its
+intensity; all the old hackneyed signatures appear by scores in the
+newspapers, and "Pro Bono Publico," "Audi Alteram Partem," "X.Y.Z.,"
+"Paterfamilias," "An Inquirer," have their theories quite pat and
+ready. Picturesque writers pile horror on horror, and strive, with the
+delightful emulation of their class, to outdo each other; far-fetched
+accounts of oppression, robbery, injustice, are framed, and the more
+drastic reformers invariably conclude that "Somebody" must be hanged.
+We never find out which "Somebody" we should suspend from the dismal
+tree; but none the less the virtuous reformers go on claiming victims
+for the sacrifice, while, as each discoverer solemnly proclaims his
+bloodthirsty remedy, he looks round for applause, and seems to say,
+"Did you ever hear of stern and audacious statesmanship like mine? Was
+there ever such a practical man?"
+
+The farce is supremely funny in essentials, and yet I cannot laugh at
+it, for I know that the drolleries are played out amid sombre
+surroundings that should make the heart quake. While the hysterical
+newspaper people are venting abuse and coining theories, there are
+quiet workers in thousands who go on in uncomplaining steadfastness
+striving to remove a deadly shame from our civilisation, and smiling
+softly at the furious cries of folk who know so little and vociferate
+so much. After each whirlwind of sympathy has reached its full
+strength, there is generally a strong disposition among the
+sentimentalists to do something. No mere words for the genuine
+sentimentalist; he packs his sentimental self into a cab, he engages
+the services of a policeman, and he plunges into the nasty deeps of
+the City's misery. He treats each court and alley as a department of a
+menagerie, and he gazes with mild interest on the animals that he
+views. To the sentimentalist they are only animals; and he is kind to
+them as he would be to an ailing dog at home. If the sentimentalist's
+womenfolk go with him, the tour is made still more pleasing. The
+ladies shudder with terror as they trail their dainty skirts up
+noisome stairs; but their genteel cackle never ceases. "And you earn
+six shillings per week? How very surprising! And the landlord takes
+four shillings for your one room? How very mean! And you have--let me
+see--four from six leaves two--yes--you have two shillings a week to
+keep you and your three children? How charmingly shocking!" The honest
+poor go out to work; the wastrels stay at home and invent tales of
+woe; then, when the dusk falls on the foul court and all the
+sentimentalists have gone home to dinner, the woe-stricken tellers of
+harrowing tales creep out to the grimy little public-house at the top
+of the row; they spend the gifts of the sentimentalist; and, when the
+landlord draws out his brimming tills at midnight, he blesses the kind
+people who help to earn a snug income for him. I have seen forty-eight
+drunken people come out of a tavern between half-past eleven and
+half-past twelve in one night during the time when sentiment ran mad;
+there never were such roaring times for lazy and dissolute scoundrels;
+and nearly all the money given by the sentimentalists was spent in
+sowing crops of liver complaint or _delirium tremens_, and in filling
+the workhouses and the police-cells. Then the fit of charity died out;
+the clergyman and the "sisters" went on as usual in their sacredly
+secret fashion until a new outburst came. It seems strange to talk of
+Charity "raging"--it reminds us of Mr. Mantalini's savage lamb--but I
+can use no other word but "rage" to express these frantic gushes of
+affection for the poor. During one October month I carefully preserved
+and collated all the suggestions which were so liberally put forth in
+various London and provincial newspapers; and I observed that
+something like four hundred of these suggestions resolve themselves
+into a very few definite classes. The most sensible of these follow
+the lines laid down by Charles Dickens, and the writers say, "If you
+do not want the poor to behave like hogs, why do you house them like
+hogs? Clear away the rookeries; buy up the sites; pay reasonable
+compensation to those now interested in the miserable buildings, and
+then erect decent dwellings."
+
+Now I do not want to confuse my readers by taking first a bead-roll of
+proposals, and then a bead-roll of arguments for and against, so I
+shall deal with each reformer's idea in the order of its importance.
+Before beginning, I must say that I differ from all the purveyors of
+the cheaper sort of sentiment; I differ from many ladies and gentlemen
+who talk about abstractions; and I differ most of all from the
+feather-brained persons who set up as authorities after they have paid
+flying visits in cabs to ugly neighbourhoods. When a specialist like
+Miss Octavia Hill speaks, we hear her with respect; but Miss Hill is
+not a sentimentalist; she is a keen, cool woman who has put her
+emotions aside, and who has gone to work in the dark regions in a kind
+of Napoleonic fashion. No fine phrases for her--nothing but fact,
+fact, fact. Miss Hill feels quite as keenly as the gushing persons;
+but she has regulated her feelings according to the environment in
+which her energies had to be exercised, and she has done more good
+than all the poetic creatures that ever raked up "cases" or made
+pretty phrases. I leave Miss Hill out of my reckoning, and I deal with
+the others. My conclusions may seem hard, and even cruel, but they are
+based on what I believe to be the best kindness, and they are
+supported by a somewhat varied experience. I shall waive the charge of
+cruelty in advance, and proceed to plain downright business.
+
+You want to clear away rookeries and erect decent dwellings in their
+place? Good and beautiful! I sympathise with the intention, and I wish
+that it could be carried into effect instantly. Unhappily reforms of
+that sort cannot by any means be arranged on the instant, and
+certainly they cannot be arranged so as to suit the case of the
+Hopeless Poor. Shall I tell you, dear sentimentalist, that the
+Hopeless brigade would not accept your kindness if they could? I shall
+stagger many people when I say that the Hopeless division like the
+free abominable life of the rookery, and that any kind of restraint
+would only send them swarming off to some other centre from which they
+would have to be dislodged by degrees according to the means and the
+time of the authorities. Hard, is it not? But it is true. Certain
+kinds of cultured men like the life which they call "Bohemian." The
+Hopeless class like their peculiar Bohemianism, and they like it with
+all the gusto and content of their cultured brethren. Suppose you
+uproot a circle of rookeries. The inhabitants are scattered here and
+there, and they proceed to gain their living by means which may or may
+not be lawful. The decent law-abiding citizens who are turned out of
+house and home during the progress of reform suffer most. They are not
+inclined to become predatory animals; and, although they may have been
+used to live according to a very low human standard, they cannot all
+at once begin to live merely up to the standard of pigs. No writer
+dare tell in our English tongue the consequences of evicting the
+denizens of a genuine rookery for the purpose of substituting
+improvements; and I know only one French writer who would be bold
+enough to furnish cogent details to any civilised community. But, for
+argument's sake, let me suppose that your "rooks" are transferred from
+their nests to your model dwellings. I shall allow you to do all that
+philanthropy can dictate; I shall grant you the utmost powers that a
+government can bestow; and I shall give six months for your
+experiment. What will be found at the end of that time? Alas, your
+fine model dwellings will be in worse condition than the wigwam that
+the Apache and his squaw inhabit! Let a colony of "rooks" take
+possession of a sound, well-fitted building, and it will be found that
+not even the most stringent daily visitation will prevent utter wreck
+from being wrought. The pipes needed for all sanitary purposes will be
+cut and sold; the handles of doors and the brass-work of taps will be
+cut away; every scrap of wood-work available for fire-wood will be
+stolen sooner or later, and the people will relapse steadily into a
+state of filth and recklessness to be paralleled only among Australian
+and North American aborigines. Which of the sentimentalists has ever
+travelled to America with a few hundreds of Russian and Polish Jews,
+Saxon peasants, and Irish peasants from the West? That is the only
+experience capable of giving an idea of what happens when a
+fairly-fitted house is handed over to the tender mercies of a
+selection from the British "residuum." I shall be accused of talking
+the language of despair. I have never done that. I should like to see
+the time come when the poor may no more dwell in hovels like swine,
+and when a poverty-stricken inhabitant of London may not be brought up
+with ideas and habits coarser than those of a pig; I merely say that
+shrieking, impetuous sentimentalists go to work in the wrong way. They
+are the kind of people who would provide pigeon-cotes and dog-collars
+for the use of ferrets. I grant that the condition of many London
+streets is appalling; but make a house-to-house visitation, and see
+how the desolation is caused. Wanton, brutish destructiveness has been
+at work everywhere. The cistern which should supply a building cannot
+be fed because the spring, the hinge, and the last few yards of pipe
+have been chopped away and carried to a marine-store dealer; the
+landings and the floors are strewn with dirt which a smart, cleanly
+countrywoman would have cleared away without ten minutes' trouble. The
+very windows are robbed; and the whole set of inhabitants rests in
+contented, unspeakable squalor. No--something more is required than
+delicate, silky-handed reform; something more is required than
+ready-made blocks of neat dwellings; and something more is required
+than sighing sentimentalism, which looks at miserable effects without
+scrutinising causes. Let the sentimentalist mark this. If you
+transplant a colony of "rooks" into good quarters, you will have
+another rookery on your hands; if you remove a drove of brutes into
+reasonable human dwelling-places, you will soon have a set of homes
+fit for brutes and for brutes alone. Bricks and mortar and whitewash
+will not change the nature of human vermin; phrases about beauty and
+duty and loveliness will not affect the maker of slums, any more than
+perfumes or pretty colours would affect the rats that squirm under the
+foundations of the city. Does the sentimentalist imagine that the
+brick-and-mortar structures about which he wails were always centres
+of festering ugliness? If he has that fancy, let him take a glance at
+some of the quaint old houses of Southwark. They were clean and
+beautiful in their day, but the healthy human plant can no longer
+flourish in them, and the weed creeps in, the crawling parasite
+befouls their walls, and the structures which were lovely when
+Chaucer's pilgrims started from the "Tabard" are abominable now. If
+English folk of gentle and cleanly breeding had lived on in those
+ancient places, they would have been wholesome and sound like many
+another house erected in days gone by; but the weed gradually took
+root, and now the ugliest dens in London are found in the places where
+knights and trim clerks and gracious dames once lived. In the face of
+all these things, how strangely unwise it is to fancy that ever the
+Forlorn Army can be saved by bricks and mortar!
+
+Education? Ah, there comes a pinch--and a very severe pinch it is!
+About five or six years since some of the most important thoroughfares
+in London, Liverpool, and many great towns have been rendered totally
+impassable by the savage proceedings of gangs of young roughs. Certain
+districts in Liverpool could not be traversed after dark, and the
+reason was simply this--any man or woman of decent appearance was
+liable to be first of all surrounded by a carefully-picked company of
+blackguards; then came the clever trip-up from behind; then the victim
+was left to be robbed; and then the authorities wrung their hands and
+said that it was a pity, and that everything should be done. The
+Liverpool youths went a little too far, and one peculiarly obnoxious
+set of rascals were sent to penal servitude, while the leader of a
+gang of murderers went to the gallows. But in London we have such
+sights every night as never were matched in the most turbulent Italian
+cities at times when the hot Southern blood was up; our great English
+capital can match Venice, Rome, Palermo, Turin, or Milan in the matter
+of stabbing; and, for mere wanton cruelty and thievishness, I imagine
+that Hackney Road or Gray's Inn Road may equal any thoroughfare of
+Francois Villon's Paris. These turbulent London mobs that make night
+hideous are made up of youths who have tasted the full blessings of
+our educational system; they were mostly mere infants when the great
+measure was passed which was to regenerate all things, and yet the
+London of Swift's time was not much worse than the Southwark or
+Hackney of our own day. I never for an instant dispute the general
+advance which our modern society has made, and I dislike the gruesome
+rubbish talked of the good old times; but I must nevertheless point
+out that "fancy" building and education are not the main factors which
+have aided in making us better and more seemly. The brutal rough
+remains, and the gangs of scamps who infest London in various spots
+are quite as bad as the beings whom Hogarth drew. They have all been
+forced into the Government schools; all of them have learned to read
+and write, and not one was suffered to leave school until he had
+reached the age of fourteen years or passed a moderately high standard
+according to the Code. Still, we have this monstrous army of the
+Hopeless Poor, and they are usually massed with the Hopeful Poor--the
+poor who attend the People's Palaces, and institutes, and so forth.
+Alas, the Hopeless Poor are not to be dismissed with a light
+phrase--they are not to be dealt with by mere pretty words! They are
+creatures who remain poor and villainous because they choose to be
+poor and villainous; so pity and nice theories will not cure them. The
+best of us yearn toward the good poor folk, and we find a healthful
+joy in aiding them; but we have a set of very different feelings
+towards the Evil Brigade.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+WAIFS AND STRAYS.
+
+
+When I talked[2] of the hopeless poor and of degraded men, I had in my
+mind only the feeble or detestable adults who degrade our
+civilisation; but I have by no means forgotten the unhappy little
+souls who develop into wastrels unless they are taken away from
+hideous surroundings which cramp vitality, destroy all childish
+happiness, and turn into brutes poor young creatures who bear the
+human image. Lately I heard one or two little stories which are
+amongst the most pathetic that ever came before me in the course of
+some small experience of life among the forsaken classes--or rather
+let me say, the classes that used to be forsaken. These little stories
+have prompted me to endeavour to deal carefully with a matter which
+has cost me many sad thoughts.
+
+    [2] Essay XII.
+
+A stray child was rescued from the streets by a society which is
+extending its operations very rapidly, and the little creature was
+placed as a boarder with a cottager in the country. To the utter
+amazement of the good rustic folk, their queer little guest showed
+complete ignorance of the commonest plants and animals; she had never
+seen any pretty thing, and she was quite used to being hungry and to
+satisfying her appetite with scraps of garbage. When she first saw a
+daisy on the green, she gazed longingly, and then asked plaintively,
+"Please, might I touch that?" When she was told that she might pluck a
+few daisies she was much delighted. After her first experiences in the
+botanising line she formally asked permission to pluck many wild
+flowers; but she always seemed to have a dread of transgressing
+against some dim law which had been hitherto represented to her mind
+by the man in blue who used to watch over her miserable alley. Before
+she became accustomed to receiving food at regular intervals, she
+fairly touched the hearts of her foster-parents by one queer request.
+The housewife was washing some Brussels sprouts, when the little stray
+said timidly, "Please, may I eat a bit of that stalk?" Of course the
+stringy mass was uneatable; but it turned out that the forlorn child
+had been very glad to worry at the stalks from the gutter as a dog
+does at an unclean bone. Another little girl was taken from the den
+which she knew as home, after her parents had been sent to prison for
+treating her with unspeakable cruelty. The matron of the country home
+found that the child's body was scarred from neck to ankle in a
+fashion which no lapse of years could efface. The explanation of the
+disfigurement was very simple. "If I didn't bring in any money mother
+beat me first; and then, when father came in drunk, she tied my hands
+behind my back and told him to give me the buckle. Then they strapped
+me on the bed and fastened my feet, and he whacked me with the
+buckle-end of his strap." It sounds very horrible, does it not?
+Nevertheless, the facts remain that the wretched parents were caught
+in the act and convicted, and that the child must carry her scars to
+her grave. No one who has not seen these lost children can form an
+idea of their darkness and helplessness of mind. We all know the story
+of the South Sea islanders, who said, "What a big pig!" when they
+first saw a horse; one little London savage quite equalled this by
+remarking, "What a little cow!" when she saw a tiny Maltese terrier
+brought by a lady missionary. The child had some vague conception
+regarding a cow; but, like others of her class, her notions of size,
+form, and colour, were quite cloudy. Another of these city phenomena
+did not know how to blow out a candle; and in many cases it is most
+difficult to persuade those newly reclaimed to go to bed without
+keeping their boots on. We cannot call such beings barbarians, because
+"barbarian" implies something wild, strong, and even noble; yet, to
+our shame, we must call them savages, and we must own that they are
+born and bred within easy gunshot distance of our centres of culture,
+enlightenment, and luxury. They swarm, do these children of suffering:
+and easy-going people have no idea of the density of the savagery amid
+which such scions of our noble English race are reared. A gentleman
+once offered sixpence to a little girl who appeared before him dressed
+in a single garment which seemed to have been roughly made from some
+sort of sacking. He expected to see her snatch at the coin with all
+the eagerness of the ordinary hardy street-arab; but she showed her
+jagged brown teeth, and said huskily, "No! Big money!" A lady,
+divining with the rapid feminine instinct what was meant by the
+enigmatic muttering, explained, "She does not know the sixpence. She
+has had coppers to spend before." And so it turned out to be.
+
+Perhaps comfortable, satisfied readers may be startled, or even
+offended, if I say that there are young creatures in our great cities
+who rarely see even the light of day, save when the beams are filtered
+through the reek of a court; and these same infants resemble the black
+fellows of Western Australia or the Troglodytes of Africa in general
+intelligence. I have little heart to speak of the parents who are
+answerable for such horrors of crass neglect and cruelty. By laying a
+set of dry police reports before any sensitive person I could make
+that person shudder without adding a word of rhetoric; for it would be
+seen that the popular picture of a fiend represents rather a mild and
+harmless entity if we compare it with the foul-souled human beings who
+dwell in our benighted places. What is to be done? It is best to
+grapple swiftly with an ugly question; and I do not hesitate to attack
+deliberately one of the most delicate puzzles that ever came before
+the world. Wise emotionless men may say, and do say, "Are you going to
+relieve male and female idlers and drunkards of all anxiety regarding
+their offspring? Do you mean to discourage the honest but
+poverty-stricken parents who do their best for their children? What
+kind of world will you make for us all if you give your aid to the
+worst and neglect the good folk?" Those are very awkward questions,
+and I can answer them only by a sort of expedient which must not be
+mistaken for intellectual conjuring; I drop ordinary logic and
+theories of probability and go at once to facts. At first sight it
+seems like rank folly for any man or body of men to take charge of a
+child which has been neglected by shameless parents; but, on the other
+hand, let us consider our own self-interest, and leave sentiment alone
+for a while. We cannot put the benighted starvelings into a lethal
+chamber and dispose of their brief lives in that fashion; we are bound
+to maintain them in some way or other--and the ratepayers of St.
+George's-in-the-East know to some trifling extent what that means. If
+the waifs grow up to be predatory animals, we must maintain them first
+of all in reformatories, and afterwards, at intervals during their
+lives, in prisons. If they grow up without shaking off the terrible
+mental darkness of their starveling childhood, we must provide for
+them in asylums. A thoroughly neglected waif costs this happy country
+something like fifteen pounds per year for the term of his natural
+life. Very good. At this point some hard-headed person says, "What
+about the workhouses?" This brings us face to face with another
+astounding problem to solve which at all satisfactorily requires no
+little research and thought. I know that there are good workhouses;
+but I happen to know that there are also bad ones. In many a ship and
+fishing-vessel fine fellows may be met with who were sent out early
+from workhouse-schools and wrought their way onward until they became
+brave and useful seamen; there are also many industrious
+well-conducted girls who came originally from the great Union schools.
+But, when I take another side of the picture, I am inclined to say
+very fervently, "Anything rather than the workhouse system for
+children! Anything short of complete neglect!" Observe that in one of
+the overgrown schools the young folk are scarcely treated as human;
+their individuality--if they have any to begin with--is soon lost;
+they are known only by a number, and they are passed into the outer
+world like bundles of shot rubbish. There are seamen who have never
+cast off the peculiar workhouse taint--and no worse shipmates ever
+afflicted any capable and honourable soul: for these Union weeds carry
+the vices of Rob the Grinder and Noah Claypole on to blue water, and
+show themselves to be hounds who would fawn or snarl, steal or talk
+saintliness, lie or sneak just as interest suited them. Then the
+workhouse girls: I have said sharp words about cruel mistresses; but I
+frankly own that the average lady who is saddled with the average
+workhouse servant has some slight reasons for showing acerbity, though
+she has none for practising cruelty. How could anybody expect a girl
+to turn out well after the usual course of workhouse training? The
+life of the soul is too often quenched; the flame of life in the poor
+body is dim and low; and the mechanical morality, the dull,
+meaningless round of useless lessons, the habit of herding in
+unhealthy rooms with unhealthy companions, all tend to develop a
+creature which can be regarded only as one of Nature's failures, if I
+may parody a phrase of the superlative Beau Brummel's.
+
+There is another and darker side to the workhouse question, but I
+shall skim it lightly. The women whose conversation the young girls
+hear are often wicked, and thus a dull, under-fed, inept child may
+have a great deal too much knowledge of evil. Can we expect such a
+collection to contain a large percentage of seemly and useful
+children? Is it a fact that the Unions usually supply domestics worth
+keeping? Ask the mistresses, and the answer will not be encouraging.
+No; the workhouse will not quite suffice. What we want to do is to
+take the waifs and strays into places where they may lead a natural
+and healthy life. Get them clear of the horror of the slums, let them
+breathe pure air and learn pure and simple habits, and then, instead
+of odious and costly human weeds, we may have wholesome, useful
+fellow-citizens, who not only will cost us nothing, but who will be a
+distinct source of solid profit to the empire. The thing has been and
+is being done steadily by good men and women who defy prejudice and go
+to work in a vigorous practical way. The most miserable and apparently
+hopeless little creatures from the filthy purlieus of great towns
+become gradually bright and healthy and intelligent when they are
+taken to their natural home--the country--and cut adrift from the
+congested centres of population. The cost of their maintenance is at
+first a little over the workhouse figure; but then the article
+produced for the money is far and away superior to anything turned out
+by any workhouse. The rescued children are eagerly sought after in the
+Colonies; and I am not aware of any case in which one of the young
+emigrants has expressed discontent. How much better it is to see these
+poor waifs changed into useful, profitable colonists than to have them
+sullenly, uselessly starving in the dens of London and Liverpool and
+Manchester! The work of rescuing and training the lost children has
+not been fully developed yet; but enough has been done to show that in
+a few years we shall have a large number of prosperous Colonial
+farmers who will indirectly contribute to the wealth of mighty
+Britain. Had the trained emigrants never been snatched away from the
+verge of the pit, we should have been obliged to maintain them until
+their wretched lives ended with sordid deaths, and the very cost of
+their burial would have come from the pockets of pinched workers. I
+fancy that I have shown the advisability of neglecting strict economic
+canons in this instance. I abhor the pestilent beings who swarm in
+certain quarters, and I should never dream of removing any burden from
+their shoulders if I thought that it would only leave the rascals with
+more money to expend on brutish pleasures; but I desire to look far
+ahead, and I can see that, when the present generation of adult
+wastrels dies out, it will be a very good thing for all of us if there
+are few or none of the same stamp ready to take their places. By
+resolutely removing the children of vice and sorrow, we clear the road
+for a better race. Let it be understood that I have a truly orthodox
+dread of "pauperisation," and I watch very jealously the doings of
+those who are anxious to feed all sorts and conditions of men; but
+pauperising men by maintaining them in laziness is very different from
+rearing useful subjects of the empire, whose trained labour is a
+source of profit and whose developed morality is a fund of security.
+We cannot take Chinese methods of lessening the pressure of
+population, and we must at once decide on the wisest way of dealing
+with our waifs and strays; if we do not, then the chances are that
+they will deal unpleasantly with us. The locust, the lemming, the
+phylloxera, are all very insignificant creatures; but, when they act
+together in numbers, they can very soon devastate a district. The
+parable is not by any means inapt.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+STAGE-CHILDREN.
+
+
+The Modern Legislator is a most terrible creature. When he is not
+engaged in obstructing public business, he must needs be meddling with
+other people's private affairs--and some of us want to know where he
+is going to stop. The Legislator has decreed that no children who are
+less than ten years of age shall henceforth be allowed to perform on
+the stage. Much of the talk which came from those who carried the
+measure was kindly and sensible; but some of the acrid party foisted
+mere misleading rubbish on the public. Henceforth the infantile player
+will be seen no more. Mr. Crummles will wave a stern hand from the
+shades where the children of dreams dwell, and the Phenomenon will be
+glad that she has passed from a prosaic earth. Had the stern
+law-makers had their way thirty years ago, how many pretty sights
+should we have missed! Little Marie Wilton would not have romped about
+the stage in her childish glee (she enjoyed the work from the first,
+and even liked playing in a draughty booth when the company of roaming
+"artists" could get no better accommodation). Little Ellen Terry, too,
+would not have played in the Castle scene in "King John," and crowds
+of worthy matrons would have missed having that "good cry" which they
+enjoy so keenly. We are happy who saw all the Terrys, and Marie the
+witty who charmed Charles Dickens, and all the pretty mites who did so
+delight us when Mme. Katti Lanner marshalled them. Does any reader
+wish to have a perfectly pleasant half-hour? Let that reader get the
+number of "Fors Clavigera" which contains Mr. Ruskin's description of
+the children who performed in the Drury Lane pantomime. The kind
+critic was in ecstasies--as well he might be--and he talked with
+enthusiasm about the cleanliness, the grace, the perfectly happy
+discipline of the tiny folk. Then, again, in "Time and Tide," the
+great writer gives us the following exquisite passage about a little
+dancer who especially pleased him--"She did it beautifully and simply,
+as a child ought to dance. She was not an infant prodigy; there was no
+evidence in the finish and strength of her motion that she had been
+put to continual torture during half of her eight or nine years. She
+did nothing more than any child--well taught, but painlessly--might
+do; she caricatured no older person, attempted no curious or fantastic
+skill; she was dressed decently, she moved decently, she looked and
+behaved innocently, and she danced her joyful dance with perfect
+grace, spirit, sweetness, and self-forgetfulness." How perfect! There
+is not much suggestion of torture or premature wickedness in all this;
+and I wish that the wise and good man's opinion might have been
+considered for a little while by some of the reformers. For my part, I
+venture to offer a few remarks about the whole matter; for there are
+several considerations which were neglected by the debaters on both
+sides during the discussion.
+
+First, then, I must solemnly say that I cannot advise any grown girl
+or young man to go upon the stage; and yet I see no harm in teaching
+little children to perform concerted movements in graceful ways. This
+sounds like a paradox; but it is not paradoxical at all to those who
+have studied the question from the inside. If a girl waits until she
+is eighteen before going on the stage, she has a good chance of being
+thrown into the company of women who do not dream of respecting her.
+If she enters a provincial travelling company, she has constant
+discomfort and constant danger; some of her companions are certain to
+be coarse--and a brutal actor whose professional vanity prevents him
+from understanding his own brutality is among the most horrible of
+living creatures. After a lady has made her mark as an actress, she
+can secure admirable lodging at good hotels; but a poor girl with a
+pound per week must put up with such squalor as only actors can
+fittingly describe. Amid all this the girl is left to take care of
+herself--observe that point. A little child is taken care of; whereas
+the adolescent or adult must fight her way through a grimy and
+repulsive environment as best she can. There is not a man in the world
+who would dare to introduce himself informally to any lady who is
+employed under Mr. W.S. Gilbert's superintendence; but what can we say
+about the thousands who travel from town to town unguided save by the
+curt directions of the stage manager? Let it be understood that when I
+speak of the theatre I have not in mind the beautiful refined places
+in central London where cultured people in the audience are
+entertained by cultured people on the stage; I am thinking grimly of
+the squalor, the degradation, the wretched hand-to-mouth existence of
+poor souls who work in the casual companies that spend the better part
+of their existence in railway carriages. Not long ago a young actress
+who can now command two thousand pounds per year was obliged to remain
+dinnerless on Christmas Day because she could not afford to pay a
+shilling for a hamper which was sent her from home. Her success in the
+lottery arrived by a strange chance; but how many bear all the poverty
+and trouble without even having one gleam of success in their
+miserable dangerous lives? There are theatres and theatres--there are
+managers and managers; but in some places the common conversation of
+the women is not edifying--and a good girl must insensibly lose her
+finer nature if she has to associate with such persons.
+
+In the case of the little children there are none, or few, at any
+rate, of the drawbacks. Not one in fifty goes on the stage; the mites
+are engaged only at certain seasons; and their harvest-time enables
+poor people to obtain many little comforts and necessaries. Further,
+there is one curious thing which may not be known to the highly
+particular sect--no manager, actor, or actress would use a profane or
+coarse word among the children; such an offender would be scouted by
+the roughest member of any company and condemned by the very
+stage-carpenters. I own that I have sometimes wished that a child here
+and there could be warm asleep on a chilly night, especially when the
+young creature was perilously suspended from a wire; but that is very
+nearly the furthest extent of my pity. So long as the youngsters are
+not required to perform dangerous or unnatural feats, they need no
+pity. Instead of being inured to brutalities, they are actually taken
+away from brutality--for no man or woman would sully their minds. We
+have heard it said that the stage-children who return to school after
+their spell of pantomime corrupt the others. This is a gross and
+stupid falsehood which is calculated to injure a cause that has many
+good points. I earnestly sympathise with the well-meaning people who
+desire to succour the little ones; but I beseech them not to be led
+away by misstatements which are concocted for sensational purposes. So
+far from corrupting other children, the young actors invariably act as
+a good influence in a school. The experienced observer can almost make
+certain of picking out the boys and girls who have had a
+stage-training. They like to be smart and cleanly, their deportment
+and general manners are improved, and they are almost invariably
+superior in intelligence to the ordinary school-trained child. Imagine
+Mme. Katti Lanner having a corrupt influence! Imagine those delightful
+beings who play "Alice in Wonderland" corrupting anybody or anything!
+I have always been struck by the pretty manners of the trained
+children--and the advance in refinement is especially noticeable among
+those who have been speaking or singing parts. The most pleasing set
+of youths that I ever met were the members of a comic-opera troupe.
+Some of them, without an approach to freedom of manner, would converse
+with good sense on many topics, and their drill had been so extended
+as to include a knowledge of polite salutes. Not one of the boys or
+girls would have been ill at ease in a drawing-room; and I found their
+educational standard quite up to that of any Board school known to me.
+These nice little folk were certainly in no wise pallid or distraught;
+and, when they danced on the stage, the performance was a beautiful
+and delightful romp which suggested no idea of pain. To see the "prima
+donna" of the company trundling her hoop on a bright morning was as
+pretty a sight as one would care to see. The little lady was neither
+forward nor unhealthy, nor anything else that is objectionable--and it
+was plain that she enjoyed her life. Is it in the least likely that
+any sane manager would ill-treat a little child that was required to
+be pleasing? One or two acrobats have been known to be stern with
+their apprentices; but the rudest circus-man would not venture to
+exhibit a pupil who looked unhappy. The rascally "Arabs" who entrapped
+so many boys in years gone by were fiends who met with very
+appropriate retribution; but such villains are not common.
+
+I am always haunted by the argument about late hours--and give it
+every weight. As aforesaid, I used sometimes to wish that some wee
+creature could only be wrapped in a night-gown and sent to rest. But,
+for the benefit of those who cannot well imagine what the horrors of a
+city slum are like, let me describe the nightly scene in a typical
+city alley. It is cold in the pantomime season; but the folk in that
+alley have not much fire. Joe, the costermonger, Bill, the
+market-labourer, Tom, the fish-porter, and the rest come home in a
+straggling way; and, if they can buy a pennyworth of coal, they boil
+the little kettle. Then one of the children runs to the chandler's and
+gets a halfpennyworth of tea, a scrap of bread, and perhaps a penny
+slice of sausage. The men stint themselves in food and firing; but
+they always have a little to spare for gin and beer and tobacco. There
+is no light in the evil-smelling room; but there is a place at the
+corner of the alley where the gas is burning as cheerily as the foul
+wreaths of smoke will permit. The men go out and squat on barrels in
+the hideous bar; then they call for some liquor which may be warranted
+to take speedy effect; then they smoke, and try to forget.
+
+What is the little child to do? Go to bed? Why, it has no bed! If it
+were earning a little money, its parents might be able to provide a
+flock or straw bed with some sort of covering; but the poverty of
+these people is so gnawing and dire that very few lodgings contain
+anything which could possibly be pawned for twopence. Usually the
+child seeks the streets; and in the dim and filthy haze he or she
+sports at large with other ragged companions. Then the women--the
+match-box makers, trouser-makers, and such like--begin to troop
+in--and they gravitate towards the gin-shop. The darkness deepens; the
+bleared lamps blare in the dirty mist; the hoarse roar from the
+public-house comes forth accompanied by choking wafts of reek; the
+abominable tramps move towards the lodging-house and pollute the
+polluted air further with the foulness of their language; the drink
+mounts into unstable heads; and presently--especially on Saturday
+nights--there are hoarse growls as from rough-throated beasts, shrill
+shrieks, and a running chorus of indescribable grossness. Drunken men
+are quarrelling in the street, drunken women yell and stagger, and the
+hideous discord fills the night on all sides. No item of corruption is
+spared the children; and the vile hurly-burly ceases only at midnight.
+The children will always try to sneak through the swinging doors of
+the gin _inferno_ when the cold becomes too severe; and they will
+remain crouched like rats until some capricious guest sends them out
+with an oath and a kick. There is not one imaginable horror that does
+not become familiar to these children of despair--and they sometimes
+have a very good chance of seeing murder. When the last hour comes,
+and the father and mother return to their dusky den, the child
+crouches anywhere on the floor; undressing is not practised; and, if
+any sentimental person will first of all go into a common Board school
+in a non-theatrical quarter on a wet afternoon, and if he will then
+drive on and pass through a few hundreds of the theatrical children,
+his "olfactories" will teach him a lesson which may make him think a
+good deal.
+
+Now let me put a question or two in the name of common sense. We must
+balance good and evil; and, granting that the theatre has a tendency
+to make children light-minded, is it worse than the horror of the
+slums and the stench and darkness of the single room where a family
+herd together? The youngster who is engaged at the theatre can set off
+home at the very latest as soon as the harlequinade is over. Very
+well; suppose it is late. Would he or she be early if the night were
+spent in the alley? Not at all! Then the child from the theatre is
+bathed, fed, taught, clothed nicely, and it gives its parents a little
+money which procures food. Some say the extra money goes for extra
+gin--and that may happen in some cases; but, at any rate, the child's
+earnings usually purchase a share of food as well as of drink; for the
+worst blackguard in the world dares not send a starveling to meet the
+stage-manager. In sum, then, making every possible allowance for the
+good intentions of those who wish to rescue children from the theatre,
+I am inclined to fear that they have been hasty. I am not without some
+knowledge of the various details of the subject; and I have tried to
+give my judgment as fairly as I could--for I also pity and love the
+children.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY: PAST AND PRESENT.
+
+
+Certain enterprising persons have contributed of late years to make
+English newspapers somewhat unpleasant reading, and mournful men are
+given to moaning over the growth of national corruption. So persistent
+have the mournful folk been, that many good simple people are in a
+state of grievous alarm, for they are persuaded that the nation is
+bound towards the pit of Doom. When doleful men and women cry out
+concerning abstract evils, it is always best to meet them with hard
+facts, and I therefore propose to show that we ought really to be very
+grateful for the undoubted advance of the nation toward righteousness.
+Hideous blots there are--ugly cankers amid our civilisation--but we
+grow better year by year, and the general movement is towards honesty,
+helpfulness, goodness, purity. Whenever any croaker begins speaking
+about the golden age that is gone, I advise my readers to try a system
+of cross-examination. Ask the sorrowful man to fix the precise period
+of the golden age, and pin him to direct and definite statements. Was
+it when labourers in East Anglia lived like hogs around the houses of
+their lords? Was it when the starving and utterly wretched thousands
+marched on London under Tyler and John Ball? Was it when the
+press-gangs kidnapped good citizens in broad daylight? Was it when a
+score of burning ricks might be seen in a night by one observer? Was
+it when imbecile rulers had set all the world against us--when the
+French threatened Ireland, and the maddened, hunger-bitten sailors
+were in wild rebellion, and the Funds were not considered as safe for
+investors? The croaker is always securely indefinite, and a strict,
+vigorous series of questions reduces him to rage and impotence.
+
+Now let us go back, say, one hundred and twenty years, and let us see
+how the sovereign, the legislators, the aristocracy, and the people
+fared then; the facts may perchance be instructive. The King had
+resolved to be absolute, and his main energies were devoted to bribing
+Parliament. With his own royal hand he was not ashamed to write,
+enclosing what he called "gold pills," which were to be used in
+corrupting his subjects. He was a most moral, industrious, cleanly man
+in private life; yet when the Duke of Grafton, his Prime Minister,
+appeared near the royal box of the theatre, accompanied by a woman of
+disreputable character, his Majesty made no sign. He was satisfied if
+he could keep the mighty Burke, the high-souled Rockingham, the
+brilliant Charles James Fox, out of his counsels, and he did not care
+at all about the morals or the general behaviour of his Ministers.
+About a quarter of a million was spent by the Crown in buying votes
+and organising corruption, and King George III. was never ashamed to
+appear before his Parliament in the character of an insolvent debtor
+when he needed money to sap the morals of his people. A movement in
+the direction of purity began even in George III.'s own lifetime; he
+was obliged to be cautious, and he ended by coming under the iron
+domination of William Pitt. Thus, instead of being remembered as the
+dangerous, obstinate, purblind man who made Parliament a sink of
+foulness, and who lost America, he is mentioned as a comfortable
+simple gentleman of the farmer sort. Before we can half understand the
+vast purification that has been wrought, we must study the history of
+the reign from 1765 to 1784, and then we may feel happy as we compare
+our gentle, beneficent Sovereign with the unscrupulous blunderer who
+fought the Colonists and all but lost the Empire.
+
+Then consider the Ministers who carried out the Sovereign's behest.
+There was "Jemmy Twitcher," as Lord Sandwich was called. This man was
+so utterly bad, that in later life he never cared to conceal his
+infamies, because he knew that his character could not possibly be
+worse blackened. Sandwich belonged to the unspeakable Medmenham Abbey
+set. The lovely ruin had been bought and renovated by a gang of rakes,
+who converted it into an abode of drunkenness and grossness; they
+defaced the sacred trees and the grey walls with inscriptions which
+the indignation of a purer age has caused to be removed; they carried
+on nightly revels which no historian could describe, and in their
+wicked buffoonery mocked the Creator with burlesque religious rites.
+Such an unholy place would be pulled down by the mob nowadays, and the
+gang of debauchees would figure in the police-court; but in those
+"good old times" the Prime Minister and the Secretary to the Admiralty
+were merry members of a crew that disgraced humanity. Just six weeks
+after Lord Sandwich had joined the Medmenham Abbey gang, he put
+himself forward for election to the High Stewardship of Cambridge
+University. Here was a pretty position! The man had been thus
+described by a poet--
+
+  "Too infamous to have a friend,
+  Too bad for bad men to commend
+  Or good to name; beneath whose weight
+  Earth groans; who hath been spared by fate
+  Only to show on mercy's plan
+  How far and long God bears with man"--
+
+and this superb piece of truculence was received with applause by all
+that was upright and noble in England. This indescribable villain
+presented himself as worthy to preside over the place where the flower
+of English youth were educated. A pleasing example he offered to young
+and ardent souls! Worst of all, he was elected. He adroitly gained the
+votes of country clergymen; he begged his friends to solicit the votes
+of their private chaplains; he dodged and manoeuvred until he gained
+his position. One voter came from a lunatic asylum, another was
+brought from the Isle of Man, others were bribed in lavish
+fashion--and Sandwich presided over Cambridge. The students rose in a
+body and walked out when he came among them; but that mattered little
+to the brazen fellow. To complete the ghastly comedy, it happened that
+four years later the Chancellorship fell vacant, and the Duke of
+Grafton, who was only second to "Jemmy Twitcher" in wickedness, was
+chosen for the high office.
+
+Now I ask plainly, "Can the croakers declare that England was better
+under Grafton and 'Jemmy Twitcher' than she now is?" It is nonsense!
+The crew of bacchanals and blackguards who then flaunted in high
+places would not now be tolerated for a day. I look on our governing
+class now,[3] and I may safely declare that not more than one Cabinet
+Minister during the past twenty years has been regarded as otherwise
+than stainless in character. What is the meaning of this
+transformation? It means that good, pure women have gained their
+rightful influence, that men have grown purer, and that the elevation
+of the general body of society has been reflected in the character of
+the men chosen to rule. Vice is all too powerful, and the dark corners
+of our cities are awful to see; but the worst of the "fast" men in
+modern England are not so bad as were the governors of a mighty empire
+when George III. was king.
+
+    [3] 1886.
+
+If we look at the society that diced and drank and squandered health
+and fortune in the times which we mention, we are more than ever
+struck with the advance made. It is a literal fact that the
+correspondence of the young men mainly refers to drink and gaming, the
+correspondence of the middle-aged men to gout. There were few of the
+educated classes who reached middle age, and a country squire was
+reckoned quite a remarkable person if he could still walk and ride
+when he attained to fifty years. The quiet, steady middle-class
+certainly lived more temperately; but the intemperance of the
+aristocracy was indescribable. The leader of the House of Lords
+imbibed until six every morning, was carried to bed, and came down
+about two in the afternoon; two noblemen declared that they drank a
+gallon and a half of Champagne and Burgundy at one sitting; in some
+coffee-houses it was the custom, when the night's drinking ended, for
+the company to burn their wigs. Some of Horace Walpole's letters prove
+plainly enough that great gentlemen conducted themselves occasionally
+very much as wild seamen would do in Shadwell or the Highway. What
+would be thought if Lord Salisbury reeled into the House in a totally
+drunken condition? The imagination cannot conceive the situation, and
+the fact that the very thought is laughable shows how much we have
+improved in essentials. In bygone days, a man who became a Minister
+proceeded to secure his own fortune; then he provided for all his
+relatives, his hangers-on, his very jockeys and footmen. One lord held
+eight sinecure offices, and was besides colonel of two regiments. A
+Chancellor of the Exchequer cleared four hundred thousand on a new
+loan, and the bulk of this large sum remained in his own pocket, for
+he had but few associates to bribe. When patrols were set to guard the
+Treasury at night, an epigram ran--
+
+  "From the night till the morning 'tis true all is right;
+  But who will secure it from morning till night?"
+
+There was a perfect carnival of robbery and corruption, and the people
+paid for all. Money gathered by public corruption was squandered in
+private debauchery, while a sullen and helpless nation looked on.
+Think of the change! A Minister now toils during seventeen hours per
+day, and receives less than a successful barrister. He must give up
+all the ordinary pleasures of life; and, in recompense for the
+sacrifice, he can claim but little patronage. By most of the men in
+office the work is undertaken on purely patriotic grounds; so that a
+duke with a quarter of a million per year is content to labour like an
+attorney's clerk.
+
+If we think about the ladies of the old days, we are more than ever
+driven to reflection. It is impossible to imagine a more insensate
+collection of gamblers than the women of Horace Walpole's society.
+Well-bred harpies won and lost fortunes, and the vice became a raging
+pest. A young politician could not further his own prospects better
+than by letting some high-born dame win his money; if the youth won
+the lady's money, then a discreet forgetfulness of the debt was
+profitable to him. The rattle of dice and the shuffle of cards sounded
+wherever two or three fashionable persons were gathered together; men
+and women quarrelled, and society became a mere jumble of people who
+suspected and hated and thought to rob each other. It is horrible,
+even at this distance of time, to think of those rapacious beings who
+forgot literature, art, friendship, and family affection for the sake
+of high play. One weary, witty debauchee said, "Play wastes time,
+health, money, and friendship;" yet he went on pitting his skill
+against that of unsexed women and polished rogues.
+
+The morality of the fair gamblers was more than loose. It was taken
+for granted in the whole set that every female member of it must
+inevitably be divorced, if the catastrophe had not occurred already;
+and one man asked Walpole, "Who's your proctor?" just as he would have
+asked, "Who's your tailor?" An unspeakable society--a hollow,
+heartless, callous, wicked brood. Compare that crew of furious
+money-grabbers with our modern gentlemen and ladies! We have our
+faults--crime and vice flourish; but, from the Court down to the
+simplest middle-class society in our provincial towns, the spread of
+seemliness and purity is distinctly marked. Some insatiable grumblers
+will have it that our girls and women are deteriorating, and we are
+informed that the taste for objectionable literature is keener than it
+used to be. It is a distinct libel. No one save a historian would now
+read the corrupting works of Mrs. Aphra Behn; and yet it is a fact
+that those novels were read aloud among companies of ladies. A man
+winces now if he is obliged to turn to them; the girls in the "good
+old times" heard them with never a blush. Wherever we turn we find the
+same steady advance. Can any creature be more dainty, more sweet, more
+pure, than the ordinary English girl of our day? Will any one bring
+evidence to show that the girls of the last century, or of any other,
+were superior to our own maidens? No evidence has been produced from
+literature, from journals, from family correspondence, and I am pretty
+certain that no evidence exists. Practically speaking, the complaints
+of the decline of morality are merely uttered as a mode of showing the
+talker's own superiority.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+"RAISING THE LEVEL OF AMUSEMENTS."
+
+
+It is really most kind on the part of certain good people to
+reorganise the amusements of the people; but, as each reorganiser
+fancies himself to be the only man who has the right notion, it
+follows that matters are becoming more and more complicated. For
+example, to begin with literature, a simple person who has no taste
+for profundities likes to read the old sort of stories about love's
+pretty fever; the simple person wants to hear about the trials and
+crosses of true lovers, the defeat of villains--to enjoy the kindly
+finish where faith and virtue are rewarded, and where the unambitious
+imagination may picture the coming of a long life of homely toil and
+homely pleasure. Perhaps the simple personage has a taste for dukes--I
+know of one young person aged thirteen who will not write a romance of
+her own without putting her hero at the very summit of the peerage--or
+wicked baronets, or marble halls. These tastes are by no means
+confined to women; sailors in far-away seas most persistently beguile
+their scanty leisure by studying tales of sentiment, and soldiers are,
+if possible, more eager than seamen for that sort of reading. The
+righteous organiser comes on the scene, and says, "We must not let
+these poor souls fritter away any portion of their lives on
+frivolities. Let us give them less of light literature and more of the
+serious work which may lead them to strive toward higher things." The
+aggressively righteous individual has a most eccentric notion of what
+constitutes "light" literature; he never thinks that Shakspere is
+decidedly "light," and I rather fancy that he would regard
+Aristophanes as heavy. If one were to suggest, on his proposing to
+place the Irving Shakspere on the shelves of a free library, that the
+poet is often foolish, often a buffoon of a low type, often a mere
+quibbler, and often ribald, he might perhaps have a fit, or he might
+inquire if the speaker were mad--assuredly he would do something
+impressive; but he would not scruple to deliver an oration of the
+severest type if some sweet and innocent story of love and tenderness
+and old-fashioned sentiment were proposed. As for the lady who
+dislikes "light" literature, she is a subject for laughter among the
+gods. To see such an one present a sensible workman with a pamphlet
+entitled "Who Paid for the Mangle?--or, Maria's Pennies," is to know
+what overpowering joy means. Yet the severe and strait-laced censors
+are not perhaps so much of a nuisance as the sternly-cultured and
+emotional persons who "yearn" a great deal. The "yearnest" man or
+woman always has an ideal which is usually the vaguest thing in the
+cloudland of metaphysics. I fancy it means that one must always be
+hankering after something which one has not and keeping a look of
+sorrow when one's hankering is fruitless. The feeling of pity with
+which a "yearnest" one regards somebody who cares only for pleasant
+and simple or pathetic books is very creditable; but it weighs on the
+average human being. Why on earth should a girl leave the tenderness
+of "The Mill on the Floss" and rise to "Daniel Deronda's" elevated but
+barren and abhorrent level? There are people capable of advising girls
+to read such a literary production as "Robert Elsmere"; and this
+advice reveals a capacity for cruelty worthy of an inquisitor. Then we
+are bidden to leave the unpolished utterances of frank love and
+jealousy and fear and anger in order that we may enjoy the peculiar
+works of art which have come from America of late. In these
+enthralling fictions all the characters are so exceedingly refined
+that they can talk only by hints, and sometimes the hints are very
+long. But the explanations of the reasons for giving the said hints
+are still longer; and, when once the author starts off to tell why
+Crespigny Conyers of Conyers Magna, England, stumbled against the
+music-stool prepared for the reception of Selina Fogg, Bones Co.,
+Mass., one never knows whether the fifth, the twelfth, or the fortieth
+page of the explanation will bring him up. There is no doubt but that
+these things are refined in their way. The British peer and the
+beautiful American girl hint away freely through three volumes; and it
+is understood that they either go through the practical ceremony of
+getting married at the finish, or decline into the most
+delicately-finished melancholy that resignation, or more properly,
+renunciation can produce. Yet the atmosphere in which they dwell is
+sickly to the sound soul. It is as if one were placed in an orchid
+house full of dainty and rare plants, and kept there until the quiet
+air and the light scents overpowered every faculty. In all the doings
+of these superfine Americans and Frenchmen and Britons and Italians
+there is something almost inhuman; the record of a strong speech, a
+blow, a kiss would be a relief, and one young and unorthodox person
+has been known to express an opinion to the effect that a naughty word
+would be quite luxurious. The lovers whom we love kiss when they meet
+or part, they talk plainly--unless the girls play the natural and
+delightful trick of being coy--and they behave in a manner which human
+beings understand. Supposing that the duke uses a language which
+ordinary dukes do not affect save in moments of extreme emotion, it is
+not tiresome, and, at the worst, it satisfies a convention which has
+not done very much harm. Now on what logical ground can we expect
+people who were nourished on a literature which is at all events
+hearty even when it chances to be stupid--on what grounds can the
+organisers of improvement expect an English man or woman to take a
+sudden fancy to the diaphanous ghosts of the new American fiction? I
+dislike out-of-the-way words, and so perhaps, instead of "diaphanous
+ghosts," I had better say "transparent wraiths," or "marionettes of
+superfine manufacture," or anything the reader likes that implies
+frailty and want of human resemblance. It all comes to the same thing;
+the individuals who recommend a change of literature as they might
+recommend a change of air do not know the constitutions of the
+patients for whom they prescribe. It has occurred to me that a
+delightful comedy scene might be witnessed if one of the badgered folk
+who are to be "raised" were to say on a sudden, "In the name of
+goodness, how do you know that my literature is not better than yours?
+Why should I not raise you? When you tell me that these nicely-dressed
+ladies and gentlemen, who only half say anything they want to say and
+who never half do anything, are polished and delightful, and so on, I
+grant that they are so to you, and I do not try to upset your
+judgment. But your judgment and my taste are two very different
+things; and, when I use my taste, I find your heroes and heroines very
+consummate bores; so I shall keep to my own old favourites." Who could
+blame the person who uttered those very awkward protests? The question
+to me is--Who need most to be dealt with--those who are asked to learn
+some new thing, or those who have learned the new thing and show signs
+that they would be better if they could forget it? I should not have
+much hesitation in giving an answer.
+
+Then, as to public amusements, we have to look quite as closely and
+distrustfully at the action of the reformers as we have at the action
+of the kind gentlefolk who are going to give us "Daniel Deronda" and
+the highly entertaining works of Mr. William Deans Howells in place of
+the dear welcome stories that pass away the long hours. Let it be
+understood that I do not wish to say one word likely to be construed
+into a jeer at real culture; but I must, as a matter of mercy, say
+something in defence of those who cannot understand or win emotions
+from such things as classical music or the "advanced" drama. Pray, in
+pity's name, what is to be said against the commonplace man who hears
+an accomplished musician play Beethoven, Bach, or Chopin in his--the
+commonplace one's--drawing-room, and who says in agony, "Very fine!
+Very deep! Very profound--profound indeed, sir! Full of breadth and
+symmetry and that sort of thing! Now do you think we might vary that
+noble masterpiece with a waltz?" Can we blame the poor fellow? Wagner
+represents a noise to him, and the awful scorn and despair of the
+first movement in the "Moonlight Sonata" only lead him to say, "Heavy
+play with that left hand. Can't he go faster over the treble, or
+whatever they call it?" He wants intelligible musical ideas, and we
+have no right to begin "level-raising" with the unhappy and
+remonstrant man. The music halls in London are now under strict
+supervision, and some of them used to need it very much in days gone
+by. Personally I should suppress the male comic singer who tries to
+win a laugh from degraded listeners by unseemly means, and I should
+not scruple to draft a short Act ensuring imprisonment for such as he;
+but, so long as the entertainment remains inoffensive to the general
+good sense of the community, we need not weep greatly if it is
+sometimes just a trifle stupid. No one who does not know the inner
+life of the working-classes can imagine how restricted are their
+interests. Moreover, I shall venture on making a somewhat startling
+statement which may surprise those who look on the surface of things
+as indicated in the newspapers. The working-classes of a certain grade
+cherish a certain convention regarding themselves, but they do not
+understand their own set at all. If they heard a real mechanic or
+labourer spouting sentiment in the shop or the club, they would
+silence him very summarily; but the stage working-man, the stage
+hawker, the stage tinker may utter any claptrap that he likes, and the
+audience try to believe that they might possibly have been able to
+talk in the same way but for circumstances. It is not at any time
+pleasant to see people going on under a delusion; but, supposing the
+delusion is no worse than that of the man who thinks himself handsome
+or witty or fascinating while he is really plain or silly or a bore,
+what can the mistake matter to anybody? We smile at the little vanity,
+and perhaps pride ourselves a little on our own remarkable
+superiority, and there the business may very well end. The men of the
+music hall live, as I have said, entirely in a dull convention; and,
+if a set of thorough artists were to portray them exactly, no one
+would be more surprised than the folk whose portraits were taken. The
+gentlemen who are resolved to regenerate the music-hall stage persist
+in not considering the audience; and yet, when all is said and done,
+the poor stupid audience should be considered a little. If we played
+Browning's "Strafford" for them, how much would they be "raised"? They
+would not laugh, they would not yawn; they would be stupefied, and a
+trifle insulted. Give them a good silly swinging chorus about some
+subject connected with the tender affections, and let the refrain run
+to a waltz rhythm or to a striking drawl, and they are satisfied in
+mind and rejoice exceedingly. The finer class of people in the
+East-end of London seem to enjoy the very noblest and even the most
+abstruse of sacred music at the Sunday concerts; but it will be long
+before the music-hall audiences are educated up even to the standard
+of those crowds who come off the Whitechapel pavements to hear Handel.
+We cannot hurry them: why try? Their lives are very hard, and, when
+the brief gleam comes on the evening of evenings in the week, we
+should be content with ensuring them decency, safety, order, and let
+them enjoy their own entertainment in their own way. A thoroughly
+prosaic and logical preacher might say to those poor souls with
+perfect truth, "Why do you waste time in coming here to see things
+which are done much better in the streets? You roar and cheer and
+stamp when you see a real cab-horse come across from the wings, and
+yet in an hour you might watch a hundred cabs pass you in the street
+and you would not cheer the least bit. You hear a costermonger on the
+stage say, 'Give me my 'umble fireside, and let my good old missus
+'and me my cup o' tea and my 'ard-earned bit o' bread, and all the
+dooks and lords in Hengland ain't nothin' to me!'--you hear that, and
+you know quite well that no costermonger on this goodly earth ever
+talked in that way, and still you cheer. You like only what is unreal,
+and, when you are shown a character which is supposed in some
+mysterious way to resemble you, you are more than delighted, and you
+applaud a thing which is either a silly caricature or an utterly
+foolish libel." The poor and lowly personage thus hailed with cutting
+denunciation and logic might say, "Please mind your own business. Do
+you pay my sixpence for the gallery? No; I find it myself, and I come
+to have my bit of fun with my own money, in my own place, at my own
+price. I have enough of workshops and streets and what you call real
+things; so, when I come out to the play, I want them all unreal, and
+as unreal as possible. Monday morning's time enough to go back to
+reality." As often as ever fussy reformers try to do more than ensure
+propriety in theatres, so often will they be beaten; and I am quite
+sure that, if any attempt is made to go too far, we may have on any
+day a repetition of the O.P. riots, which almost ended in the wrecking
+of the patent playhouses. Let us be treated like grown beings, and not
+as if we were still in short baby-frocks. Men resent many things, but
+they resent being made ridiculous more than all. The committees before
+which many theatrical managers were obliged to appear a few years
+since have done good in a few instances; but they have often played
+the most ridiculous pranks, and they have roused grave fears in minds
+unused to know fear of any kind. The peculiar prying questions, the
+successful attempts made to interfere with concerns which should not
+on any account be public property, the disposition to treat the
+people, whose mature wisdom is proclaimed from all political
+platforms, as little children, all combine to make the aspect of the
+general question not a little alarming. Would it not be better then,
+in sum, to abstain from raising levels to such a mighty extent, and to
+strive after improving all the amusements on a less heroic scale?
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+A LITTLE SERMON ON FAILURES.
+
+
+If we study the history of men with patience, it becomes evident that
+no great work has ever been done in the world save by those who have
+met with bitter rebuffs and severe trials at the beginning of their
+career. It seems as though the ruling powers imposed an ordeal on
+every human being, in order to single out the strong and the worthy
+from the cowardly and worthless. The weakling who meets with trouble
+uplifts his voice in complaint and ceases to struggle against
+obstacles; the strong man or woman remains silent and strives on
+indomitably until success is achieved. It is strange to see how many
+complaining weaklings are living around us at this day, and how
+querulous and unjust are the outcries addressed to Fate, Fortune, and
+Providence. We are the heirs of the ages; we know all about the brave
+souls that suffered and strove and conquered in days gone by, and yet
+many who possess this knowledge, and who have the gift of expression
+at its highest, spend their time in one long tiresome whimper. Half
+the poetry of our time is rhythmic complaint; young men who have
+hardly had time to look round on the splendid panorama of life profess
+to crave for death, and young women who should be thinking only of
+work and love and brightness prefer to sink into languor. There is no
+curing a poet when once he takes to being mournful, for he hugs his
+own woe with positive pleasure, and all his musical pathos is simply
+self-pity.
+
+When Napoleon said, "You must not fear Death, my lads. Defy him, and
+you drive him into the enemy's ranks!" he uttered a truth which
+applies in the moral world as on the battle-field. The sudden panic
+which causes battalions of troops to hesitate and break up in
+confusion is paralleled by the numbing despair which seems to seize on
+the forces of the soul at times. Brave men gaze calmly on the trouble
+and think within themselves, "Now is the hour of trial; it is needful
+to be strong and audacious;" weak men drop into hopeless lassitude,
+and the few who happen to be foolish as well as weak rid themselves of
+life. I dare say that hardly one of those who read these lines has
+escaped that one awful moment when effort appears vain, when life is
+one long ache, and when Time is a creeping horror that seems to lag as
+if to torture the suffering heart. We need only turn to the vivid
+chapter of modern life to see the utter folly of "giving in." Let us
+look at the life-history of a statesman who died some years ago in our
+country, after wielding supreme power and earning the homage of
+millions. When young Benjamin D'Israeli first entered society in
+London, he found that the proud aristocrats looked askance at him. He
+came of a despised race, he had no fortune, his modes of acting and
+speaking were strange to the cold, self-contained Northerners among
+whom he cast his lot, and his chances looked far from promising. He
+waited and worked, but all things seemed to go wrong with him; he
+published a poem which was laughed at all over the country; he strove
+to enter Parliament, and failed again and again; middle age crept on
+him, and the shadows of failure seemed to compass him round. In one
+terrible passage which he wrote in a flippant novel called "The Young
+Duke" he speaks about the woful fate of a man who feels himself full
+of strength and ability, and who is nevertheless compelled to live in
+obscurity. The bitter sadness of this startling page catches the
+reader by the throat, for it is a sudden revelation of a strong man's
+agony. At last the toiler obtained his chance, and rose to make his
+first speech in the House of Commons. He was then long past thirty
+years of age; but he had the exuberance and daring of a boy. All the
+best judges in the Commons admired the opening of the oration; but the
+coarser members were stimulated to laughter by the speaker's strange
+appearance. D'Israeli had dressed himself in utter defiance of all
+conventions; he wore a dark green coat which came closely up to his
+chin, a gaudy vest festooned with chains, and glittering rings. His
+ringlets were combed in a heavy mass over his right shoulder; and it
+is said that he looked like some strange actor. The noise grew as he
+went on; his finest periods were lost amid howls of derision, and at
+last he raised his arms above his head, and shouted, "I sit down now;
+but the time will come when you will hear me!" A few good men consoled
+him; but most of his friends advised him to get away out of the
+country that his great failure might be forgotten. Now here was cause
+for despair in all conscience; the brilliant man had failed
+disastrously in the very assembly which he had sworn to master, and
+the sound of mockery pursued him everywhere. His hopes seemed
+blighted; his future was dim, he was desperately and dangerously in
+debt, and he had broken down more completely than any speaker within
+living memory. Take heart, all sufferers, when you hear what follows.
+For eleven long years the gallant orator steadily endeavoured to
+repair his early failure; he spoke frequently, asserted himself
+without caring for the jeers of his enemies, and finally he won the
+leadership of the House by dint of perseverance, tact, and intellect.
+We cannot tell how often his heart sank within him during those weary
+years; we know nothing of his forebodings; we only know that outwardly
+he always appeared alert, vigorous, strenuously hopeful. At last his
+name was known all over the world, and, after his death, a traveller
+who rode across Asia Minor was again and again questioned by the wild
+nomads--"Is your great Sheikh dead?" they asked. The rumour of our
+statesman's power had traversed the earth. Men of all parties
+acknowledge the indomitable courage of this man who refused to resign
+the struggle even when the very Fates seemed to have decreed his ruin.
+
+Take a man of another stamp, and observe how he met the first blows of
+Fortune. Thomas Carlyle had dwelt on a lonely moorland for six years.
+He came to London and employed himself with feverish energy on a book
+which he thought would win him bread, even if it did not gain him
+fame. Writing was painful to him, and he never set down a sentence
+without severe labour. With infinite pains he sought out the history
+of the French Revolution and obtained a clear picture of that
+tremendous event. Piece by piece he put his first volume together and
+satisfied himself that he had done something which would live. He
+handed his precious manuscript to Stuart Mill, and Mill's servant lit
+the fire with it. Carlyle had exhausted his means, and his great work
+was really his only capital. Like all men who write at high pressure,
+he was unable to recall anything that he had once set down, and, so
+far as his priceless volume went, his mind was a blank. Years of toil
+were thrown away; time was fleeting, and the world was careless of the
+matchless historian. The first news of his loss stunned him, and, had
+he been a weak man, he would have collapsed under the blow. He saw
+nothing but bitter poverty for himself and his wife, and he had some
+thoughts of betaking himself to the Far West; but he conquered his
+weakness, forgot his despair in labour, and doggedly re-wrote the
+masterpiece which raised him to instant fame and caused him to be
+regarded as one of the first men in Britain. In the whole wide history
+of human trials I cannot recall a more shining instance of fortitude
+and triumphant victory over obstacles. Let those who are cast down by
+some petty trouble think of the lonely, poverty-stricken student
+bending himself to his task after the very light of his life had been
+dimmed for a while.
+
+There is nothing like an array of instances for driving home an
+argument, so I mention the case of a man about whom much debate goes
+on even to this day. Napoleon starved in the streets of Paris; one by
+one he sold his books to buy bread; he was without light or fire on
+nights of iron frost, and his clothing was too scanty to keep out the
+cold. He arrived at that pass which induces some men to end all their
+woes by one swift plunge into the river; but he was not of the
+despairful stamp, and he stood his term of misery bravely until the
+light came for him. Leave his splendid, chequered career of glory and
+crime out of reckoning, and remember only that he became emperor
+because he had courage to endure starvation; that lesson at least from
+his career can harm no one. Choose the example of a woman, for
+variety's sake. George Eliot was quite content to scrub furniture,
+make cheese and butter, and sweep carpets until she arrived at ripe
+womanhood. She felt her own extraordinary power; but she never repined
+at the prospect of spending her life in what is lightly called
+domestic drudgery. The Shining Ones oftenest walk in lowly places and
+utter no sound of mourning. She was nearing middle age before she had
+an opportunity of gaining that astonishing erudition which amazed
+professed students, and, had she not chanced to meet Mr. Spencer, our
+greatest philosopher, she would have lived and died unknown. She never
+questioned the decrees of the Power that rules us all, and, when she
+suddenly took her place as one of the first living novelists, she
+accepted her fame and her wealth humbly and simply. Till her last day
+she remembered her bitter years of frustration and failure, and the
+meanest of mortals had a share of her holy sympathy; she gained her
+unexampled conquest by resolutely treading down despair, and her brave
+story should cheer the many girls who find life bleak and joyless.
+George Eliot was prepared to bear the worst that could befall her, and
+it was her frank and gentle acceptance of the facts of life that
+brought her joy in the end. We must also remember such people as
+Arkwright, Stephenson, Thomas Edwards the naturalist, and Heine the
+poet. Arkwright saw his best machinery smashed again and again; but
+his bull-dog courage brought him through his trouble, and he
+surmounted opposition that would have driven a weakling to exile and
+death. Stephenson feared that he would never conquer the great morass
+at Chat Moss, and he knew that, if he failed, his reputation would
+perish. He never allowed himself to show a tremor, and he won. Poor
+Edwards toiled on, in spite of hunger, poverty, and chill despair; he
+received one knock-down blow after another with cheery gallantry, and
+old age had clutched him before his relief from grinding penury came;
+but nothing could daunt him, and he is now secure. Heine lay for seven
+years in his "mattress grave;" he was torn from head to foot by the
+pangs of neuralgia; one of his eyes was closed, and at times the lid
+of the other had to be raised in order that he might see those who
+visited him. Let those who have ever felt the aching of a single tooth
+imagine what it must have been to suffer the same kind of pain over
+the whole body. Surely this poor tortured wretch might have been
+pardoned had he esteemed his life a failure! His spirit never flagged,
+and he wrote the brightest, lightest mockeries that ever were framed
+by the wit of man; his poems will be the delight of Europe for years
+to come, and his memory can no more perish than that of Shakspere.
+
+Enough of examples; the main fact is that to men and women who refuse
+to accept failure all life is open, and there is something to hope for
+even up to the verge of the grave. When the sullen storm-cloud of
+misfortune lowers and life seems dim and dreary, that is the hour to
+summon up courage, and to look persistently beyond the bounds of the
+mournful present. Why should we uplift our voices in pettish
+questioning? The blows that cut most cruelly are meant for our better
+discipline, and, if we steel every nerve against the onset of despair,
+the battle is half won even before we put forth a conscious effort.
+There never yet was a misfortune or an array of misfortunes, there
+never was an entanglement wound by malign chance from which a man
+could not escape by dint of his own unaided energy. By all means let
+us pity those who are sore beset amid the keen sorrows that haunt the
+world, look with tenderness on their pain, soothe them in their
+perplexities; but, before all things, incite them to struggle against
+the numbing influence of despondency. The early failures are the raw
+material of the finest successes; and the general who loses a battle,
+the mechanic who fails to find work, the writer who pines for the
+approach of tardy fame, the forsaken lover who looks out on a dark
+universe, and the servant who meets only censure and coldness, despite
+her attempts to fulfil her duty, all come under the same law. If they
+consent to drift away into the limbo of failures, they have only to
+resign themselves, and their existence will soon end in futility and
+disaster; but, if they refuse to cringe under the lash of
+circumstances, if they toil on as though a bright goal were
+immediately before them, the result is almost assured; and, even if
+they do succumb, they have the blessed knowledge that they have failed
+gallantly. Half the misfortunes which crush the children of men into
+insignificance are more or less magnified by imagination, and the
+swollen bulk of trouble dwindles before an effort of the human will.
+Read over the dismal record of a year's suicides, and you will find
+that in nine cases out of ten the causes which lead unhappy men and
+women to quench their own light of life are absolutely trivial to the
+sane and steadfast soul. Let those who are heavy of heart when
+ill-fortune seems to have mastered them remember that our Master is
+before all things just. He lays no burden that ought not to be borne
+on any one of His children, and those who give way to despair are
+guilty of sheer impiety. The same Power that sends the affliction
+gives also the capability of endurance, and, if we refuse to exert
+that capability, we are sinful. When once the first inclination toward
+weakness and doubt is overcome, every effort becomes easier, and the
+sense of strength waxes keener day by day. Who are the most serene and
+sympathetic of all people that even the most obscure among us meet?
+The men and women who have come through the Valley of the Shadow of
+Tribulation. By a benign ordinance which is uniform in action, it so
+falls out that the conquerors derive enhanced pleasure from the memory
+of difficulties beaten down and sorrows vanquished. Where then is the
+use of craven shrinking? Let us rather welcome our early failures as
+we would welcome the health-giving rigour of some stern physician.
+Think of the heroes and heroines who have conquered, and think
+joyfully also of those who have wrought out their strenuous day in
+seeming failure. There are four lines of poetry which every
+English-speaking man and woman should learn by heart, and I shall
+close this address with them. They were written on the memorial stone
+of certain Italian martyrs--
+
+  "Of all Time's words, this is the noblest one
+    That ever spoke to souls and left them blest;
+  Gladly we would have rested had we won
+    Freedom. We have lost, and very gladly rest."
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+"VANITY OF VANITIES."
+
+
+Those who have leisure to explore the history of the past, to peer
+into the dark backward and abysm of Time, must of necessity become
+smitten with a kind of sad and kindly cynicism. When one has travelled
+over a wide tract of history, and when, above all, he has mused much
+on the minor matters which dignified historians neglect, he feels much
+inclined to say to those whom he sees struggling vainly after what
+they call fame, "Why are you striving thus to make your voice heard
+amid the derisive silence of eternity? You are fretting and frowning,
+with your eyes fixed on your own petty fortunes, while all the
+gigantic ages mock you. Day by day you give pain to your own mind and
+body; you hope against hope; you trust to be remembered, and you fancy
+that you may perchance hear what men will say of you when you are
+gone. All in vain. Be satisfied with the love of those about you; if
+you can get but a dog to love you during your little life, cherish
+that portion of affection. Work in your own petty sphere strenuously,
+bravely, but without thought of what men may say of you. Perhaps you
+are agonised by the thought of powers that are hidden in you--powers
+that may never be known while you live. What matters it? So long as
+you have the love of a faithful few among those dear to you, all the
+fame that the earth can give counts for nothing. Take that which is
+near to you, and value as naught the praises of a vague monstrous
+world through which you pass as a shadow. Look at that squirrel who
+twirls and twirls in his cage. He wears his heart out in his ceaseless
+efforts at progression, and all the while his mocking prison whirls
+under him without letting him progress one inch. How much happier he
+would be if he stayed in his hutch and enjoyed his nuts! You are like
+the restless squirrel; you make a great show of movement and some
+noise, but you do not get forward at all. Rest quietly when your
+necessary labour is done, and be sure that more than half the things
+men struggle for and fail to attain would not be worth the having even
+if the strugglers succeeded. Do not waste one moment; do not neglect
+one duty, for a duty lost is the deadliest loss of all; snatch every
+rational pleasure that comes within your reach; earn all the love you
+can, for that is the most precious of all possessions, and leave the
+search for fame to those who are petty and vain."
+
+Such a cold and chilling speech would be a very good medicine for
+uneasy vanity, but the best medicine of all is the contemplation of
+the history of men who have flourished and loomed large before their
+fellows, and who now have sunk into the night. How many mighty
+warriors have made the earth tremble, filling the mouths of men with
+words of fear or praise! They have passed away, and the only record of
+their lives is a chance carving on a stone, a brief line written by
+some curt historian. The glass of the years was brittle wherein they
+gazed for a span; the glass is broken and all is gone. In the wastes
+of Asia we find mighty ruins that even now are like symbols of
+power--vast walls that impose on the imagination by their bulk,
+enormous statues, temples that seem to mock at time and destruction.
+The men who built those structures must have had supreme confidence in
+themselves, they must have possessed incalculable resources, they must
+have been masters of their world. Where are they now? What were their
+names? They have sunk like a spent flame, and we have not even the
+mark on a stone to tell us how they lived or loved or struggled. Far
+in that moaning desert lie the remains of a city so great that even
+the men who know the greatest of modern cities can hardly conceive the
+original appearance and dimensions of the tremendous pile. Travellers
+from Europe and America go there and stand speechless before works
+that dwarf all the efforts of modern men. The woman who ruled in that
+strong city was an imposing figure in her time, but she died in a
+petty Roman villa as an exile, and Palmyra, after her departure, soon
+perished from off the face of the earth. One pathetic little record
+enables us to guess what became of the population over whom the queen
+Zenobia ruled. A stone was dug up on the northern border of England,
+and the inscription puzzled all the antiquarians until an Oriental
+scholar found that the words were Syriac. "Barates of Palmyra erects
+this stone to the memory of his wife, the Catavallaunian woman who
+died aged thirty-three." That is a rude translation. Poor Barates was
+brought to Britain, married a Norfolk woman of the British race, and
+spent his life on the wild frontier. So the powerful queen passed away
+as a prisoner, her subjects were scattered over the earth, and her
+city, which was once renowned, is now haunted by lizard and antelope.
+Alas for fame! Alas for the stability of earthly things! The
+conquerors of Zenobia fared but little better. How strong must those
+emperors have been whose very name kept the world in awe! If a man
+were proscribed by Rome, he was as good as dead; no fastness could
+hide him, no place in the known world could give him refuge, and his
+fate was regarded as so inevitable that no one was foolhardy enough to
+try at staving off the evil day. How coolly and contemptuously the
+lordly proconsuls and magistrates regarded the early Christians. Pliny
+did not so much as deign to notice their existence, and Pontius
+Pilate, who had to deal with the first twelve, seems to have looked
+upon them as mere pestilent malefactors who created a disturbance. For
+many years those scornful Roman lords mocked the new sectarians and
+refused to take them seriously. One scoffing magistrate asked the
+Christians who came before him why they gave him the trouble to punish
+them. Were there no ropes and precipices handy, he asked, for those
+who wished to commit suicide? Those Romans had great names in their
+day--names as great as the names of Ellenborough and Wellesley and
+Gordon and Dalhousie and Bartle Frere, yet one would be puzzled to
+write down a list of six of the omnipotent sub-emperors. They fought,
+they made laws, they ruled empires, they fancied themselves only a
+little less than the gods, and now not a man outside the circle of a
+dozen scholars knows or cares anything about them. The wise lawgivers,
+the dread administrators, the unconquerable soldiers have gone with
+the snows, and their very names seem to have been writ in water.
+
+If we come nearer our own time, we find it partly droll, partly
+pathetic to see how the bubble reputations have been pricked one by
+one. "Who now reads Bolingbroke?" asked Burke. Yes--who? The brilliant
+many-sided man who once held the fortunes of the empire in his hand,
+the specious philosopher, the unequalled orator is forgotten. How
+large he loomed while his career lasted! He was one of the men who
+ruled great England, and now he is away in the dark, and his books rot
+in the recesses of dusty libraries. Where is the great Mr. Hayley? He
+was arbiter of taste in literature; he thought himself a very much
+greater man than Blake, and an admiring public bowed down to him.
+Probably few living men have ever read a poem of Hayley's, and
+certainly we cannot advise anybody to try unless his nerve is good. Go
+a little farther back, and consider the fate of the distinguished
+literary persons who were famous during the period which affected
+writers call the Augustan era of our literature. The great poet who
+wrote--
+
+  "Behold three thousand gentlemen at least,
+  Each safely mounted on his capering beast"--
+
+what has become of that bard's inspired productions? They have gone
+the way of Donne and Cowley and Waller and Denham, and nobody cares
+very much. Take even the great Cham of literature, the good Johnson.
+His fame is undying, but his works would not have saved his reputation
+in vigour during so many generations. To all intents and purposes his
+books are dead; the laboured writings which he turned out during his
+years of starvation are not looked into, and our most eminent modern
+novelist declares that, if he were snowed up in a remote inn with
+"Bradshaw's Railway Guide" and the "Rambler" as the only books within
+reach, he would assuredly not read the "Rambler." Perhaps hardly one
+hundred students know how admirably good Johnson's preface to
+Shakspere really is, and the "Lives of the Poets" are read only in
+fragmentary fashion. Strange, is it not, that the man who made his
+reputation by literature, the man who dominated the literary world of
+his time with absolute sovereignty, should be saved from sinking out
+of human memory only by means of the record of his lighter talk which
+was kept by his faithful henchman? But for the wise pertinacity of
+poor Boswell, the giant would have been forgotten even by the
+generation which immediately followed him. His gallant and strenuous
+efforts to gain fame really failed; his chance gossip and the amusing
+tale of his eccentricities kept his name alive. Surely the irony of
+fate was never better shown. Even this Titan would have had only a
+bubble reputation but for the lucky accident which brought that
+obscure Scotch laird to London.
+
+Most piteous is the story of the poor souls who have sought to achieve
+their share of immortality by literature. Go to our noble Museum and
+look at the appalling expanse of books piled up yard upon yard to the
+ceiling of the immense dome. Tons upon tons--Pelion on Ossa--of
+literature meet the eye and stun the imagination. Every book was
+wrought out by eager labour of some hopeful mortal; joy, anguish,
+despair, mad ambition, placid assurance, wild conceit, proud courage
+once possessed the breasts of those myriad writers, according to their
+several dispositions. The piles rest in stately silence, and the
+reputations of the authors are entombed.
+
+As for the fighters who sought the bubble reputation even at the
+cannon's mouth, who recks of their fierce struggles, their bitter
+wounds, their brief success? Who knows the leaders of the superb host
+that poured like a torrent from Torres Vedras to the Pyrenees, and
+smote Napoleon to the earth? Who can name the leaders of the doomed
+host that crossed the Beresina, and left their bones under the Russian
+snows? High of heart the soldiers were when they set out on their wild
+pilgrimage under their terrible leader, but soon they were lying by
+thousands on the red field of Borodino, and the sound of their moaning
+filled the night like the calling of some mighty ocean. And now they
+are utterly gone, and the reputation for which they strove avails
+nothing; they are mixed in the dim twilight story of old unhappy
+far-off things and battles long ago.
+
+Critics say that our modern poetry is all sad; and so it is, save when
+the dainty muse of Mr. Austin Dobson smiles upon us. The reason is not
+far to seek--we know so much, and the sense of the vanity of human
+effort is more keenly impressed upon us than ever it was on men of
+more careless and more ignorant ages. We see what toys men set store
+by, we see what shadows we are and what shadows we pursue, so there is
+no wonder that we are mournful. The sweetest of our poets, the most
+humorous of our many writers cannot keep the thought of death and
+futility away. His loveliest lyric begins--
+
+  "Oh, fair maids Maying
+    In gardens green,
+  Through deep dells straying,
+    What end hath been.
+
+  Two Mays between
+    Of the flow'rs that shone
+  And your own sweet queen?
+    They are dead and gone."
+
+There is the burden--"dead and gone." Another singer chants to us
+thus--
+
+  "Merely a round of shadow shows
+    Shadow shapes that are born to die
+  Like a light that sinks, like a wind that goes,
+    Vanishing on to the By-and-by.
+
+  Life, sweet life, as she flutters nigh,
+    'Minishing, failing night and day,
+  Cries with a loud and bitter cry,
+    'Ev'rything passes, passes away.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Who has lived as long as he chose?
+    Who so confident as to defy
+  Time, the fellest of mortals' foes?
+    Joints in his armour who can spy?
+  Where's the foot will nor flinch nor fly?
+    Where's the heart that aspires the fray?
+  His battle wager 'tis vain to try--
+    Ev'rything passes, passes away."
+
+The age is diseased. Why should men be mournful because what they call
+their aspirations--precious aspirations--are frustrated? They seek the
+bubble reputation, and they whimper when the bubble is burst; but how
+much better would it be to cleave to lowly duties, to do the thing
+that lies next to hand, to accept cheerfully the bounteous harvest of
+joys vouchsafed to the humble? Since we all end alike--since the
+warrior, the statesman, the poet alike leave no name on earth save in
+the case of the few Titans--what use is there in fretting ourselves
+into green-sickness simply because we cannot quite get our own way? To
+the wise man every moment of life may be made fruitful of rich
+pleasure, and the pleasure can be bought without heartache, without
+struggling painfully, without risking envy and uncharitableness.
+Better the immediate love of children and of friends than the hazy
+respect of generations that must assuredly forget us soon, no matter
+how prominent we may seem to be for a time. I have read a sermon to my
+readers, but the sermon is not doleful; it is merely hard truth. Life
+may be a supreme ironic procession, with laughter of gods in the
+background, but at any rate much may be made of it by those who refuse
+to seek the bubble reputation.
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+GAMBLERS.
+
+
+The great English carnival of gamblers is over for a month or two; the
+bookmakers have retired to winter quarters after having waxed fat
+during the year on the money risked by arrant simpletons. The
+bookmaker's habits are peculiar; he cannot do without gambling, and he
+contrives to indulge himself all the year round in some way or other.
+When the Newmarket Houghton meeting is over, Mr. Bookmaker bethinks
+him of billiards, and he goes daily and nightly among interesting
+gatherings of his brotherhood. Handicaps are arranged day by day and
+week by week, and the luxurious, loud, vulgar crew contrive to pass
+away the time pleasantly until the spring race meetings begin. But
+hundreds of the sporting gentry have souls above the British
+billiard-room, and for them a veritable paradise is ready. The
+Mediterranean laps the beautiful shore at Monte Carlo and all along
+the exquisite Eiviera--the palms and ferns are lovely--the air is soft
+and exhilarating, and the gambler pursues his pleasing pastime amid
+the sweetest spots on earth. From every country in the world the
+flights of restless gamblers come like strange flocks of migrant
+birds. The Russian gentleman escapes from the desolate plains of his
+native land and luxuriates in the beautiful garden of Europe; the
+queer inflections of the American's quiet drawl are heard everywhere
+as he strolls round the tables; Roumanian boyards, Parisian swindlers,
+Austrian soldiers, Hungarian plutocrats, flashy and foolish young
+Englishmen--all gather in a motley crowd; and the British bookmaker's
+interesting presence is obtrusive. His very accent--strident, coarse,
+impudent, unspeakably low--gives a kind of ground-note to the hum of
+talk that rises in all places of public resort, and he recruits his
+delicate health in anticipation of the time when he will be able to
+howl once more in English betting-rings.
+
+But I am not so much concerned with the personality of the various
+sorts of gamblers, and I assuredly have no pity to spare for the
+gentry who lose their money. A great deal of good useful compassion is
+wasted on the victims who are fleeced in the gambling places. Victims!
+What do they go to the rooms for? Is it not to amuse themselves and to
+pass away time amid false exhilaration? Is it not to gain money
+without working for it? The dupe has in him all the raw material of a
+scoundrel; and even when he blows his stupid brains out I cannot pity
+him so much as I pity the dogged labourer who toils on and starves
+until his time comes for going to the workhouse. I am rather more
+inclined to study the general manifestations of the gambling spirit. I
+have in my mind's eye vivid images of the faces, the figures, the
+gestures of hundreds of gamblers, and I might make an appalling
+picture-gallery if I chose; but such a nightmare in prose would not do
+much good to any one, and I prefer to proceed in a less exciting but
+more profitable manner. We please ourselves by calling to mind the
+days when "society" gambled openly and constantly; and we like to
+fancy that we are all very good and spotless now-a-days and free from
+the desire for unnatural excitement. Well, I grant that most European
+societies in the last century were sufficiently hideous in many
+respects. The English aristocrat, male or female, cared only for
+cards, and no noble lady dreamed of remaining long in an assembly
+where _piquet_ and _ecarte_ were not going on. The French seigneur
+gambled away an estate in an evening; the Russian landowner staked a
+hundred serfs and their lives and fortunes on the turn of a card;
+little German princelings would play quite cheerfully for regiments of
+soldiers. The pictures which we are gradually getting from memoirs and
+letters are almost too grotesque for belief, and there is some little
+excuse for the hearty optimists who look back with complacency on the
+past, and thank their stars that they have escaped from the domain of
+evil. For my own part, when I see the mode of life now generally
+followed by most of our European aristocracies, I am quite ready to be
+grateful for a beneficent change, and I have again and again made
+light of the wailings of persons who persist in chattering about the
+good old times. But I am talking now about the spirit of the gambler;
+and I cannot say that the human propensity to gamble has in any way
+died out. Its manifestations may in some respects be more decorous
+than they used to be; but the deep, masterful, subtle tendency is
+there, and its force is by no means diminished by the advance of a
+complicated civilisation. Often and often I have mused quietly amid
+scenes where gamblers of various sorts were disporting themselves--in
+village inns where solemn yokels played shove-halfpenny with
+statesmanlike gravity; in sunny Italian streets where lazy loungers
+played their queer guessing game with beans; in noisy racing-clubs
+where the tape clicks all day long; on crowded steamboats when
+Tynesiders and Cockneys yelled and cursed and shouted their offers as
+the slim skiffs stole over the water and the straining athletes bent
+to their work; on Atlantic liners when hundreds of pounds depended on
+the result of the day's run; on the breezy heath where half a million
+gazers watched as the sleek Derby horses thundered round. As I have
+gazed on these spectacles, I have been forced to let the mind wander
+into regions far away from the chatter of the gamesters. Again and
+again I have been compelled to think with a kind of melancholy over
+the fact that man is not content until he is taken out of himself. Our
+wondrous bodies, our miraculous power of looking before and after, our
+infinite capacities for enjoyment, are not enough for us, and the poor
+feeble human creature spends a great part of his life in trying to
+forget that he is himself. At the best, our days pass as in the dim
+swiftness of a dream. The young man suddenly thinks, "It is but
+yesterday that I was a child;" the middle-aged man finds the gray
+hairs streaking his head before he has realised that his youth is
+gone; the old man lives so completely in the past that he is taken
+only by a gentle shock of surprise when he finds that the end is upon
+him. Swiftly, like some wild hunt of shadows, the generations fleet
+away--nothing stays their frantic speed; and to the true observer no
+fictitious flight of spirits on the Brocken could be half so weird as
+the passage of one generation of the children of men. As we grow old,
+the appalling brevity of time impresses itself more and more on the
+consciousness of calm and thoughtful men; yet nine-tenths of our race
+spend the best part of their days in trying to make their ghostly
+sweeping flight from eternity to eternity seem more rapid than it
+really is. That hot and fevered youth who stands in the betting-ring
+and nervously pencils his race-card never thinks that the time of
+weakness and sadness and weariness is coming on; that gray and
+tremulous old man who bends over the roulette-table never thinks that
+he will speedily drop into a profundity deeper than ever plummet
+sounded. The gliding ball does not swing round in its groove faster
+than the old man's soul fares towards the darkness; and yet he
+clenches his jaw and engages in the most trivial of pursuits as if he
+had an eternity before him. The youth and the dotard have alike
+succeeded in passing out of themselves, and their very souls will not
+return to the body until the delirious spell has ceased to act. All
+men alike seem to have, more or less, this craving for oblivion. Long
+ago I remember seeing a company of farmers who had come to market in
+the prosperous times; they were among the wildest of their set, and
+they settled down to cards when business was done. Day after day those
+bucolic gentlemen sat on; when one of them lay down on a settle to
+snatch a nap, his place was taken by another, and at the end of the
+week some of the original company were still in the parlour, having
+gambled furiously all the while without ever washing or undressing.
+Time was non-existent for them, and their consciousness was exercised
+only in watching the faces of the cards and counting up points. But
+the dull-witted farmers were quite equalled by the polished scholar,
+the great orator, the brilliant wit, Charles Fox. It was nothing to
+Fox if he sat for three days and three nights at a stretch over the
+board of green cloth. His fortune went; he might lose at the rate of
+ten thousand pounds in the twenty-four hours; but he had succeeded in
+forgetting himself, and his loss of time and fortune counted as
+nothing. The light, careless gipsy shares the disposition of the
+matchless orator and the dull farmer. You may see a gipsy enter the
+tossing-ring at a fair; he loses all his money, but he goes on staking
+everything he possesses, and, if the luck remains adverse, he will
+continue tossing until his pony, his cart, his lurcher-dog, his very
+clothes are all gone. The Chinaman will play for his life; the Red
+Indian recklessly piles all he owns in the world upon the rough heap
+of goods which his tribe wager on the result of a pony race. Look
+high, look low, and we see that the gamblers actually form the
+majority of the world's inhabitants; and we must go among the men of
+abstractions--the men who can achieve oblivion by dint of their own
+thinking power--before we find any class untouched by the strange
+taint. Observe that venerable looking man who slowly paces about in
+one of the luxurious dwelling-places which are sacred to leisure; you
+may see his type at Bath, Buxton, Leamington, Scarborough, Brighton,
+Torquay, all places, indeed, whither flock the men whose life-work is
+done. That venerable gentleman has fulfilled his task in the world,
+his desires have been gratified so far as fortune would allow, and one
+would think that most pursuits of the competitive sort must have lost
+interest for him. Yet he--even he--cannot get rid of the tendency to
+gamble; and he studies the financial news with the eagerness of a boy
+who follows the fortunes of Quentin Durward or D'Artagnan or Rebecca.
+If English railway shares fall, he is exultant or depressed, according
+to the operations of his broker; he may be roused into almost
+hysterical delight by a rise in "Nitrates" or "Chilians," or any of
+the thousands of securities in which stockbrokers deal. What is it to
+the old man if Death smiles gently on him, and will soon touch his
+heart with ice? There is no past for him; he has forgotten the
+raptures of youth, the strength of manhood, the depression of failure,
+the gladness of success, and he drugs his soul into forgetfulness by
+dwelling on a gambler's chances. So long as the one doubtful boon of
+forgetfulness is secured, it seems to matter very little what may be
+the stake at disposal. The English racing-man picks out a promising
+colt or filly; he finds that he has a swift and good animal, and he
+resolves to bring off some vast gambling _coup_. Patiently, cunningly,
+month after month, the steps in the plan are matured; the horse runs
+badly until the official handicappers think it is worthless, and the
+gambler at last finds that he has some great prize almost at his
+mercy. Then with slow dexterity the horse is backed to win. If the
+owner shows any eagerness, his purpose is balked once and for all; he
+may have to employ half-a-dozen agents to bet for him, until at last
+he succeeds in wagering so much money that he will gain, say, one
+hundred thousand pounds by winning his race. The fluttering jackets
+come nearer and nearer to the judge's box; some of the jockeys are
+using their whips and riding desperately; the horse on which so much
+depends draws to the front; but the owner never moves a muscle. Of
+course we have seen men shrieking themselves almost into apoplexy at
+the close of a race; but the hardened gambler is deadly cool. In the
+last stride the animal so carefully--and fraudulently--prepared is
+beaten by a matter of a few inches, and the chance of picking up a
+hundred thousand pounds is gone; but the owner remains impassive, and
+as soon as settling-day is over, he endeavours to forget the matter. I
+have seen an old man watching a race on which he had planned to win
+sixty thousand pounds; his horse was beaten in the last two strides,
+and the old gentleman never so much as stirred or spoke. No doubt he
+was really transported out of himself; but nothing in the world seemed
+capable of altering the composure of his wizened features. On the
+other hand, there is one man who is known to possess some four
+millions in cash, besides an immense property; this man never bets
+more than two pounds at a time, yet from his wild fits of excitement
+it might be supposed that his colossal wealth was at stake.
+
+So the whole army of the gamblers pass in their mad whirlwind march
+toward the region of night; they are delirious, they are creatures of
+contradictions--they are fiercely greedy, lavishly generous, wary in
+many things, reckless of life, ready to take any advantage, yet
+possessed by a diseased sense of honour. Some of them think that a man
+is better and happier when he feels all his faculties working rather
+than when he goes off into blind transports of excitement or fear or
+doubt. I think that the man who is conscious to his very finger-tips
+is better than the wild creature whose senses are all blurred. I hold
+that the student or thinker who faces life with a calm and calculated
+desire for true knowledge is better off than the insensate being whose
+hours are passed in a sordid nightmare. But I see little chance of
+ever making men care little for the gambler's pleasure, and I humbly
+own to the existence of an ugly mystery which only adds yet another to
+the number of dark puzzles whereby we are surrounded. I observe that
+desperate efforts are made to put down gambling by law rather than by
+culture, religion, true and gentle morality. As well try to put down
+the passions of love and fear--as well try to interdict the beat of
+the pulses! We may deplore the gambler's existence as much as we like;
+but it is a fact, and we must accept it.
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+SCOUNDRELS.
+
+
+Byron very often flung out profound truths in his easy, careless way,
+but the theatrical vein in his composition sometimes prompted him to
+say dashing things, not because he regarded them as true, but because
+he wanted to make people stare. Speaking of one interesting and
+homicidal gentleman, the poet observes--
+
+  "He knew himself a villain, and he deemed
+  The rest no better than the thing he seemed."
+
+Now I take leave to say that the rawest of fifth-form lads never
+uttered a more school-boyish sentiment than that; and I wonder how a
+man of the world came to make such a blunder. Byron had lived in the
+degraded London of the Regency, when Europe's rascality flocked
+towards St. James's as belated birds flock towards a light; and he
+should have known some villains if any one did. Ephraim Bond, the
+abominable moneylender and sportsman, was swaggering round town in
+Byron's later days; Crockford, that incarnate fiend, had his nets
+open; and ruined men--men ruined body and soul--left the gambling
+palace where the satanic spider sat spinning his webs. Byron must have
+known Crockford, and he had there a chance of studying a being who was
+indeed a villain, but who fancied himself to be a highly respectable
+person. From the time when "Crocky" started money-lending in the back
+parlour of his little fish-shop up to his last ghastly appearance on
+earth, he was a cheat and a consummate rascal; and even after death
+his hideous corpse was made to serve a deception. He was engaged in a
+Turf swindle, and it was necessary that he should be regarded as alive
+on the evening of the Derby day; but he died in the morning, and, to
+deceive the betting-men, the lifeless carcass of the old robber was
+put upright in a club window, and a daring sharper caused the dead
+hand to wave as if in greeting to the shouting crowd--a fit end to a
+bad life. Crockford's delusion was that his character was marked by
+honesty and general benevolence; and those who wished to please him
+pretended to accept his own comfortable theory. He regarded himself as
+a really good fellow, and in his own person he was a living
+confutation of Byron's dashing paradox. Then there was Renton
+Nicholson, a specimen of social vermin if ever there was one. This
+fellow earned a sordid livelihood by presiding over a club where men
+met nightly in orgies that stagger the power of belief. His huge
+figure and his raffish face were seen wherever rogues most did
+congregate; he showed young men "life"--and sometimes his work as
+cicerone led them to death; his style of conversation would nowadays
+lead to a speedy prosecution; he was always seen by the ringside when
+unhappy brutes met to pound each other, and his stock of evil stories
+entertained the interesting noblemen and gentlemen who patronised the
+manly British sport. I could not describe this man's baseness in
+adequate terms, nor could I so much as give an idea of his ordinary
+round of roguery without arousing some incredulity. This unspeakable
+creature was fond of describing himself as "Jolly old Renton," or
+"Good old John Bull Nicholson"; he really fancied himself to be a
+good, genial fellow, and he appeared to fancy that the crowds who
+usually collected to hear his abominations were attracted by his
+_bonhomie_ and his estimable intellectual qualities. Byron must have
+known this striking example of the scoundrel species, but he appears
+to have forgotten him when he propounded his theory of villainy. Then
+there was Pea-green Haynes, who was also a fine sample of folly and
+rascality mingled. Haynes regarded himself as the most injured man on
+earth; he never performed an unselfish action, it is true, and he
+flung away a fine patrimony on his own pleasures, yet he whined and
+held himself up as an example of suffering virtue. Then there was the
+precious Regent. What a creature! Good men and bad men unite in saying
+that he was absolutely without a virtue; the shrewd, calculating
+Greville described him in words that burn; the great Duke, his chief
+subject, uses language of dry scorn--"The king could only act the part
+of a gentleman for ten minutes at a time"; and we find that the
+commonest satellites of the Court despised the wicked fribble who wore
+the crown of England. Faithless to women, faithless to men, a coward,
+a liar, a mean and grovelling cheat, George IV. nevertheless clung to
+a belief in his own virtues; and, if we study the account of his
+farcical progress through Scotland, we find that he imagined himself
+to be a useful and genuinely kingly personage. No man, except,
+perhaps, Philippe Egalite, was ever so contemned and hated; and until
+his death he imagined himself to be a good man. In all that wild set
+who disgraced England and disgraced human nature in those gay days of
+Byron's youth, I can discover only one thoroughly manly and estimable
+individual, and that was Gentleman Jackson, the boxer; yet, with such
+a marvellously wide range of villainy to study, Byron never seems to
+have observed one ethical fact of the deepest importance--a villain
+never knows that he is villainous; if he did, he would cease to be a
+villain.
+
+Perhaps Byron's own peculiar disposition--his constitution--prevented
+him from understanding the undoubted truth which I have stated. Like
+all other men, he possessed a dual nature; there was bad in him and
+good, and his force was such that the bad was very bad indeed, and the
+good was as powerful in its way as the evil. During the brief time
+that Byron employed in behaving as a bad man, his conduct reached
+almost epic heights--or depths--of misdoing; but he never in his heart
+seemed to recognise the fact that he had been a bad man. At any rate,
+he was wrong; and the commonest knowledge of our wild world suffices
+to show any reasoning man the gravity of the error propounded in my
+quotation. As we study the history of the frivolous race of men, it
+sometimes seems hard to disbelieve the theory of Descartes. The great
+Frenchman held that man and other animals are automata; and, were it
+not that such a theory strikes at the root of morals, we might almost
+be tempted to accept it in moments of weakness, when the riddle of the
+unintelligible earth weighs heavily on the tired spirit. I find that
+every prominent scoundrel known to us pursued his work of sin with an
+absolute unconsciousness of all moral law until pain or death drew
+near; then the scoundrel cringed like a cur under the scourges of
+remorse. Thackeray, in a fit of spasmodic courage, painted the
+archetypal scoundrel once and for all in "Barry Lyndon," and he
+practically said the last word on the subject; for no grave analysis,
+no reasoning, can ever improve on that immortal and most moving
+picture of a wicked man. Observe the masterpiece. Lyndon goes on with
+his narrative from one horror to another; he exposes his inmost soul
+with cool deliberation; and the author's art is so consummate that we
+never for a moment sympathise with the fiend who talks so
+mellifluously--the narrative of ill-doing unfolds itself with all the
+inevitable precision of an operation of nature, and we see the human
+soul at its worst. But Thackeray did not make Byron's mistake; and
+throughout the book the Chevalier harps with deadly persistence on his
+own virtues. He does not exactly whine, but he lets you know that he
+regards himself as being very much wronged by the envious caprices of
+his fellow-men. His tongue is the tongue of a saint, and, even when he
+owns to any doubtful transaction, he takes care to let you know that
+he was actuated by the sweetest and purest motives. Many people cannot
+read "Barry Lyndon" a second time; but those who are nervous should
+screw their courage to the sticking-place, and give grave attention to
+that awful moral lesson, for all of us have a little of Barry in our
+composition. Thackeray's sudden inspiration enabled him to plumb the
+deeps of the scoundrel nature, and he saw with the eye of genius that
+the very quality which makes a bad man dangerous is his belief in his
+own goodness. If you look at the appalling narrative of Lyndon's life
+in this country, you see, with a shudder, that the man regards his
+cruelty to his wife, his villainy towards his step-son, as the
+inevitable outcome of stern virtue; he tells you things that make you
+long to stamp on the inanimate pages; for he rouses such a passion of
+wild scorn and wrath as we feel against no other artistic creation.
+Yet all the while, like a low under-song, goes on his monotonous
+assertion of his own goodness and his own injuries. No sermon could
+teach more than that hateful book; if it is read aright, it will
+supply men or women with an armoury of warnings, and enable them to
+start away from the semblance of self-deception as they would from a
+rearing cobra when the hood is up, and the murderous head flattened
+ready to strike. Thackeray worked on the same theme in his story of
+little Stubbs. Lyndon is the Lucifer of rascals; Stubbs--well, Stubbs
+beggars the English vocabulary; he is too low, too mean for adjectives
+to describe him, and I could almost find it in my heart to wish that
+his portraiture had never been placed before the horrified eyes of
+men. Yet this Stubbs--a being who was drawn from life--has a profound
+belief in the rectitude of everything that he does. Even when he tells
+us how he invited his gang of unspeakables home, to drink away his
+mother's substance, he takes credit to himself for his fine display of
+British hospitality. How Thackeray contrived to live through the
+ordeal of composing those two books I cannot tell; he must have had a
+nerve of steel, with all his softness of heart and benevolence. At all
+events, he did live to complete his gruesome feat; and he has given
+us, in a vivid pictorial way, such a picture of scoundreldom as should
+serve as a beacon to all men. It may seem like a paradox; but I am
+inclined to think that our non-success in putting down actual crime
+and wickedness which do not come within range of the law arises from
+the fact that our jurists have not made a proper study of the criminal
+nature. Grod made the cobra, the cruel wolverine, and the
+thrice-cruel tiger; we study the animals and deal with them
+adequately; but some of us do not study our human cobras and
+wolverines and tigers. I scarcely ever knew of a case of a convict who
+would not moan about his own injuries and his own innocence. Even when
+these men, whose criminality is ingrained, are willing to own their
+guilt, they will always contrive to blame the world in general and
+society in particular. It is almost amusing to hear a desperate thief,
+who seems no more able to prevent himself from rushing on plunder than
+a greyhound can prevent itself from rushing on a hare, complaining
+that employers will not trust him. It is useless to say, "What can you
+expect?" The scoundrel persists in crying out against a hard world
+which drove him to be what he is.
+
+Some ten years ago the arch-rascal among English thieves was living
+quietly in a London suburb; he used to solace himself with high-class
+music, and he was very fond of poetry. This dreadful creature was a
+curious compound of wild beast and artist. During the day he went
+about with an innocent air; and the very police who were destined to
+take him and hang him learned to greet him cordially as he passed them
+in his walks. They thought he was "a sort of high-class tradesman."
+Now, when this cheery little man with the decent frock-coat and the
+clean respectable air was sauntering on the margin of the breezy heath
+or walking up by-streets with measured sobriety, he was really marking
+down the places which he intended to plunder. Here his trained pony
+should stand; here he would make his entrance; that bedroom door
+should be fastened inside; this lock should be picked. The wild
+predatory beast drove the police to despair, for it seemed as if no
+human being could have performed the feats which came easy to the
+robber. The hard earning of good men went to the rascal's store; the
+cherished household gods, the valued keepsakes of innocent women were
+transferred callously to the melting-pot. He went coolly into bedrooms
+where the inmates were asleep; had any one awaked, there would have
+been murder, and the murderer would have decamped long before the door
+could be broken open. Now my point is this--the wretch whom I have
+described never ceased to inveigh against the wrongs of society. Two
+unhappy women served him faithfully and followed him like dogs; but he
+did not apply his theories in his treatment of them, for they were
+never without the marks of his brutality. In the very presence of his
+bruised and beaten slaves he talked of his own virtues, of social
+inequality, of the tyranny of the rich, and he held to his belief in
+his own innate goodness after he had committed depredations to the
+extent of thousands of pounds, and even after he was answerable for
+two murders. That man never knew himself a villain, and it was only
+when the rope was gradually closing round his neck that the keen
+sleuth-hound remorse found him out, and he had the grace to save an
+innocent man from a living death. This monstrous hypocrite was another
+typical scoundrel, and his like people every prison in the country.
+
+The scoundrels who are called great do not usually come under the
+gallows-tree, and their last dying speeches are somewhat rare; but we
+may be pretty certain, from the little we know, that each one of them
+fancies himself an estimable person. Ivan of Russia, the ferocious
+ruler, who had men torn to pieces before his eyes, the being who had
+forty thousand men, women, and children massacred in cold blood,
+regarded himself as the deputy of the Supreme Being. The mad Capet,
+who fired the signal which started tho massacre of St. Bartholomew,
+believed that he was fulfilling the demands of goodness and orthodoxy.
+The deadly inquisitors who roasted unhappy fellow mortals wholesale
+believed--or pretended to believe--that they were putting their
+victims through a benign ordeal. The heretic was a naughty child;
+roast him, and his sin was purged; while the frosty-blooded old men
+who murdered him looked to heaven and returned thanks for their own
+special allowance of virtue. Conqueror and inquisitor, burglar and
+murderer, forger and wife-beater, brutal sea-captain and prowling
+thief--all the scoundrels go about their business with a full faith in
+their own blamelessness. I do not like to class them as automata,
+though the wise and genial Mr. Huxley would undoubtedly do so. What
+shall we do with them? Is it fair that a wearied world and a toil-worn
+society should maintain them? My own idea is that sentiment, softness,
+regrets for severity should be banished, and we should say to the
+scoundrel, "Attend, rascal! You say that you are wronged, and that you
+are driven to harm your fellow-creatures by the force of external
+circumstances; that may be so, but we have nothing to do with the
+matter. Take notice that you shall eat bitter bread on earth, no
+matter how you may whine, when our just grip is on you; if you persist
+in practising scoundrelism, we shall make your lot harder and harder
+for you; and, if in the end we find that you will go on working evil,
+we shall treat you as a dangerous wild beast, and put you out of the
+world altogether."
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+QUIET OLD TOWNS.
+
+
+A rather popular writer, who first came into notice by dint of naming
+a book of essays, "Is Life worth Living?" gave us not long ago a very
+sweet description of an English country town; and he worked himself up
+to quite a moving pitch of rapture as he described the admirable
+social arrangements which may be perceived on a market-day. This
+enthusiast tells us how the members of the great county families drive
+in to do their shopping. The stately great horses paw and champ at
+their bits, the neat servants bustle about in deft attendance, and the
+shopkeeper, who has a feudal sort of feeling towards his betters,
+comes out to do proper homage. The great landowner brings his wealth
+into the High Street or the market place, and the tradesmen raise
+their voices to bless him. We have all heard of institutions called
+"stores"; but still it is a pity to carp at a pretty picture drawn by
+a literary artist. I know that rebellious tradesmen in many of the
+shires use violent language as they describe the huge packing-cases
+which are deposited at various mansions by the railway vans. I know
+also that the regulation saddler who airs his apron at the door of his
+shop on market-days will inform the stranger that the gentry get
+saddles, harness, and everything else nowadays from the abominable
+"stores"; but I must not leave my artist, and shall let the saddler
+growl to himself for the present. The polished writer goes on to speak
+of the ruddy farmer who strolls round in elephantine fashion and hooks
+out sample-bags from his plethoric and prosperous pockets; the dealers
+drive a brisk trade, the small shopkeepers are encouraged by their
+neighbours from the country, and everything is extremely idyllic and
+pure and pretty and representative of England at her best. The old
+church rears its quaint height above the quainter houses that cluster
+near. In the churchyard the generations of natives sleep sound; one
+may trace some families back for hundreds of years, and thus perceive
+how firmly the love of the true townsman clings to his native place.
+Perhaps a castle looms over the modest streets and squares--it is
+converted into a prison in all probability; but the sight of it brings
+memories of haughty nobles, or of untitled personages whose pride of
+race would put monarchs to the blush. The river flows sweetly past the
+sleepy lovely town, and sober citizens walk solemnly beside the
+rippling watery highway when the day's toil is over. On Sunday, when
+the bells chime their invitation, all sorts and conditions of men meet
+in the dim romantic precincts of the ancient church, and there is much
+pleasant gossiping when morning and evening worship are ended. Good
+old solid England is put before us in miniature when we glance at such
+of the community as choose to show themselves before the artistic
+observer, and, as we drive away along the sound level roads, we
+say--if we are very literary and enthusiastic--"Happy little town!
+Happy little nation!" Now that is all very pretty; and yet the
+conscientious philosopher is bound to admit that there is another
+side--nay, several other sides--to the charming picture. I do not want
+any students of the modern French school to prove that rural life in
+small towns may be as base and horrible as the life of crowded
+cities--I do not want any minute analysis of degradation; but I may
+prick a windbag of conceit and do some little service if I try to show
+that the state of things in some scores of these delightful old places
+is base and corrupt enough to warm the heart of the most exacting
+cynic that ever thought evil of his fellow-creatures.
+
+Let us go behind the scenes and see what the idyllic prospect looks
+like from the rear. We must proceed with great deliberation, and we
+must take our rustic society stratum by stratum. First, then, there
+are the idle men who have inherited or earned fortunes, and who like
+to settle in luxurious houses away from great centres of population.
+Such men are always in great force on the skirts of quiet old towns,
+and they are much revered by the tradesmen. I cannot help thinking
+that the fate of the average "retired" man must be not a little
+dolorous, for I find that the typical member of that class conducts
+himself in much the same way no matter where he pitches his habitation
+in broad England. He is saved if he has a hobby; but, without a hobby,
+he is a very poor creature, and his ways of living on from day to day
+are the reverse of admirable. If such a revolutionary institution as a
+club has been established in the town, he may begin his morning's
+round there; or, in default of a club, there is the "select" room in
+the principal hotel. If he is catholic in his tastes and hungry for
+conversation, he may wander from one house of call to another, and he
+meets a large and well-chosen assortment of hucksters who come to bind
+bargains with the inevitable "drink"; he meets the gossip who knows
+all the secrets of the township, he meets flashy persons who have a
+manly thirst which requires perpetual assuagement. Then he converses
+to his heart's content; and, alas, what conversation it is--what
+intellectual exertion is expended by these forlorn gossips in the
+morning round that takes up the time of many men in a quiet town!
+There is a little slander, a good deal of peeping out of windows, a
+little discussion of the financial prospects ascribed to various men
+in the neighbourhood, and an impartial examination of everybody's
+private affairs. The regular crew of gossips hold it as a duty to know
+and talk about the most minute details of each other's lives, and,
+when a man leaves any given room where the piquant chatter is going
+on, he is quite aware that he leaves his character behind him. The
+state of his banking account is guessed at, the disposition of his
+will is courageously foretold, the amounts which he paid to various
+shopkeepers are added up with reverence or scorn according to the
+amount--and the company revel in their mean babble until it is time to
+go to another place and pull the character and the financial accounts
+of somebody else to pieces. By luncheon time most of these useful
+beings are a little affected in complexion and speech by the trifling
+potations which wash down the scandal; but no one is intoxicated. To
+be seen mastered by "drink" in the morning would cause a man to lose
+caste; and, besides, if he said too much while his tongue was loose,
+he would not be believed when next he set down a savoury mess for the
+benefit of the company. Through all the talk of these wretched
+entities, be it observed that money, money runs as a species of
+key-note; the men may be coarse and servile, but a shrewd eye can
+detect every sign of purse-pride. Let a gentleman of some standing
+walk past a window where the grievous crew are wine-bibbing and
+blabbing, and some one will say, "Carries hisself high enough, don't
+he? He ain't got a thousand to fly with. I bet a bottle on it! Why,
+me, or Jimmy there, or even old Billy Spinks, leaving out Harry, and
+let alone the Doctor--any one on us could buy him out twelve times
+over, and then have a bit of roast or biled for Sunday's dinner!" This
+remark is received as a wise and trenchant tribute to the power of the
+assembly, and they have more "drink" by way of self-gratulation. Those
+poor "retired" men, and "independent" men, often go deeper and deeper
+down the incline towards mental and moral degradation until they
+become surprisingly repulsive specimens of humanity. In all their
+dreary perambulations they rarely speak or hear an intelligent word;
+they are amazingly ignorant concerning their country's affairs, and
+their conceptions of politics are mostly limited to a broad general
+belief that some particular statesman ought to be hanged.
+
+As to the government of these quiet old places, there is much to be
+said that is depressing. While men prate about the decay of trade and
+the advance of poverty, how few people reflect on the snug fortunes
+which are amassed in out-of-the-way corners! We hear of jobbery in the
+metropolis, and jobbery in Government departments, but I take it that
+the corporations of some little towns could give lessons in jobbery to
+any corrupt official that ever plundered his countrymen. Some town
+councils may be very briefly and accurately described as nests of
+thieves. The thieves wear good clothes, go to church, and do not go to
+prison--at least, the cases of detection are rare--but they are
+thieves all the same. As a rule, no matter what a man's trade or
+profession may be, he contrives to gather profit pretty freely when
+once he joins the happy band who handle the community's purse. In some
+cases the robbery is so barefaced and open that the particulars might
+as well be painted on a monster board and hung up at the town cross;
+but tradesmen, workmen, and others who have their living to make in
+the town are terrorised, and they preserve a discreet silence in
+public however much they may speak evil of dignities in private. As a
+general rule, a show of decorum is kept up; yet I should think it
+hardly possible for the average vestry or council to meet without an
+interchange of winks among the members. John favours Tommy's tender
+when Tommy contracts to horse all the corporation's water-carts,
+dust-carts, and so forth; then Tommy is friendly when John wants to
+sell his row of cottages to the municipality. If Tommy employs two
+horses on a certain work and charges for twenty, then John and some
+other backers support the transaction. Billy buys land to a heavy
+extent, and refuses to build on it; houses are risky property, and
+Billy can wait. An astute company meet at William's house and take
+supper in luxurious Roman style; then James casually suggests that the
+east end of the town is a disgrace to the council. Until the block of
+houses in Blank Street is pulled down and a broad road is run straight
+to join the main street, the place will be the laughingstock of
+strangers. James is eloquent. How curious it is that the new road
+which is to redeem the town from shame must run right over Billy's
+building plots, and how very remarkable it is to think that the
+corporation pays a swinging price for the precious land! Billy looks
+more prosperous than ever; he sets up another horse, reduces rivals to
+silence by driving forth in a new victoria, and becomes more and more
+the familiar bosom friend of the bank manager. I might go on to give a
+score of examples showing how innocent rate-payers are fleeced by
+barefaced robbers, but the catalogue would be only wearisome. Let any
+man of probity venture to force his way into one of these dens of
+thieves and see how he will fare! It is a comic thing that the gangs
+of jobbers consider that they have a prescriptive right to plunder at
+large, and their air of aggrieved virtue when they are challenged by a
+person whom they call an "interloper" is among the most droll and
+humiliating farces that may be seen in life. The whole crew will make
+a ferocious dead set at the intruder who threatens to pull their
+quarry away from them; he will be coughed down or interrupted by
+insulting noises, and he may esteem himself highly fortunate if he is
+not asked to step outside and engage in single combat. Everything that
+mean malignity can do to balk him will be done, and, unless he is a
+very strong man physically and morally, the opposition will tire him
+out. There is usually one dominant family in such towns--for the
+possibility of making a heavy fortune by a brewery or tannery or
+factory in these quiet places is far greater than any outsider might
+fancy. The members of the ruling family and their henchmen arise in
+their might to crush the insolent upstart who wants to see accounts
+and vouchers: the chairman will rise and say, "Let me tell Mr. X. that
+me and my family were old established inhabitants in this ancient
+borough long before he came, and we'll be here long after he has gone
+bankrupt. We don't require no strangers: the people in this borough
+has always managed their own affairs, and by the help of Providence
+they'll go on in the good old way in spite of any swell that comes
+a-sniffin' and a-smellin' and a-pryin' and a-askin' for accounts about
+this and that and the other; and I tell the gentleman plain, the
+sooner this council sees his back the better they'll be pleased; so,
+if he's not too thick in the skin, let him take a friendly hint and
+take himself off." A withering onslaught like this is received with
+tumultuous applause, and other speakers follow suit. It is seldom that
+a man has nerve enough to stand such brutality from his hoggish
+assailants, and the ring of jobbers are too often left to work their
+will unchecked. Are such people fit for political power? Ask the
+wretched rich man who indirectly buys the seat, and hear his record of
+dull misery if he is inclined to be confidential. He does not like to
+leave Parliament, and yet he knows he is merely a mark for the
+licensed pickpocket; he is not regarded as a politician--he is a donor
+of sundry subscriptions, and nothing more. The men in manufacturing
+centres will return a poor politician and pay his expenses; but the
+people in some quiet towns have about as much sentiment or loyalty as
+they have knowledge; and they treat their member of Parliament as a
+gentleman whose function it is to be bled, and bled copiously. A sorry
+sight it is!
+
+One very remarkable thing in these homes of quietness is the
+marvellous power possessed by drink-sellers. These gentry form the
+main links in a very tough chain, and they hang together with touching
+fidelity; their houses are turned into scandal-shops, and they prosper
+so long as they are ready to cringe with due self-abasement before the
+magistrates. No refined gentleman who keeps himself to his own class
+and refrains from meddling with politics could ever by any chance
+imagine the airs of broad-blown impudence which are sometimes assumed
+by ignorant and stupid boors who have been endowed with a license; and
+assuredly no one would guess the extent of their political power
+unless he had something to do with election business. The landlord of
+fiction hardly exists in the quiet towns; there is seldom a smiling,
+suave, and fawning Boniface to be seen; the influential drink-seller
+is often an insolent familiar harpy who will speak of his own member
+of Parliament as "Old Tom," and who airily ventures to call gentlemen
+by their surnames. The man is probably so benighted in mind that he
+knows nothing positive about the world he lives in; his manners are
+hideous, his familiarity is loathsome, his assumptions of manly
+independence are almost comic in their impudence; but he has his uses,
+and he can influence votes of several descriptions. Thus he asserts
+himself in detestable fashion; and people who should know better
+submit to him. One electioneering campaign in a quiet town would give
+a salutary lesson to any politician who resolutely set himself to
+penetrate into the secret life of the society whose suffrages he
+sought; he would learn why it is that the agents of all the factions
+treat the drink-seller with deference.
+
+So the queer existence of the tranquil place moves on; petty scandal,
+petty thieving, petty jobbery, petty jealousy employ the energies of
+the beings who inhabit the "good old town"--the borough is always good
+and old--and a man with a soul who really tried to dwell in the moral
+atmosphere of the community would infallibly be asphyxiated. Nowhere
+are appearances so deceptive; nowhere do the glamour of antiquity and
+the beauty of natural scenery draw the attention away from so vile a
+centre. I could excuse any man who became a pessimist after a long
+course of conversations in a sleepy old borough, for he would see that
+a mildew may attack the human intelligence, and that the manners of a
+puffy well-clad citizen may be worse than those of a Zulu Kaffir. The
+indescribable coarseness and rudeness of the social intercourse, the
+detestable forms of humour which obtain applause, the low distrust and
+trickery are quite sufficient to make a sensitive man want to hide
+himself away. If any one thinks I am too hard, he should try spending
+six whole weeks in any town which is called good and old; if he does
+not begin to agree with me about the end of the fifth week I am much
+in error.
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+THE SEA.
+
+
+Is there anything new to say about it? Alas, have not all the poets
+done their uttermost; and how should a poor prose-writer fare when he
+enters a region where the monarchs of rhythm have proudly trodden? It
+is audacious; and yet I must say that our beloved poets seem somehow
+to fail in strict accuracy. Tennyson wanders and gazes and thinks; he
+strikes out some immortal word of love or despair when the awful
+influence of the ocean touches his soul; and yet he is not the poet
+that we want. One or two of his phrases are pictorial and decisive--no
+one can better them--and the only fault which we find with them is
+that they are perhaps a little too exquisite. When he says, "And white
+sails flying on the yellow sea," he startles us; but his picture done
+in seven words is absolutely accurate. When he writes of "the scream
+of the maddened beach," he uses the pathetic fallacy; but his science
+is quite correct, for the swift whirling of myriads of pebbles does
+produce a clear shrill note as the backdraught streams from the shore.
+But, when he writes the glorious passion beginning, "Is that enchanted
+moan only the swell Of the long waves that roll-in yonder bay?" we
+feel the note of falsity at once--the swell does not moan, and the
+poet only wanted to lead up to the expression of a mysterious ecstasy
+of love. Again, the most magnificent piece of word-weaving in English
+is an attempted description of the sea by a man whose command of a
+certain kind of verse is marvellous. Here is the passage--
+
+                           "The sea shone
+  And shivered like spread wings of angels blown
+  By the sun's breath before him, and a low
+  Sweet gale shook all the foam-flowers of thin snow
+  As into rainfall of sea-roses, shed
+  Leaf by wild leaf in the green garden bed
+  That tempests still and sea-winds turn and plough;
+  For rosy and fiery round the running prow
+  Fluttered the flakes and feathers of the spray
+  And bloomed like blossoms cast by God away
+  To waste on the ardent water; the wan moon
+  Withered to westward as a face in swoon
+  Death-stricken by glad tidings; and the height
+  Throbbed and the centre quivered with delight
+  And the deep quailed with passion as of love,
+  Till, like the heart of a new-mated dove,
+  Air, light, and wave seemed full of burning rest"--
+
+and so on. Superb, is it not? And yet that noble strain of music gives
+us no true picture of our dear, commonplace, terrible sea; it reminds
+us rather of some gaudy canvas painted for the theatre. The lines are
+glorious, the sense of movement and swing is conveyed, and yet--and
+yet it is not the sea. We fancy that only the prose-poets truly
+succeed; and the chief of them all--the matchless Mr. Clark
+Russell--gets his most moving effects by portraying the commonplace
+aspects of the water in a way that reminds people of things which they
+noticed but failed to admire promptly. Mr. Russell's gospel is plain
+enough; he watches minutely, and there is not a flaw of wind or a
+cross-drift of spray that does not offer some new emotion to his quick
+and sensitive soul.
+
+I want all those who are now dwelling amid the shrewd sweetness of the
+sea-air to learn how to gain simple pleasure from gazing on the
+incessant changes that mark the face of the sea. The entertainment is
+so cheap, so fruitful of lovely thought, so exhilarating, that I can
+hardly keep my patience when I see those wretched men who carry a
+newspaper to the beach on a glad summer morning, and yawn in the face
+of the Divine spectacle of wave and cloud and limpid sky. Let no one
+think that I picture the sea as always gladsome. Ah, no! I have seen
+too much of storm and stress for that. On one awful night long ago, I
+waited for hours watching waves that reared and thundered as if they
+would charge headlong through the streets of the town. The white
+crests nickered like flame, and below the crests the dreadful inky
+bulge of each monster rolled on like doom--like death. Throughout the
+mad night of tempest the guns from many distressed vessels rang out,
+and I could see the violent sweep of the ships' lights as they were
+hurled in wild arcs from crest to crest. Many and many a corpse lay
+out on those sands in the morning; the bold, bronzed men stared with
+awful glassy stare at the lowering sky; the little cabin-boy clasped
+his fragment of wreckage as though it had been a toy, and smiled--oh,
+so sweetly!--in spite of the cruel sand that filled his dead eyes.
+There was turmoil enough out at sea, for the steadily northerly drift
+was crossed by a violent roll from the east, and these two currents
+were complicated in their movement by a rush of water that came like a
+mill-race from the southward. Imagine a great city tossed about by a
+monstrous earthquake that first dashes the streets against each other,
+and then flings up the ruins in vast rolls; that may give some idea of
+that memorable storm. One poor, pretty girl saw her husband gallantly
+trying to make the harbour. Long, long had she waited for him, and day
+by day had she tried to track the vessel's course; the smart barque
+had gone round the Horn, and escaped from the perils of the Western
+Ocean in dead winter, and now she was heaving convulsively as she
+strove to run into harbour at home. Right and left the grey billows
+hit her, and we could see her keel sometimes when the wan light of the
+morning broke. The girl stared steadily, and her face was like that of
+a corpse. The barque swung southward, and with the speed of a railway
+engine rushed on to the stones; the pretty girl moaned, "Oh me!--oh
+me!" She never saw her lad again until his battered body was in the
+dead-house of the pier. A commonplace red-haired woman was in a
+dreadful state of mind when she saw a large fishing-boat trying to run
+for the harbour. Her husband and two sons were aboard, she said, so
+she had reasons for anxiety. The boat was pitched about like a cork;
+and presently one fearful sea fairly smashed her. The red-haired woman
+fell down upon the sand, and lay there moaning.
+
+Assuredly I am not inclined to imitate the Cockney frivolity of Barry
+Cornwall, who never went to sea in his life, but who nevertheless
+carolled the most absurdly joyous lays regarding the ocean, which made
+him ill even when he merely looked at it. No; the true sea-lover knows
+that there are terror and mystery and horror as well as joyousness in
+the varied moods of the treacherous, remorseless, magnificent ocean.
+Those who read this may see the unspeakable beauty of the opaline and
+ruby tints that flame on the water when the sunset sinks behind the
+Isle of Thanet. The bay at Westgate will shine like mother-of-pearl,
+and the glassy rollers at the horizon will be incarnardined. That is a
+splendid sight! Then those who are in Devon may pass sleepy days in
+gazing on a vivid piercing blue that is pure and brilliant as the blue
+of the Bay of Naples. In the lochs to the West of Scotland the
+swarming tourists watch that riot of colour that marks the times of
+sunrise and sunset. All these spectacles of suave magnificence are
+imposing; but, for my own part, I love the grey water on the East
+Coast, and I like the low level dunes where the bent grass gleams and
+the sea-wind comes whispering "Forget!" All the gay days of the
+holiday-places, all the gorgeous sunsets, the imperial noondays, the
+solemn, glittering midnights are imposing, but the wise traveller
+learns to see the beauty of all the moods of the wild changing sea.
+Observe the commonplace man's attitude on a grey cheerless day, when
+the sky hangs low and the rollers are leaden. "A beast of a day!" he
+remarks in his elegant fashion; and he goes and grumbles in the vile
+parlour of his lodging-house, where the stuffy odour of aged chairs
+and the acrid smell of clumsy cookery contend for mastery. Yet outside
+on the moaning levels of the dim sea there are mysterious and ghostly
+sights that might move the heart of the veriest stockbroker if he
+would but force his mind to consider them. Look at that dark tremulous
+stream that seems to flow over the sullen sea. It is but a cat's-paw
+of wind, and yet it looks like a river flowing in silence from some
+fairy region. The boats start out of the haze and glide away into
+dimness after having shown their phantom shadows for a few seconds;
+the cry of the gull rings weirdly; the simulated agony of the staunch
+bird's scream makes one somehow think of tortured souls; you think of
+dim strange years, you feel the dim strange weather, you remember the
+still strange land unvexed of sun or stars, "where Lancelot rides
+clanking through the haze." Ah, who dares talk of a commonplace or
+disagreeable sea? I used the phrase once, but I well know that the
+"commonplace" day offers sights of sober grandeur to the eyes of the
+wise man. Happy those who have royal, serene days, lovely sunsets,
+quiet gloamings full of stars; happy also those who see but the
+enormous hurly-burly of mixed grey waves, and hear the harsh song of
+the wild wind that blows from the fields at night!
+
+Autumn is a great time for the wild Sea Rovers who gather at Cowes and
+Southampton. The Rover may always be recognised on shore--and,
+by-the-way, he stays ashore a good deal--for his nautical clothing is
+spick and span new, the rake of his glossy cap is unspeakably jaunty,
+and the dignity of his gesture when he scans the offing with a trusty
+telescope is without parallel in history. When the Rover walks, you
+observe a slight roll which no doubt is acquired during long
+experience of tempestuous weather. The tailors and bootmakers gaze on
+the gallant Rover with joy and admiration, for does he not carry the
+triumphs of their art on his person? He roughs it, does this bold
+sea-dog--none of your fine living for him! His saucy barque lies at
+her moorings amid the wild breakers of Cowes or "the Water," and he
+sleeps rocked in the cradle of the deep, when he is not tempted to
+sojourn in his frugal hotel. The hard life on the briny ocean suits
+him, and he leaves all luxuries to the swabs who stay on shore. If the
+water is not in a violent humour, the Rover enjoys his humble
+breakfast about nine. He tries kidneys, bloaters, brawn, and other
+rude fare; he never uses a gold coffee-pot--humble silver suffices;
+and even the urn is made of cheap metal. At eleven the hardy fellow
+recruits his strength with a simple draught of champagne, for which he
+never pays more than twelve pounds a dozen, and then four stalwart
+seamen row him to the landing-place. He criticises the mighty ocean
+from the balcony of the club until the middle of the afternoon, and
+then he prepares for a desperate deed of daring. The Rover goes to the
+landing-place and scans the gulf that yawns between him and his
+vessel. Two hundred yards at least must be covered before the Rover
+can bound on to the deck of his taut craft. Two hundred yards! And
+there is a current that might almost sweep a tea-chest out to sea! But
+the Rover's steady eye takes in the whole view, and his very nautical
+mind enables him to lay plans with wisdom. He looks sternly at his gig
+with the four stout oarsmen; his simple carpets are all right; his
+cushions, his pillows, his cigar-box, his silken rudder-lines are all
+as they should be. The Rover takes his determination, and a dark look
+settles on his manly countenance. For one brief instant he thinks of
+all he leaves behind him; his dear home rises before his eyes, the
+voices of his loved ones thrill in his ear, and his bronzed hand is
+raised to dash away the tear that starts unbidden. But there must be
+no weakness. Rovers have their feelings, but they must subdue them
+when two hundred yards have to be traversed over waves that are nearly
+two inches high. The Rover steps into his boat, resolved to do or die.
+Now or never! He puts one cushion behind his athletic back, he lights
+a Regalia--so cool are genuine heroes in peril--and shoots away over
+the yeasty billows. For forty seconds the fierce struggle lasts; the
+bow of the boat is wetted to a height of four inches; but
+dauntlessness and skill conquer all difficulties, and in forty seconds
+and a half the unscathed Rover stands on his quarter-deck.
+
+Sometimes when the captain is in a good humour, the Rover goes for a
+sail, and he takes as many as three ladies with him. This statement
+may be doubted, but only by those who do not know what British courage
+is really like. Yes, the Rover sometimes sails as much as ten miles in
+the course of one trip, and he may be as much as three hours away from
+his moorings. Moreover, I have known a good-natured skipper who
+allowed the roving proprietor of a yacht to take as many as six trips
+in the course of a single season. Observe the cheapness of this
+amusement, and reflect thankfully on the simplicity of taste which now
+distinguishes the wealthy Rovers of the South Coast. The yacht costs
+about two thousand pounds to begin with, and one thousand pounds per
+year is paid to keep her up. Thus it seems that a Rover may have six
+sails at the rate of one hundred and sixty-six pounds thirteen
+shillings and fourpence per sail! So long as the breed of Cowes Rovers
+exists we need have no fears concerning our naval supremacy. Indeed
+competent nautical men think that, if any band of enemies, no matter
+how ferocious they might be, happened to see a thorough-bred Cowes
+Rover equipped for his perilous afternoon voyage of two hundred yards,
+they would instantly lose heart and flee in terror. Such is the
+majesty of a true seaman. I hope that all my readers may respect the
+Rover when they see him. Remember that his dinner rarely numbers more
+than six courses, and he cannot always ice his champagne owing to the
+commotion of the elements. If such privations do not win pity from
+judicious readers, then, alas, I have written in vain! Those who read
+this will often be surrounded by strolling Rovers. Treat the reckless
+daring salts with respect, for they live hard and risk much.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+SORROW.
+
+
+I have never been disposed to be niggard of cheerfulness; for it has
+always seemed to me that one of the duties of a writer is to supply
+solace in a world where, amid all the beauty, so many things seem to
+go wrong. But, while I would fain banish cankered melancholy, sour
+ill-humour, cynicism, and petty complaining, I have never sought to
+disturb those who are mastered for a time by the sacred sorrow which
+takes possession of the greatest and purest and gentlest souls at
+times. There have been great men who were joyous--and they bore their
+part very bravely on earth; but the greatest of all have gained their
+strength in Sorrow's service. It matters not which of the kings
+amongst men we choose, we find that his kingship was only gained and
+kept after he had passed through the school of grief. It is a glad
+world for most of us--else indeed we might wish that one cataclysm
+would overwhelm us all; but our masters, those who teach us and guide
+us, have all been under the dominion of a nameless something which we
+can hardly call Melancholy, but which is a kind of divine sad sister
+to Melancholy. There is no discontent in the sorrow of the great ones;
+they are not querulous, and none of them ever sought to avenge their
+subdued grief on the persons of their fellow-creatures. The kings bear
+their burden with dignity; they love to see their human kindred light
+of heart; but they cannot be light-hearted in turn; for the burden and
+mystery of the world are ever with them, and their energy is all
+needed to help them in conquering pettiness of soul, so that by no
+weak example may they dishearten those who are weak. I am almost
+convinced that the man who composed the inscription on the emerald
+which is said to have reached Tiberius must have seen the Founder of
+our religion--or, at least, must have known some one who had seen Him.
+"None hath seen Him smile; but many have seen Him weep." It is so like
+what we should have expected! The days of the joyous pagan gods were
+passing away, the shadows of tedium and of life-weariness were
+drooping over a world that was once filled with thoughtless
+merriment--and then came One who preached the Gospel of Sorrow. He
+preached that gospel, and a faithless world at first refused to hear
+Him; but the Divine depth of sorrow drew the highest of souls; and
+soon the world left the religion of pride and vainglory and pleasure
+to embrace the religion of Pity.
+
+The sorrow of the weary King Ecclesiast has never seemed to me
+altogether noble; it is piercing in its insight--and I understand how
+youths who are coming to manhood find in the awful chapters a savage
+contrast to the joys of existence. Young men who have reached the
+strange time of discontent through which all of us pass are always
+profoundly affected by the Preacher; and they are too apt to pervert
+the most poignant of his words; but men who have really thought and
+suffered can never help feeling that there is a species of ingratitude
+in all his splendid lamentations. Why should the mighty king have
+bidden the youth to rejoice after so many awful words had been penned
+to show the end of all rejoicing? Every pleasure on earth the king had
+enjoyed, and he had drained life's chalice so far down that he tasted
+the bitterness of the lees. But had he not savoured joy to the full?
+Was there one gift showered by the lavish bounty of God which had not
+fallen on the chosen of fortune? We revere the intellect of the man
+who chastens our souls with his sombre discourse; but I could wish he
+had veiled his despair, and had told us of the ravishing delights
+which he had known. No; the Preacher is great, but his sorrow is not
+the highest. I give my chief reverence to the men who let their sorrow
+pass into central fire that blazes into deeds; I revere the men and
+women who bear their yoke and utter never a word of complaint; on them
+sorrow falls like a pure soft snow that leaves no stain.
+
+Of late, the nations of the world have been thrilled by the deeds of
+one humble man who embraced Sorrow and let her claim him for the best
+part of his life. I cannot bear to think much of the tragedy of
+Damien's life--and I shall not dream of endeavouring to find excuses,
+or of declaring that life an essentially happy one. The good Father
+chose Grief and clave to her as a bride; he chose the sights and
+sounds of grief as his surroundings and he wrought on silently under
+his fearful burden of holy sorrow until the release was given. He
+spoke no boastful words of contentment save when he thought of the
+rest that was coming for him; he gallantly accepted the crudest and
+foulest conditions of his dreadful environment, and he uttered no
+craving for sympathy, no wish for personal aid. If we think of that
+immortal priest's choice, we understand, perhaps for the first time,
+what the religion of Sorrow truly means. On the lonely rock the meek,
+strong soul spent its forces; joy, friendly faces, laughter of sweet
+children, healthy and kindly companions--there were none of these. The
+sea moaned round with many voices, and the sky bent over the lonely
+disciple; the melancholy of the sea, the melancholy of the changeless
+sky, the monotony of silence, must all have weighed on his heart. In
+the daytime there were only sights whereat strong men might swoon
+away--pain, pain, pain all round, and every complication of horror;
+but the Child of Sorrow bore all. Then came the sentence of death. For
+ten weary years the hero had to wait in loneliness while the Destroyer
+slowly enfolded him in its arms. We pity the monster who dies a swift
+death after his life of wickedness has been forfeited; we are vexed if
+a criminal endures one minute of suffering; but the noble one on that
+sad isle watched his doom coming for ten years, and never flinched
+from his task during that harrowing time. It makes the heart grow
+chill, despite the pride we feel in our lost brother. The religion of
+Sorrow has indeed conquered; and Father Damien has set the seal to its
+triumph.
+
+But around us there are others who have composedly accepted sorrow as
+their portion. We have, it may be, felt so much joy in living, we have
+been so pierced through and through in every nerve and every faculty
+of the mind with pure rapture during our pilgrimage, that we would
+fain let all dwellers on earth share the blessedness that we have
+known. It is not to be; the gospel of pity must needs claim some of
+its disciples wholly--and sorrow is their portion. Perhaps under all
+their sadness there lurks a joy that passes all known to slighter
+souls--I hope so; I hope that they cannot be permitted to endure what
+Dante endured. In the purlieus of our cities these resigned, resolute
+spirits expend their forces, and their unostentatious figures, passing
+from home to home where poor men lie, offer a lesson to the petty
+souls of some whose riches and worldly powers are by no means petty.
+Ah, it is lovely to see those merciful sisters of the fallen or
+falling--good to see the men who help them! Need we pity them? They
+would say "No"; but we must, for they live hard. A delicate lady
+quietly sets to work in a filthy tenement; her white hands raise up
+and cleanse the foulest of the poor little infants who swarm in the
+slums; she calmly performs menial offices for the basest and most
+ungrateful of the poor--and no one who has not lived among those
+degraded folk can tell what ingratitude is really like. Day after day
+that lady toils; and the only word of thanks she receives is perhaps a
+whine from some woman who wishes to cajole her into bestowing some
+gift. These sisters of Sorrow do not need thanks any more than they
+need pity; they frankly recognise the baseness of ill-reared human
+nature, and they go on trustfully in the hope that maybe things may
+grow slowly better. They meet death calmly; they hide their own
+sorrow, and even their pity is disciplined into usefulness. The men of
+the good company are the same. They have resigned all the lighter joys
+of earth, they are calm, and they let the unutterable sadness of the
+world spur them on only to quiet efforts after righteousness. Think
+what it must be for a man to leave the warm encompassment of the
+cheerful day and pass composedly to a gloom which is relieved only by
+the inner light that shines from the soul! Were not the hearts of the
+heroes pure, they must grow cynical as they looked on the evil mass of
+roguery, idleness, foulness, and cunning that seethes around them. But
+they have passed the portal beyond which peace is found; and the
+sorrow wherewith they gaze on their hapless fellow-men is tinctured
+neither by scorn nor weariness. If there is no reward for them, then
+we all of us have cause for bitter disappointment. But the forlorn
+hope of goodness never trouble themselves about rewards; they face the
+shadows of doom only as they face the squalor of their daily
+martyrdom. A certain philosopher said that he could not endure so
+sombre an existence because his nerves and sinews were frail and the
+pain would have mastered him; but he gladly owned that the enthusiasts
+had conquered his admiration and taken it for their permanent
+possession. The cool keen eye of the scoffer divined the strength of
+sorrow, and he admired the men whom he durst not imitate.
+
+There are others who pass through life enwrapped by the veil of a
+noble sorrow; and, when I see them, I am minded to wonder whether any
+one was ever the worse for encountering the touch of the chilly
+Mistress whom most children of earth dread. When I think the matter
+over I become convinced that no one who has once felt a noble and
+gentle sorrow can ever become wholly bad; and I fancy that even the
+bad, when once a real sorrow has pierced them, have a chance of
+becoming good. So in strange ways the things that seem hard to bear
+steadily tend to make the world better. When the bell tolls and the
+brown earth gapes and the form of the loved one is passed from sight
+for ever, it is bitter--ah, how bitter! But the chastening touch of
+Time takes away the bitterness, and there is left only an intense
+gentleness which seeks to soothe those who suffer; and the mother
+whose babe seemed to take her very heart away when it went into the
+Darkness can pity the other bereaved ones; so that her soul is exalted
+through its grief. The poet is thought by some to have uttered a mere
+aimless whim in words when he said--
+
+      "To Sorrow
+      I bade good-morrow,
+  And thought to leave her far away behind;
+      But cheerly, cheerly,
+      She loves me dearly--
+  She is so constant to me and so kind.
+      I would deceive her,
+      And so leave her;
+  But, ah, she is so constant and so kind!"
+
+It sounds like a whim; but it is more than that to those who have been
+in the depths of grief; for they know that out of their affliction
+grew either a solemn scorn of worldly ills or a keen wish to be
+helpful to others.
+
+I have no desire to utter a paradox when I say that all the world
+holds of best has sprung from sorrow. Shakspere smiles and is still. I
+love the smiles of his wiser years; but they would never have been so
+calmly content, so cheering with all their inscrutable depth, had not
+the man been weighed down with some dark sorrow before his soul was
+rescued and purified. I do not care for him when he is grinning and
+merry. He could play the buffoon when he willed--and a very unpleasant
+buffoon he was in his day; but Sorrow claimed him, and he came forth
+purified to speak to us by Prospero's lips. He had his struggle to
+compass resignation, he even seems to have felt himself degraded, and
+there is almost a weak complaint in that terrible sonnet, "No longer
+mourn for me when I am dead;" but his heart-strings held; he kept his
+dignity at the last, and he gave us the splendours of "The Tempest." I
+have no manner of superstition about the great poet--indeed I feel
+sure that at one time of his life he was what we call a bad man, his
+self-reproaches hinting all too plainly at forms of wickedness, moral
+wickedness, which pass far beyond the ordinary vice which society
+condemns--but I am sure that he became as good as he was serene; and I
+like to trace the phases of his sorrow up to the time of his triumph.
+
+Of late it has been the fashion to talk about Byron's theatrical
+sorrow. One much-advertised critic went so far as to speak of "Byron's
+vulgar selfishness." It might have been supposed that incontestable
+evidence had come before him; but a careful perusal of the documents
+will prove that, though Byron was as selfish as most other men during
+his mad misguided youth, yet, after sorrow had blanched his noble
+head, he cast off all that was vile in him and emerged from the
+fire-discipline as the most helpful and utterly unselfish of men. His
+last calm gentle letter to the woman who drove him out of England is
+simply perfect in its dignified humility; and the poorest creature
+that ever snarled may see from that letter that grief had turned the
+wayward fierce poet into a gentle and forbearing man who had suffered
+so much that he could not find it in his heart to inflict suffering on
+his worst enemy. I call the Byron of the Abbey a bad man; the Byron
+whose home became the home of pure charity--charity done in
+secret--was a good man.
+
+Sorrow may appear repulsive and men bid her "Avaunt!" Yet out of
+sorrow all that is noblest and highest in poesy and art has arisen;
+and all that is noblest in life has been achieved by the
+sorrow-stricken. Joy has given us much; and those who have once known
+what real earthly joy means should be content to pass unrepining to
+the Shades; but Sorrow's gifts are priceless, and no man can appraise
+their worth. Even poor Carlyle's sorrow, which was oftentimes aught
+but noble, if all tales be true, was sufficient to endow us with the
+most splendid of modern books. It is strange to see how that crabbed
+man with the passionately-loving heart keeps harping on the
+beneficence of sorrow. Once he spoke of "Sorrow's fire-whips"; but
+usually his strain is far, far different. He cleaves to the noble and
+sorrowful figures that crowd his sombre galleries; and I do not know
+that he ever gives more than a light and careless word of praise to
+any but his melancholy heroes. Cromwell, Abbot Sampson, the bold
+Ziethen, Danton, Mirabeau, Mahomet, Burns, "the great, melancholy
+Johnson," and even Napoleon and Luther--all are sorrowful, all are
+beautiful. Peace to them, and peace to the strong soul that made them
+all live again for the world!
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+DEATH.
+
+
+The air of mystery which most of us assume when we speak about the
+great change that marks the bound of our mortal progress has
+engendered a kind of paralysing terror which makes ordinary people
+shudder at the notion of bodily extinction. We are glad enough to
+enjoy the beautiful things of life, we welcome the rapture of love,
+the delight of the sun, the promise of spring, the glory of strength;
+and yet forsooth we must needs tremble at the grand beneficent close
+which rounds off our earthly strivings and completes one stage in our
+everlasting progress. Why should we not speak as frankly of Death as
+we do of love and life? If men would only be content to let their
+minds play freely around all the facts that concern our entrance, our
+progress, our exit, then existence would be relieved from the presence
+of terror. The Greeks were more rational than we are; they took the
+joys of life with serenity and gladness, and they accepted the mighty
+transformation with the same serenity. On their memorial-stones there
+is no note of mourning. A young man calmly bids adieu to his friends
+and prepares to pass with dignity from their presence; a gallant
+horseman exults in the knowledge that he once rejoiced in life--"Great
+joy had I on earth, and now I that came from the earth return to the
+earth." Such are the carvings and inscriptions that show the wise,
+brave spirit of the ancients. But we, with our civilisation, behave
+somewhat like those Indian tribes who keep one mysterious word in
+their minds, and try to avoid mentioning it throughout their lives.
+Even in familiar conversation it is amusing to hear the desperate
+attempts made to paraphrase the word which should come naturally to
+the lips of all steadfast mortals. "If anything should happen to me,"
+says the timid citizen, when he means, "If I should die"; and it would
+be possible to collect a score more of roundabout phrases with which
+men try to cheat themselves. It is right that we should be in love
+with life, for that is the supreme gift; but it is wrong to think with
+abhorrence of the close of life, for the same Being who gave us the
+thrilling rapture of consciousness bestows the boon of rest upon the
+temple of the soul. "He giveth His beloved sleep," and therein He
+proves His mighty tenderness.
+
+Strange it is to see how inevitably men and women are drawn to think
+and speak of the great Terror when they are forced to muse in
+solitude. We flirt with melancholy; we try all kinds of dismal
+coquetries to avoid dwelling on our inexorable and beneficent doom;
+yet, if we look over the written thoughts of men, we find that more
+has been said about Death than even about love. The stone-cold
+comforter attracts the poets, and most of them, like Keats, are half
+in love with easeful death. The word that causes a shudder when it is
+spoken in a drawing-room gives a sombre and satisfying pleasure when
+we dwell upon it in our hours of solitude. Sometimes the poets are
+palpably guilty of hypocrisy, for they pretend to crave for the
+passage into the shades. That is unreal and unhealthy; the wise man
+neither longs for death nor dreads it, and the fool who begs for
+extinction before the Omnipotent has willed that it should come is a
+mere silly blasphemer. But, though the men who put the thoughts of
+humanity into musical words are sometimes insincere, they are more
+often grave and consoling. I know of two supreme expressions of dread,
+and one of these was written by the wisest and calmest man that ever
+dwelt beneath the sun. Marvellous it is to think that our most sane
+and contented poet should have condensed all the terror of our race
+into one long and awful sentence. Perhaps Shakspere was stricken with
+momentary pity for the cowardice of his fellows, and, out of pure
+compassion, gave their agony a voice. That may be; at any rate, the
+fragment of "Measure for Measure" in which the cry of loathing and
+fear is uttered stands as the most striking and unforgettable saying
+that ever was conceived in the brain of man. Everybody knows the
+lines, yet we may once more touch our souls with solemnity by quoting
+them:
+
+  "Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
+  To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
+  This sensible warm motion to become
+  A kneaded clod, and the delighted spirit
+  To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
+  In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
+  To be imprisoned in the viewless winds
+  And blown with restless violence round about
+  The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
+  Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
+  Imagine howling!--'tis too horrible!
+  The weariest and most loathed worldly life
+  That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
+  Can lay on nature is a paradise
+  To what we fear of death."
+
+There is no more to be said in that particular line of reflection; the
+speech is flawless in its gruesome power, and every piercing word
+seems to leap from a shuddering soul. The other utterance which is fit
+to be matched with Shakspere's was written by Charles Lamb.
+"Whatsoever thwarts or puts me out of my way brings death into my
+mind. All partial evils, like humours, run into that capital
+plague-sore. I have heard some profess an indifference to life. Such
+hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge, and speak of the
+grave as of some soft arms in which they may slumber as on a pillow.
+Some have wooed death--but 'Out upon thee,' I say, 'thou foul, ugly
+phantom! I detest, abhor, execrate thee, as in no instance to be
+excused or tolerated, but shunned as a universal viper, to be branded,
+proscribed, and spoken evil of! In no way can I be brought to digest
+thee, thou thin, melancholy _Privation_. Those antidotes prescribed
+against the fear of thee are altogether frigid and insulting, like
+thyself.'"
+
+Poor Charles's wild humour flickers over this page like lambent flame;
+yet he was serious at heart without a doubt, and his whirling words
+rouse an echo in many a breast to this day. But both Shakspere and
+Lamb had their higher moments. Turn to "Cymbeline," and observe the
+glorious triumph of the dirge which rings like the magnificent
+exultation of Beethoven's Funeral March--
+
+  "Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
+    Nor the furious winter's rages;
+  Thou thy worldly task hast done,
+    Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages;
+  Golden lads and girls all must,
+    As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
+
+  Fear no more the frown o' the great--
+    Thou art past the tyrant's stroke;
+  Care no more to clothe and eat--
+    To thee the reed is as the oak;
+  The sceptre, learning, physic, must
+    All follow this, and come to dust."
+
+Here in rhythmic form we have the thought of the mighty apostle--"O
+Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?" Shakspere
+was too intensely human to be absolved from mortal weakness; but, in
+the main, he took the one view which I should be glad to see cherished
+by all. His words sometimes make us pause, as we pause when the violet
+flashes of summer lightning fleet across the lowering dome of the sky;
+but, in the end, he always has his words of cheer, and we gather heart
+from reading the strongest and most perfect writer the earth has
+known. Turn where we will, we find that all of our race--emperor,
+warrior, poet, clown, fair lady, innocent child--are given to dwelling
+on the same thought. It is our business to seek out those who have
+spoken with resignation and dauntlessness, and to leave aside all
+those who have only affectations of bravery or affectations of horror
+to give us. Here is a beautiful word:--
+
+  "The ways of Death are soothing and serene,
+  And all the words of Death are grave and sweet;
+  Approaching ever, soft of hands and feet,
+  She beckons us, and strife and song have been.
+  A summer night, descending cool and green
+  And dark on daytime's dust and stress and heat,
+  The ways of Death are soothing and serene,
+  And all the words of Death are grave and sweet.
+  O glad and sorrowful, with triumphant mien
+  And hopeful fancies look upon and greet
+  This last of all your lovers, and to meet
+  Her kiss mysterious all your spirit lean!
+  The ways of Death are soothing and serene!"
+
+Even Shakspere hardly bettered that!
+
+I should not like to see men begin to encourage the recklessness of
+the desperado, nor should I like to see women affect the brazen
+abandonment of the Amazon. I only care to see our fellow-creatures
+rise above pettiness, so that they may accept all God's ordinances
+with unvarying gratitude. Is it not pitiful to see a grown man
+trembling and waving his hand with angry disgust when the holy course
+of Nature is spoken of with gravity and composed resolution? I have
+seen a stout, strong man who had amassed enormous wealth fly into
+pettish rage like a spoiled child when a friend spoke to him about the
+final disposal of his riches. Like a silly girl, this powerful
+millionaire went into tremors when the inevitable was named in his
+ear, for he had imbibed all the cowardly conventions that tend to
+poison our existence. He died a hundred deaths in his time, and much
+of his life was passed in such misery as only cultivated poltroonery
+can breed. Wicked wags knew that they could frighten him at any
+moment; they would greet him cordially, and then suddenly assume an
+air of deep concern. The poor plutocrat's face changed instantly, and
+he would ask, "What is the matter?" The joker then made answer, "You
+are a little flushed. You should rest." This was enough. The truant
+imagination of the unhappy butt went far afield in search of terrors;
+neither food, nor wine, nor the pleasures of the theatre could tempt
+him, and he remained in a state of limpness until the natural buoyancy
+of his spirits asserted itself. What a life! How much better would it
+have been for this rich man had he trained himself to preserve General
+Gordon's composure, even if he had bought that composure at the price
+of his whole colossal fortune! Riches were useless to him, the sun
+failed to cheer him, and his end was in truth a release from one
+incessant torture.
+
+Turn from this hare-hearted citizen, and think of our hero, the pride
+of England, the flower of the human race--Charles Gordon. With his
+exquisite simplicity, Gordon confesses in one of his letters that he
+used to feel frightened when he went under fire, for the superstitious
+dread of death had been grafted on his mind when he was young. But he
+learned the fear of God and lost all other fear; he accustomed himself
+to the idea of parting with the world and its hopes and labours, and
+in all the long series of letters which he sent home from the Soudan
+during his period of rule we find him constantly speaking quietly,
+joyously about the event which carries horror to the hearts of weak
+men--"My Master will lay me aside and use some other instrument when I
+have fulfilled His purpose. I have no fear of death, for I know I
+shall exchange much weariness for perfect peace." So spoke the hero,
+the just and faithful Knight of God. He was simple, with the
+simplicity of a flawless diamond; he was reverent, he was faithful
+even to the end, and he was incredibly dauntless. Why? Because he had
+faced the last great problem with all the force of his noble manhood,
+and the thought of his translation to another world woke in his
+gallant soul images of beauty and holiness. Why should the meanest and
+most unlearned of us all not strive to follow in the footsteps of the
+hero? Millions on millions have passed away, and they now know all
+things; the cessation of human life is as common and natural as the
+drawing of our breath; why then should we invest a natural, blessed,
+beautiful event with murky lines of wrath and dread? The pitiful
+wretch who flaunts his braggart defiance before the eyes of men and
+shrieks his feeble contempt of the inevitable is worthy only of our
+quiet scorn; but the grateful soul that bows humbly to the stroke of
+fate and accepts death as thankfully as life is in all ways worthy of
+admiration and vivid respect. We are prone to talk of our "rights,"
+and some of us have a very exalted idea of the range which those
+precious "rights" should cover. One of our poets goes so far as to
+inquire in an amiable way, "What have we done to thee, O Death?" He
+insinuates that Death is very unkind to ply the abhorred shears over
+such nice, harmless creatures as we are. Let us, for manhood's sake,
+have done with puerility; let us recognise that our "rights" have no
+existence, and that we must perforce accept the burdens of life,
+labour, and death that are laid upon us. We can do no good by
+nourishing fears, by encouraging silly conventionalities, by shirking
+the bald facts of life; and we should gently, joyfully, trustfully
+look our fate in the face and fear nothing. Life will never be the
+joyous pilgrimage that it ought to be until men have learned to crush
+their pride, their doubts, their terrors, and have also learned to
+regard the beautiful sleep as a holy and fitting reward only to be
+rightly enjoyed by those who live purely, righteously, hopefully in
+the sight of God and man.
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+JOURNALISM.
+
+
+When the mystic midnight passes, the bustle of Fleet Street slackens;
+but on each side of the thoroughfare hundreds of workers with hand and
+brain are toiling with eager intensity. In tall buildings here and
+there the lights glitter on every floor, and throw their long shafts
+through the gloom; not much activity is plainly visible, and yet
+somehow the merest novice feels that there is a throb in the air, and
+that some mysterious forces are working around him. Hurrying
+messengers dash by, stray cabs rush along with a low rumble and sharp
+clash of hoofs. But it is not in the street that the minds and bodies
+of men are obviously in action; go inside one of the mighty palatial
+offices, and you find yourself in the midst of such a hive of
+marvellous industry as the world has never seen before. On one journal
+as many as four hundred and fifty or five hundred men are all
+labouring for dear life; every one is at high pressure, from the
+silent leader-writer to the fussy swift-footed messenger. In that one
+building is concentrated a great estate, which yields a revenue that
+exceeds that of some principalities; it is a large nerve-centre, and
+myriads of fibres connect it with every part of the globe; or, say, it
+is like some miraculous eye, which sees in all directions and is
+indifferent to distance. Go into one quiet, soft-carpeted room, and
+certain small glittering machines flash in the bright light. "Click,
+click--click, click!"--long strips of tape are softly unwound and fall
+in slack twisted piles. One of those machines is printing off a long
+letter from Berlin, another is registering news from Vienna, and by a
+third news from Paris comes as easily and rapidly as from Shoreditch;
+subdued men take the tapes, expand and make fluent the curt, halting
+phrases of the foreign correspondents, and pass the messages swiftly
+away to the printers. From America, Australia, India, China, the items
+of news pour in, and are scrutinised by severe sub-editors; and those
+experts calculate to a fraction of an inch what space can be
+judiciously spared for each item. If Parliament is sitting, the relays
+of messengers arrive with batches of manuscript; and, when an
+important debate is proceeding, the steady influx of hundreds of
+scribbled sheets is enormous. A four hours' speech from such an orator
+as Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Chamberlain contains, say, thirty thousand
+words. Imagine the area of paper covered by the reporters! But such a
+speech would rarely come in late at night, and the men can usually
+handle an important oration by an eminent speaker in a way that is
+leisurely by comparison. The slips are distributed with lightning
+rapidity; each man puts his little batch into type, the fragments are
+placed in their queer frame, and presently the readers are poring over
+the long, damp, and odorous proof-sheets. There is no very great hurry
+in the early part of the evening; but, as the small hours wear away,
+the strain is feverish in its poignancy. There is no noise, no
+confusion; each man knows his office, and fulfils it deftly. But such
+great issues are involved, that the nervousness of managers, printers,
+sub-editors--every one--may easily be understood. Suppose that a very
+important division is to be taken in Parliament; the minutes roll by,
+and the news is still delayed. Some kind of comment must be made on
+the result of the debate, and an able, swift writer scrawls off his
+column of phrases with furious speed. Then that article must be put
+into type; a model of the type must be taken on a sheet of
+papier-mache, the melted metal must be poured into the paper mould,
+the resulting curved block must be clamped on to a cylinder of the
+waiting machine, and all this must be done with strict regard to the
+value of seconds. A delay of half a minute might prevent the manager
+from sending his piles of journals away by the early train, and that
+would be a calamity too fearful to be dreamed of. In one great
+newspaper-office ten machines are all set going together, and an
+eleventh is kept ready in case of accident. The ten whizzing cylinders
+print off the papers, and an impression of a quarter of a million is
+soon thrown out, folded, and piled ready for distribution. But imagine
+what a loss of one minute means! Truly the agitation of the officials
+at an awkward pinch is singularly excusable, and many a hard word is
+levelled at pertinacious talkers who insist on thrusting themselves
+upon the House at a time when the country is waiting with wild
+eagerness for momentous tidings. The long line of carts waits in the
+street, the speedy ponies rattle off, and soon the immense building is
+all but still. Comfortable people who have their journal punctually
+handed in at a convenient hour in the morning are apt to think lightly
+of the raging effort, the inconceivably complicated organisation, the
+colossal expense needed to produce that sheet which is flung away at
+the close of each day. A blunder of the most trivial kind might throw
+everything out of gear; but stern discipline and ubiquitous precaution
+render the blunder almost an impossibility. Sometimes you may observe
+in a paper like the _Times_ one column which bristles with
+typographical errors. All the slips are clustered in one place, and
+the reason is that the few minutes necessary for proper revision could
+not be spared. Good workmen are set on at the last moment, and an
+attempt is made to set up the final scraps of matter with as few
+errors as possible; but little mistakes will creep in, and people who
+do not know the startling exigencies of the printer's trade are apt to
+express scornful wonder. Very comic have been the errors made during
+the recent furious and prolonged debates, for the frantic conflicts in
+the House were extended far into the small hours. One excited orator,
+in closing a debate, dropped into poetry, and remarked that a certain
+catastrophe came "like a bolt from the blue"; a daily journal of vast
+circulation described the event as coming "like a bolt from the
+flue"--which was a very sad instance of bathos. The amazing thing is
+that such blunders should be so rare as to be memorable.
+
+What a strange population who toil thus at night for our pleasure and
+instruction, and who reverse the order of ordinary people's lives!
+They are worth knowing, these swift, dexterous, laborious people.
+First of all comes the great personage--the editor. In old days simple
+persons imagined the conductor of the _Times_ perched upon a majestic
+throne, whence he hurled his bolts in the most light-hearted manner.
+We know better now; yet it must be owned that the editor of a great
+journal is a very important personage indeed. The true editor is born
+to his function; if he has not the gift, no amount of drilling will
+ever make him efficient. Many of the outside public still picture the
+editor as wielding his pen valiantly, and stabbing enemies or
+heartening friends with his own hands. As a matter of fact, the
+editor's function is not to write; the best of the profession never
+touch a pen, excepting to write a brief note of instruction or to send
+a private letter. The editor is the brain of the journal; and, in the
+case of a daily paper, his business is not so much to instruct the
+public as to find out what the public want to say, and say it for them
+in the clearest and most forcible way possible. Imagine a general
+commanding amid the din of a great battle. He must remember the number
+of his forces, the exact disposition of every battalion, the peculiar
+capabilities of his principal subordinates, and he must also note
+every yard of the ground. He hears that a battalion has been repulsed
+with heavy slaughter at a point one mile away, and the officer in
+command cannot repeat his assault without reinforcements. He must
+instantly decide as to whether the foiled battalion is merely to hold
+its ground or to advance once more. Orderlies reach him from all
+points of the compass; he must note where the enemy's fire slackens or
+gains power; he must be ready to use the field-telegraph with
+unhesitating decision, for a minute's hesitation may lose the battle
+and ruin his force. In short, the general plays a vast game which
+makes the complications of chess seem simple. The editor, in his
+peaceful way, has to perform daily a mental feat almost equal in
+complexity to that of the warrior. Public opinion usually has strong
+general tendencies; but there are hundreds of cross-currents, and the
+editor must allow for all. Suppose that a public agitation is begun,
+and that a great national movement seems to be in progress; then the
+editor must be able to tell instinctively how far the movement is
+likely to be strong and lasting. If he errs seriously, and regards an
+agitation as trivial which is really momentous, then his journal
+receives a blow which may cripple its influence during months. One
+great paper was ruined some twenty years ago by a blunder, and about
+one hundred thousand pounds were deliberately thrown away through
+obstinate folly. The perfect editor, like the great general, seizes
+every clue that can guide him, and makes his final movement with alert
+decision. No wonder that the work of editing wears men out early. The
+great _Times_ editor, Mr. Delane, went about much in society; he
+always appeared to be calm, untroubled, inscrutable, though the
+factions were warring fiercely and bitterness had reached its height.
+He scarcely ever missed his mark; and, when he strolled into his
+office late in the evening, his plan was ready for the morrow's
+battle. At five the next morning his well-known figure, wrapped in the
+queer long coat, was to be seen coming from the square; he might have
+destroyed a government, or altered a war policy, or ruined a
+statesman--all was one to him; and he went away ready to lay his plans
+for the next day's conflict. Delane's power at one time was almost
+incalculable, and he gained it by unerringly finding out exactly what
+England wanted. England might be wrong or right--that was none of
+Delane's business; he cared only to discover what his country wished
+for from day to day. An amazing function is that of an editor.
+
+Then we have the leader-writer. The British public have decided that
+their newspaper shall furnish them daily with three or four little
+addresses on various topics of current interest; and these grave or
+gay sermons are composed by practised hands who must be ready to write
+on almost any subject under the sun at a minute's notice. In a certain
+class of old-fashioned literature the newspaper-writer is represented
+as a careless, dissipated Bohemian, who lived with rackety
+inconsequence. That tribe of writers has long vanished from the face
+of the earth. The last of the sort that I remember was a miserable old
+man who haunted the British Museum. No one knew where he lived; but
+his work, such as it was, usually went in with punctuality, and he
+drank the proceeds. He died in a stall of a low public-house, and was
+buried by the parish. No one but his editor and one or two cronies
+knew his real name, and he appeared to be utterly friendless. But the
+modern leader-writer must beware of strong liquors. Usually he is a
+keen, reposeful man who has his brain cool at all hours. The immense
+drinking-bouts of old times could never be indulged in now; and
+indeed, if a journalist once begins to take stimulants as stimulants,
+his end is not far off. Let us mention the kind of feats which must be
+performed. A powerful minister makes a speech after eleven o'clock at
+night; the leader-writer receives proof-sheets; he must grasp the
+whole scope of the speech in a flash, and then proceed with the mere
+mechanical work of writing. Twelve hundred words will take about an
+hour and twenty minutes to set down, and then the MS. must be rushed
+piece by piece to the composing-room. Again, supposing that news of
+some great disaster arrives late. An article must be swiftly done, and
+the writer must have a theory ready that will hold water. Work like
+this needs a quick wit, a copious vocabulary, and an absolutely steady
+hand. Moreover, the leader-writer must unhappily be invariably ready
+to write "nothings" so that they may look like "somethings." News is
+scarce, foreign nations show a culpable lack of desire to kill each
+other, no moving accident has occurred--and the paper must be filled.
+Then the leader-writer must take some trivial subject and weave round
+it a web of graceful and amusing phrases. One brilliant scholar once
+wrote a most charming and learned article about pigs; and I have seen
+a column of grave nonsense spun out on the subject of an unhappy cat
+which fixed its head in a salmon-tin!
+
+This hurried writing on trifling matters brings on a certain looseness
+of style and thought; but the public will have it, and the demand
+creates the supply of a flimsy, pleasant, literary article. The best
+leaders are now written by fine scholars. In travelling over the
+country I have been amused by simple people who imagined that the
+articles in a journal were produced by one secret and utterly
+mysterious being. These good folk are mightily surprised on finding
+that the admired leaders are done by a troop of men who are not
+exactly commonplace, but who are not much wiser or better than their
+fellows.
+
+
+UNWIN BROTHERS PRINTERS CHILWORTH AND LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Side Lights, by James Runciman
+
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